Denny Burk: “Keeping Christianity Weird: Why the Nashville Statement Matters”

Writing at The Hill, CBMW President Denny Burk explains why the Nashville Statement matters, and why it matters especially in this day and age:

There is an apocryphal saying often attributed to Martin Luther that says this:

‘If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.’

And there can be no question that some self-identified evangelicals have been “flinching” in recent years when it comes to Christianity’s 2,000-year old teaching about gender and sexuality.

This summer, the Pew Research Center released a survey showing a dramatic change in attitudes among evangelicals concerning gay marriage. The study revealed a widening difference of opinion between older and younger evangelicals. According to Pew, nearly half of white millennial evangelicals now approve of gay marriage.

The Pew survey confirms a trend that many of us leading churches have already observed anecdotally to be true. A rising generation of self-professed Christians no longer believes what the church has always believed about the nature of marriage and about God’s special design of male and female. These issues of sexual morality and personal identity have always been central to the Christian faith, yet now they are being abandoned by some even within the evangelical movement.

You can read the rest of the article here.