One mission of CBMW is to help Christians think through secular and ecclesial trends on gender and sexuality. Through this work, we pore over a lot of different news reports and articles as we attempt to wade through the ceaseless flow of information on the web. In our weekly Gender and Sexuality News Roundups, we aim to distill some of the more pertinent information for you.
The articles below are from a wide variety of sectors and publications, organized generally into three categories. They are presented in aggregate, not necessarily endorsed.
If you see an article that you think should be featured in future CBMW News Roundups, you can send it to [email protected] with the subject “News Roundup.”
At the Evangelical #MeToo Summit, Christians Grappled With Just How Deep the Church’s Sexual Misconduct Problems Go, Slate (Ruth Graham)
“At an event on Thursday, #ChurchToo was embraced on a prominent stage by a series of influential evangelical leaders, though the hashtag’s founders were not among them. The occasion was a one-day summit at evangelical Wheaton College on how church leaders can respond to sexual harassment, assault, and violence.”
Cardinal George Pell Reportedly Convicted Of Sex Abuse Amid Gag Order In Australia, NPR (Bill Chappell)
“Australian news outlets are grappling with how to handle one of the country’s biggest news stories of the year — even though a judge has barred them from reporting the details. The story revolves around Cardinal George Pell, a Vatican insider who was reportedly convicted of sexually abusing minors this week, and public interest in the case has been intense.”
Boards back SOGI compromise, World Magazine (J.C. Derrick)
“Major Christian groups endorse framework to expand LGBT rights in exchange for religious protections.”
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Laws Are Not Fairness for All, Heritage (Ryan T. Anderson)
“In the United States of America, people who identify as LGBT are free to live as they want. But SOGI laws, including FFA, are not about freedom—they are about coercion. SOGI laws are about forcing all Americans to embrace—and live out—certain beliefs about human sexuality. They are not about protecting the freedom of people to live as LGBT, but about coercing everyone else to support, facilitate, and endorse such actions. This is one fundamental problem in equating coercive antidiscrimination laws with permissive religious freedom laws. And imposing a bad coercive policy on everyone while exempting select faith-based institutions is anything but fairness for all.”
Investigation Unearths Hundreds Of Abuse Allegations In Independent Baptist Churches, Huffington Post (Carol Kuruvilla)
“The Star-Telegram spoke to more than 200 current or former IFB church members who shared stories about “rape, assault, humiliation and fear.” Many of the stories have already been made public through criminal cases, lawsuits and news reports. However, the newspaper said its reporters uncovered 21 new abuse allegations in the course of its eight-month investigation. In total, the newspaper said it found that 168 IFB church leaders were accused or have been convicted of sexually abusing children.”
Christianity Today’s 2019 Book of the Year, Christianity Today
The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home Russell Moore (B&H)
Boy Scouts, facing sexual abuse lawsuits, may declare bankruptcy, CBS News (Kate Gibson)
“The Boy Scouts of America is exploring a range of options to address it’s increasingly shaky financial situation. Those may include declaring bankruptcy, with the more than century-old organization facing rising legal fees due to lawsuits over its handling of sexual abuse allegations.”
Germany Must Allow Third Gender Category, Court Rules, New York Times (Melissa Eddy and Jessica Bennett)
“Germany must create a third gender category for people who do not identify as either male or female or were born with ambiguous sexual traits, the country’s constitutional court ruled on Wednesday, finding that binary gender designations violated the right to privacy…The new decision, by the Federal Constitutional Court, goes further, giving lawmakers until the end of 2018 to either allow the introduction of a third gender category or dispense with gender altogether in public documents.”
Is the Women’s March Melting Down?, Tablet Magazine (Leah McSweeney and Jacob Siegel)
“As its fame grew, so did the questions about the Women’s March’s origin story—including, at first privately within the inner circles of the organizations, questions pertaining to the possible anti-Jewish statement made at that very first meeting. And that wasn’t the only incident from the initial encounter that would have far-reaching consequences. Within a few months of the original marches, key figures who came from outside or stood apart from the inner circle of the Justice League, an initiative of The Gathering for Justice, left the organization.”
