Matthew Schmitz

I was recently accused of (actually, praised for, but it seemed to me an accusation) supporting “marriage equality”—a slogan that indicates whoever uses it fails to understand either of the terms it combines. The occasion for this slander was, rather ironically, a piece I had written rejecting calls for gay marriage. The piece was misread, I think, because I had positive things to say about gay people and about the love present in countless gay relationships. Apparently this fact was significant enough that there was no need to attend to my actual conclusion. Continue Reading »

Evangelicals are changing their minds on gay marriage. So argues the Log Cabin Republicans’ David Lampo in a recent op-ed in the Daily Caller. In defense of his thesis, Lampo trots out the examples of two prominent evolved evangelicals: David Blankenhorn and yours truly. There are two problems here: Blankenhorn is not an Evangelical and I have not changed my mind on gay marriage. If David and I are the two best examples of an evangelical evolution, it ain’t happening. Continue Reading »

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer did—with clarity regarding its evil and compassion regarding its motivations.

As a young Christian, I arrived at college in the fall of 2004 with some of the usual intellectual difficulties: evolution, creation, the authority of Scripture, and so on. But I could think through them undisturbed, working them out in my reading rather than in debates. No one was asking, “Where . . . . Continue Reading »

N. T. Wright—hailed by Time as “one of the most formidable figures in Christian thought”—first captured my imagination with the early volumes of his series  Christian Origins and the Question of God. In them, he frames the Christian story precisely as a story, a . . . . Continue Reading »

A prayer for singles. Continue Reading »

How rap’s two nastiest brothers split—and how I hope they’ll reunite. Continue Reading »

After my Bloggingheads discussion on gay marriage and related matters with Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, a student at a prominent Evangelical college wrote me asking for advice. She said her campus has been riven by the homosexuality debate and she’s found herself challenged to . . . . Continue Reading »

Whereas you, the Federalist, brainchild of one Ben Domenech, of Virginia, were denounced in 2014, to this Holy Office, for holding as true a false doctrine taught by a majority, namely, that marriage is possessed of an immovable definition, that it consists of two persons, and of opposite sex; also, . . . . Continue Reading »

Many have been hoping that the Church under Pope Francis will allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. Some argue for a change in Church teaching; many more urge the need for a “pastoral” response that leaves doctrine intact. In an interview today, Cardinal Gerhard . . . . Continue Reading »