Tim Kaine tries to rewrite the Bible

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

Vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., counts himself among those whose support for same-sex marriage contradicts the teachings of the church he attends.

“But I think that’s going to change,” Kaine said Sept. 10 in a speech at a Washington dinner for Human Rights Campaign. Kaine, a Catholic, pointed to Genesis 1 as a justification for his views on marriage, saying God’s declaration that creation is “very good” can be interpreted as a celebration of the “beautiful diversity of the human family.”

John Stonestreet called Kaine a “terrible exegete of the Bible and incredibly selective in his focus on Genesis 1.” The next chapter, Genesis 2, makes it clear that men and women have essential, complementary roles to fill in caring for the world God made.

“So let’s not go to Sen. Kaine for any sort of Sunday school lessons anytime soon,” Stonestreet said.

Not only was Kaine’s statement bad exegesis, but it was also historically ignorant, Stonestreet added.

Not only was Kaine’s statement bad exegesis, but it was also historically ignorant, Stonestreet added. To suggest the Catholic Church might change its stance on marriage when it hasn’t throughout its entire history, indicates “chronological snobbery,” the idea that anything new is necessarily better.

The irony of Kaine’s position is that Christians for so long have been accused of being overly spiritual and esoteric, but beliefs about biblical marriage are solidly grounded in reality.

“It’s clear that Christians are actually the ones that not only are sticking to the church’s theology, they’re actually sticking to biological reality,” Stonestreet said. “The other side has tried to act like those realities can be changed or that they don’t actually exist in the first place.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the Sept. 16, 2016, edition of The World and Everything in It.