For Evangelicals, same-sex marriage is not an “agree to disagree” issue.
(By Ed Stetzer, The Exchange). Marriage, as Jesus defines it in Matthew 19—where a man leaves his father and mother and joins with his wife in covenant marriage—is a core evangelical belief.
It might not seem that way these days, when we hear of a few people making news by changing their views on sexuality and marriage, but we are in a season of one evangelical organization after another feeling the need to make clear their position on marriage.
That’s the bigger story than the celebrity of the moment.
Evangelical organizations across the spectrum are making clear where they stand on marriage. For some, particularly conservative Evangelicals, this view was already evident, but perhaps this is most difficult in the progressive wing of Evangelicals.
Organizations like Fuller Seminary, InterVarsity, the Vineyard, and World Vision are all known for their progressive views on gender, race, and social justice.
These organizations were seen as progressive—until recently.
They’ve recently made it clear what they believe on marriage, and some people are disappointed.
Disappointment
I imagine that if you’ve dedicated your life to making same-sex marriage an issue on which good, Bible-believing Christians can just “agree to disagree,” this must be deeply disappointing. And for many LGBT people who just want to live their lives as they believe God made them, I understand this can be hurtful. I know those emotions are real and deeply felt.
While those feelings are real, it is also the case that this is real: Evangelicals consider biblical marriage a core issue.
Now, Evangelicals are not the only ones to think this, but they are currently in the spotlight on this discussion. For a few years, some wondered if Evangelicals would move on same-sex marriage, or at least not make it the dividing line. For example, when one Vineyard megachurch pastor wrote a book affirming same-sex relationships, the question was, “Will the Vineyard make this an ‘agree to disagree’ issue?”
That pastor is no longer with the Vineyard, explaining he could not “enforce” the policies when the Vineyard said what they always believed—marriage is a core Evangelical belief.
Related article: What’s Really Going on with Evangelicals and Same-Sex Marriage
2 Comments. Leave new
One would get the impression evangelical groups are being pressured into changing their views on SSm, and that simply is not happening.
So, how is this … article “news”???
And InterVarsity was NEVER “progressive”. Good to see they dropped the “Christian” from their name, though. Their views are quite unlike the Christ.
The Reformation Father’s, Zwingli, Know, Calvin had the option to make marriage a rite and full sacrament of the church, as in the Roman tradition, but did not. Their balance was to more or less vest the act of marriage as a civil act of the State for legal purposes, but to be retain the in church and faith the ability of clergy to perform marriages as an agent of the State, but to keep the State out of theology and church order as how marriage is defined and who or whom should be married. This agreement, reflected in the 1st Amendment, more or less held for about 230 years in the republic.
Well here we are now. What we see today in the LGBTQ deconstruction of the church and faith, with the full support and cooperation of liberal protestant sects, is the essencial union of church and State, though the offices of Obama administration and its sycophants in the various denominations, into a amalgamation of a contemporary secular religion, based on a number of beliefs with LGBTQ rights at its center, along with a hole laundry list of other causes, issues and identity based victimization narratives.
So what does the PCUSA do in service of their secular faith? Redefine marriage removing gender or sexual qualifications or identity and in essence make it whatever one chooses to make it, all in service of their new faith and patrons in the general secular-humaists power structures of law, culture and politics. As far as its effect or affect on its clergy and churches, as experience has shown, they really don’t give a damn what happens.