Matthew Vines considered it a victory just to get into a room at a conservative Christian university with four influential evangelicals who disagreed with him over what the Bible says about homosexuality. He ended up in a polite, heartfelt three-hour debate last month over Scripture passages about topics like celibacy, eunuchs, slavery — and the connections between sex and marriage.
The founder of Red Letter Christians and Emergent Church leader Tony Campolo has called for full inclusion of gay and lesbian “Christians” into the church. Campolo is a “Progressive Christian” (read: liberal) so it comes as no surprise that he would go against the clear teaching of Scripture on the sin of homosexuality.
Tony Campolo, one of the country’s leading progressive evangelicals, announced that he had changed his mind and now believed that churches should fully accept committed same-sex couples:
Rest assured that I have already heard – and in some cases made – every kind of biblical argument against gay marriage, including those of Dr. Ronald Sider, my esteemed friend and colleague at Eastern University. Obviously, people of good will can and do read the scriptures very differently when it comes to controversial issues, and I am painfully aware that there are ways I could be wrong about this one.
However, I am old enough to remember when we in the Church made strong biblical cases for keeping women out of teaching roles in the Church, and when divorced and remarried people often were excluded from fellowship altogether on the basis of scripture. Not long before that, some Christians even made biblical cases supporting slavery. Many of those people were sincere believers, but most of us now agree that they were wrong. I am afraid we are making the same kind of mistake again, which is why I am speaking out.
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Debating Bible Verses on Homosexuality
Two evangelical authors offer conflicting
interpretations about the Bible’s well-known passages about
homosexuality.
