The sexual revolutionaries are not satisfied with liberty. Those who disagree are hereby excused from the table of public discourse, thus declares David Gushee in his recent column, “On LGBT equality, middle ground is disappearing.”
I agree with Gushee’s observation that there is no more middle ground. At the table of public discourse if you do not affirm the LGBT agenda you will find that your chair has been removed. He rightly observes that “most visible institutions of American life…are increasingly intolerant of any remaining discrimination, or even any effort to stay in a neutral middle ground.” As others have already witnessed, there is no coexist if you don’t agree.
Gushee’s primary argument for the abandonment of sincerely held religious beliefs and Church doctrine is personal experience. He admits setting up his own experience as the way to be followed by others. Experience, he argues, “is the major path to theological reconsideration.”
Those whose theological convictions refuse to be bent and reshaped by human sexual desire are thus described as “digging in their heels” and interpreting the “pressure to reconsider as pressure to succumb to error, or even heresy.” Gushee is right even as he misses the point.
He fails to see that the violation of conscience and the theological gymnastics necessary to be welcomed at the table is not a contortion evangelicals are willing to make. Orthodoxy is not so easily redefined nor abandoned.
The kind of Christians who continue to be conscience bound by the plain meaning of the Scriptures, believe that God, through His Word, informs our understanding of the world, not the other way around. Those guided by public opinion, on the other hand, are subject to the ever rising and falling waves of human proclivity.
God, the Scriptures declare, is the same yesterday today and tomorrow. Those who strive to conform to His unchanging character are seen as hold-outs to history’s momentum. Gushee sees us as having dug in our heels, failing to see that we care more about being found on the right side of a holy God than on the right side of history.
I particularly take umbrage at Gushee’s assertion that “they are organizing legal defense efforts under the guise of religious liberty, and interpreting their plight as religious persecution.” It’s no guise.
We live in a day and time when Christians are being actively persecuted in dozens of countries around the world by the very same forces that persecute LGBT people. The only reason we’re even having these conversations is because of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of both freedom of expression and freedom of religion. To force compliance of my sincerely held religious beliefs to your sexual anarchist ideas is as much a violation as any other threat to my conscience. Yet those now seeking to bind the conscience of Christians who remain aligned with the overwhelming majority of Christians around the world are unable to see their religious intolerance.
The clash within our culture will prove to others around the world whether we genuinely believe everyone has a right to freely exercise their religion, even if that religion is convictional Christianity.
So, is there room at the proverbial table of public discourse for those who disagree with the prevailing winds of evermore libertine sexual ethics? Gushee is arguing a definitive no. And, by the way, he sees no need to further debate. The sexual revolutionaries have determined that the case is closed and all dissenting voices are hereby barred from the table. “Space for neutrality,” he declares, “will close up as well.”
Gushee errs elsewhere. Like when he asserts “they are confident that they have the moral high ground.” No one should know better than an evangelical Christian how we’re all equal at the foot of the cross. We all lost the moral high ground in a place called Eden in what might as well be a galaxy far far away. And as for those “shrinking places of power” from whence Gushee seems to think we’re out to get those he calls “strays,” the heart of the evangelical is for prodigals to come home and be redeemed, restored, and blessed, not punished.
Gushee has clearly become an A+ student of the sexual revolutionaries. Maybe it’s time he took up the study of the new face of evangelicalism where love for those with whom we disagree is the starting point for Kingdom advancement–not for power nor positional authority in the kingdoms of this world.
Deny us a seat at the table of here-and-now if you want. We’ve actually set our minds and hearts on taking a seat at the table in the Kingdom of now-and-forevermore.
Related articles:
David Gushee–The Missing Link, by Jeff Gissing
Ask Not for Whom the Volcano Erupts; It Erupts for Thee: A Response to David Gushee, by Albert Mohler
LGBT Rights vs. Religious Freedom: No Middle Ground? by John Stonestreet
Discrimination That Is Necessary For A Civil Society: a Response to David Gushee, by George Guthrie
8 Comments. Leave new
Re: “At the table of public discourse if you do not affirm the LGBT agenda you will find that your chair has been removed. ”
Poppycock.
