The Dangerous Affirmation of “Gay Christianity” – Part 2

The Dangerous Affirmation of Gay Christianity. Today is part two of that topic with M.D. Perkins, right here on the Christian Real View Radio Program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host. For more information, please visit our website, TheChristianRealView.org, calling our toll-free number, 1-888-646-2233, or by writing to Box 40 4-0-1, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. God's Word is clear about the sin of homosexual actions and desires. Leviticus 18-22 says, You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination. Or Romans 1-27 says, Men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another.

Men with men committing indecent acts. Now, with this kind of crystal clear clarity and other similar passages like Genesis 19, which describes the homosexual depravity in God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, it's quite remarkable that something called gay Christianity that one can identify as a homosexual and be a true Christian in good standing in the church has pushed into evangelicalism. MD Perkins, author of the book Dangerous Affirmation, The Threat of Gay Christianity, joins us today to explain how everything within the historic faith must be reimagined to accommodate the LGBTQ movement.

Be informed and alert, because this will likely come to your church, Christian school, or parachurch ministry as well. MD, you defined gay Christianity as the attempt to reconcile the Christian faith with homosexuality. I think that's a very simple but good definition.

So that's what we're talking about today. Now, in part one of our interview, we discussed how we got here as a society to where this is full affirmation mode of gay pride month and so forth. It's all over the schools and everywhere now in society, corporations promoting it. You talked also about the three categories of theology, behind gay Christianity. Affirming theology, which is just affirming homosexuality as being right, reinterpreting scripture to get there, to affirm it. The second category was queer theology, which is like a disruption, as being really just hourly and purposely saying things that are meant to completely change people's minds and shock them almost. And third is gay celibate theology, which is the idea that you can be a gay or a self-identified gay Christian as long as you're not practicing physically the act of homosexuality. And you commented on that soundbite, extensive soundbite last time by one of the advocates of gay celibate theology, Rachel Gilson. Now today in part two, we're going to discuss some of the other chapters of your book. Part one, we did Rethinking Theology, and then today we're going to get into Rethinking the Bible, chapter three, Rethinking the Church, chapter four, Rethinking Identity, and perhaps we'll get to something of chapter five, Creating Activists. Now, the first question I want to ask is, I'm going to play a soundbite as some context for this, and the question is around why this issue, the LGBTQ issue, the homosexual issue in society, in the church, is so aggressive in demanding of affirmation. You think of other issues like climate change and maybe racism, those are the only two other issues that I could think of that are so strong in their quote, evangelism and their aggression that they must be accepted in our society. I'm just going to play about a minute of a song that was produced from the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. And the title of the song is, We'll Convert Your Children.

Let me just play a minute of it and get your comment on it. As we celebrate pride on the progress we've made over these past years, there's still work to be done. So to those of you out there who are still working against equal rights, we have a message for you. You think we're sinful, you fight against our rights, you say we all need lives you can't respect, but you're just frightened. You think that we'll corrupt your kids if our agenda goes unchecked.

It's funny, just this once, you're correct. We'll convert your children, happens bit by bit, quietly and subtly, and you will barely notice it. You can keep them from disco, warn about San Francisco, make them wear pleated pants, we don't care. We'll convert your children, we'll make them tolerant and fair.

I'll stop it there and maybe we'll get to play the rest of the song later in the program, but just some of the lyrics, in case, couldn't make them out. You think we're sinful, you fight against our rights, you say we all need lives you can't respect, but you're just frightened. You think we'll corrupt your kids if our agenda goes unchecked.

Funny, just this once, you are correct. We'll convert your children, happens bit by bit, quietly and subtly, and you will barely notice it. You can keep them from disco, warn about San Francisco, make them wear pleated pants, we don't care. We'll convert your children, we'll make them tolerant and fair.

There's several more stanzas that I'll try to play later, but I don't want to take too much time up with that, but it's representative of this aggression. Christians are known as the ones who are proselytizing and for good reason. We're trying to point people to the way they can be reconciled, made right with God, convert them to something good, not by force, not by deceit. Why is this issue of the LGBTQ movement so aggressive and so demanding of affirmation? Well, I think underneath it all, there is the realization that you are guilty under the law of God, and that you are living with guilt and the shame that's associated with that guilt. People who live in sin are always trying to block out the law of God and the witness of God's truth in their life. In particular, with this issue, with the whole gay rights movement and everything else, there is that aggressive component of trying to remove shame. I mean, it's called Pride Month for a reason, because it's not something to be ashamed of, it's something to flaunt, to celebrate, to put out the shame that's associated with that guilt.

