Complementarianism Is a Means to Joy, Not a Problem to Solve

Last updated on: January 13, 2015 at 4:36 pm By Owen Strachan

If you want international media attention, here’s one way to get it: simply quote the Bible on headship and submission in marriage. That’s what Gavin Peacock just did. Peacock is a pastor in Calgary, Alberta, and a former star soccer player in the UK. (I speak with CBMW at Peacock’s church, Calvary Grace, next week–here are the details.) Following a long career–which included multiple goals for Chelsea against Manchester United (!)–Peacock became a widely-loved soccer commentator for the BBC. Not... Read more

Training the Next Generation to Be Men and Women

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 8:28 am By Owen Strachan

We live in strange days. Many of my parental peers are not training their boys and girls to be men and women. They’re helping their little tykes select their gender, as ABC News recently reported. It’s increasingly considered oppressive and unkind to dare to give boys a sense of manhood and girls a sense of womanhood. Living in a culture like this makes me deeply thankful for a whole host of young complementarian men and women who love manhood and womanhood.... Read more

Christmas Is About War

Last updated on: December 24, 2014 at 1:22 pm By Owen Strachan

A sermon I gave at Kenwood Baptist Church one year ago, in December 2013. So we’re clear, I’m good with warm fires, hot chocolate, and cozy time with the family. But we can never forget: Christmas is about war. Read more

Best of 2014

Last updated on: December 23, 2014 at 12:31 pm By Owen Strachan

The web is democratized, right? This means, by my lights, that I get to do a “Best of 2014” list. My list, defined by “magnificently arbitrary criteria” (I steal this marvelous phrase from the class syllabus of New Testament scholar D. A. Carson), ranges over culture, theology, basketball, and rap. The good stuff, you know. 1. Best video production of the year: Desiring God, “The Calvinist.” I am totally cheating here, because this video came out in December 2013. However, I... Read more

Same-Sex Friendship: The Possibilities of Renewal

Last updated on: December 22, 2014 at 10:04 am By Owen Strachan

In the last week, I have been thinking and conversing about the topic of “gay Christianity.” In reading the thoughtful reflections of a number of fellow believers, I’ve realized that the possibility of finding common ground between those who have advocated for “gay Christianity” and those who do not may be greater than we might initially think. Here are several reflections that I hope can in some small way foster further conversation and, ultimately, unity in Christ. 1. Homosexual sexual... Read more

How Paganism Keeps Women Down & Christianity Lifts Them Up

Last updated on: December 18, 2014 at 8:31 am By Owen Strachan

I just recorded a 30-minute program with the TV show Dead Reckoning. It’s led by Brian Mattson and Jay Friesen, two sharp and gifted guys. We did not talk about wine, but we did talk about women. Specifically, we discussed how Christianity in ancient times dignified and enfranchised women. It was not the Christians, and the Bible, that subjugated women. It was the pagans. New Testament scholar Bruce Winter, for example, notes that if a woman was found guilty of adultery,... Read more

Christology and Temptation: Same-Sex Attraction & Christ’s Cross

Last updated on: December 15, 2014 at 9:22 am By Owen Strachan

The recent advent of “gay Christianity” (and see also this) has prompted some profitable discussion online. This conversation prompted a common question: “What about Jesus?” In other words, if he “was tempted in every way, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15), and if this experience forms a bridge with our human experience, then how can we rightly call homosexual desire–and thus homosexual orientation, which is a pattern of desire–sinful? This is an important question, and I’m thankful that some friends have asked it. It... Read more

Gay Christianity: Toward a Theological and Pastoral Response

Last updated on: December 13, 2014 at 1:23 pm By Owen Strachan

The very helpful article by Julie Roys for WORLD magazine has offered a fresh opportunity to clarify the muddled evangelical conversation over “gay Christianity.” Yesterday I responded briefly to the blog of a Wheaton chaplain. Today I want to push further on this matter in order to try and move the discussion ahead. My particular interest is pastoral, for this is where all the theological issues come to a point. Here are ten points that I hope can move us... Read more

David and Jonathan’s Love Was Pure, Not Erotic

Last updated on: December 12, 2014 at 3:53 pm By Owen Strachan

World magazine just released a story entitled “Wheaton’s ‘Gay Celibate Christian'” featuring comments from a campus worker in the chaplain’s office named Julie Rodgers. Rodgers takes upon herself the label “gay Christian,” which I’ve previously responded to in the Journal for Biblical Manhood & Womanhood. The World story–characteristically well-reported–leads readers to an October blog by Rodgers. Here are selected quotations from it: The best way I can describe my experience of ‘being gay’ is that with certain women I feel the ‘it’ factor:... Read more

With Tears: On Racism and the Gospel

Last updated on: December 11, 2014 at 7:03 am By Owen Strachan

Like many, I have been deeply saddened by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I have wanted to carefully think through these matters. We feel great pressure today to speak instantaneously and with maximal depth about current events. I found that I needed to listen, learn, and hear my brothers and sisters speak–particularly my African-American brothers and sisters, whose reflections have been moving, instructive, and invaluable to me. The deaths of both men are complicated in different ways by... Read more