Tom Oden, writing in his book Requiem way back in 1995, explains how it happens.
The first step is always a study committee.
In response to claims for moral legitimization of behaviors widely thought displeasing to God, each of the mainline denominations has dutifully appointed elaborate study commissions to report back to the general legislative body on how the church might respond to this form of sexual orientation, practice, and advocacy. (152)
If the first study committee comes back with a traditional reading of
the text, or if the legislative body dismisses the committee’s
progressive interpretation, you can always assign another study
committee amidst outcries that the recalcitrant conservatives suffer
from “homophobia and reactionary stupidity” (153).
And if the traditional view cannot be overturned right away, try
dismissing the whole controversy by telling people (with no small amount
of chronological snobbery) that saner Christians understand this is
nothing worth fighting over.
The fact that homosexual practice is not a weighty moral matter was asserted by the United Methodist Sexuality Report as a “consensus among Christian ethicists,” yet without any evidence to support this curious assertion. All the conspicuous Christian teachers who have resisted same-sex intercourse (John Chrysostom, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other consensual ecumenical teachers) are weighed in the debate less heavily than selected modern proponents of moral relativism and utilitarian permissivism. (153) Continue at Kevin DeYoung
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