MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It is Friday, September 22, 2023.
Glad to have you with us for today’s edition of The world and everything in it. Hello, my name is Myrna Brown.
NICK EICHER, HOST: And my name is Nick Eicher.
It’s Cultural Friday. Katie McCoy joins us now. She holds a doctorate in theology and is the author of the book entitled Be a woman. Hello, Katie.
KATIE MCCOY: Hi, Nick and Myrna. Great to be with you.
BROWN: Good to see you.
EICHER: Well, Katie, from Andy Stanley’s North Point Community Church, in a week, and there they’ll be wrapping up the second day of a two-day conference on supporting LGBTQ+ parents and children in their churches. Now, I quote here and will continue to quote: “You will be equipped, refreshed and inspired by listening to leading communicators on topics that speak to your heart, soul and mind. » This is billed as the main event and this topic, presumably that of supporting LGBTQ+ parents and children in their churches, they say, will be approached, citing again, “from the quieter middle space” . Albert Mohler, editor-in-chief of WORLD Opinions, pointed out that two of the speakers at the conference are men married in accordance with the 2015 Obergefell ruling, i.e. same-sex marriages. Another speaker is public intellectual David Gushee. Gushee is the author of the book titled Change one’s mind subtitle A historic call for the inclusion of LGBT Christians. Now, the church where this is to take place, as I said, is North Point Church in Atlanta, led by Pastor Andy Stanley. So let me quote near the end of Mohler’s column in WORLD: “Perhaps the conference will surprise us. Perhaps Stanley will present a resounding affirmation of biblical authority and the Christian Church’s long-held beliefs regarding sexuality, marriage, and gender. But this would then require a reversal of Stanley’s trajectory and a bold correction of his guests on the platform to state the obvious: this is not what is advertised. So Katie, if there are no surprises, if the conference continues as announced, what will happen?
MCCOY: It was such an unfortunate story to read on so many levels. First of all, I graduated from Union University and was a student there when Dr. Gushee was a professor, and I remember him being one of the kindest and most empathetic professors. And I think what’s unfortunate at first glance, first of all, looking at the programming and the speakers, is this false amalgamation of kindness and empathy and acceptance, and kindness, not just to the person who might be in trouble, kindness to the person who it might be confusing, but kindness translating into I’m not going to challenge your beliefs, I’m not going to tell you what you might not want to hear at name of truth. But aside from that, there was this familiar phrase when I heard about this conference, it’s the idea of supporting families, or supporting people in the LGBTQ community, and I always have to ask. “Support for what? Support for what purpose and for what purpose? Because if it’s support to help someone fight with the strength that Christ provides through the Spirit against the flesh, that’s one thing. But if it is an accompaniment to affirm or accept one’s lifestyle, one’s choices, one’s sexual preferences, and that goes against the Bible, that is a completely different question. So when people ask whether these are same-sex couples, people struggling with same-sex attraction, or transgender people, and they say we need to provide support for them, I I always feel like they don’t finish their sentence, because we haven’t defined what support means. But not only that, but what is the end and purpose of this support? What are we trying to help them do? Is it living according to God’s plan or not? And this also reminds me of a quote from Pastor John Mark Comer and his book Don’t live on lies, and he describes how sexuality has been, throughout the history of the Church, the place where God’s people contrasted most sharply with their culture. And more precisely, he speaks of it as the first test of our generation’s fidelity to the way of Jesus or to the ideas and ideologies of the world. This is going to be ever present among us and it will become increasingly rare, even among professing evangelical circles, to hold firmly to a biblical sexual ethic, according to God’s design for our bodies and all our lives. . Will we compromise on this truth in the name of kindness? Are we going to confuse support with acceptance? Or will we just say difficult things like every other generation of the Church has done?
BROWN: Yes, so Katie, I want to tell you about a woman who is very clear about what she believes about marriage. A biblical marriage, of course. Kim Davis is back in the news and she’s still defending biblical marriage. In 2015, she was a county clerk in Kentucky and refused to sign a marriage license for two same-sex couples. Both couples filed civil lawsuits against Davis. And last week, two juries, two juries, reached different conclusions about how much she should pay for the mental anguish the four men said she caused by refusing to sign the marriage licenses. So here is the update. Katie Davis’ attorney will appeal and, in a statement, said the jury’s verdict clears the way for this case to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, the road to vindication may still be long for Davis. My question is: what length of road do you think?
