Christine Wicker: The Internet Monk Interview with the Author of Fall of the Evangelical Nation

Posted byChaplainmikePosted inInterview

UPDATE: I’m just curious: do some of you always descend into railing preacher mode when you encounter a person who isn’t on the same page as you, or is today just not your day?

Internet Monk.com is extremely honored to have Christine Wicker in the house for the IM interview segment today. Christine is the author of the book that blew my mind for at least two weeks, Fall of the Evangelical Nation. She is also currently is working on adapting some of her other books for television and planning a conference on literature and ethics.

Many of you have read Christine’s book and find her research interesting and provocative as I do. It’s great to have her at IM for a few questions. After snacks served by the gracious Van Til, we got to the interview.

1. Thank you, Christine, for doing this interview. You made it clear in your book that you grew up among evangelicals, but are no longer an evangelical or part of the Christian community. Can you tell us a little bit about your own faith journey and what were the significant contributing experiences to where you are now?

I wrote a book called “God Knows My Heart” in which I tried to figure all that out while covering religion for The Dallas Morning News. I was pretty devout as a kid and even in college.

Why did I leave? I once replied off the cuff that I wanted a world bigger than the Baptist Student Union. That might sum it up.

But leaving church and leaving Jesus are quite different. The first is easier. I sometimes suspect Jesus is not all that impressed with my belief or lack of belief, which fluctuates.

I say that because he continues to be a daily influence in how I conduct my life, the most important guide for how to behave. Sometimes he is also a presence. He shows up in all of my books, no matter the subject and whether or not I’m looking for him.

2. I’m imagining a person happily enjoying the programs of an evangelical megachurch would find your contention that the evangelical nation is facing its demise to be hilariously inaccurate. What’s the credible evidence that the “evangelical nation” is falling?

The evidence comes entirely from evangelicals themselves. When I talk about demise, I’m talking about numbers, growth, attitudes and behavior. The preachers often say that the culture has had more impact on the church than the church has had on the culture.

That’s completely true. Some people decry that. Others think that’s a good thing.

I use the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Association of Evangelicals as my two greatest examples. I also figured in non-denominational evangelicals. Anyone who wants numbers can find them on my website, www.christinewicker.com.

3. Your book puts a lot of emphasis on the end of evangelical political dominance, but many younger evangelicals are just as political as before, they just aren’t sold out to the Republican party. Do you see the politics of more left-leaning evangelicals like Brian Mclaren, Jim Wallis and Shane Claiborne playing a significant role in the evangelical future?

I’d say Rick Warren is a better example of where the bulk of evangelicals are going. He’s quite conservative religiously but independent on other matters. My sense is that he’s positioning himself as the new Billy Graham, not the new Jerry Falwell/ Pat Robertson.

Wallis calls for engagement of a kind that would be radically different for many evangelicals. McLaren does too, and he breaks down some of the barriers that evangelicals have traditionally used to define themselves as God’s people.

I suspect that the notion of a God who is punishing but who also generally supports the American status quo will continue to appeal to many evangelicals. In fact, anything else seems ungodly to them.

I’m most interested right now in how Obama may change religious thinking and behavior.

4. Is the prosperity Gospel a cancer killing evangelicalism or is it a drug keeping the patient medicated and alive?

I’d go for the second option if I had to pick. For me judging prosperity gospel depends on whom the prosperity gospel is being preached to. Poor people need powerful promises to help them believe they can overcome all the obstacles in their way.

And isn’t prayer often about imploring God to give us something? Why is asking for health, which is far more valuable than money, more holy than asking for wealth, which allows us to be safe, to be fed, to be educated, to be treated by hospitals when we’re sick, and even to help others?

Certainly it would be more noble to serve God with no expectation of return, but promises of Divine favor, which seem plentiful in the Bible, help humans feel hopeful and comforted and not so alone in our troubles.

Those are great benefits. Are they are a drug? Marx thought so, but who listens to him anymore?

5. Why has James Dobson’s method of moving from counseling and teaching family life to promoting high-powered political involvement been so effective among evangelicals? Is Dobson’s day as the “big gorilla” in evangelicalism over?

He got his credibility from his base as a counselor and teacher. His legitimacy as a family-values defender was higher than many other leaders’ because he approached the topic so broadly and in such a useful, knowledgeable way. Since the Religious Right was so successful in taking over the idea of family values, his transition was a natural one. People learned to trust him in one role, and it wasn’t hard for them to follow him into a wider sphere.

Is his day over? I don’t know. He didn’t do too well in this election. But America is full of second acts, and third acts, and fourth acts. I wouldn’t even be sure Ted Haggard’s day is over.

6. Despite enormous compromises on the pragmatic front, Evangelicalism continues to stand strongly against the culture on issues related to gender and sexuality. Does this surprise you?

It doesn’t surprise me that the leaders stand so strongly or that their congregations do the same in opinion polls and voting. If nothing else, that kind of stand provides comfort during a time of threatening changes. And we need comfort.

What worries me is that the split between evangelical ideals and evangelical actions may be getting wider. Not because evangelicals are comfortable being hypocrites but because societal pressures are more intense.

For instance, I’m told that many evangelical kids and single adults come to church on Sunday and are regularly sleeping around or living with people they aren’t married to. Why? Because waiting until you’re married to have sex means that you are very likely never to get married and never to have sex either. Those are the “facts on the ground.”

Do you expect this to change?

I think the conservative evangelical stand on gay rights will change because science is going to demonstrate more and more convincingly that sexuality isn’t a choice. Also, normalization of homosexuality becomes more complete every year, and that’s what really changes attitudes.

I suspect the stand on abortion rights won’t change. Once again because of science, which I suspect has become our true god.

Science has already bolstered the anti-abortion argument with sonograms and by keeping babies alive earlier and earlier. Now it is providing private ways to abort so early that the woman doesn’t even know if she was pregnant. No knowledge, no guilt. So public abortions will be less needed and easier to condemn as something only stupid, careless, immoral women need.

7. For the first time, numbers of “non-religious” are growing faster than the any version of Christianity. The growth is coming from significant numbers of people brought up in Christianity. Have we turned a corner?

I’m afraid we have turned a corner. We could turn back. A great revival might occur.

But the truth about those “non-religious” people is that many of them aren’t “non-religious.” They are “spiritual but not religious.” They have their own ideas about God and life. They’re making it up as they go, so to speak. They feel in touch and empowered by God or the Universe or Spirit. And they don’t think they need the church. They have their own “bibles.” Their own leaders. And lots of company.

What are the major issues contributing to this shift?

Science, of course. I also mention in my book that Alcoholics Anonymous has shifted the concept of God enormously. It uses Christian principles. It rests on community. It gets results. But the God of AA has no attributes. He can be anything you want him to be.

That’s a threat to traditional Christian faith because the “AA God of your own understanding” has enormous power to change lives. So why convert to the Christian brand and take orders from some preacher?

8. One of your most provocative contentions could be summarized as something like this: When you send your kid to a good school like Wheaton and bring them up to be a tolerant, educated, non-fundamentalist, you’re probably contributing to the demise of evangelicalism.

I guess my answer would be another question: How ignorant and intolerant do you have to keep them to preserve religious beliefs? And is that really the best strategy?

