Marginal Christianity

OPINION  |  Centre For Public Christianity Friday 17 June 2016 The first step in navigating your way through any complicated topic is to work out what the main approaches are and try (as best you can) to identify what is appealing about each position, as well as what might be a weakness. In our efforts to think through the fraught topic of same sex marriage, the Centre for Public Christianity has developed the following brief guide to seven approaches we’ve encountered amongst Christians wrestling with this topic. It does not claim to be exhaustive. It cannot capture every nuance. But we thought it might still be helpful to describe the various perspectives in a simple, convenient format, and invite readers to evaluate their own position in light of the alternatives.  1.     Innovators : moving beyond scripture Innovators enthusiastically support same sex marriage. They do so with what they hold to be a generous moving beyond the Bible’s te...

Image Credit: G-Day Published by: Robert Laurie on Friday June 26th, 2015 Another take. I'll get this out of the way right up front.  A lot of you aren't going to like what I have to say. However, the boss doesn't pay me to tell you what you want to hear - or even what  he  wants to hear.  My job is to offer my opinion.  Dan gave you the  social conservative reaction here , and my take is going to be substantially different. So here we go: The Supreme Court got the gay marriage ruling right. I know, social-cons hate it, but the SCOTUS made the right call under the equal protection clause. I've written -  for years  - that the GOP's knee jerk desire to legislate morality has been both a mistake and massive failure. You're either for freedom and individual liberty, or you're not. I'll fight tooth and nail for your right to live your life and raise your families as you see fit, but your absolute right to do so ends when you use t...

    Damon Linker (Illustration by Lauren Hansen | Images courtesy iStock) April 21, 2015   When a school learns that one of its alums has achieved great things, the institution will usually seek to promote those accomplishments. But there are exceptions. If it's discovered, for example, that the former student also happens to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, or a neo-Nazi, or a convicted felon, then the school will naturally seek to downplay the connection — and to sever any explicit ties between them. To this list of offenses — normally reserved only for bigots and criminals — we can now apparently add opposing same-sex marriage. Consider the recent experience of Ryan T. Anderson. A graduate of the Quaker Friends School of Baltimore, Anderson has achieved far more than most 33-year-olds. He completed his undergraduate education at Princeton and earned a Ph.D. from Notre Dame. He has...

The attack on Memories Pizza and its implications Conor Friedersdorf Apr 3 2015, 6:46 AM ET   Mario Anzuoni/Reuters What do white evangelicals, Muslims, Mormons, blacks, conservative Republicans, and immigrants from Africa, South America, and Central America all have in common? They're less likely to support gay marriage than the average Californian. Over the years, I've patronized restaurants owned by members of all those groups. Today, if I went out into Greater Los Angeles and chatted up owners of mom-and-pop restaurants, I'd sooner or later find one who would decline to cater a gay wedding. The owners might be members of Rick Warren's church in Orange County. Or a family of immigrants in Little Ethiopia or on Alvera Street. Or a single black man or woman in Carson or Inglewood or El Segundo. Should we destroy their livelihoods?     If I recorded audio proving their ...

  Posted on June 26, 2013 by thad Perhaps because of what I do for a living, I have been asked about gay marriage many times over the last couple of years. With very few exceptions, each of the questions I’ve been asked is some variation of the same question: What is your position on gay marriage? Some ask to make sure I’m on the right side of the issue; some ask because they are conflicted about which side is right, but they feel pressure to choose a side (and to choose the right side, obviously). I understand the desire to be right. I understand the pressure to choose. I understand that right and wrong still matter. The question that all of the questions seem to be asking still makes sense to me. And yet the more I am asked the question, the more I am convinced that we are so collectively obsessed with position  we have forgotten that Jesus has at least as much to say about posture . My observation of the Church is that we usually give our first and bes...

I wrote in a facebook status earlier that two things I liked about today’s PCUSA gay marriage decisions at General Assembly are that nothing is imposed on any one and that it’s over and attention can be paid to other pressing matters.   I want to say and perhaps qualify those two statements in this blog post. I believe the decision to allow each clergy and church session to decide what their policy regarding gay marriage will be was the only decision that could be made if the denomination hoped to retain its more conservative churches.   A mandatory policy would have driven them all out. But this decision on a denominational level merely pushes the battle back in the local churches.   Every pastor and session knows the struggle and pressure of a request from grandparents to baptize their new grandchild even though the parents do not and do not intend to take the child to church even though our general polity rules such a thing out.   We shouldn’t do it but ...

http://www.worldmag.com/2014/03/world_vision_reportedly_reverses_decision Religion  |  Board member says the organization never meant to undermine the authority of Scripture By Jamie Dean Posted March 26, 2014, 03:40 p.m.               Less than 24 hours after international poverty ministry World Vision announced it would allow its American branch to hire employees in same-sex marriages, the Christian group is reportedly set to reverse its decision. Board member Stephen Hayner, president of Columbia Theological Seminary , replied to an email inquiry from WORLD this afternoon concerning the outcry from evangelicals over the original decision: “The Board of World Vision is just concluding a meeting and will be releasing a statement shortly reversing the decision that was made. It was never the intention of the Board to undermine our firm commitment to the authority of the Scriptu...

Being Against Gay Marriage Doesn't Make You a Homophobe Some people just aren't sure about marriage equality—but their reasoning isn't necessarily a reflection of their character.  Brandon Ambrosino Dec 13 2013, 1:30 PM ET   Does being against gay marriage make someone anti-gay? The question resurfaced last week when Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, claimed on Meet the Press that the Catholic Church is unfairly “caricatured” as anti-gay. The Huffington Post’s Paul Raushenbush quickly wrote up a response , saying that “The hard reality that Cardinal Dolan and all Christians need to face up to is that the Catholic Church along with every other church whether Orthodox, Protestant or Catholic has been horrifically, persistently and vehemently anti-gay for almost all of its history.” Then Raushenbush hauled out a familiar argument: “Let's just be very clear here —if you are against marriage equality you are anti-gay. Done.” As...