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Till We Have Faces

Ron Belgau I

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

Ron Belgau I

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

Ron Belgau I

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

Ron Belgau I

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

Ron Belgau I

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”

Ron Belgau I

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”?

Ron Belgau I

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

Ron Belgau I

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

Ron Belgau I

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

Ron Belgau I

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

Ron Belgau I

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

Ron Belgau I

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...