Considering that the “agenda” is nothing more, less or other than the EQUAL protections of the secular, civil law – which governs us ALL – the “agenda” looks a lot like the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.
Nor are you required to “affirm” this, but it is a reality and yes, you are kind of expected to accept (or at least cope with) reality.
And … CLEARLY – the metaphorical “chair” has NOT been “removed”. If it were, this very article would not exist. This article, this website – and countless others like it – are part of the “table of public discourse”. There is no END to input from those who disagree.
Re: “most visible institutions of American life…are increasingly intolerant of any remaining discrimination”.
Obviously not the many ‘christian’ institutions that want to perpetuate discrimination. They do not WANT to “CO-EXIST”. How many ‘christian’ ‘pastors’ in Florida publicly declared their dismay that even MORE of God’s LGBTQ children weren’t massacred in Orlando???
‘Reverend’ Kevin Swanson called for gays to be “surely put to death” – and did so in front of THREE GOP Presidential hopefuls, not ONE of whom had the integrity to disavow his heinous remarks.
I still remember the ‘pastor’ who said “Gay people should be rounded up in electrified pens until they die off.”
‘Reverend’ Jimmy Swaggart said that “If a man so much as LOOKED at me ‘funny’, I’d kill him and tell God he died.” It’s hardly an example of wanting to “CO-EXIST”.
‘Reverend’ Scott Lively exported this kind of ‘christian’ hate to Uganda, and now that country has the “Kill the gays” bill.
Like I said, too many who claim the name of Christ have ZERO interest in ‘co-existing’. They want gay people DEAD, and make NO bones about saying so publicly.
We do not SEEK “the abandonment of sincerely held religious beliefs”. We want you to stop discriminating in the secular, public square. Now THAT would be ‘co-existing’!
The author of this piece makes it sound as if gay people don’t ALSO hold sincere religious beliefs. And that’s just nonsense.
The author doesn’t see or treat gay people as human beings. Instead, the author talks only about “sexual desire”, “sexual anarchist ideas”, “libertine sexual ethics” and “sexual revolutionaries” instead of two people fully capable of love and committment to one another in marriage. That is NOT how you treat people you purport to “love”. It’s diminshing, demeaning and debasing of God’s LGBTQ children, and the author ought to be ashamed.
If you go back to the aftermath of the Stonewall riots and the birth of the contemporary LGBT movement , many of its foundation writers and thinkers, never conceived their agenda or end goals as gaining a seat at the table. When the spoke of LGBT empowerment and liberation they spoke in absolutist, reconstructionist terms and goals. They did not desire culture, politics or faith to be hospitable to the LGBT community but they sought removal and deconstruction of any institution or power center they perceived as a threat to their personal liberties and freedoms. The first and primary target of course was the soft quivering mass of acceptance that was the mainline Protestant churches of the 1970s. They easily fell under the LGBTs lobby primarily because both the LGBT movement and liberal Protestantism shared the same Marxist view of history more or less, of the inevitability of conflict, struggle and the linear outcomes of their victories, with subjugation and dis empowerment of those who stood against them. There is no longer any seat at the table simply because they do not wish you have one. And more than that, they wish further you do not exist in their version of reality or culture. It is not just not exile they are after for their opponents, far more serious I am afraid.
I DO “coexist” with the LGBT community but I will not be a part of a church that endorses homosexual marriage. I will love and pray for my gay brothers and sisters but will not condone their chosen lifestyle. And it’s only a matter of time before PCUSA mandates that “marriages” between gays be performed in the churches.
My congregation will be gone by then to another denomination.
Sadly, I do agree with your analysis.