But I didn’t quite mean to say what you’ve described. My chapter on family is meant to point out that child rearing has changed enormously in the last 30 years. Traditional evangelical faith is grounded in authority. The Bible says it. God wills it. The preacher leads, the congregation follows.

Faith requires a leap. God desires that you make that leap. If you don’t, you go to hell.

Traditional child rearing was also grounded in authority. So the two bolstered each other. I think that’s why conservative evangelicals sometimes allow their children to be paddled at school. Authority must be obeyed or punishment follows. Boundaries are essential to traditional evangelical faith. Child rearing once widely reinforced boundaries in action, speech and thought.

I argue that today’s children who are encouraged from their earliest days to question and contend with authority are less likely to accept religious ideas based on authority. And that parents have made this shift from supporting authority (their own first of all) because the pace of change demands that they prepare their children by teaching them flexibility and questioning.

Was evangelicalism wrong from the outset to believe that it could reject a fundamentalist posture and succeed as a movement?

I think the shifts evangelicals and other Christians are making may be painful and confusing, but they are also the hope of American Christianity.

These “new” evangelicals put following God above their own interests, above traditions, above certainties. They ask themselves hard questions and hold themselves to high standards of faith and reasoning. More than any great deed or sacrifice, certainly more than any political positions, the pure essence of who they are and who they hope to be speaks for their beliefs.

Will they still be evangelicals as they continue to question and change? Not as they have been defined by the Religious Right. But Southern Baptists, for instance, have always believed in the priesthood of the believer. So the changes rest on very traditional evangelical ideas.

9. I want to ask about your reaction/response to my two primary assertions regarding the demise of evangelicalism. A) Evangelicalism has failed to develop a real Christian spirituality that shapes and defines “What is a Christian?” Instead, we have culture war zealots, consumers, fans of various celebrities, and so forth. If asked to name a great Christian, most evangelicals would name a celebrity, not a saint.

I’d agree. American evangelical faith has become so identified with the Republican Party that the two were, until recently, thought of as one. Perhaps not what Jesus had in mind.

And certainly not what mainstream America thinks of as Christ-like behavior. So that has hurt the evangelical witness.

I’m hopeful that the growing evangelical focus on helping others will turn that image around.

B) Evangelicalism has deconstructed everything in Christianity in the name of numerical growth/church growth/relevance. So we have a church that isn’t really a church, worship that isn’t worship, pastors who don’t pastor, sermons that aren’t the Bible, Christians who aren’t particularly like Christ and so on. The end of this, as Louis Bouyer predicted half a century ago about Protestantism, is self-destruction.

I would have to beg off on this one. As you know, I grew up as a Southern Baptist. I’ve never experienced any other kind of Christianity. I’ve heard about Christianity that isn’t as you’ve described it, and sometimes seen it. But I wonder if that’s too extreme for most Americans.

The kind of evangelicalism we have now suits them very well. Can is convert others? Usually not.

10. It’s been a delight to have you here at the IM interview. One last question:  One of my personal quests is for a Jesus-shaped spirituality. If I asked you where to go in American Christianity to see and experience Jesus shaped spirituality, where would you suggest I go?

I’d say, “Go to church.” You can find it in other places of service, in neighborhoods, in families, among people who don’t go to church, but the easiest way would be to look in the churches.

For the brand I like best, you would look among the quieter, more humble, probably the older members of the congregation. I’d look among those with the least power. Not because powerful people can’t be Jesus-shaped, but the temptations are so much greater for them. I suspect it’s easier to become like Jesus if you’re among the “nobodies” of the world.

93 thoughts on “Christine Wicker: The Internet Monk Interview with the Author of Fall of the Evangelical Nation”

  1. I said that I don’t think it makes sense to marry someone you’re not attracted to because they have some “spiritual” virtue you’re drawn to. Be friends. I wouldn’t marry someone I didn’t find attractive and I’d be ashamed if someone married me if they didn’t find me attractive, and held some religious belief up to me to prove their pure intentions. I think that’s living in a dream-land. — Pat Lynch

    If so, a lot of Christians are living in that dreamland. I remember (during my younger, single-and-desperate days after Ann dumped me) attending a Christian speaker on dating/marriage. He kept going on dissing and denigrating appearance, attraction, and common interests/likes, putting all importance on “shared values/spiritual virtues” et al.

    I thought, “That attractiveness and shared common interests are what draws you together in the beginning. If you’re never attracted to them in the first place, how are you ever going to find out you have those ‘shared spiritual values’?”

    All Sustainer, no Booster. The rocket would never leave the launch tube.

    (Since then, JMJ/Christian Monist has written about a way around this dilemma. He saw it a lot in Navigators — using heavy-duty spiritual manipulation/”God Revealed to me…” to entrap the attractive Nav girl into marriage. The long-term success of this Christian (TM) Booster Charge for Initial Attraction/Meeting was shall we say “haphazard”.)

    Wasn’t it also St. Augustine who wrote that he used to pray, “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”? — That Other Jean

    That’s because St Augustine was a real horndog in his younger days. I read an essay on the Web months ago (titled “Christian Sex Cult”, I think) which argued that St Augustine’s post-conversion monastic life also colored his ideas on women and sex in a dysfunctional manner. From horndog — women primarily as sex partners — to monk — with no opportunity to befriend women, even in a non-sexual manner. And, as a horndog, prone to the “I have a problem, so everybody must have the same problem” syndrome. The essay didn’t rip on St Augustine so much as point out that he was a mortal man with a load of accumulated baggage in the sex department, and that probably influenced his writings and teachings.

    “People using sexual compatibility as a reason for pre-marital relations are simply trying to see if the other person performs well in bed with them.”

    What if they don’t? — Pat Lynch

    Discard and Replace, of course.

    Like

  3. If you can turn any discussion on spirituality into a debate about premarital sex, homosexuality and/or abortion, then you just might be an______________:-)

    Like

  6. “People using sexual compatibility as a reason for pre-marital relations are simply trying to see if the other person performs well in bed with them.”

    What if they don’t?

    Like

  7. At one level it is all a trick God played on us — He makes us so we want it, then tells us we can’t have it, just making us want it more.

    And what does He get out of the deal …?

    More people.
    (He really likes people) 🙂

    Like

  8. Here’s what’s ridiculous:

    Evangelicals who rant, rave, quote scripture and preach at anyone who isn’t in their fundamentalist camp meeting are convincing exactly NO ONE.

    When someone unloads on me, I generally ask if they are feeling better now. One can always hope.

    Like

  9. Well, I guess I’m the token sinner here 🙂

    I was in high school during the late 70’s, was an average teenager of the time in that I had as much sex as I could get, and I don’t regret it one bit. It was beautiful, intimate, and didn’t detract one iota from my marriage 12+ years later.

    The drive to reproduce is right there with the drive to eat and drink – survival of the species. Teenagers have always had sex, always will, and if that’s God’s way of tempting them to see if they reject sin, that’s a mighty cruel thing to do. Why not make everyone an alcoholic, just to see if they can resist?

    As far as Paul, I believe he said it was better to be celibate than to be married, but who’s defending the lifetime single life as the most Holy possible?