To put out in the public place and get people to see it and to participate in it and enjoy it for what it is. The attempt to just remove that sense of shame and guilt that goes along with doing something that, you know, we know from Scripture is abominable in God's sight, that it brings condemnation, that it is a dishonorable passion is the way that it's described in Romans chapter one. So that's something that brings dishonor in itself. It's something that testifies even within nature, there's a recognition that this is not how people should be living or what they should be seeking out. So it is the attempt of sinful men and women to override the witness of God imprinted on the heart and on the conscience, just because we're made in God's image.

And so I think that's part of why it's so aggressive, why it has to shout from the rooftops rather than just a live and let live approach. Dr. Justin Marchegiani What about the grooming aspect of it though? We'll convert your children and we've heard this word grooming come out within the last year with Disney and putting homosexual elements into their films for kids and so forth and drag queen story hour, educational systems targeting or putting this curricula for children. Is there a grooming element? Are these the future sex partners to be blunt about it? Is that an element to this as well?

Aaron Alexander Well, yes, all of that is connected together. I mean, the grooming aspect in terms of seeking out future sex partners is part of it, but also just overall the refashioning of society because you cannot have homosexuality be celebrated and accepted as purely normal without dismantling a number of things that are already there. And part of that is the influence that parents have over their children in setting that kind of normative expectation for sexuality, for marriage, for family, for what is right and wrong.

And so that has to be overrided. You have to go somehow around those sorts of influences, even just within families that aren't particularly religious, aren't particularly spiritual. In queer theory, there's a concept called heteronormativity. I think I mentioned it last time, which is just the worldview that heterosexuality is good and normal. And that is something that is specifically trying to be undermined by those who are promoters of queer theory, queer theology. But the way that it works out in social policy is that you have to get the reins of things like education.

You have to get control over medical talking points on this. You have to make it seem as if a promotion of homosexuality is just a promotion of equality. And so this is what good, right, normal people want.

This is why corporations are buying in. It's almost like they want to paint the rainbow colors over top of the lentils in their doorway so that the angel of death passes over. They don't want to be seen as abnormal. They don't want to be suddenly under the laser focus of some kind of LGBT activist attack on them or to say anything negative about them. So as society has become more inclusive of all of these different ideas, you've seen this at all different elements of society, all different facets of society.

And the normalizing aspect of it is that people want to, they want to remove that sense of shame and guilt associated with it, but you have to kind of capture the reins of society in order to completely get that total, total sense of control over it all. MD Perkins with us today on the Christian worldview radio program. We're talking about the dangerous affirmation of gay Christianity.

That's the name of his book, Dangerous Affirmation. We'll tell you how you can get this book, our new featured resource here on the Christian real view for donation of any amount coming up. MD, let's get into chapter two, where you talk about rethinking the Bible. And this is a very important chapter to understand because what needs to be done is reinterpreting, reimagining the truth of God's word in order to change people's minds.

The word of God is the final line of defense against the doctrine of the LGBTQ movement. You say page 31 of Dangerous Affirmation, we sometimes forget that the fundamental reason a person speaks or writes is to communicate something that will be understood. That basic principle is behind God, the ultimate author, giving us his word. It is also true for each individual author whom God chose to write the books of the Old and New Testaments. They are part of a text intended to communicate a consistent and understandable message with a notable spiritual outcome on the Christian reader or hearer. And you quote 2 Timothy 3, 16, and 17, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. You go on to say the fact that the text was written in a different language, time period, and culture than our own only adds some potential hurdles to our immediate understanding. It does not make the task of understanding utterly impossible. In other words, the Bible is meant to be understood. God intended it for us so that we would understand who he is and what his will is for us. But this whole chapter is how the Bible is being reinterpreted, passages of the Bible that speak against homosexuality or other passages.

