Law and Justice
The current debate over LGBTQ inclusion is usually framed as either a matter of law, “God doesn’t permit this” or justice “God’s justice demands it.”
Beneath the traditionalist argument is usually an implied legalism. “We know God doesn’t permit this because of the law and therefore this is out of bounds for God’s people”.
Beneath this inclusivist camp is usually an implied progressivism or liberationism. “God in history ‘sets the captives free’. God did so with slaves in abolition, racial injustice in the civil rights movement, women in church leadership, and sexual minorities as we now discover they were ‘born that way’ and so must be welcomed. Christianity is about freeing us from guilt and shame and inviting us into freedom in Christ.”
Progressivism and Civil Religion
There is a progressivism deep beneath Western culture today that tracks with the Christian variety. This progressivism has in fact become the new civil religion replacing the Cold War version that aligned God and country to defeat communism. This new civil religion as social progressivism appears to be emerging victorious over the Cold War version which tried to repackage itself as “the moral majority” in American politics. Just as American power felt itself to be deeply moral in resisting godless communism it is increasingly feeling itself to be deeply moral in bringing justice to those sexually disenfranchised by traditional sexual ethics backed by traditional religion. Some in the church are trying to keep up by bringing this new enlightenment to their less evolved traditional church partners.
Lines in the Sand on a Slippery Slope Continue reading →