    Like

  10. Karen I share your comment. Imonk asked 10 questions. Sex was barely mentioned. Look what happened. ADD en mass.
    This is exactly the symptom! No wonder C.Wicker Bailed out. We were told to spread the love and message of the messiah, instead we itch and groan over the behavior of people outside the church.None of our business! And we set preachers up like they are the Pope and complain about the Catholics.
    “I suspect that the notion of a God who is punishing but who also generally supports the American status quo will continue to appeal to many evangelicals. In fact, anything else seems ungodly to them.” If this is true somebody help me. I went to Ms. Wickers site, tested myself on 9 issues and horror of horrors, it seems I am an Evangelical. Please issue me my card so they stop throwing me out of their churches. What is appealing about a pro_USA God who punishes? Honestly, is that a biblical image? What happened to “Render unto Caesar” showing a duality of government and God and a duality of responsibility.
    I am glad Imonk’s guest is the expert on this, not me. I am just going to spread the Good News and try not to be an idiot. I feel it is possible to do both.

    Like

  11. Patrick, i think what is meant by sexual compatibility is NOT sexual attraction. Otherwise, premarital sex would not be necessary to determine it. People using sexual compatibility as a reason for pre-marital relations are simply trying to see if the other person performs well in bed with them. Seems entirely selfish in motive. The role a married person in sex is to please their spouse and not themselves. Doing so should be inherently pleasurable anyways. If premarital sex wasn’t experienced with multiple persons in the first place, there would be nothing to compare it to anyways. Isn’t that kinda what God had in mind?

    Tim, I have SOOOO totally been where you are at. But I made it. I went through SOOOO much frustration thinking why should I bother waiting if God wasn’t going to reward me for it. I finally had to come to a point where I said OK God i trust you and I’m going to obey.
    I kid you not I met her the next day and today we are happily married. We were each others first everything, including kiss. Boy was it worth it.
    That is not to say that giving it up to God is automatically going to solve the problem. I have a friend who is 72 and still waiting. It simply doesn’t seem like it is going to happen. If you were to ask her if she regretted it, she would definitely say no. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t an extremely painful concession to make.
    She had to decide for herself that she loved God more than meeting a single perceived need of her own, and God has used her mightily as a result.
    To this day she wishes she could get married and who knows maybe she might. But her love and commitment to follow God are not dependent upon that or her feelings. Feelings are the absolute worst source of reconciling moral choices to reality. They lead astray to easily.
    Hang in there bro.

    Like

  12. Wasn’t it also St. Augustine who wrote that he used to pray, “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”? There may be hope for the rest of us after all.

    Like

  14. Tim W,
    I think it was St. Augustine who said “If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”
    Convicting, isn’t it?

    Like

  15. Brian, often yes – people should divorce if they make each other miserable. Jesus allowed Christians to divorce knowing that we weren’t always going to be able to “submit” to the task ahead of us in some cases (Michael: NOT a Catholic answer, I know). A bad marriage is not a spiritually healthy thing for ANYONE, no matter what Jesus’s metaphysical relationship with the Church Visible. Turning it into a prison for two people who are unhappy with one another in the name of ideological purity conceals nothing from those who are close to it.

    I never implied that anyone should abandon their spouse in a time of need. I never said anyone should approach marriage with a me-first attitude.

    I said that I don’t think it makes sense to marry someone you’re not attracted to because they have some “spiritual” virtue you’re drawn to. Be friends. I wouldn’t marry someone I didn’t find attractive and I’d be ashamed if someone married me if they didn’t find me attractive, and held some religious belief up to me to prove their pure intentions. I think that’s living in a dream-land.

    Then again, I don’t believe God picks our spouse out for us from before time or anything like that. I think that’s a nice sentiment, but it doesn’t help anyone understand anything.

    Like

  16. “Any condition which falls in the realm of “thought” is psychology. Any pattern of thought, such as who one is attracted to, that applies to only 1-3% (men who claimed a sexual encounter with another man in the previous 10 years) of the population is, by definition, abnormal.”

    There’s your problem. Sexuality is not a thought. Your sexual preference is not an idea you came up with. Psychology knows this, whether you do or not.

    Psychology knows that there’s a difference between sexual orientation and occasional same-sex sexual contact, too – which is much, much more common than you seem to think.

    Also, “abnormal” doesn’t qualitatively say anything. Other things that are “abnormal” include grey eyes, extra fingers (though not for long..), and the ability to taste certain things – none of which affect the quality of a person’s life in the least. Being gay falls into that category – relatively rare behavior doesn’t mean that behavior is “borderline” for some kind of pathology.

    Like

  18. Look, Patrick, the average behavior of Christians is not the determining factor of what the behavior of Christians should be.

    The important part of sexuality in a marital relationship is what one gives. One claims nothing. One demands nothing. The notion that I need to make sure my wife is sufficiently pleasurable to me before I commit to her is something I find totally selfish and un-Christian.

    I mean, did Christ make sure the church was sufficiently pleasurable to him before he died for it, or did he do so while we were his enemies? Or is that “love your wives like Christ loved the church” another one of those obsolete verses to be thrown out? Is it now “love your wives according to how they meet your needs” or some such thing?

    So what happens if your wife falls ill? What happens if she loses her physical beauty? Are you doomed to divorce?

    Like

  19. “Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as ‘an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law.'” (CCC 1849)

    In a nutshell, I think one would be hard pressed to out do the CCC for definition of sin and how one can go about discerning it.

    Our modern American culture regarding sexuality is definitely under the category of a perverse attachment to a good, the good namely being sex. As C. S. Lewis put it, “Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?” (http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00CUIw)

    As someone who failed to live up to Evangelical standards in this area, I strongly feel that the ball has been dropped on a church-wide level in terms of educating people on Christian Ethics. Christians are often told the What, but the Why is severely lacking, boiling down to a giant “because we said so”. Not that I don’t take full responsibility for my own actions, but Evangelical culture didn’t provide much help, and doesn’t provide much help to those struggling with themselves.

    Like

  20. “Killing, stealing, etc. are clearly sin but having sex with someone you love just doesn’t seem like sin to me, anymore than eating shellfish seems like a sin.”

    “Thou shall not commit adultery.”

    “If a man looks at a woman with lust in his heart, he has already committed adultery with her.”

    If Jesus says just LOOKING with lust is a sin, how can DOING not be?

    No offense, but this is why the church in America is going the way Ms. Wicker describes. We pick and choose which parts of the Bible we like and which to ignore. Instead of striving to be more like Jesus, we seek ways to excuse our own, or our friends and families, behavior.

    DD

    Like

  21. I also use the bible so long as it feels right in my heart. My heart has to agree with what the bible says. If the bible says something but it feels wrong, then I would rather listen to my heart.

    Like

  22. “Why is one clearly sin but not the other? By what standard do you discern what sin is?”

    I just use my own judgment

    Like

  23. Patrick,

    Any condition which falls in the realm of “thought” is psychology. Any pattern of thought, such as who one is attracted to, that applies to only 1-3% (men who claimed a sexual encounter with another man in the previous 10 years) of the population is, by definition, abnormal. In the school of psychology, anything falling into the far reaches of abnormal is considered a mental illness. In fact, a lot of things that aren’t that far flung are considered mental illness.

