Here are four more recent and very thoughtful opinion pieces from the New York Times on the meaning of the 2016 presidential election.
Ross Douthat, October 16: In Defense of the Religious Right
David French, November 24: Is Criticism of Identity Politics Racist or Long Overdue?
Maureen Dowd, November 26: Election Therapy from my Basket of Deplorables
Jennifer Finney Boylen, December 2: Really, You’re Blaming Transgender People for Trump?
Jesus loves LGBT!
“. . . [T]here is a great chasm between much of the public discourse and what science has shown.”
– Lawrence S. Mayer, Paul R. McHugh, Special Report: Sexuality and Gender – Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences. The New Atlantis, Number 50, Fall 2016.
In the first six months of 2015, I researched and wrote my Survey of the scholarly literature concerning the nature of same-sex attraction (SSA) and its causes, and published it on this blog under the title, What is Homosexuality – A Survey of the Scholarly Literature. (Originally posted June 26, 2015; reposted July 4, 2015, see below.) My primary motive for diving into the literature was to inform myself in order to be able to help my sons in their thinking about the topic. Chiefly I wanted to know: is there anything to the claim that SSA is inborn and immutable?
Not much, I learned. The most concise and fair way to summarize my findings would be to say that while there do appear to be one or more unidentified biological factors – perhaps genetic and/or epigenetic – which contribute causally to the incidence of homosexuality, other causes are much more significant, including adverse childhood experience, parental role modeling, and individual free choice; and large numbers of LGBT do change their choices of partners and even their SSA, some once, and some many times over the course of a lifetime. In short, the weight of the evidence, far from justifying the supplanting of traditional sexual morality, instead provides substantial reason for its reaffirmation.
By pure coincidence, I finished my Survey and posted it on the very day of the decision of the US Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, the gay marriage case. By that time I had become conscious of the utter lack of discussion about the science of SSA in the policy debates, from gay marriage to transgenderism; but I was still amazed that the science was given virtually no place at all in the Court’s decision. In the opinion of the Court there was only one mention of any scientific authority, which was a reference to the claim in the brief filed by the American Psychological Association that “sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable” – but the APA brief contains no reference to any scientific evidence. Yet none of the four dissenting Justices even mentioned the APA’s claim, much less challenged it. Could it be that 100 “friend of the court” briefs ignored the science completely?
I began looking for someone, anyone, engaged in bringing the science into the policy discussion. It took over a year, but I have found two pairs of scholars who have published their own surveys of the scientific findings about SSA. It is very gratifying to be able to say that my own findings are almost entirely consistent with theirs.
One pair published their findings way back in 2000 – unfortunately, I did not become aware of it until August 2016. Stanton Jones is Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College, and Mark A. Yarhouse is Professor of Psychology at Regent University. Their book, Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Church’s Moral Debate, published by InterVarsity Press, is outstanding. The other pair of scholars published their review of the literature in a lengthy article in the Fall 2016 issue of The New Atlantis. Lawrence S. Mayer is a scholar at the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University. Paul R. McHugh is University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Their conclusions track very closely with Jones’ and Yarhouse’s (and with mine), namely: there does appear to be a weak biological factor in SSA, but “scientific research does not give much support to the hypothesis that sexual orientation is innate and fixed. . . . Some of the most widely held views about sexual orientation, such as the ‘born that way’ hypothesis, simply are not supported by science.”
Let me emphasize again, LGBT individuals bear the image of God as much as anyone. They are citizens and entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. However, the reckless departure on which our society has embarked is very dangerous. May it be that our courts and legislatures will soon become acquainted with what science has to say about SSA. Spread the word.
In 2010 and 2011 I was a student in Biola University’s master’s degree program in Science and Religion. I benefitted greatly. In the course of my studies I was required to produce an extensive catalog of essays on interesting topics. It’s my intention to publish the best of them here from time to time. This is the first of that series. I hope you enjoy it. Click here.
This is FREE at Amazon for Kindle! (February 22, 2016 update: No, it’s not free, it costs about $14. But I didn’t lie, it really was free when I downloaded it. I don’t know what happened. But it’s still worth the price.)
Habermas is regarded by many as the world’s foremost authority on the Resurrection, and Licona is the author of the definitive The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Nottingham, England: IVP Academic 2010).
Listen, please: if you want to know the truth and can read, then read this: (click here.)
Three days ago Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times, published an excellent essay concerning the debate among Catholics on the permissibility of the admission to communion of Catholics who have remarried without the formal church annulment of a previous marriage. Please have a look at his essay here, and if you are so inclined, see my comment here.
Click here.
The meal in the upper room has continued uninterrupted for 2000 years. We, the church universal, are all present at that meal, in the upper room; and Jesus says, “This is my body.” And so we are.
On the night He was betrayed, when the Lord offered bread to His disciples, He said, Take this and eat it; this is my body. Similarly, when he offered them the cup, he said, Drink of the cup, all of you; this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.