They're trying to get homosexuality affirmed. And you mentioned one name in here again and again is Matthew Vines. So talk about the misinterpretation of scripture, the importance of that taking place in this, the debate, and Matthew Vines' influence. Yeah, I think one thing that Christians need to realize is the overall impact that postmodern philosophy and literary theory has actually had on the way that many people approach the Bible.

Of course, it impacts the way the people approach all kinds of texts, all kinds of written things. But the Bible in particular, where this idea that you as an individual reader bring all the important necessary materials, because it's just about your response and reaction to the things that are written there, as opposed to the way that historically and traditionally, we've thought about texts is that a writer writes something in order to communicate something so that the reader on the receiving end understands the ideas, the storyline, or whatever is being communicated there. And the Bible is the same way. So when we approach the topic of homosexuality within the Bible, there's the question of what is being communicated here? What seems to be the clear overriding understanding about homosexuality?

And it is that overall, sexuality is intended to be expressed between a man and a woman in marriage. And that was God's design and intent from the beginning. So even before you get to the quote unquote clobber passages, those passages that directly address homosexuality that activists don't like to hear about, you still have to deal with Genesis one and two, that describes man and woman being created by God. And obviously, the sexual functioning within that and all of that is descriptive of what God's design and intention is for us. So then the overall project then to reinterpret the scripture to create some level of doubt or confusion, or say that things are just more complicated or more complex, that's tended to be the ways that people have taken it.

So guys like Matthew Vines, who's just a popular level author, speaker, he talks about this, he's with a group called the Reformation Project, I believe is what it's called. And his whole goal and action is trying to get into churches to basically retrain them how to think about these passages of scripture and to, in his mind, have a better approach to the LGBT issue. Because once you can undermine the way that people have thought about scripture, then you can get a more desirable left-leaning, gay-affirming outcome in terms of politics and in terms of response from the church. All of the examples are there in the book of the different passages that people have taken on, you know, the attempts to try and claim that David and Jonathan had a homosexual relationship. Or in Romans 1, Paul didn't really understand the kind of committed and monogamous same-sex partnerships that we know now. So we know something that Paul didn't experience at that time, because the kinds of relationships he was talking about were just always exploitive, they were master-slave, there was some power dynamic there. But in our time, you know, there's these consensual, loving, life-giving relationships that Paul didn't have any experience about. So we can say that that's the lens that we should then examine the scripture with.

And so there's all kinds of ways that people have tried to reinterpret it, but those are a couple of examples. Our guest today is MD Perkins. He is the author of Dangerous Affirmation, The Threat of Gay Christianity. That book is our new featured resource.

It's 239 pages, softcover, and retails for $24.99. For a limited time, you can order it for a donation of any amount to The Christian Real View. Just go to our website, thechristianrealview.org, call us toll-free, 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331.

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianrealview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Today is part two of our topic, The Dangerous Affirmation of Gay Christianity, and MD Perkins is our guest.

One thing that is emphasized in your book, Dangerous Affirmation, at certain points is how important the control of language and words and expressions is to this movement. And you say on page two, since the 1960s, a growing number of professing Christians have been arguing against the biblical facts. It has been said that the Bible's teaching of love should be celebrated while the Bible's sexual ethics should be rethought or rejected. It has been said that orthodox theology is oppressive and harmful, while affirming theology is life-giving and beautiful. It has been said that a person who identifies as a quote gay Christian is simply part of God's plan for a diverse church.

It has been said that being gay is innate and immutable, and that anyone who claims that a gay person can change is a liar. It has been said that in order to truly love our neighbors, Christians must fight for LGBTQ causes in the political arena. These are all expressions of quote gay Christianity. And you could see how words and terms that are commonly understood, let's say by a biblical worldview, are twisted, love your neighbor. And one of the ones that has come up, and we discussed this a bit last week, but same-sex attracted Christian, but celibate, as if we all have wrong desires. So I guess you can be a Christian and have homosexual desires.

