A watershed cultural moment for America

This week, I discussed with John Stonestreet of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview whether the cultural climate of the debate over sexuality and religious freedom should alarm Christians.

The pitched battle over religious liberty in Indiana drives the question, but two pieces of commentary from the past week make it even more pertinent. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni insisted Christians should be coerced to take homosexual practice off the church’s “sin list.” And author and journalist Rod Dreher wrote about a law professor who is a closeted Christian, saying he or she is likely to remain so for fear of having his or her career derailed.

Stonestreet noted how the culture’s understanding of the term “religious liberty” has changed.

“Suddenly, it’s gone from being an assumed part of American culture to being the worst thing you can say out loud because it’s a code word for gay discrimination,” he said, agreeing that the controversy over Indiana’s religious freedom law was a watershed moment in American culture.

In the new cultural context, Stonestreet said, the church must come to an agreement on where Christian authority lies. Christians now are at odds over whether biblical sexuality is a matter of orthodoxy or whether God is calling the church to deny its historically held views.

“For both of these groups to be within the same heading of ‘evangelical’ is crazy,” Stonestreet said. “It means that ‘evangelical’ as a word doesn’t mean a lot anymore.”

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