Ever since the Lord shared with His disciples that Last Supper, believers have been wondering what He meant when He said that a loaf of bread was His Body, and what He meant when He said that a cup of wine was His blood. Some have interpreted these statements literally, saying that we actually eat His flesh and drink His blood; others have claimed that the bread and wine are only symbolic of His body and blood; it has even been argued that the body is in the bread, or over it, or underneath it or around it. None of these interpretations has ever satisfied me.
When I hold that morsel of bread in my hand, waiting for everyone to receive, I do as the Lord commanded: I remember Him, and I meditate on His words to the disciples. Then, at a word from the pastor, I place the bread in my mouth. I begin to chew, and I taste the bread. As I am tasting it, I hear the words in my mind, “This is my body,” and I realize that I am doing what all believers have done since the night in the upper room, and which all believers will continue to do until the very last Day. And it is not so much the taste of the bread itself, but the fact that it is I who am tasting it, which identifies me with His people, and which proves to me that I am His. “This is my body” becomes for me, “You belong to me.”
Then I open my eyes and I look around me, and I see you also taking the bread! And again I hear the words, “This is my body.” And so by our sharing of this sacrament, you see, “This is my body” becomes, “We belong to Him and to each other,” and it becomes, “He is here, among us.”
Similarly, when the flavor of the wine bursts in my mouth, I taste the sharpness of the wounds that caused Him to bleed and die, and it is proof to me – proof that I can taste! – that my sins are forgiven. Blessed be the Lord, and may His Name be praised forever and ever!
Eat, then, rejoicing that we belong to Him, and to each other!
Drink, rejoicing that your sins are forgiven!
Merry Christmas from JoshuaLetter! Enjoy this article about how public engagement can be a Gospel ministry.
Introduction
It has been fifteen years since Jack Davidson, then pastor at Cascade Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in America) in Eugene, Oregon, Robert Iltis, Professor of Communications at Oregon State University, and I presented our Symposium on American Slavery. The papers which we read publicly were formerly available at the original Joshua Letter web site, and with this post are available again.
The nation continues, of course, to struggle with the topics of race and the former condition of Negro servitude, as it must. The Civil War is not as long past as we may wish to think. Racism is very persistent in American society, as evidenced by consistent patterns of discrimination in our justice system and in our housing policies. This concerns the church not only because we are American citizens, but also because the church has a prophetic role to play in society by bringing a biblical critique to bear upon injustice. What’s more, the Gospel mission itself depends in part upon the demonstration that the biblical view of man provides the only philosophically adequate basis for opposing racism. It is the doctrine of the creation of man in the image of a personal God which alone justifies our recognition of one another’s inherent value and dignity.
This doctrine of creation may be placed in doubt by claims that the Bible approves of slavery. One such claim was made by Steve Wilkins and Douglas Wilson, the former a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), in their book entitled, Southern Slavery, As it Was. (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1996.) This book was the precipitating factor for the Symposium. Dr. Davidson felt compelled to provide a refutation, and he invited contributions by Dr. Iltis and me.
Since then, Dr. Davidson was awarded his doctorate by the University of Wales for his dissertation on Eli Caruthers, the North Carolina antebellum Presbyterian pastor who authored an unpublished manuscript offering “a scripturally based alternative to the nineteenth-century hermeneutics supporting slavery.” (Publication of the dissertation is pending elsewhere.) Also since then, in 2011 Douglas Wilson published an interview (https://vimeo.com/25338963) in which he makes it plain enough that his views have not changed.
Beyond that, the scriptures themselves are not without difficulty on this question. Exodus 21:16 states that “Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.” (NIV) That would seem to preclude categorically any attempt at a biblical defense of the American form of slavery. The mere fact that Exodus 21:16 addresses the culpability of only the kidnaper himself would not absolve a purchaser of the victim, since if kidnaping for profit is a crime, then purchasing the victim would make one an accessory.
Moses did countenance other forms of slavery, however. Leviticus 25:39-54 provides for Jews and non-Jews to sell themselves. Jews who sold themselves were to be treated as hired workers, not slaves, and were to be released at the Jubilee, which occurred every 50th year. Non-Jews, however, “You can bequeath . . . to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.” Lev. 25:46.
Does that mean Jews were permitted to be ruthless with their non-Jewish slaves? It does seem that if that had been the case, no one would have sold himself. More to the point is Leviticus 19:33, which provides:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
The enslaving of foes conquered in war was also practiced both in biblical times and in Africa in the 18th and 19th Centuries; but the Bible nowhere sanctions the practice.
We hope that those who read the following essays will find them useful and encouraging.
THE ESSAYS
by Rev. Jack Davidson
Wrong About the Bible : A Response to Steve Wilkins and Douglas Wilson’s Doctrine of Slavery
by Rev. Jack Davidson
Peculiar History in Slavery As It Was
by Robert S. Iltis
The Fraudulent Legal History of Sourthern Slavery, As It Was
by Thomas O. Alderman
Slavery and the American Constitution
by Thomas O. Alderman
Joshualetter 