There's a typical one. Talk about how the terms and expressions are being captured by the homosexual movement to beguile Christians. Language is such an important part of this conversation. You can't talk about the impact of the LGBT movement on society without talking about how language has been part of that reshaping and refashioning and rethinking of things. And I think the big reason for that is it ties in with the postmodern philosophy that I mentioned earlier, but it's also just this overall you have to reframe and completely reshape the meaning of words in order to make this viewpoint completely acceptable. I mean, the fascinating thing is like the question of the Matt Walsh documentary, What is a Woman?

You know, a very simple question that we didn't really even think that we had to have a clear answer for because it was just so obvious on its face. Well, here we are in the year 2023, and that question is not so obvious on its face to a large section of the population, even as it is obvious underneath the surface, because there's all of these ways that people have to fight against that kind of normative understanding of what that word is. You know, I ran across this news story recently about how Johns Hopkins Hospital had a definition of the word lesbian within their dictionary, and they defined it as a non-man attracted to a non-man.

And it's funny because they were trying to avoid using the word woman, but you still have to understand what a man is. And so even within that context, you're still bringing in certain aspects of the established order within that, but there's overall this movement to dismantle and completely rip apart. Words kind of fail me sometimes when I'm trying to even address this whole issue of language within the LGBTQ plus movement, because it hurts your head after a little while trying to think about it. So what I like about your book is it talks about the dangerous affirmation, yes, in society, but it's focused on the dangerous affirmation going on within the Christian church.

So Christians need to be able to fend off expressions and language that is intended to undermine and soften and weaken them and give into this. So a common one is someone's sexual orientation, as in, I was born this way. Or you'll hear a mother say, my child knew he was the opposite sex at two or three years old.

This is who he really is. How do you answer that particular question, which is so common, that assertion that I was just born this way? In other words, God made me this way. This is inherent to my nature.

I can't change the way I am. And because God made me this way, this is a good thing and should be expressed. Yeah, the question of orientation is underneath so much of this. And the history of that phrase or that idea that you're just born this way and that you can't change, it's interesting to know that that actually has a political history behind it, that that was taking the term homosexuality that we use very regularly. But you notice that that term is not as clear as the term sodomy. Sodomy refers to a specific action. Homosexuality is more referring to a state of being or the way that somebody feels or a lot of different things can be tied to it.

Behavior can be tied to it, but also feeling or inclination or all of these kinds of ideas. And that was intentional. That was a German legal scholar who was trying to undermine the sodomy laws that existed in Germany in the 1860s. And so part of how he came upon to do this was to add an additional term into this idea that basically people who committed sodomy were no longer sodomites. They were homosexuals. They were just living out physically what they were internally.

And so to restrain that by law was somehow to restrain this individual. And at this point, they weren't really calling for some kind of acceptance of it. The actual progressive way to respond to it at that time was to call it a mental illness. And so you see, even now, people don't like to talk about this as a mental illness. That was something that was established back in the 1860s, but then was overridden in the 1970s here in the States with the American Psychiatric Association changing their diagnostic manual under intense political pressure from gay activist groups, I should add. People act like the idea of sexual orientation is this scientific term.

It isn't. It's a way of trying to describe how somebody feels. I just think Christians need to avoid some of these terms and just buying into the ideologies that are factoring underneath it. Like you said, this idea, once you say that someone has a homosexual orientation, it's like you're putting them in a different category, like they're a different kind of person. And this kind of person is this way.

And they were born that way and they can't change. And that also impacts then how you think about the gospel's influence on that person's life, rather than thinking in terms of what the Bible describes as temptations, sin, patterns of sin, giving into these things, besetting sins. What are besetting sins?

They're ways of sinning that you have gone back to again and again and kind of created this rut or this habit in your life. But even within the context of when we hear about besetting sins in the book of Hebrews, it talks about laying aside the sin that so easily besets. So there's this idea that even the sins that easily beset you are things that you're commanded to as a Christian, that you lay aside, that you put to death, that you seek to overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in you, as you're looking to Christ in faith.

That's very well said. And I think on the topic of language, a Christian can never go wrong and indeed will go right by using biblical terms to describe what's taking place. Go to Romans chapter one, unnatural, depraved. These kinds of words express just truths from the mind of God that will be helpful for us so we don't get deceived by these softening words all the time. It's interesting to note that the term homosexual is now no longer a preferred term. In fact, it's on the list of hate terms for homosexuals that some of these groups have put together. So the language has not only changed, but it is still changing, keying you into this whole idea that this is not a static movement and these things are constantly changing and shifting as different things want to be brought in.

