Pastors Respond to the Homosexual Question

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from Leadership Journal.net, January 23, 2006, with the headline: “How Should Pastors Respond to the Homosexual Question?” The following are excerpts: “I hesitated answering the homosexual question not because I am a cowardly flip-flopper who wants to tickle ears but because I am a pastor, and pastors have learned from Jesus that there is more to answering a question than being right or even honest. We must also be pastoral. That means understanding the question beneath the question—the need or fear or hope or assumption that motivates the question. Most of the emerging leaders I know share my agony over this question.

“Frankly, many of us don’t know what we should think about homosexuality. We’ve heard all sides but no position has yet won our confidence so that we can say it seems good to the Holy Spirit and us. That alienates us from both the liberals and conservatives who seem to know exactly what we should think. Even if we are convinced that all homosexual behavior is always sinful, we still want to treat gay and lesbian people with more dignity, gentleness, and respect than our colleagues do. If we think that there may actually be a legitimate context for some homosexual relationships, we know that the biblical arguments are nuanced and multi-layered, and the pastoral ramifications are staggeringly complex.

“We aren’t sure if or where lines are to be drawn, nor do we know how to enforce with fairness whatever lines are drawn. Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making pronouncements. In the meantime, we’ll practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably. When decisions need to be made, they will be admittedly provisional. We’ll keep our ears attuned to scholars and biblical studies, theology, ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology and related fields. Then in five years, if we have clarity we will speak, if not we will set another five years for ongoing reflection. After all, many important issues in church history took centuries to figure out. Maybe this moratorium would help us resist the ‘winds of doctrine’ blowing furiously from the left and right, so we can patiently wait for the wind of the spirit to set our course.”

Tom: Dave, this is incredible! First of all, this is LeadershipJournal.net.

Dave: Right, but who…Can I ask the author?

Tom: This is [Brian] McClaren, one of the leaders in the emerging church movement, one of the, supposedly, top twenty-five most respected pastors in the country.

Dave: Highly regarded by Rick Warren?

Tom: Yes, Christianity Today sponsors this leadershipjournal.net. So, this is where all of this is coming from. Now, he says that…again, he’s one of the emerging church leaders. This is a movement, for those that don’t know, that really attempts to win or appeal to the 20-to-30-year-olds. They are very much into ritual and candles and all kinds of…it’s really a sort of replay of Catholic and Orthodox mysticism, so that the young people can feel and experience spirituality. That’s really the heart of it. But, Dave, he says that he’s not a cowardly flip-flopper—but this is “weaselism”! I mean, I just made that term up, but this is really what he’s going for.

Dave: Well, Tom, it almost…I knew it couldn’t have been, but I thought, Hey, this is Joel Osteen. He doesn’t know anything: “Oh, no, I don’t know…well, I can’t say…I can’t make that definite.

Tom: Yes, but he says, Five years, if we just back off for five years, and then maybe have a moratorium in another five years. Why five years, Dave, why not twenty years, why not…?

Dave: Well, it could be, it’s going to get worse, Tom, but this is nonsense. Anyway, go on, you wanted to say some things.

Tom: No, I want your response to this. I see the veins on your neck are starting to…

Dave: Tom, we’ve got all these scholarly studies, biblical studies, theology, ethnic psychology, genetic sociology, and related fields, and so forth.

Tom: We have pseudo sciences, and sciences that don’t apply.

Dave: Right. You see, the Bible speaks very definitely about this. God wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality. It very clearly tells us that that was why. Every since that time, homosexuality has been known as sodomy It has been recognized as unnatural, against the, you know, nature—it was the crime against nature. And you remember, it was— I forget the date, you probably remember—there in San Francisco, when the American Psychological Association was meeting, or was it the American Psychiatric Association?

Tom: It was the American Psychiatric Association.

Dave: Right, and the homosexual…

Tom: Well, it had to do with the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and for our folks that don’t know, it’s the psychiatrists who met and on the basis of a vote would decide what was a mental disorder and what was not. And prior to this meeting in San Francisco, homosexuality was a mental disorder, and there was much pressure brought upon this group in their voting by the gay task force to get them to change the vote.

Dave: Well, the homosexuals threatened to cut off the power to this place.

Tom: And folks, this isn’t hearsay. We know a gentleman who was there, who experienced this.

Dave: Yeah, so anyway, the Bible speaks very clearly to this. Now, is this normal? Well, Tom, it’s very simple. If it were normal—in other words, if this were some aberration, but it normally came about through the genes, it would wipe itself out very quickly, because these people don’t reproduce. So, it wouldn’t happen again. Now how can this, from cosmic rays or whatever, how can this keep happening? No, they teach it to you! They teach it to you in school, and so forth. You could read The Fatal Shore, which tells the story of Australia. It was a penal colony, and they have letters still preserved from men—they all became homosexuals. “Oh, all the guys that had genes to be homosexuals. Oh, they all ended up in Australia as criminals.”

Really! No, you ought to read the letters from some of these people. They are pleading, “How did I get into this? I mean, they just force us into this—we don’t want it! it’s unnatural!” Furthermore, it’s a breaking of the first commandment! God said, “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth,” and these people do not replenish the earth. They are thumbing their noses at God who said, “I want you to reproduce.”

Now if everybody—Tom, I don’t know how you can have a gay pride parade about this. If everybody adopted this lifestyle, it would be the end of the human race. How can you be proud of that? It is so totally against nature, against anything that your common sense would tell you.

Tom: Dave, McLaren says, “Maybe this moratorium would help us to resist the winds of doctrine blowing fiercely from left to right.” He’s just jettisoned doctrine altogether, and that’s a major, major problem.

Dave: Exactly.