    So far your arguments against my position amount to sticking your fingers in your ears and singing really loudly. You don’t LIKE what they have to say so you dismiss them out of hand. It may make you feel morally superior but it’s intellectually dishonest. Do you honestly think that Jesus would never tell a homosexual “Go, and sin no more?”

    Keep playing word games and I’ll keep following what Jesus taught: call sin sin but love the prisoner caught in sin. They are NOT mutually exclusive.

    DD

    Like

  24. “There is sin, all one needs to do is read the news. Killing, stealing, etc. are clearly sin but having sex with someone you love just doesn’t seem like sin to me, anymore than eating shellfish seems like a sin.”
    Why is one clearly sin but not the other? By what standard do you discern what sin is?

    Like

  25. Brian, my point is that people are people first, and “Christian” second, and there are no dividing lines between the two in terms of our humanity. There’s no reason to parse things along religious lines when dealing with something as everyday as sexuality. Besides, many of the people who were surveyed were certainly Christian – this is, after all, a nation full of people who call themselves Christian. Inventing a shadowy category of “True Christians” that exempts the average professing Christian and claiming, without evidence, that sex is less of a factor in their relationships than others (and thereby a benefit) is just ideological fluff.

    I have no assumptions about the differences between Christians and non-Christians. On most levels, I don’t believe that there are any. Except, of course, that Christians tip less at restaurants…

    Like

  26. “If there’s no sin, there’s nothing to be saved from, no need for a Savior, the gospel is irrelevant, and what you have left is a nice social club that has inspirational talks and does community activism.”

    There is sin, all one needs to do is read the news. Killing, stealing, etc. are clearly sin but having sex with someone you love just doesn’t seem like sin to me, anymore than eating shellfish seems like a sin.

    Like

  27. Jonathan, you write like a true heterosexual. Which, by your own argument (genetic composition does not equal destiny, but your disposition helps define your perspective, right?), makes your position a wash.

    Like

  28. “I think the only way for the exit of people from the church is to redefine sin. What’s wrong with redefining sin? ”
    If there’s no sin, there’s nothing to be saved from, no need for a Savior, the gospel is irrelevant, and what you have left is a nice social club that has inspirational talks and does community activism.

    Like

  29. I think the only way for the exit of people from the church is to redefine sin. What’s wrong with redefining sin? it used to be a sin to marry a different race. I don’t think premarital sex should be labeled as sin any more, because it doesn’t hurt any one. Adultery should stay a sin because it’s cheating and hurts people.

    Like

  31. Thanks Michael & Ms. Wicker for a very interesting interview leading to some lively discussion. Funny how many have focused on sex, when that was only a small part of the interview.

    Like

  32. “It is impossible that offenses don’t come, but woe unto them through whom they come.” Remember people …?

    To quote me quoting the One who defines sinfulness ….

    Like

  33. Regarding the idea that scientific inquiry will increasingly demonstrate that sexuality is not a choice, along with the query, “did you choose to be straight?”, the condition I find most helpful as an analogy is alcoholism.

    Scientific inquiry has shown alcoholism to have genetic components, and I did not “choose” to not be an alcoholic (I do drink alcohol, but am not an alcoholic). I (along with most Americans) still perceive alcoholism as a problem, so it would appear that the “non-choosing” of alcoholism is not the relevant factor.

    In an analogous way, I do not believe that the “non-choosing” of sexual attraction is relevant for establishing its acceptability. I find it perfectly consistent with both science and Christian faith to believe that the sexual desires of gays is/was not a choice on their part, yet to affirm that the proper response to same-sex attraction is continence.

    Of course, I also realize that the wider American culture does not perceive this, and thinks that, if homosexuality is genetic, then it must therefore be acceptable. So Ms. Wicker’s comment is actually probably going to prove more accurate than it ought reasonably to be.

    Like

  35. “What about the fact that males and females of all ages were separated back in Bible times, much as they are in fundamentalist Islamic countries today. How can we expect chastity in our children when we by law force them into daily coeducation situations especially when their hormones are exploding onto the scene? And then the society uses sex to sell everything.”

    There is a difference between on the one hand recognizing that resisting temptation is difficult and that we sometimes, even often, fall, despite God’s provision, and therefore both need and must show grace, and on the other hand deciding that sin is not sin anymore.

    Like

  36. Comparing the chastity of Gospel times and that of today’s Western Culture is like comparing fasting in the desert to someone trying to diet in a world where it rained chocolate milk and snowed Dunkin Donuts everyday.

    Like

  37. Patrick, I can hardly unpack all the assumptions behind your citing sociological statistics. I can’t imagine why the marriage behavior of a secular nation would have any bearing on how Christians are called to act. All I can say is that I must have a radically different notion of what human sexuality and Christian marriage are from yours.

    Like

  38. I appreciate the book and the interview. We don’t need to agree with everything she says. But we do need to hear her perspective. She speaks for many.

    We lived in Southern California when Focus on The Family first started their radio broadcast. We were one of their first listeners. We liked the tips on marriage and raising children.

    Somehow over the years that group and its leader moved away from focusing on the family to focusing on legislation. They lost sight of the fact that Jesus changes people’s hearts, not legislation. Obviously this “culture war” of which they are one of the leaders found a ready following, especially among Evangelicals.

    I clearly remember sitting in the living room of a man who had “repented” (his words) of the years he was a radio evangelist. He said he made a lot of money. He said the key is simple: find any cause that people are passionate about, take a side, get on the radio and espouse that position and ask people to send you money to defend that position, and the money will pour in. Of course, most of it will need to be spent for “administration”. It’s too bad James Dobson was not sitting beside me that day.

    Of course our children have problems dealing with sex. We don’t know how to deal with it. We don’t help them. “Churches” don’t help them. We don’t model good, healthy sexual relationships for them. We spend our time railing against gays, sending money to pass Prop. 8, etc. etc.

    Legislation does not change people’s hearts. Jesus does. The first thing He needs to change about us is to teach us to love our neighbors, including Christine Wicker, our families and whoever else we run across in the course of our day.

    Like

  39. Sex is to be confined to one man and one woman in the context of marriage – this is god’s design.

    for this to work, then I guess it is essential to accept an intelligent design theory of creation.

    If we evolved, then I would think that the appeal to design has no basis.

    Like

  40. “Don’t give up though – if you wind up getting married you will regret having given in.”

    Thanks. I wonder how much of this regret would be from all the years of being told “Don’t!” – thus making it a societal/church induced regret, rather than an actual spiritual/from-God kind of regret.

    Like

  41. I appreciate you comments, Ms. Wicker. Very well considered.

    What about the fact that males and females of all ages were separated back in Bible times, much as they are in fundamentalist Islamic countries today. How can we expect chastity in our children when we by law force them into daily coeducation situations especially when their hormones are exploding onto the scene? And then the society uses sex to sell everything.

    “It is impossible that offenses don’t come, but woe unto them through whom they come.” Remember people …?

    Like

  42. No offense taken, David. Your figures seem somewhat lower than others I’ve read. Do they include people not exclusively homosexual?