I mean, the number of letters in the acronym LGBT that now has LGBTQ or LGBTQIA or LGBTQIA2S+, and the plus sign indicating that there's more sexual identities out there that we haven't really described yet, that we don't know about, but we'll think of letters for them once we get there. MD Perkins is our guest today on The Christian Real View. On page 29, you say, it was the 2018 promotion of the Side B-Focused Revoice Conference.

I want you to explain what Side B is. It has to do with celibate gay Christianity as you describe it. In St. Louis, that brought the questions of gay celibate theology to the forefront in many churches hosted in a Presbyterian church in America, PCA, and founded by graduates of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

You mentioned Nate Collins as one of the primary people putting this together. In Covenant Theological Seminary, you mentioned the name Stephen Moss, the conference was built under the mission of, quote, supporting, encouraging, and empowering LGBT Christians who were committed to Orthodox teaching. The controversy over Revoice highlighted that gay celibate theology, unbeknownst to many, had found a significant hearing in conservative churches, especially among the younger generation of pastors, campus ministers, and church planters.

I think this is important for listeners to understand. This isn't just the mainline denominations who are subsuming this homosexual ideology. This is entering or has entered conservative evangelicalism.

MD, tell us more about Revoice, why that was so significant, and where this has come from since it started. The Revoice conference in 2018 was significant in that it was the first time that we realized, I say we, I just mean conservative evangelicals, realized that there was any sort of division within the conservative churches in terms of how we should be thinking and talking about homosexuality. Before this, there was always this expectation that when people come to faith in Christ, like Rosaria Butterfield's testimony, where in light of the fact that she came to faith in Christ through, you know, the generous hospitality of a local minister there where she was, but what did she do after that? Well, she turned away from her gay identity. She no longer identified as a lesbian.

She broke off that lesbian partnership that she was in, and eventually, by God's grace, she met a man that she married and has children with and is a pastor's wife, you know, homeschooling the kids and kind of focused in on bringing those children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And that was what we would hope for when someone would come to faith in Christ as a homosexual, that you would put away the things that you had once pursued, that your mind would change in terms of its thinking about who you were and what you desired, and that those things would now be lived out differently in the life. But what happened in 2017, the year prior to the Revoice conference, was that a bunch of evangelical leaders put together something called the Nashville statement, which was just a general statement on biblical orthodoxy regarding sexuality, but one of the things that it described in there was that it was not proper to take on a homosexual self-conception, and that was something that these people who had grown up within the church, so they identified as evangelicals, but they also identified as homosexual to some degree, to some degree, whether they were lesbian or bisexual or whatever, and they had taken on that identity themselves, and they felt like there still needed to be room for them to live as gay Christians. And so that's where the Revoice conference came from, was trying to set a different standard forward and say, people used to talk about being ex-gay or things like that. Well, that can't truly happen, they would argue, because we used to pray, we used to participate in some of that stuff, it never worked for us, and so there has to be a way for us to live as gay Christians here and now, and the church has to listen to us because we have experiences particularly helpful in dealing with homosexuality and talking about these things in the culture, and we're going to be kind of this third way that's able to tiptoe through the cultural landmine of all of these different hot-button issues and be able to actually present a true gospel to people that is no longer trying to cure them of homosexuality, but is just trying to care for them within their homosexuality.

And so that was kind of the shift that happened there that became evident there through the Revoice conference in 2018. And as we have seen over the years since then, I mean we're five years in post that conference, the ripple effects throughout the Christian church and the amount of confusion, the lack of clarity, the vagueness from church leaders on this, people rising up and saying that this is wrong, other people who are kind of confused about weight. Are you saying that we can't love homosexuals? Of course that's not what is being discussed here, but all of these things just created a lot of confusion and it created a clear divide that there were some people who wanted to allow for the gay identity and there were others who took the traditional biblical position that said, no, you don't take on an additional identity as a Christian.

