Pastors issue powerful statement against gay ‘marriage,’ liberals are furious [LifeSiteNews]

Fr. Mark Hodges
News | Faith, Family, Gender, Homosexuality | Thu Aug 31, 2017 - 11:07 am EST

Pastors issue powerful statement against gay ‘marriage,’ liberals are furious

NASHVILLE, Tennessee, August 31, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — An Evangelical coalition has released a statement affirming biblical-based sexual morality, calling homosexuality and transgenderism “an essential departure from Christian faithfulness.”

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), a coalition of mostly Southern Baptist and Presbyterian leaders, met to address increasing societal “confusion” about gender and sexuality. The scholars, pastors, authors, radio personalities, and others co-signed a “Nashville Statement” delineating 14 brief, simple affirmations and their contrasting denials regarding natural marriage.

Released Tuesday, the joint statement connects the acceptance of one’s biological gender and fidelity to traditional marriage with God’s intentional plan for all people.

“Western culture … has embarked upon a massive revision of what it means to be a human being,” the statement said. Gender is considered a matter of “an individual’s autonomous preferences.” But this revision leads to “shortsighted alternatives that … ruin human life and dishonor God.”

The solution to this modern dilemma, they say, is found in knowing God and His will for mankind. “To forget our Creator is to forget who we are, for He made us for Himself ... We did not make ourselves,” the evangelicals stated. “Our true identity as male and female persons is given by God. It is not only foolish but hopeless to try to make ourselves what God did not create us to be.”

The authors point out that one of God’s universal intentions for humanity is heterosexual marriage. “God has designed marriage to be a … lifelong union of one man and one woman ... We deny that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual … relationship,” the statement read.

Monogamy is also divinely ordained for our good. “Sexual intercourse before or outside marriage” is never justified, the authors asserted.

God created two genders, male and female, as “equal before God as persons,” yet “distinct,” the signers offered. Gender differences do not mean one is superior to the other. “We deny that the divinely ordained differences between male and female render them unequal in dignity or worth.”

The statement unequivocally puts homosexuality and transgenderism outside of God’s loving will. “A homosexual or transgender self-conception” is against “God’s holy purposes,” the leaders explained. Same-sex attraction is not “natural,” but those suffering from it may still have “the hope of the Gospel” and “live a rich and fruitful life” if they “walk in purity.”

The source of sexual deviancy is sin. “Sin distorts sexual desires,” according to the evangelical leaders, leading to “both heterosexual and homosexual immorality.”

Christians who go along with prevailing views of sexuality are hurting their neighbor and denying the Faith. “It is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism,” the statement flatly stated, adding that to approve of either “constitutes an essential departure from” Christianity. Such moral matters are not something Christians can “agree to disagree” on.


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The institution of the family is most definitely under attack