Log Cabin Republicans Plan to ‘Push’ Trump on LGBT Rights, Daily Beast (Samantha Allen)
“Jerri Ann Henry, the new executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, ‘would take a meeting’ to work on LGBT-related policy with President Trump, if he would meet with her.”
LGBT Rights at High Court: Waiting for Transgender Student Case?, Bloomberg Law (Robert Iafolla)
“The U.S. Supreme Court may wait to decide whether to take a trio of LGBT worker discrimination cases until a petition involving transgender student bathroom access is also ready for consideration.”
LGBT couples in Brazil hold collective wedding ceremony over fears ‘Trump of the Tropics’ will restrict gay marriage, The Hill (Avery Anapol)
“Bolsonaro has made incendiary comments about race and sexual orientation, including saying in 2011 that he would be “incapable of loving a homosexual son.” Same-sex marriage has been legal in the country since 2013.”
Children abusing children: Children’s Mercy see’s dangerous trend involving children and porn, KSHB (Sarah Plake)
“Children’s Mercy says they’re seeing a disturbing trend in child sexual assault cases. Children are abusing children. “I think that was kind of shocking to us all as we were collecting this data, is that almost half of our perpetrators are minors,” said Heidi Olson, the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Coordinator.”
Study: Female-Led Movies Perform Better at the Box Office, Relevant Magazine
“Creative Arts Agency has released a study that shows at every budget level, movies that feature a woman in the lead role outperform the same-budgeted movies with men in the lead.”
Learning to Love Thy Body: An Interview with Nancy Pearcey, CBMW (Colin Smothers)
In a new Danvers Audio podcast episode, CBMW Colin Smothers interviews award-winning author and scholar Nancy Pearcey about her latest book, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality.
How to Communicate the Beauty of Christian Sexual Ethics, The Gospel Coalition (Joshua Ryan Butler)
“We often approach the topic of sex through the lens of truth, which is foundational. So we often are going, ‘What does the Bible say about sex?’ I don’t want to undermine what’s foundational, but I do want to supplement it, pointing out that God’s vision for sexuality is actually beautiful and good as well.”
The Feminist Life Script Has Made Many Women Miserable. Don’t Let It Sucker You, The Federalist (Joy Pullman)
“Our culture is so saturated with feminism that even conservatives and devoutly religious people like me think inside its wheel ruts. This wouldn’t be a problem, except that feminism is antithetical to human flourishing, both individually and corporately, because it has a false view of human nature.”
Gender Dysphoria and the Gospel, Gentle Reformation (Jared Olivetti)
“If you are interacting with someone who is experiencing the distress of not feeling “at home” with their biological gender or if you have that experience yourself, it can be a very confusing and frightening time. An acquaintance of mine recently let me know about his struggles with transgenderism and the ways that Jesus has met and delivered him.”
A Radical Reformation in the Making?, Yale University (Mary Clark Moschella)
“It is time for churches across the spectrum, including the evangelical-minded SBC, to reconsider their support of complementarian theology…This blatant rejection of women’s vocations means their insights and gifts for ministry are stymied if not lost.”
Shame Storm, First Things (Helen Andrews)
“The solution, then, is not to try to make shame storms well targeted, but to make it so they happen as infrequently as possible. Editors should refuse to run stories that have no value except humiliation, and readers should refuse to click on them. It is, after all, the moral equivalent of contributing your rock to a public stoning. We should all develop a robust sense of what is and is not any of our business. Shame can be useful—and even necessary—but it is toxic unless a relationship exists between two people first. A Twitter mob is no more a basis for salutary shaming than an actual mob is for reasoned discussion. That would be true even if the shaming’s relics were not preserved forever by Google, making any kind of rehabilitation impossible.”
You, too, can help support the ministry of CBMW. We are a non-profit organization that is fully-funded by individual gifts and ministry partnerships. Your contribution will go directly toward the production of more gospel-centered, church-equipping resources.
Menu