And so why would you take on an aspect of the fallen world and act like this is just who you are and you just need to steward that sexuality in some way? But that's what was being argued by the Revoice or gay celibate movement. No, it's grown a lot since them MD, this idea of quote gay Christianity. Now I'm going to correct me if I'm wrong in any of the statements I'm going to make here, but things I've been reading within Saddleback Church, Rick Warren's former church, and also Andy Stanley's church in Atlanta, that there are affirming or gay Christian type support groups that aren't preaching from what I understand that you must repent and believe the gospel and put to death these sinful desires, these depraved desires and overcome in Christ, that they're not doing that.

Again, correct me if I'm wrong if I'm mischaracterizing that. Talk about within, let's say, conservative evangelicalism today, who are some of the churches and names that listeners should be looking out for to realize where these Christian leaders are coming from, who have been either soft or welcoming toward the idea of gay Christianity? Well, when we're talking about the gay celibate side, the big names to be on guard for are Greg Johnson, he was the pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church, that's no longer part of the PCA, the church did end up leaving just this past year, but of course the damage has been done and his influence still lingers in many quarters of the PCA denomination. He wrote a book, Still Time to Care, which is supposed to be this history of the failure of the ex-gay movement and how wrong-headed Christians were. You know, it's interesting, a lot of people are putting up these kind of histories of recent times where they're trying to expose the improper thinking that is materialized through some of the theology and things of the time.

And so there's elements of his book that I think are accurate, but a lot of his approach and assessment of it are inaccurate and completely denigrating any idea that people have changed or can change. And so Greg Johnson is a name to listen for. Preston Sprinkle is another one, he runs a group called the Center for the Study of Faith and Sexuality and Gender, I think is what it's called.

It's based out of Boise, Idaho. He's somebody who has a tremendous amount of influence because he's producing a church curriculum and resources intended particularly for parents of children who've come out as gay and transgender to basically argue how they should approach their child and maintain this relationship. But he really is a wolf and he's somebody that people need to be on guard against because I can't say anything good about the things that I've read that he's written on this. He maintains kind of an orthodox air while he brings in a lot of the affirming ideas, but then only brings it up to a point and then kind of only slightly pushes back on it and then acts like he's on the other side the whole time. But he's another one on the gay celibate side that people need to be on guard for. Within the affirming church movement, there are names like Matthew Vines, who's a big promoter of this. Also Justin Lee is a major voice within this whole movement.

And these are young guys who are very charismatic and amiable. And they're going to talk a lot about their personal experience of growing up in a conservative church context and then the way that they felt marginalized because of that when they felt like they were gay or same sex attracted or whatever. And then their whole story is kind of about how the church was wrong to them and then how they come to an affirming position on this as they quote unquote examine the Bible for themselves. Jen Hatmaker, you know, was a popular evangelical woman speaker for a while and she's gone fully into this as her daughter came out. And I think you'll notice a lot of times people who have come out as affirming, who used to hold the opposite position, usually within their background, there's a child or a family member or somebody close to them, who's come out as gay, and then the position changes.

And that's true of a lot of these people. Dr. Justin Marchegiani M.D. Perkins with us today here on the Christian worldview. We're talking about the dangerous affirmation of gay Christianity.

Today's part two. We're also featuring his book Dangerous Affirmation. This is our new featured resource here on the program, you can get it for a donation of any amount to the ministry. And by the way, this is a really, really good book. I've been reading a lot of it. And it's very readable, understandable, and covers a lot of ground. And so we just highly recommend you get a copy of this book, Dangerous Affirmation.

It's 239 pages, soft cover and retails for $24.99. For a limited time, you can order it for a donation of any amount to the Christian Real View. Just go to our website, thechristianrealview.org.

Call us toll free, 1-888-646-2233 or write to us at Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Stay tuned, we have much more coming up. You are listening to the Christian Real View radio program. I'm David Wheaton.

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, theChristianworldview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter. Order resources for adults and children and support the ministry. Today is part two of our topic, The Dangerous Affirmation of Gay Christianity, and MD Perkins is our guest.

In your chapter on Rethinking the Church in Dangerous Affirmation, MD, you talk about there's a misconception that homosexuals or the LGBTQ community, that they're not religious, and that is just not the case at all. As a matter of fact, they're really quite religious. They have full intent of overtaking the church. The two terms they like to think about is representation and visibility.

