“Throughout history, religion has sanctioned and fueled the persecution of homosexuality. That dynamic may be drawing to an end. Polls, clerics, and denominations are shifting. Theology is adapting. Resistance to same-sex marriage is dwindling, and there’s no end in sight.”
So writes William Saletan of Slate, in an article on the recent Faith Angle Forum, an event hosted annually by the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center.It includes this snippet:
The conference’s second session dwelled on sin. The speakers, Cornelius Plantinga of Calvin College and Ross Douthat of the New York Times, discussed what we should feel bad about. Homosexuality wasn’t on the list. Plantinga, a former president of Calvin Theological Seminary, noted that some people’s views were changing.* “It used to be that people thought of homosexual acts as sinful,” he said. “Now they think of criticism of homosexual acts as sinful.”
Perhaps the most interesting part of Saletan’s piece deals with a question that Michael Gerson, who former Bush speech writer and member of a breakaway Anglican church, asked the two speakers about the ways in which the “belief” that people may have a “strong genetic predisposition” to homosexuality” is changing even conservative Christian’s views on this subject.
If Gerson and his compatriots in the breakaway Anglican movement are swerving from their uncritical embrace of the anti-gay bigotry of Peter Akinola, which I wrote about in this May 2008 piece, that is good news. But what would be better is if they could get their leaders, like Archbishop Bob Duncan, to come out against Uganda’s hideous anti-gay law.
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Gentle Christopher, you have it backwards. Progressives have done their home work — theological, psychological, sociological, historical, etc. It’s just that regressives ignore it least they lose their old delaying tactic, “It needs more study.”
Reread The 2 May 2014 posting on the Christian paradox that some Christians follow a tradition of absolutism and others a tradition of questioning. Some need a rock to stand on. Others prefer the fluidity of the Baptismal waters.
Which ever, I will put on my purple stole with its mauve and puce crystals and forgive all as I have an inkling such varying approaches to the faith are probably genetic, will not change and cannot be helped.
[Whew, I’m back! I guess Typepad FINALLY fixed its hack problem.JCF.]
Yup, ChristopherJ, that’s what this story is about: a (losing) side “giving it a rest”.
JC Fisher
[NB: my “side” addressing ” theological issues raised”—
1: Wake Up
2: Greet day, thanking God for creating/redeeming/sanctifying Queer Lil’ Me! Alleluia! :-)]
Give it a rest, Paul. Your side hasn’t yet seriously addressed the theological issues raised. But it’s understandable. “He who perseveres to the end” and all that.
Or maybe even return to the fold if the gate-keeper will let them though I have a premonition homosexuality was less a cause than an excuse for their doing what they wanted to do all along — leave The Episcopal Church so they could all have their own little cults and very tall miters.