The Apoplectic Reaction to the Nashville Statement

Apoplectic, near universal condemnation was the reaction to the Nashville Statement, the dry reminder that, to Christians, homosexual acts are sinful, that two men cannot be married to one another, and that a man who thinks he is a woman is a man.

Yet when the kumbaya crowd heard these things, it was as if it were announced their cell phones were to be taken away. The by-now standard cries of “hate”, “bigotry”, “hypocrisy” were made, with many paradoxically calling the Statement “anti-Christian.”

The Nashville Statement was not political. Many prominent “never Trumpers” signed; for instance, Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Statement does have debatable points, but theological niceties weren’t what triggered the credentialed Left. After all, it is no secret what the Bible actually says about sex. What galled must have been their discovery that large numbers of people still believe things like this:

For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature.

And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.

The New York Times said “The Nashville Statement Is an Attack on L.G.B.T. Christians“. Attack?

Turns out gender dysphoria sufferers and the same-sex attracted “have disproportionately high rates of suicide and of anxiety and depression”, which is so. The NYT claims that these folks being reminded that their lusts are “objectively disordered” will cause them to kill themselves faster.

If that is so, we’re going to have to ban and burn the Bible, Old and New Testaments, lest a homosexual chance upon God saying “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Sites which give comparative translations of verses like that one are also going to have to go.

So too must we rid our shelves of Robert Gagnon’s magisterial The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics, a book which stuns in its erudition and painstaking argument, a book which leaves those who help to find even a scrap of scriptural support for aberrant sexuality with no hope.

How many LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP—and even normal—folks will go to Hell if they act on their disordered desires and do not seek forgiveness, critics of the Nashville Statement do not say. It’s a good bet that, if pressed, Statement critics would say none. The only sin they would probably recognize is the “sin” of recognizing sin.

One critical group is Faithful America, which put out a petition—petition battles are to be expected in democracies—saying the Nashville Statement condemns “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people”. The Nashville Statement does no such thing; it condemns nobody; so these faithful Americans have been unfaithful to the truth. They say:

The so-called “Nashville Statement” not only claims that “it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism” – it says that “such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness.”

The Nashville Statement is right. Yet the Faithful America petition says:

Like all of humanity, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are made in God’s image. The Nashville Statement’s hateful words about their identities and relationships are deeply contrary to Jesus’ radical embrace of those marginalized as impure by the religious leaders of his day.

Being rational creatures is what is meant as being created in God’s image, not desiring sex with dead bodies, as the marginalized and impure part-of-humanity necrophiliacs want, nor do we want to radically embrace woofies, i.e. those who want sex with animals. And don’t let’s forget the poor downtrodden neglected ecosexuals, who want sex with dirt.

Many so-called Christians leaders rushed to reject the Nashville Statement. Theologian Brandan Robertson has his own petition called “Christians United“. Says things like:

WE AFFIRM that God designed marriage to be a covenantal bond between human beings who have committed to love, serve, and live a life faithfully committed to one another over the course of a lifetime.

WE DENY that God intended human romantic relationships to be limited to one man and one woman and declare that any attempts to limit the sacred or civil rights of humans to covenant and commit to love and serve one another is an affront to God’s created design.

A slew of academics signed, such as Dr. Mary Elizabeth Moore, Dean, Boston School of Theology, and The Venerable Alastair McCollum, Archdeacon, Diocese of Islands & Inlets, Rector St John the Divine Anglican Church (great title).

There are other petitions and rebuttals, and doubtless more will come. But it’s a good bet none will quote Gagnon or acknowledge “hurtful” Biblical passages.