That's how they do it. They get representation within a church and they're visible. That's the foot in the door. So you write in this chapter, you say, gay Christians have come to think of inclusion as extending well beyond theological statement. So they're not just trying to change the theology that wants to be included in the church body. For them, the posture and tone of the church need to exude inclusion and must be expressed practically in the visible makeup of the church membership and leaders. And again, this isn't just for the mainline progressive denomination. This is for conservative evangelicalism. From there, how churches utilize language, combat heteronormativity, and resist homophobia, gain increased scrutiny.

As we shall see, this rethinking of the church's visible representation is part of a weakening of the church's commission and calling. So talk about this process of church takeover, MD, with representation, visibility, and then messaging, and it goes on from there. There are two sociological concepts of representation and visibility and you might hear them a lot when it comes to media representations of either minority viewpoints or minority identities within Hollywood or in particular when it comes to LGBT stuff. But those two ideas, the idea that you need people to represent your particular identity in a very public and clear way. And then that once you have that representation of that individual within that role, you have created visibility for that identity within that space. And so that same concept that has been applied to television with like the Ellen show, you know, in 1997 Ellen's coming out episode, a major moment for LGBT representation and visibility in that program. But that same concept has been applied then to church environments and all kinds of environments, but we're talking here specifically about the church.

And so the idea is that this is what people are calling for. They want people who are gay or lesbian or transgender within positions of leadership within the church so that they are visible within that leadership role and participating publicly in those worship services. So that's like doing the call to worship, singing songs, being presented at some point or even preaching the sermons or whatever, so that those things are represented there so that then that visibility is coming back to individuals sitting in the church. And so they feel comfortable, they feel affirmed. And then even the child who's sitting there who is struggling with sexuality, well, I don't know if I'm gay or I don't know if I was born, you know, the right gender or whatever, is looking and saying, well, there's somebody who represents how I feel.

And so that's who I'm supposed to be. And together with that, this whole concept is supposed to create an environment where those who are slow to accept this whole idea of homosexuality, now they have these visible reminders that are coming at them and are slowly softening their response that would be seen as opposed. And so it's supposed to soften that response so that then they become more accepting and more tolerant of this representation.

It's almost like a cycle. You put the person in the position, you give them that visibility, it creates an outgrowth of that same desire to want to be visible within the church, within the people who are there, and then it kind of circles back and forth. And like you said, this isn't just something that's happening within affirming churches. It's very obvious the way that it's happening in affirming churches. Just type Pride Month service into YouTube and see all the different streamed church services that are happening during Pride Month that feature flags and drag queens leading the liturgy and all that.

You know, that's all very clear. But it's also there within the gay celibate movement as well, where people like Greg Johnson, who initially didn't come out as gay until some of the heat had kind of come off of the first Revoice conference that he was receiving. But once he came out, and he came out in Christianity Today and declared that he was gay, once he did that, then he's kind of this visible point of, oh, there's a gay pastor and, oh, it's okay to call yourself gay and to be a conservative pastor. So for everybody to kind of feel like they have that sense of representation within their particular sphere of church life and church culture, that's what this is all trying to engender. I'll just read just one paragraph.

I'm not going to follow up with a question about it, but just what you're saying about going to YouTube and watching Pride Month services. You write in page 101 of your book, this is why the push for inclusive language will not end merely with a rejection of a male God. It won't end with a female God, but it will end with a queer God. You said one queer call to worship spoke to God this way. Strange one, fabulous one, fluid and ever becoming one. Just blasphemy alert here. You are mother, father and parent.

You are sister, brother and sibling. You are drag queen and trans man and gender fluid, incapable of limiting your vast expressions of beauty embodied in us, your creation. We recognize our flesh in all its forms is made holy to you.

With Thanksgiving we celebrate your manifestation in all its glorious forms. You may not see that in the evangelical church yet, but give it 10 years and we'll see where it is because this is strong and coming. MD, let's move over toward the Christian response to this movement because you can hear a prayer like that, so-called prayer like that, and become very angry at the blasphemy it communicates. But as believers, we can't give in to hatred or complete separation from those who are God rejecters, non-believers. You write in the book and say in 1978, conservative Presbyterian pastor Jerry Kirk encouraged Christians to remember their calling as ambassadors of Christ to a lost and dying world. He said, the homosexual has sinned, but Christian, your sin of lovelessness may be keeping him from finding hope and finding Christ.