    But this discussion has gone far afield from the column’s interview. To get back to it:

    Concerning Ms. Wicker’s response to #4, “Poor people need powerful promises to help them believe they can overcome all obstacles in their way,” isn’t that setting people up for a terrible disillusionment? What happens when they pray and believe and fail to overcome the obstacles in their lives? Why would you continue in a church that lies to you?

    Like

  43. iMonk,

    Your readers are actually a lot nicer than some of the people who email me. I’m honored that they would grapple with my ideas.

    Those who think my libertine ideas come from my lifestyle made me laugh. The most exciting thing I do is clean the garage.

    It’s certainly not impossible to marry if you’re a virgin. I know a number of nonreligious 20-somethings who are waiting to have sex. I suspect they will change their minds unless they marry soon, but I hope not.

    To throw gasoline on this fire, let me pass on what one middle-aged, married evangelical/maybe not-evangelical-anymore told me. She said she doesn’t think God cares who unmarried people have sex with as long as we are loving and respectful and honest. Her reason? Women and children were little more than property in Biblical times. Men needed to know which children belonged to them. Now we can find that out with a DNA test.

    Many of us disagree. But we live as though she’s right.

    That’s a split that one evangelical preacher believes is more dangerous than staying home from church.

    Like

  44. Tim W: It’s difficult. I can’t give a lecture about it because I fell down in that regard for 10 years before I got married. But just because it is difficult to stay celibate doesn’t mean it is impossible. I knew what I was doing was wrong and did it anyway. Our sins seem to be the product of unrealistic expectations only because we seek to justify our behavior. Don’t give up though – if you wind up getting married you will regret having given in.

    Brian: It’s all about expectations. Like anything else in a marriage, if one partner thinks something is very important and the other doesn’t, there is going to be a problem. And for most men, sex is at or near the top of the expectations of a marriage.

    Like

  45. The science has gotten to epigenetics now, where individual genes are programmed by environmental factors in the womb and in life. And things that occur during puberty can program the genes in a man’s sperm for his whole life, affecting his offspring for generations. The debate over whether it is genes or environment has been very much blurred.

    But that’s really not the point for this discussion, I don’t think. I am fairly certain that if the time the Gospels were written was today, Jesus would be found hanging with homosexuals, and would even be accused of being one, seeing as how many “Christians” would treat them as the very least of His brothers.

    Like

  46. Especially when I read of David and all his wives and concubines and he was still loved by god I think, the heck with all this fretting, I’m going to be with who I want to be with.

    Like

  47. Michel, the comment you removed was an agreement with your guest….not a disagreement. I clearly understood her intent in her statement concerning science’s interpretation of homosexuality and it’s growing acceptance in society as a result of that scientific interpretation. I in no way took her comment to be a ‘for’ or ‘against.’ To me she sounds like a insightful and intelligent author. My ending comment of “So, then, so much for science’ or whatever it was……was simply meaning that when science and the Word conflict…all the earth should coose the Word. Shame on you for thinking I intended, in any way, to be insulting. Old ‘Lucy’ tricked you one :smile:.

    Like

  48. “However, I would require a heterosexual couple to quit having sex outside of marriage if they came to my church and I would require the same of a homosexual.”

    This is why the numbers of people going to church are shrinking. It is not something people are willing to give up. And because they are believing less and less in Hell, there is less and less reason for them to give it up.

    “I truly don’t understand why this is that radical of a concept.”

    I think our society is much less social nowadays. I can go for weeks without having to speak to another person. I don’t even have to speak at the store, I can go to the robotic self-checkout instead of to the human cashier.

    So if I happen to be lucky enough to find someone, it is very hard to give that person up just cause the bible says I should. With Hell less and less of a certainty, I feel like I can take my chances and follow my heart instead of the bible and hope for the best.

    Like

  50. Brian, frigidity or loss of sexual interest on either partner’s case is a component in the breakup of a lot of marriages; evidently more than you realize. With the loss of sexual intimacy goes a lot of emotion, trust, and closeness, so I’ve read. Many marriages suffering sexual dysfunction end in divorce – I’m not going to make up a number, but the sociological studies are easy to find. Sexless marriages are more common than we realize.

    Like

  51. DaveD, they were sued BECAUSE there was no scientific basis for classifying it as a mental disorder. The same process was undergone to remove homosexuality as a CRIME from the law books – properly conceived, the law shouldn’t criminalize people for their private sexual activities. We recognize today that neither JAIL nor PSYCHOTHERAPY is effective in curtailing homosexuality, and we recognize that there is no ‘victim’ involved.

    So in short, you’re way off-base. If there is a gay gene or a series of them, unfortunately your strong religious convictions aren’t going to help you discover it. Lets leave it to the experts until we become experts, okay?

    Like

  52. “Brian, you don’t personally think sexual compatibility matters, or exists?

    I don’t know, man. Being attracted to somebody attractive is a pretty big pre-req for me wanting to have sex with them, let alone marry them.”

    On the list of things that make a good marriage, great sex has to be pretty low on the list.

    Like

  54. “I don’t know that homosexuality has a genetic basis– although I suspect so–but your belief that it could not doesn’t hold water.”

    No offense, but that’s because you don’t WANT it to. If only 1-3% of the population is gay and even 50% of them are not reproducing (which is a reasonable number) within a generation or two that percentage should be reduced even further if there is a gay gene. Unfortunately, that number has stayed constant since the 1940’s.

    To those who ask why a sane person would choose to be gay: The American Psychological Association cited homosexuality as a mental illness until just a couple of decades ago when they were SUED to remove it. There was no science to prove that it was not a mental disorder, just a court order/settlement.

    Now, none of this means we shouldn’t love homosexuals and treat them with kindness and respect. However, I would require a heterosexual couple to quit having sex outside of marriage if they came to my church and I would require the same of a homosexual. I truly don’t understand why this is that radical of a concept.

    I apologize to imonk. I really did think the word I used would need censoring since it wasn’t a curse word and curse words are allowed here. I enjoy the discussions here and would not knowingly cross that line.

    DD

    Like

  55. Brian, you don’t personally think sexual compatibility matters, or exists?

    I don’t know, man. Being attracted to somebody attractive is a pretty big pre-req for me wanting to have sex with them, let alone marry them.

    Like

  56. I guess for me the bible just doesn’t jibe with reality. I know it says that we shouldn’t have sex unless it is in heterosexual marriage, but it just doesn’t seem realistic.

    People need love and sex so if after years or decades of trying to do the right thing doesn’t result in satisfaction, I think people should try something else.

    I’m not gay, I’m hetero – but I’m tired of waiting and I feel cheated by Christianity. So I guess its time to give up and move on, or I can stay and try and bend the rules to fit my life?

    Like

  57. In evangelical culture, I have noticed a tendency for people to think that if somebody does not get married by the age of 30, then there is something wrong with them. This is especially true for women. There is a tendency to think that having a family is the only meaningful manifestation of the Christian life for a woman. Well, that, and being a missionary in some far-off field.

    Then there is the cultural belief that sexual “compatibility” is somehow a prerequisite for a successful relationship.