MCCOY: Well, unfortunately, we can measure the length of this road by the litigious nature of our society. And it’s ridiculous. When I learn that this county clerk was prosecuted for mental anguish, you laugh at me and say that no one else could sign marriage licenses for whom it was not a conflict of conscience. We are simply asking the government to grant people the right to express themselves and worship according to their conscience. And if this is the case, then we will see a withdrawal of believers from government jobs. And this doesn’t just concern Christians. It also concerns other religious traditions, Judaism for example and even Islam. Do you see people suing Muslims for some of their anti-LGBTQ speech? No, it’s just the Christian faith. And so I was just flabbergasted when I heard this story, it’s kind of like this poor baker in Colorado, like people can’t just leave this man alone and let him live his life in peace according to his convictions. And unfortunately, it looks like this Kentucky county clerk is headed down a long road. And I think it’s absolutely absurd that in our society this has to go to the Supreme Court when they can’t just find someone else to sign the stinking marriage licenses. And instead we need to create an integer number. Little do you know that this will end up being debated in primaries, both Republican and Democratic, if we end up having one. So it’s absurd. And it’s just a sign of how much we’ve abandoned common sense. I wish young female college athletes had as many opportunities to sue schools and administrators for the mental anguish they were put through by having to share a locker room with a biologically intact man. We’re not going to see this level of media attention, because this type of outrage is reserved for Christians who live out their beliefs in the public square.
EICHER: Katie, you mentioned the political primaries, and on that note, I want to move on to the pro-life question. We’ve covered this topic at some length on the The world and everything in it this week. President Trump’s position on Former President Trump’s position on protecting unborn life. Regarding the six weeks of pro-life protections signed in Florida by his distant challenger, Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump said on national television that it was a terrible mistake for the governor to sign the bill. So President Trump deserves credit for being overturned by the Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade, clearly, but he now appears to be saying that the freedom the Court has granted to the States should not be exercised as freely as Florida exercised it. It seems, in the words of another editor of our Opinions of the World, to backtrack on abortion. So I ask you: did the former president and favorite for 2024 make a terrible mistake, in your opinion?
MCCOY: Well, he’s certainly stepping back from his pro-life stance and time will tell the political implications of that, especially in this Republican primary season that we find ourselves in. President Trump gave the Supreme Court three. I don’t want to say the pro-life judges. It wasn’t that they were pro-life, it was that they had a philosophy of jurisprudence that led to the overturning of the law. Roe v. Wade. But what we’re seeing now with President Trump is that it’s no longer politically expedient to be pro-life and I think that falls on all voters who in the past may have justified their vote for President Trump based on their pro-life stance. position of saying: does this candidate’s policies really support your values? Now let’s zoom out to former President Trump. And look at the state-by-state debates over abortion and access since the law was overturned. Roe deer and, overwhelmingly, states voted to protect the right to abortion, or not to authorize legislation that would interfere with that right to abortion. And what that tells us is that ultimately, it’s not just a legislative question, it’s not just a political question, we can have Roe v. Wade overturned, and we still need to convince the hearts and minds of a new generation about the effects of abortion and those whom abortion kills. And until we do that, we’re going to continue this ideological lobbying to find out who is the right candidate to support abortion because the sad reality is that even within a political party known for its pro-abortion stance, life, it becomes unpopular, it becomes something that is no longer politically expedient. This is no longer something we can assume from this party’s candidates. So whether it’s the legalization of same-sex marriage, LGBTQ issues, or abortion, I think it’s a sign that we as people of faith, the family of God, need to become familiar with and we get used to being part of a cultural minority.
BROWN: All right, Katie McCoy, her doctorate is in theology and she’s the author of a book that just came out called Be a woman. Thanks, Katie.
MCCOY: Thanks for inviting me.
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