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Till We Have Faces
The Fall, 2013 issue of Leadership Journal has an article by Stanton Jones up entitled, ” Help, I’m Gay .” It is billed as “A pastoral conversation about same-sex...
The Question of Truth
In his excellent posts from Monday ( Celibacy Is Not the Gospel and Celibacy in Light of the Resurrection ), Wes attempted to respond to the following concern: “If...
Two Quotes from C. S. Lewis on Homosexuality
Over at Spiritual Friendship, I have posted two excerpts from C. S. Lewis on how Christians should respond to homosexuality. Rather than repost both in their entirety here, here...
Arduous Goods
Celibacy has a kind of duck-rabbit quality, at least in my experience. If you catch me in one mood, and ask me what celibacy is like, I will be...
C. S Lewis: Talking about Bicycles
One of the common criticisms of a traditionally Christian sexual ethic is that it forces a lot of gay people into involuntary celibacy , which some find very lonely,...
Misleading Ex-Gay Language: “I’m Not Gay”
In my last post , I pointed out the way that some Christians have exploited the ambiguous meaning of the word “gay” to make misleading promises (like “You don’t have...
“You Don’t Have to Be Gay”?
In contemporary culture, “gay” is the most common word for describing homosexual persons. This has become so much a part of the default language that Pope Francis used it...
Celibacy and Healing
When I was an undergraduate, I read two of the most important ex-gay books of the time: Coming Out of Homosexuality by Bob Davies and Lori Rentzel, and ...
Homosexuality and the Development of Doctrine
For almost 20 centuries, there was little controversy over Christian teaching about homosexuality. For the last few decades, there has been an extraordinary amount of controversy. How should Christians...
Three Kinds of Friendship
In his treatise On Spiritual Friendship , Aelred of Rievaulx, a 12th-century Cistercian abbot, insists that we need to test our beliefs about friendship with Scripture. The treatise is...
Scout’s Honor
A while back, a student in my philosophy of religion class turned in a paper which stated that, in The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values ,...
Friendship and the Scandal of Particularity
In a recent post , Wesley Hill discusses the apparent tension between the Christian ideal of universal, unconditional love and the particularity of friendship, and cites Samuel Johnson’s worry...