    Like

  58. WOUT: Whether the sin is homosexuality, adultry, murder, robbery, child molestation, and so forth, all are based in meeting the selfish need of the instagator. They are rooted in the destructive desires of Satan and are intended solely to destroy the creation of God. Most people discount the presence of the most dangerous enemy of man…..Lucifer. He’s alive and well. He is the fulness of hate and destruction as God is the fulness of love and construction. Satan is the imagination behind the rape of innocence, of the animalistic desire to eat flesh of victims, of all forms of destruction…one of the most current being the homosexual lifestyle. In its beginning, it deprives its victim of integrity,of honor, of peace, of offspring, of the procreative experience as designed by God, of honesty, and so forth. In the end, the choice robs one of his/her very soul. ‘It’s not God’s will for any to perish, but that all come to repentance.’ I have an acquaintance who practiced homosexuality for all his adult life until age 58. He then confessed it to God and the church he was a member of for all his life. When talking with him one day..he said, “I feel so cheated.! I said, “That was the point of Satan’s lie.” God hates sin…but not the sinner open to repentance. We wrestle not with flesh and blood…but against spiritual wickedness in high places. I have NO ill will towards those who have chosen homosexuality. The desire of my heart is for wholeness, health, and peace for all man. But I know the works of Satan. I despise him because his nature continually imagines the destruction of God’s handiwork. Any who reject the Word, Bible, Truth, Jesus, God…whatever one names that ‘precious goodness’ have justly earned eternity with the chosen evil, destruction, and terrors of the desolate.

    Like

  59. Not everybody is going to be able to “make a life” in what some of you consider “an orthodox environment”. Some of us certainly don’t fit – earning us the suspicion of other “orthodox” (read: type-A) Christians and to our own self-disillusionment. Not everybody can thrive, socially and certainly not spiritually, in certain church cultures. It has less to do with Jesus or “rules” and more to do with the clouds of dust people tend to kick up around religion – the pietism, the strident dogmatism, the lack of intellectual variety, the little norms of how the Important people act that make being a young Christian such a confusing or disheartening experience.

    If you’re unwilling or unable to grok that, you’re either on the path to seminary yourself or sooner or later going to discover that, as Mrs. Wicker put it, “the world is larger than the Southern Baptist student union”.

    Sexual propriety looks a whole lot like a competition or a game people are playing when you’re not dating and nobody in your hypocritical church community is interested in you anyways.

    Just sayin’.

    Like

  60. Some of you are expressing yourself in a completely inappropriate way for this forum. Christine Wicker is my guest on this blog, and no matter what you think of her opinions, you will respond respectfully or not at all. Two of you are done now in this discussion.

    Get it together.

    And if you want to bad mouth this blog and its content, please just stop participating.

    Like

  61. I think the conservative evangelical stand on gay rights will change because science is going to demonstrate more and more convincingly that sexuality isn’t a choice.

    The issue isn’t whether one “chooses” his or her sexual inclinations, but how a person, straight or gay, chooses to act on those inclinations. Hopefully the change in conservative evangelicalism will not be to condone homosexual sin, but to stop turning a blind eye to other types of sexual sin.

    Like

  64. “You have me confused. Which branch of Christianity accepted science as supreme? That is something that I am unaware of.

    I have no problem with the idea that science and religion are two different areas, which may or may not overlap. Nor is the Bible a science book.

    Thank you for clarifying your ideas for me.”

    In 19th-century America, people were comfortable with the idea that Christianity and modern science coincided. Then starting with Darwin and evolution, that coincidence was challenged. Modernism was at the height of its powers then. American Protestantism split into two groups. One was liberalism, which decided that anything in the Bible that didn’t sound scientifically plausible couldn’t be true, up to and including the Resurrection, but as long as people were moral and had religious experiences, it was OK. The other was fundamentalism, which decided that any scientific finding that contradicted a strictly literal reading of Scripture was false and probably an intentional fraud; therefore, fundamentalists separated themselves from the larger culture. Fundamentalists set up their own “science” which consisted of taking strictly literal readings of Scripture, concocting “theories” based upon it, and then cherry-picking evidence to support it.

    Both groups made science their god in the sense that if science was made the arbiter of whether Scripture was true — one group decided it wasn’t true, the other group concocted evidence to convince themselves it was.

    At that point, orthodox Christianity lost its hold on the culture. Evangelicalism tried to revive it, but that effort too has failed.

    Liberalism slides smoothly into atheism. Fundamentalism bottles up the cognitive dissonance until it explodes into atheism.

    Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy do not have this problem, but then again they are not rooted in the American understanding of the world.

    Like

  65. I wouldn’t say that science is our God — but it is our metanarrative. I think we all look at the Cosmos according to what science has “discovered.” We think we can actually know what it was like on earth 100 million years ago or what it’s like to be 100 million light years away from earth. And this “scientific method” has effected our thinking about God, as if God is a “thing” we can examine, share our findings and determine the attributes of.

    He’s not, by the way. (In my humble opinion) 🙂

    Like

  66. Tim W hit the nail on the head.

    In wanting to avoid temptation, people might end up avoiding social situations, which I think it might have the effect of stunting some peoples social skills. Plus, the church preaches no sex before marriage yet they don’t really do anything to help people get married. “Matchmaking isn’t the church’s business”

    The reason premarital sex is such a problem in the church is that people now wait so much longer to get married. We have lost the family and cultural structures that once gave young couples the support they need in order to marry in late teens/early twenties. We also provide very little help for single people in their 30s to remain chaste, which is a near-miraculous feat in this culture.

    How to fix this, I don’t know. But I think it is the root of many problems.

    Like

  67. Brian,

    You have me confused. Which branch of Christianity accepted science as supreme? That is something that I am unaware of.

    I have no problem with the idea that science and religion are two different areas, which may or may not overlap. Nor is the Bible a science book.

    Thank you for clarifying your ideas for me.

    Like

  68. #2. Evangelicals lost the culture war in America. Not “might lose.” Not “are losing.” Lost. Sometimes I think the evangelical era was just rigor mortis from the death of Christianity in American culture 80 years ago in the fundamentalist/liberal split. The fighting in the political arena seems pointless at this point. Americans who subscribe to Christian ideas of morality are now a stark minority that will only continue to shrink. Nothing efficacious can come out of the political sphere, unless the point is just to demonstrate to God that one is “on the right side” of the fight, as though that would impress Him.

    #4. Wicker apparently subscribes to liberal notions of (non)eschatology.

    #6. If being born with a propensity towards a particular kind of sin excuses that sin, then whoopee! We’re all scot free! We don’t need Jesus after all!

    I totally agree with Wicker that science is America’s true god. That is why I think America’s apostasy was sealed 80 years ago — the church split into a group that accepted science as supreme, and changed the faith to fit it, and another group that accepted science as supreme, and made up a pretend science that didn’t challenge its assumptions about faith. Evangelicalism tried to bridge the gap between them, but it was the answer to the wrong question.

    #8. This radical individualism so inherent in American ideology ultimately corrodes away any coherent concept of communal faith, but to unpack that would be a comment unto itself. I’ll suffice to say that it explains the phenomena covered in #9.

