Comments on: A new test of orthodoxy

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:49:54 +0000

@ Zoe Brain : I agree it that what’s going with regard to religious extremism in the USA is very worrying.

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:49:54 +0000

Throbert
I hope that, in relation to the first two questions, I could have given rather better answers than did the ‘Christian’ in your imagine dialogue!
(I’m not going to answer them here, as it would take me at least an hour’s worth of typing to even begin to do them justice!)
Perhaps because I am someone who is unashamedly ‘liberal’ on the issue of same-sex relationships, I really do take the view the Bible has nothing to say about loving same-sex relationships, unless one assumes that there was a sexual element to one or more of the David-Jonathan, Ruth-Noami or Daniel-Ashpenaz friendships.
Of course there is much biblical material that clearly points to Marriage as an ideal. But ‘ideality’ (which none of us fits) should not be confused with ‘morality’, and certainly not with ‘legality’!

By: David

David — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:49:54 +0000

@Mark Yarhouse:
I just wanted to congratulate you on the 1-hour videotaped seminar you gave at Liberty University, in which you affirmed your pre-existing belief that “change” is possible via the Christan “seal ethic.” It is the mark of a great Christian academic that he begins with a conclusion and then seeks evidence to bolster it. BTW, I look forward with interest to hearing about any ex-gay study that: 1) assesses “change” after the therapy or religious counseling ends, not while it is still ongoing and/or 2) measures or at least corroborates reported arousal patterns through objective measurement rather than relyiing on self-reporting alone. Please do let us know when you get around to doing that.
@Richard Willmer and Throbert:
You can’t call CBN, AFA, FOTF, FRC, etc. “extremist” because by every objective measurement, they are mainstream American Christianity. Throckmorton is the extremist. CBN’s last reported revenue was over $600 million, including over $200 million in contributions from supporters. This is the annual revenue that came in *after* Pat Robertson declared on the air that God sent the earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people in Haiti because Haitians had entered into a pact with Satan to free themselves from slavery. AFA brings in $20 million per year, in spite of the regular assertions by its senior policy analyst that Muslims have no First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion and that Native Americans are savages who were brutalized because they failed to accept Jesus.
FOTF regularly brought in well over $100 million per annum for many years following James Dobson’s demand that 6 out of the 9 Justices of the US Supreme Court be impeached because they struck down an anti-gay measure that was passed in Colorado.
How many supporters does Throckmorton have? How many supporters and how much money do evangelists like Tony Campolo have? The answer is: a tiny fraction of what Robertson, Fischer, and Dobson have. So it makes little sense to call the latter group extremists.
As for Throbert’s point, Christianity is what Christians make of it. You can insist all you like that “real” Christianity should be determined by adherence to this or that creed, but the reality is that “Christianity” will mean what the consensus of Christians says it means. Today, the evidence is overwhelming that by consensus, Christianity means a cruel reactionary political ideology with a neurotic obsession with all matters sexual. Just for lulz, set aside a few hours and do some date-restricted google searches for “Christian and mortgage fraud” or “Christian and oil spill”. Now do date-restricted searches for “Christian and homosexuality” or “Christian and sexuality” or “Christian and lust” and compare the results, both in quantity and content.

By: Richard Willmer

Richard Willmer — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:49:54 +0000

The danger of doing any kind of study from some kind of ‘religious’ starting point is that one end up ‘assuming the answer’ rather than properly evaluating the evidence.
As I have said, perhaps the key point on this thread is ‘what constitutes a Christian approach?’ Well, anyone who takes God seriously understands that they can ‘never know it all’ (because ‘the truth’ is always bigger than they/we are) – and so they search and question and draw ‘conclusions’ that they know perfectly well are relative and proximate … and then they search and question and … (etc etc etc). Saint Paul, despite his propensity for seemingly ‘dogmatic’ statements, so often says “something, something, something, and yet ,,,”

By: Throbert McGee

Throbert McGee — Wed, 30 May 2018 19:49:54 +0000

a lot of boys feel “attracted” to older, more masculine boys or men. And as far as I see, it’s extremely difficult to make out how that “attraction” differs in heterosexual boys and in homosexual boys.

For me, as a boy who grew up to be homosexual, the key difference may have been in how I felt about women and femininity. I can remember that in middle school and early high school, I enjoyed drawing both naked men and naked women — but the enjoyment from drawing boobs and vaginas was rather abstract, and similar to the gratification I got from drawing a dog or a geranium or a Coke bottle and having it turn out more or less true-to-life (it was the satisfaction that I had produced something aesthetically pleasing). But drawing a naked muscular man and what I thought his penis might look like produced a much more gut-level (but paranoid) satisfaction.