Exploring friendship

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Well, dear readers, I’m happy to be able to announce that over the weekend I signed a contract with Brazos Press to write a book about the theology and practice of Christian friendship.

The goal of this writing project is to take some of the themes we’ve been exploring on this blog (see, for instance, Ron’s very clear and helpful post here) and make them more widely accessible, with a special emphasis on the questions and concerns of gay and lesbian Christians. Over the next year and a half or so, this is what I’ll be working on.

During the writing process, I’ll be really eager to try out ideas here and receive feedback from you. And if any of you have resources — books, poems, stories, articles, talks, blog posts, etc. — on the theme of friendship that you think might be useful for this project, please don’t hesitate to mention them in the comment section.

Thanks for celebrating with me! Your prayers and well wishes are especially welcome.

Recommended reading

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I’ve got a brief list in the latest issue of Christianity Today of some books I’ve found useful in thinking through gay Christian questions.

The editors limited me to five, and I would have liked to include a couple of others (like Oliver O’Donovan’s Church in Crisis, for instance), but, honestly, at this point, there simply aren’t as many good books out there on these matters as you might think. I’m hoping that will change soon, with both Eve Tushnet and a couple of others associated with this blog working on new projects…

Stay tuned.

“The Love We Dare Not Ignore”

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My review of Justin Lee’s new book, Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate, is up over at Christianity Today.

An excerpt:

Many of us evangelicals may believe that LGBTQ ("lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning") folks are far removed from our churches and ministries. Surely gays and lesbians are out there, somewhere else, not here in our discipleship small groups, or kneeling at the Communion rail beside us—are they? But if Lee, the God Boy of his high school who could quote John 3:16 in his sleep, is an example of what it means to be "gay," then yes, they are. They’re here in our churches, and they’re here to stay, forcing us to reconsider what it might mean to love our own spiritual siblings.

For me, this is where the real importance of Justin’s book lies. For quite a while now, evangelical Christians have been able to take for granted that "gay affirming" theology and pastoral practice is the preserve of liberal, mainline denominations. But what Justin’s book forces us to recognize is that many people inside the evangelical movement—who are otherwise very traditional in doctrine and practice—are experiencing a shift in their convictions about homosexuality. I don’t presume to know what this might mean for the future of evangelicalism, but I think it’s a significant point to observe.

I hope many people read Justin’s book. Despite my strong disagreements with it, I think it’s smart, thoughtful, charitable, and shows a remarkable commitment to take the Bible seriously.

On Matthew Vines

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Many of our readers have probably heard of Matthew Vines, who released a video earlier this year arguing for a revisionist understanding of Scripture on the morality of same-sex sexual activity. The video has gained a lot of attention—over 400,000 views—and he has also recently been profiled in the NYT.

Today, in First Things: On the Square, I offer a response, which can be found here.

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Understanding the context of debate

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For almost 20 centuries, there was little controversy over Christian teaching about homosexuality. For the last few decades, there has been an extraordinary amount of controversy. How should Christians respond to this changing situation?

The core truths of the Gospel never change (Hebrews 13:8). However, each generation of Christians faces its own challenges in sharing the good news of God’s love. Different cultures ask different questions and require different approaches to preaching.

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An Unformed Pauline Thought on Living and Dying with Christ

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In the Pauline Epistles class I teach, we talked today about the “overlap of the ages” that Paul portrays in his depiction of the redemption of the world in Jesus Christ. Believers exist in a present age that is “evil” (Galatians 1:4) and marked by sin and death (Romans 5:12-21), but in the death and resurrection of Jesus the “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) has dawned and now exists as an incursion of the future into the present. The light of the new creation’s dawn is diffused into the fog of this present age (2 Corinthians 4:4) in such a way that we have real hope that the light will one day burn the fog away completely. Nonetheless, that day is not yet. And so we groan, eagerly awaiting the consummation of the redemption that has been inaugurated (Romans 8:23). The light has come, but not yet in its fullest glory.

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Spiritual friendship in 300 words

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A friend of mine and I were recently discussing the difficulties of trying to explain the themes we discuss on this blog clearly and succinctly, in a way that does justice to the various aspects of the discussion. After thinking about it for a bit, I decided to try my hand at explaining what I’m about in 300 words, in a way that was personal, hopeful, honest about obstacles, and in touch with the broader Christian tradition.

(Actually, Microsoft Word informs me that this is only 297 words.)
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Homosexuality and false hope

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“These are my desires / and I will give them up to you this time around and so / I’ll be found with my stake stuck in this ground / marking its territory of this newly impassioned soul . . .   But you / you’ve gone too far this time / you have neither reason nor rhyme / with which to take this soul which is so rightfully mine.” -Mumford and Sons, ‘Roll Away Your Stone’

The subject of sexual orientation change efforts has come up in a lot of different contexts since my recent pieces in First Things. From what I can tell, it seems that such efforts can have significant positive effects; at the same time, the ready promotion of orientation change is a dangerous response to the pastoral questions of homosexuality.

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Identity questions

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Yesterday, the Gospel Coalition blog posted an article by Jeff Buchanan of Exodus called “The New Sexual Identity Crisis.”

Today, Matt Anderson (of MereOrthodoxy) blogged about “The Trouble with Talking about Our ‘Identity in Christ.'”

I agree with Matt that there is a lot of confusion surrounding use of the term “identity.” I want to address this issue in more depth at some point, but I don’t have the time these days. So I will just throw out a couple of (relatively) brief observations.

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