We often assume that if we give in just a little, the other side will be satisfied. But it never is, pushing for more and more and more, going to ever greater extremes.
The issue in progressive churches is no longer gay rights, or accepting LGBTQ+ members and pastors, or performing same-sex weddings, or being inclusive of transgendered individuals. Rather, all of this is only preparatory to Queer Theology, according to which Christianity itself is all about homosexuality and transgenderism.
In order to know what is happening in mainline churches and liberal seminaries, you must read Queering Jesus: How It’s Going Mainstream at Progressive Churches and Top Divinity Schools. The article, by John Murawski of RealClearInvestigations, shows just how pervasive “queer theology” has become in these ostensibly Christian circles. Here is an excerpt, with my bolds:
Progressive churches are moving beyond gay rights, even beyond transgender acceptance, and venturing into the realm of “queer theology.” Rather than merely settling for the acceptance of gender-nonconforming people within existing marital norms and social expectations, queer theology questions heterosexual assumptions and binary gender norms as limiting, oppressive and anti-biblical, and centers queerness as the redemptive message of Christianity.
In this form of worship, “queering” encourages the faithful to problematize, disrupt, and destabilize the assumptions behind heteronormativity and related social structures such as monogamy, marriage, and capitalism. These provocative theologians and ministers assert that queerness is not only natural and healthy but biblically celebrated. They assert that God is not the patron deity of the respectable, the privileged, and the comfortable, but rather God has a “preferential option” for the promiscuous, the outcast, the excluded and the impure. . . .
Queer theology presents itself as an apocalyptic, revival movement, rendering queer people as angels and saints who are a living foretaste of what’s to come, when all binaries and man-made social constructs fall away as remnants of heterosexual oppression and European colonialism. There is a sense in which to be queer is to be the chosen people, those favored by God to spread the good news.
I can’t bring myself to quote any more of what Murawski describes and critiques on this blog. Read it yourself.
This is not just the speculations of academic theologians. Murawski shows how this is showing up everywhere in mainline churches.
We keep hearing that the split in the United Methodist Church, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) breaking away from the Episcopal Church, the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) breaking away from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the revolt of global Anglicans against Canterbury are all about “accepting gay pastors” or the like. But the bigger issue is surely the rise of Queer Theology and whether it will be allowed to replace actual Christianity.
Back when the main issue with liberal theology was the higher critical approach to the Bible, as accompanied with the “social gospel,” J. Gresham Machen wrote Christianity and Liberalism, in which he argued that liberal theology was not just a strain of Christianity or a theological option in the church universal. Rather, liberal theology is a different religion than Christianity.
He was right then in 1923. And Queer Theology, as the decaying fruit of that rebellion against the authority of Scripture, is certainly a different religion than actual Christianity.
This happens to be the 100th anniversary of the publication of that book. It is worth reading in light of what liberal theology has mutated into.
Photo: Church Door with Pride Flag by Haanala 76 via PublicDomainPictures.Net, CC0
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In