    Like

  69. I do not understand the perception that homosexuality is a choice. What sane person would willingly subject themselves to the abuse and hatred so prevalent in society at large and evangelicalism in particular unless they are what they are. Secondly, completely straight people are repulsed by the idea of sex with someone of the same gender. Why would anyone force themselves to do something that repels them. Christians must deal with homosexuality as something that exists, whether it is acted upon or not. This hatred so often found hinders gay people from ever being shown the gospel and being able to accept Christ. It also seems that many Christians think that of all sinners, only the gay person must first change before coming to Christ.

    Like

  70. Now I don’t feel alone. I got the same treatment when I tried to speak about the RCC “boots on the ground” experience as opposed to the Catechism and the dictates of the Magisterium in earlier threads. (Don’t worry — not going there.):-)

    Must take issue with Ms, Wicker’s statement on the effects of AA spirituality. Few — if any — wear 12-Step membership on their sleeves. People who frequent those fellowships do so because they find it to actually work on their otherwise unbreakable internal chains, not because professed allegiance gets you points with anyone. Anonymity is strictly observed, even when running into people you see every week at the meeting because you never know if they tell anyone where they are going when they go to meetings. Spouses and families, co-workers and friends often don’t understand and could get upset — after all, it’s the place to air the dirty family laundry. It is not evangelical in the least — the official tradition is to spread the message by attraction, not advertisement — but it absolutely has the Gospel at it’s spiritual foundation. New Age philosophy was not developed there nor does it flourish there anymore than anywhere else and probably less than in many mainline Christian congregations. And it is much easier to walk into the upstairs morning church service and sit in a pew and listen to a sermon than it is to tell your real stuff in a basement room full of strangers.

    For those who don’t know, almost every meeting starts with the Serenity Prayer — written by Reinhold Neihbur, one of the best respected Protestant theologians of the 2Oth Century, and ends with a hand holding, moving, grateful and heartfelt reciting of the Lord’s Prayer, and we all know who Authored that one.

    Often to get it started, someone will ask softly, “Whose Father…?”

    Like

  71. Um, David? Who says that gay men (or women) don’t have children? Both men and women with sexual urges toward their own gender may well marry and have children, hoping that traditional married life will make the urges go away. Gay women may be forced into sex they would not otherwise choose to have, resulting in children. And some people are equally attracted to members of both sexes. I don’t know that homosexuality has a genetic basis– although I suspect so–but your belief that it could not doesn’t hold water.

    Like

  72. Dave D: Dude, you need to chill. No one is condoning sin. There is tremendous pressure to have sex in your 20’s because “How are you supposed to know if you are compatible with someone and want to married to them if you never sleep with them.” This is a cultural expectation that modern evangelicalism is doing very little to contend with. Instead, we worry about “the gay agenda.” To reach people, you have to do more than spout off rules, you need to talk to them where they are – just like you can’t just roll up to a homeless man and say “Get a job.”

    Someone who says “it’s easier to become like Jesus if you’re among the “nobodies” of the world” clearly has not left the faith. You seem very threatened by her…

    Like

  73. Headless Unicorn Guy: If it’s so “ludicrous”, how did it happen to me in so many words?

    Because your personal experience is not the standard by which the proposition is measured. I could just as easily tell you that I was a virgin until I was 26 and had no problem in social situations, meeting and dating women, finding women who found my commitment in this regard attractive and so on. I could name several other people I am close to that had similar experiences.

    It probably depends on the area of the country you live in and the people you surround yourself with as much as anything. I find it hard to believe that in an orthodox church environment, virginity would be an impediment.

    Like

  74. Regarding the comment about having to sleep around in order to get married: I did not read that as her stating a rule, but instead stating a perception by people. I can totally see people believing this, most likely subconsciously, and acting on it. There is a lot of emphasis, rightly or wrongly, in our society in making sure you’re compatible with your potential spouse. Why wouldn’t people also factor in sexual compatibility?

    Also, it seems that the paragraph preceding that comment shows that this widening gap between “evangelical ideals and evangelical action” worries her. I don’t think she’s endorsing that position, just exposing its presence.

    Sounds like a facinating book. I’ll have to put it in on my “to read” list. I really loved her statement about Jesus showing up in all of her writings, intended or not. I’m also very interested in the point about AA’s “god of our understanding”. Having participated in a 12-Step program after having grown up in a fundamentalist environment, I’ve always felt the tension between people getting sober whether they believe in Jesus or not and the thought that if they get better without Jesus they’re “destined for hell”, so to speak. I know people who think we *must* bring people to Christ first and worry about the addiction later. But I also know that that will shut out many addicts from getting sober…at least in that particular group.

    Thanks, Michael, for sticking with this blog for so long. God’s used your writings (and the comments from others) in so many ways in my life, I couldn’t begin to describe it. Thanks and Peace.

    Like

  75. “If it’s so “ludicrous”, how did it happen to me in so many words?”

    That’s an unprovable assertion. Since you didn’t wait, you can’t say that no one (ever) would marry you. Did you get married after having sex? It seems so. Does this mean you never would have gotten married if you hadn’t? We’ll never know will we?

    Tim W: So no one will love you unless you’re [MOD edit: having sex with] her? If you don’t have the social skills to talk to a woman in the first place, what makes you think you can get one to sleep with you? Also, you’re life’s not over…many people get married and have kids later in life. It’s not like there’s an expiration date for guys on having kids.

    All the couples I know who never had sex before they were married or with the person they married (in the case of those who were sexually active before coming to Jesus) will be shocked to find out they’ll never get married. If you’re hanging around sinful people, don’t complain that you can’t find a good one.

    Joseph, you just reacting emotionally. The facts are as follows. First, since it is physically impossible for two men to reproduce with each other, if there was a “gay gene” it would eventually disappear as an evolutionary dead end. If it is not the result of any one gene but certain mixtures that only occur in 1-3% of the population it is rightfully considered an anomaly or a mutation. Still a genetic dead end.

    Two, if we can change external factors and increase the homosexual tendancies in mice etc. (Over crowding and/or lack of women seem to be primary causes) then it is reasonable to extrapolate that such behaviors in humans are effected by environmental influences.

    Three, most homosexual men have certain events that have happened in their lives, the most famous being sexual abuse as a child. This points strongly to the idea that events in a child’s developmental years influence their sexual preferences post puberty.

    I never said that it was a well reasoned conscious choice but at some point the urge strikes and they choose to entertain that urge. It is no different than ANY sex outside of the marriage covenant.

    [MOD edit]

    DD

    Like

  76. DaveD and Patrick Lynch:

    I interpreted her statement the same way Patrick did. I do not think she is condoning fornication but saying the societal pressures are immense for young adults.

    Like

  77. What complete, unmitigated bull. If you don’t have sex before marriage no one will marry you??? Ludicrous. — DaveD

    If it’s so “ludicrous”, how did it happen to me in so many words?

    I’m a 36-year old virgin and I think Christine W is correct. I just have never heard it stated so bluntly before.

    Premarital sex is pretty much the biggest taboo to be avoided as Christian growing up. In wanting to avoid temptation, people might end up avoiding social situations, which I think it might have the effect of stunting some peoples social skills. Plus, the church preaches no sex before marriage yet they don’t really do anything to help people get married. “Matchmaking isn’t the church’s business”

    Like

  78. DaveD, I think you misread her intentions.

    “For instance, I’m told that many evangelical kids and single adults come to church on Sunday and are regularly sleeping around or living with people they aren’t married to. Why? Because waiting until you’re married to have sex means that you are very likely never to get married and never to have sex either. Those are the “facts on the ground.”

