culture

Yay Denver, home of happiness!

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(since apparently today is my day for Rocky Horror references.)

Anyway, I spoke in Denver at Theology on Tap! This is a quick summary of what I said. Count yourselves lucky to get it in writing btw—I am still learning how to make this presentation SHORTER and borderline coherent. A lot of this is stuff you all have heard many times from me, but people expressed interest in having a post about it. Sorry for length.

There may be video and/or a Denver Post story later so I will post that as I receive it.

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Rachel Held Evans on friendship and the culture wars

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Rachel Held Evans recently put up a blog post expressing frustration with the overly politicized approach to homosexuality taken by many conservative Christians.

When I speak at Christian colleges, I often take time to chat with students in the cafeteria.  When I ask them what issues are most important to them, they consistently report that they are frustrated by how the Church has treated their gay and lesbian friends.  Some of these students would say they most identify with what groups like the Gay Christian Network term “Side A” (they believe homosexual relationships have the same value as heterosexual relations in the sight of God). Others better identify with “Side B” (they believe only male/female relationship in marriage is God’s intent for sexuality).  But every single student I have spoken with believes that the Church has mishandled its response to homosexuality.

Most have close gay and lesbian friends.

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Conversion and perseverance: the voyage of life

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Christians like conversion stories.

The plot of a conversion story usually goes something like this: we hear various bits of pre-conversion debauchery—and the better conversion stories usually include some juicy violations of the Sixth Commandment (or Seventh Commandment, for those who follow the Philonic, rather than the Augustinian numbering of the Ten Commandments).

As a result of these sins, the potential convert encounters a crisis:

The Moment of Crisis

The Moment of Crisis

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Pepperdine: transforming the conversation (video)

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I recently spoke at Pepperdine with Justin Lee, founder of the Gay Christian Network.

Justin believes that God blesses gay marriage. I embrace the traditional Christian belief that God intends marriage only to join a man and a woman. Both of us are gay.  And despite our differences, we’ve been good friends for a decade and a half now.

In 2003, we created The Great Debate, a pair of (very long!) essays explaining our respective views.

This year, Pepperdine University invited us to speak about Transforming the Conversation: how to have productive dialogue between those who disagree about gay marriage, and why each of us believes our position more faithfully represents the Gospel. Videos of this event have now been posted on Vimeo, and may be viewed below.

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Faces: a pet peeve

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One of my pet peeves involves Christian publishers who are allergic to presenting faces of lesbian or gay Christians.

There’s an old adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover. And for those who don’t know the publishing business, I should add that you can’t judge the author by the book cover, either. Authors usually have very little control over the cover design of their book. In most cases, the fault for the cover designs I critique below lies with the publisher rather than the author.

So here, presented with some comment, is a rogues’ gallery of homosexuals without faces.

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