Should Christians Use the Term “Gay Christian”?

In his new book God and the Gay Christian, Matthew Vines seeks to legitimate homosexual practice among evangelicals. I responded to this heretical teaching yesterday in my post about the new Southern Seminary eBook, God and the Gay Christian? I quoted a section from my chapter on the church’s historical teaching, a chapter that has now been posted in full over at the Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood.

 

Today I’d like to think a little more with you about Vines’s use of the term “gay Christian” (I also commend to you this excellent and stirring post from my SBTS colleague and New Testament expert Jim Hamilton). This is not a new descriptor, but Vines has infused new meaning into it. Authors who have previously used it have done so with the understanding that “gay Christian” is essentially equivalent to “born-again believer who experiences, to some degree, ongoing same-sex attraction and who willingly resists gratifying this desire.” Vines, however, uses the term to essentially mean “born-again believer who experiences same-sex attraction and indulges this desire in mutual, covenantal relationships to the glory of God.” There is a vast and unbridgeable gulf between these two definitions.  Continue at Owen Strachan

God, the Gospel, and the Gay Challenge

Evangelical Christians in the United States now face an inevitable moment of decision. While Christians in other movements and in other nations face similar questions, the question of homosexuality now presents evangelicals in the United States with a decision that cannot be avoided. Within a very short time, we will know where everyone stands on this question. There will be no place to hide, and there will be no way to remain silent. To be silent will answer the question.

The question is whether evangelicals will remain true to the teachings of Scripture and the unbroken teaching of the Christian church for over two thousand years on the morality of same-sex acts and the institution of marriage.

The world is pressing this question upon us, but so are a number of voices from within the larger evangelical circle — voices that are calling for a radical revision of the church’s understanding of the Bible, sexual morality, and the meaning of marriage. We are living in the midst of a massive revolution in morality, and sexual morality is at the center of this revolution. But the question of same-sex relationships and sexuality is at the very center of the debate over sexual morality, and our answer to this question will both determine or reveal what we understand about everything the Bible reveals and everything the church teaches — even the gospel itself.   Continue at Al Mohler