    Lots of young people are sexually active, and those of us who aren’t are under a lot of pressure to conform because we know that, from the people we are attracted to, they’re not likely to share the same values re: sex as we are. So, the choice really does seem to be to either avoid guys/girls we like and wait for “holy” girls (and watch our twenties and maybe even our thirties evaporate), or get into a relationship with someone who, at some point, expects sex. Not bridging that gap with them complicates relationships immensely because a person’s stance seems arbitrary and culturally-bound and hard for others to grasp – perhaps more complexifying than sex itself.

    She’s saying that’s how things are, not that it’s GOOD.

    Like

  79. If you think gay people choose to be gay, the question you should ask yourself is when you chose to be straight.

    I attend church with a lot of gay people and even taught Sunday School with one. I can tell you they have difficult lives and take a lot of abuse that no sane person would choose to take. They’re born gay, created by God gay.

    In this society — unless you’re seeking to be Answer Number 10 (which I loved!!!) — why would anyone choose to be anything other than a straight, white male? Seriously. I thank God I’m not a minority.

    Moreoever, Scripture (as in the literal words of Jesus) is pretty clear about the evils of greed, a sin that is, and has been, thousands of times more destructive than homosexuality, but where are the Christians protesting that? We worship the accumulation of wealth in a society based on dog-eat-dog, get your hands off my stack Jack, capitalism.

    No one but God should be in the business of creating a hierarchy of sin, but it’s commonplace. And it’s always someone else’s sins that are the greater.

    Like

  80. [MOD edited]

    This is a very good and interesting interview which I enjoyed. However I completely agree with Dave’s statement that it’s ludicrous to say that unless I start sleeping around, I’m never going to experience sex or marraige.

    While it’s socially taboo, I am a successful 26 year old woman that is not a fundamentalist and I’m holding out for that God-loving guy that’s going to rock my world!

    Some credibility was lost after I read that statement by Ms. Wicker. It’s pretty dangerous to speak in absolutes on these issues!

    Like

  81. What complete, unmitigated bull. If you don’t have sex before marriage no one will marry you??? Ludicrous. — DaveD

    If it’s so “ludicrous”, how did it happen to me in so many words?

    Like

  82. Miguel, there is evidence that the brains of homosexual men and women resemble the brains of the opposite sex in some ways, pointing to differences in brain chemistry. I don’t know how to link to it, but if you Google “homosexual brain,” you can find a “Science Daily” report on the article in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”, with a link the article.

    Like

  83. “Because waiting until you’re married to have sex means that you are very likely never to get married and never to have sex either. Those are the “facts on the ground.””

    What complete, unmitigated bull. If you don’t have sex before marriage non one will marry you??? Ludicrous.

    In this interview she has clearly left the faith altogether. You can’t implicitly endorse acts of sin and still claim to be following Jesus. Saying that calling homsexuality a sin is “ignorant and intolerant” means Jesus, Paul, God the Father etc. are “ignorant and intolerant”.

    As far as “scientific evidence” about homsexuality here it is: even if it is genetics over choice (which it is not because nearly every homosexual has the same recurring life experiences) it would have been bred out by now because you can’t pass on genes if you’re not having kids. If it isn’t a directly passed on trait, but still gentetic in nature then that makes it a mutation, a defect like having webbed hands and feet.

    It’s funny how people who leave the faith always seem to drift(run?) towards the belief in sexual openness.

    I’m sure this will get modded but…

    DD

    Like

  84. Question #7 asserts – For the first time, numbers of “non-religious” are growing faster than the any version of Christianity.

    I assume we are speaking about the western world and America in particular. No doubt such decline is most likely happening in the typical evangelical setting of America and the western world. People are wanting something a little more authentic, real, community-oriented, etc.

    But, it is interesting to note that, in considering a global picture, some will estimate that some 80,000+ come to Christ on a daily basis. I think it quite amazing! These figures are bolstered by places such as China, India, Africa, and Central & South America, but these new believers are typically becoming part of what we might term ‘evangelical’, yet with a more charismatic or Pentecostal emphasis, but without all the celebrity hype.

    It reminds me of what one prophet said:

    It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the LORD
    shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and shall be lifted up above the hills;
    and all the nations shall flow to it.     (Isaiah 2:2)

    Like

  85. @Miguel–This issue of homosexuality and scientific evidence is a complex one. There is no one-to-one ‘gay gene’ but there does seem to be a complex interplay between nature and nurture. this quote from the American Psychological Association, I feel, best sums up the scientific consensus,

    “There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.”
    http://www.apa.org/topics/sorientation.html#whatcauses

    Like

  86. Miguel,
    Even if they found a gay gene and determine that being gay is not a choice, fine. How does that overturn historic, classical, orthodox Christian teaching on the matter? It doesn’t. Lots of evangelicals do not believe homosexuality is a choice but still uphold the Church’s teaching on this.

    Like

  87. Miguel,

    This is merely antedotal evidence. I have an internet friend who is homosexual, he has never been abused so that eliminates that as a cause. He is a very loving man, who has never acted on his sexuality. He did not chose his inclinations, but only his actions.

    I don’t know where science comes in about situations like his.

    Like

  88. Incredible! Now I really have to read this book.
    I’m not quite so sure about the homosexuality and scientific evidence thing. I was under the impression (not surprisingly as an evangelical) that there was absolutely NO evidence that homosexuality was something one was born with. I’ve always been told that we’ve mapped out every gene in the human body and there is no such thing as a “gay” gene. Was I lied to? Or is there some other evidence that I should be aware of? I just don’t know of any current or possible science that demonstrates that sexuality isn’t a choice, but if it’s out there, I feel it would be really important for me to be aware of.

    Like

  89. I agree with the consensus so far. That last answer is very insightful. I was also intrigued by her mention of the influence of the AA god of your own understanding on modern belief.

    Like

  90. Answer #10 is the best. We have made Christianity into a religion and the one we serve, Jesus Christ, was committed not to religion but to revealing God to the world in Spirit and Truth. If we are really searching for Christ looking among the powerless in the church is a great place to start.
    thanks for sharing these thought provoking answers.

    Like

  91. “He shows up in all of my books, no matter the subject and whether or not I’m looking for him”

    That is a very telling line. As a writer I also find that Christ is in all I do, even when it isn’t about Him! Like a fragrance that lingers on everything around me, an evidence that He has been where I am!

    Like

  92. “I suspect it’s easier to become like Jesus if you’re among the “nobodies” of the world.”

    Best quote in the interview. It sounds like Rich Mullins.

    Michael, I agree with your premise that evangelicalism as we know it is dying. On one hand, I celebrate it, because it’s ruining Christianity in the West. On the other hand, there are an awful lot of humble believers in the midst of evangelicalism that stand to be hurt badly in the fall, and it pains me to think of the potential for shipwrecked lives. I’m about 5 years away from completing a seminary degree, and I wonder what it is I’ll come out to be a minister to. Fear and trembling, indeed.

    Like

Leave a comment