Homosexual unions

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"These are the confessions of American Christians recovering from American Christianity. This is the world we made."

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce a new podcast hosted by Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson and featuring Tim Bayly. The World We Made is designed to help ordinary American Christians think through the difficult issues we face in our culture today. Season 1 is about homosexuality.

Over the course of the first season, we talk with Tim about how we went from having anti-sodomy laws in all 50 states (just 50 years ago) to where we are today. What are the changes Tim has seen in his lifetime? What exactly do they mean? What part did the culture play and what part did the church play? How are regular Bible-believing Christians supposed to respond? What has Tim learned as a pastor to help equip us for the challenge of ministering to men and women tempted by homosexuality?

These are the questions we'll be unpacking over the course of eight 20-minute episodes. We'll start out slow and easy, and things will pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the end. You won't want to miss it, so check out the trailer (above), and go ahead and subscribe now in iTunes or Android (or wherever you listen to your podcasts—Google Play Music, Stitcher, TuneIn, RSS feed) so you're ready when the first episode drops (July 17). 

Reading Sobran's article just posted reminded me of the word "pusillanimous."

Keep track of the words that have died. They tell us what we've become.

Public leadership in the church and uncivil society today is forevermore pusillanimous. The word had to be killed. If you're fighting under cover of darkness, you don't provide the enemy night vision goggles.

Pusillanimous is the perfect word to describe what Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel did earlier today. After showing her truest heart to a woman's magazine where she answered a question about sodomite marriage by emoting about a recent visit she'd had with a lesbian couple and their foster children, Merkel suggested the issue be put to a vote...

I am one of those women who have worked under Tim Keller’s leadership at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. [Tim] hired me to envision and develop an entire ministry to equip and mobilize men and women in Redeemer’s congregation to work with gospel-centered vision and integrity out in the world. We partnered in the establishment of the Center for Faith & Work, which may have done as much as any church in decades to honor Abraham Kuyper’s vision of humble, respectful engagement in a world of many faith perspectives.

- Katherine Leary Alsdorf, "Tim Keller hired women in leadership: Katherine Leary Alsdorf responds to the Princeton Kuyper Prize controversy" in A Journey Through NYC Religions.

Far above all other blog posts I've done through the years, the things I've written criticizing Tim Keller have cost me the most in terms of being viewed as an outlier among Reformed Evangelicals. "Who on earth would want to criticize Tim Keller," people ask; "he's the best we have!"

Maybe he's the best of my generation, but sorry to say, that's not saying much. Based upon the past generations of leaders I've known personally, as well as my reading of fathers in the faith who preceded us across the centuries, it's my judgement those of us leading the church today are moral, theological, and spiritual midgets. Children. Infants.

A little less than a century ago, J. Gresham Machen observed that America...

"Tactile bar stools." Seriously?

Lesbian design here in Bloomington, and we're so very proud.

They tell us they have "been in demand ever since they were discovered by a private buyer in the Hamptons." You can't argue with that. Here's their "About" page. It's not self-parody.

When Gospel Coalition puffed the LivingOut.org two-minute video by Anglican priest Sam Allberry, did you think it hit the sweet spot culturally and Biblically?

Sorry to disappoint, but no. Though parts of it were true, Pastor Allberry's testimony was carefully wrong at several key points—but in such a highly nuanced way that it's little wonder many people missed it. Pastor Allberry was wrong in the kind of way that listeners had to be highly educated to miss.

This sort of sound-bite plea of the pain of victimhood combined with sophisticated half-truths is what LivingOut.org specializes in, and there's a reason all men speak well of them.

Pointing out these errors Gospel Coalition keeps promoting is the subject of the book Juergen Von Hagen and I are close to finishing, now. We spent the past week...

Not Ashamed: Ministry in a post-Obergefell world

Wednesday, February 15 at 6 PM to Friday, February 17 at 1:30 PM...

Next week is our conference for church leaders.

You may have noticed I haven't been posting much, recently. I've been hard at work on a book documenting and critiquing the church's present compromises with the homosexualist forces.

The compromises are most visible in celebrity church leaders' recent promotion of the UK's LivingOut.org and the gay Christian lobby. Undiscerning believers are being taught that "godliness is not heterosexuality," that they should have no issue with their church hiring gay pastors, that homosexual orientation is a real deal, and that no pastor should help parents teach their child to love and live the sex God made him...

The Federalist very much wants Russ Moore to continue working inside the Beltway. They tell us Russ is an effective ally in their work lobbying D.C. on behalf of conservative policies. They say he shouldn't be penalized for being unflagging in his opposition to our President-elect, Donald Trump. In their view, "There is no more effective evangelical leader than Moore."

Here are a couple comments from a northern presbyterian who knows and has worked with Russ, Al Mohler, and their SBC's patriarch, Paige Patterson.

First, I commend Russ for not caving in his opposition to our President-elect (and I say this having myself voted against Hillary Clinton by voting for Donald Trump). Opposition from conservatives will be a healthy antidote to the relentless pressure Trump and Pence will face after taking office to... 

But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. (Revelation 2:20)

President-elect Donald Trump says he's worth billions and Hillary is worth around $350 million. So who spent what in their respective presidential campaigns, and where did it come from?

Trump raised $340 million and he himself gave $66 million of it. Clinton raised $581 million and she herself gave none of it.

This is the soul of that species who have usurped for themselves the name "Democrats." They love you and have a wonderful plan for your life.

Not their lives. Your life.

You give them money and they...

This is a talk given by ruling elder Ken Patrick at a conference held this past Saturday at his church, Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA), in Ludlow, Kentucky. Titled "Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture," the conference's other speakers were Trinity's pastor Chuck Hickey and an attorney from the Alliance Defending Freedom, Jeff Shafer. I attended the conference with my son, Joseph, and his fellow pastor Paul Belcher (both serving Christ Church in Cincinnati). Hope you find this talk as wise and helpful as Joseph, Paul, and I did.

* * *

Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture

by Ken Patrick

Before we begin, let me talk about my qualifications to divine the future: I’m not a prophet; I don’t have a “word from the Lord” in the sense that I’m about to share any divinely sourced revelation with you; God didn’t appear to me in a dream.

What I’m going to share are simply observations on what may come to pass if current trends continue, and what I would do if I were in charge. If you find yourself disagreeing with what I say, hopefully you’ll stay until I’m finished. We’ll have a Q&A session where you can ask a question, and of course you can pigeon-hole me afterward.

So, to answer my own question right up front—is there a Christian ghetto in our future?—I think the most likely answer is “of course, yes” at least in an intellectual sense and perhaps in a real, physical way as well. I think it’s very possible that we’ll see both. Before I begin describing what these Christian “ghetto” scenarios might look like, let’s establish why many of us think...