He may not as yet have found a Christian who will love him as he is and guide him to wholeness in Christ. You also quote former homosexual Stephen Black, who said, the gospel according to Jesus Christ is the same message for a gay identified person, an idolater, an adulterer, a fornicator, a pornographer, a liar, a thief, a gossip, a slanderer, or a murderer. Now we're not equating all the sins on the same level, it's just the gospel is the same for every sinner. The message of good news, he says, redemption into a love relationship with God is the same for all sinners.

And so you say these statements testify to the need for personal self-examination as well as grief-filled compassion in our hearts toward others. Holding to the clear biblical teaching that homosexuality is sinful is not unloving or unkind or something that requires repentance. In fact, it is the affirming position that lies about God's word and God's character.

And those who spread those lies will not be held guiltless. We always in the background have to balance it like these people are sinners and lost and under God's judgment. And I'm still called to, if I get the opportunity, to be able to point them to salvation, which comes to repentance of their sin and faith in the person and work of Christ. So how do Christians achieve that particular balance? So when it comes to the individual person, the homosexual in your family or the person who comes into church who's trying to identify as a woman and you're trying to speak with them, you know, a word for Christ, you're reaching out in love and compassion, while at the same time, there is this resistance that's happening when it comes to a lot of the social movement that's happening within society. Feel free to go speak at the local school board or the library board or, you know, speak up in the corporate workplace or wherever it is, because those things need to be resisted at the fundamental level within society. But at the same time, you're trying to build relationships to speak a word for Christ and to be able to present the gospel with an individual. And so that same kind of standing for truth on the side of the road, you know, with a sign or a picket sign or that kind of thing, is not the same approach that you take with the individual who's sitting there with you that you're trying to speak to.

I've found that way of thinking about it helpful. How are we going to receive and deal with some of the traumatic exiles of the sexual revolution? You know, the detransitioners who have gone through the process of changing their gender and then they've realized, you know, that this didn't fulfill the promise that it hoped for.

But now they've devastated their body and they've lost a lot of relationships, maybe, you know, in all of these things, and they're in a position to hear about the hope and the healing that Christ offers. Are we ready to meet them there? Do you have that heart of compassion for that person? Instead of just seeing people as objects within the culture war, are you ready to still meet the individual when you have that opportunity?

Now, I'm not saying at all to retreat from the culture war. These things need to be guarded for the safeguard of everyone. This is a way to love your neighbor, just to stand up and to speak out about some of the things that are happening in society. That is a way to love your neighbor. So don't be intimidated out of doing some of those very public posture things because you've been told that this is not loving or this is unkind or, you know, we just need to love people.

I think Christians need to hold both things in their mind at the same time and realize the different contexts in which they are engaging with people. Well, MD, we just appreciate the time and thought and research that it took for you to put together this book, Dangerous Affirmation. We highly recommend listeners get a copy of this book and read it.

It will help you understand this tsunami that is taking place in all corners of our society. We appreciate in the book the highness with which you hold God's word and use God's word as our foundation for knowing what is true and what is wrong. Thank you again for coming on the program and all of God's best and grace to you.

Thank you again for the invite, David. And this really is about trying to build up the foundation. Wherever you find yourself connecting with this issue of homosexuality, transgenderism, LGBT movement, or whatever, I hope that this gives you some tools in your mind to help you understand how to stand firmly on God's truth and to be able to speak with confidence in a culture that's rapidly decaying.

Let's end today on some good news. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6 that those who are unrepentant in their sin will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the good news is in verse 11, such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God.

God offers sinners forgiveness, redemption, and the overcoming of temptation along with eternal life if you repent of your sin and believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you've never done that, go to our website, thechristianworldview.org, and click on the page, What Must I Do to be Saved? Thank you for joining us today on the Christian Worldview radio program. Let's remember that there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.

So until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of the Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out What Must I Do to be Saved?, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Worldview is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian Worldview partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to the Christian Worldview.