@george – interesting how the lgbt crowd likes to throw out the fear/nazi/shame accusation when they run out of reasons to violate the 1 amendment. It’s like they all have the same brochure on how to insult their opponents when reason fails them. “When all else fails tell them they are phobists. If that doesn’t work call them nazis or at least compare them to nazis (it doesn’t matter that they have nothing in common with nazis- trust us, the insult will stick). If that fails bring out the ultimate weapon: Shame them!” Sexual/gender issues submit to the same scrutiny as does any idea presented in a free society. Your personal experience has no say on mine. I am free to disagree with what I feel is sexual and gender anarchy. I am free to disagree. The government has one obligation: to ensure the ongoing freedom of thought and expression in a free context. They have no business determining the content. The lgbt can try to force the govt to regulate the context but that can have only one end: an unwanted and unnecessary journey toward civil violence. The 1 amendment is the one thing that keeps all this in check. Dissolve the 1 amendment and deny people freedom of content and the result cannot be good (pandora’s box will be opened at that point). @lgbt crowd, treat others with the same freedom of content you want for yourselves… (PS – people who disagree with lgbt opinions are not afraid of them. Funny how the people most willing to threaten the loss of freedom to the sexually orthodox are calling us “afraid.” You can drop the phobist BS.)
What has happened to the teaching that the only way to become a Christian and to know God is, “if God reveals himself to a person and dwells in their mind and heart. I strongly hold on to that truth, since there is no other way to know God or Jesus or the Spirit. They are too immense for anyone to pretend to really understand who God is. We only know what God reveals to us threw the Spirit.
It is always the same story, people wanting and proclaiming they have the truth, but their minds and hearts are obscure by their own thoughts and set of new beliefs, which do not include Jesus as the center of their lives and the only way to become part of the Kingdom: And the Bible as the revelation of Jesus. God will always guide us to hold fast to our beliefs and protect us from cultural trends and current ideas that do not conform to the true revelation of God in Jesus Christ. I read many arguments about lgbtq rights. Yes, I agree they have the same rights as any other person does. But, the central issue is not about rights or privileges, It’s about worshiping God and deny self. Most, don’t want to deny self because maybe they consider self to be the center of all things, but really have never had a personal encounter with the Creator who is beyond our imagination and can only be known if he reveals himself. To deny self comes with the responsibility to change many things which one likes and enjoys doing. “Rights, our personal beliefs and agendas” should never be the center of our agenda and written statements, It is a waste of time; The center of our agenda, activity writings thoughts should always be Christ. If you have Christ in your heart and mind all other worldly things will not matter.
George [August 31, 2016] is an advocate for this LGBT position. Unfortunately, he apparently neither understands or cares to understand the Christians who do not hate gays, lesbians, etc. But Christians do not march to the beat of a Supreme Court ruling grounded on trends of the times[Justice Kennedy] or allegedly based on the 14th Amendment.
Rather, we obey God, not man, in faith and practice. The Supreme Court ruling is not the highest law in the universe.
What the writer confuses is an understanding of culture. He mixes and matches and nothing fit.
There are at least 3 modes of culture. George’s understanding is as he admits secular advocacy. The first mode is Theonomous Culture – governed by God to God’s authority. All law are engraved on the heart. That is the ground most Christians understand and adopt.
The second mode of culture is Hereronmous culture – from the top down. Islam is an example in a fully Muslim culture or political culture.
The third mode of culture is Autonmous culture – self law, each person determines his or her moral inclinations. George and many others are located in his hedonistic culture.
[Thanks to Christian apologist Ravi Zachiaras for making these cultural distinction clear and decisively so].
Thus, George and the increasing secular society will not provide a table or chair but bar all Christians from the room or the public square. In time they will demand clergy do not preach on the subject, as it is hurtful and painful.
Their is a limited tolerance.
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On the other hand, theology is the major path to experience reconsideration.
“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord ponders the heart.”