Jonathan Merritt
I made a chart for something I’m working on. https://paulvanderklay.me/2016/09/16/defining-the-spectrum-on-lgbtq-and-the-church-today/ It at least notes some of the boundary markers.
There are of course various positions within the labels especially the moderates. Where are those check points? One person I’m in conversation with is using the distinction between baptized members and confessing members, something we’ve got some bandwidth in as paedo-baptists which the credo-baptists don’t.
The evangelical movement was at heart an ecumenical effort that sought to transcend confessional and sectarian divisions by in a sense offering a “least common denominator” approach. Keep to rather fuzzy and implicit standards like “bible believing”. that way we can crop out the mainline, the JW and LDS but increasingly not the SDA. Let’s soften up conflicts over baptism, not make too big of a deal if your CRC youth get dunked by the Bible barn down the road. Besides they claim it was a meaningful experience.
We’ve also gone from “some RC are Christians because they read the Bible” to RCs as culture war and political allies and rediscovering RC liturgy and some of the kind words the Reformers had for church fathers even beyond Augustine.
The LGBTQ conflict is going to reset the table again in dramatic ways. That is already happening.
How can we process these changes productively? How can we process the inevitable movement of institutional lines that will follow? pvk
