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.”

Ecclesial Trends on Gender and Sexuality

Joshua Harris marches in pride parade after apologizing to LGBT community, The Christian Post (Lean MarieAnn Klett)

“Former pastor and evangelical author Joshua Harris demonstrated his support for the LGBT community by marching in Vancouver’s annual Pride Parade less than a month after announcing he no longer considers himself a Christian. On August 4, Harris, former pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, shared several Instagram photos of himself participating in the British Columbia parade, engaging in Pride festivities, and ‘swapping stories’ with LGBT activists.”

A liberal Baptist church will close its doors and give $1 million to nonprofits, The Washington Post (Marisa Iati)

“For 63 years, the low-slung, brick church on Twinbrook Parkway has proudly advertised its liberal values. Its logo incorporates rainbow colors. Its members march in Pride parades. A sign formerly on the front lawn declared, ‘All Are Welcome. Really.’ Twinbrook Baptist Church in Rockville, Md., has long been a powerful advocate for a wide range of marginalized groups — from children with autism to students with lunch-money debt to LGBTQ Christians seeking a safe place to worship. So when declining membership forces Twinbrook’s ministry to end in August, the Rev. Jill McCrory says, she’ll rest easy knowing that her congregation will build on its legacy by selling the church and donating $1 million of the proceeds.”

Unrest feared as Poland Catholic church doubles down on anti-gay rhetoric, NBC News (Reuters)

“Poland’s Catholic Church has doubled down on the anti-gay rhetoric that has become the nationalist ruling party’s dominant theme in recent weeks, drawing a rebuke from liberal politicians who compared an archbishop’s remarks to incitement to genocide. In a sermon given to mark the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising by Polish resistance fighters against Nazi occupation, the archbishop of Krakow, Marek Jedraszewski, described Poland as under siege from a ‘rainbow plague’ of gay rights campaigners he compared to Poland’s former Communist rulers.”

Founders Ministries expresses ‘regret’ over divisive film trailer as SBC leaders back out, The Christian Post (Samuel Smith)

“To some critics, the trailer came off as downplaying concerns related to sex abuse in the church. ‘Some have claimed that the trailer shows a disregard for those who have suffered sexual abuse. That is not what we wished to communicate at all,’ Ascol wrote in his statement. ‘We grieve the very real oppression and abuse that occurs far too often in our day. We are thankful that this evil is being exposed. It needs to be faithfully and biblically confronted and addressed by pastors. Ascol also said that some have accused Founders of presenting Rachel Denhollander, an abuse survivor who has frequently expressed concerns about sexual abuse cover-up in churches, as ‘demonic.'”

Secular Trends on Gender and Sexuality

While They Openly Support Maiming Children, LGBT Activists Claim Criticizing Them Kills Trans People, The Federalist (Natasha Chart)

“What used to happen when children were persistently unhappy in the stereotypical social roles of their sex is that most of them stopped being dysphoric. Until recently, very few such children presented at clinics with significant distress. Most of them were boys, and most grew out of it. Now many more children are presenting with this type of distress, most of them are girls, and most of them persist in their distress until an age where physical intervention is allowed, which most of them then demand.”

Victoria’s Secret Casts First Openly Transgender Woman as a Model, New York Times (Christine Hauser)

“‘Wow finally!’ Laverne Cox, who has spoken publicly about her own breakthroughs as a transgender actress, wrote on Ms. Sampaio’s Instagram post. It was only last year that Ed Razek, the chief marketing officer of the lingerie company’s parent organization, L Brands, expressed a lack of interest in casting transgender models. He later apologized for the remark, which had come in an interview with Vogue.”

Coca-Cola ads promoting gay tolerance stir furor in Hungary, Reuters (Marton Dunai)

“The posters, in tandem with the week-long ‘Love Revolution’ event starting on Wednesday in Budapest, show gay people and couples smiling with slogans like ‘zero sugar, zero prejudice’. That has irked some supporters of Viktor Orban’s nationalist Fidesz party, which supports a prohibition of same-sex marriage.”

Gender and Sexuality Miscellany

What’s in a name? The meaning and origin of “complementarianism”, CBMW (Denny Burk)

“While it was common for older commentators to point out that Adam and Eve were a complement to one another1, the exact term complementarian did not appear in theological discourse until the late 1980’s. Some writers have therefore given the impression that the entrance of the term into the lexicon marked out a theological innovation—a peculiar expression of baby boomer theology that is soon to peter out when the baby boomers are no more. In this kind of analysis, the term reduces to a sociological descriptor rather than a theological one. I think this kind of analysis sort of misses the point.”

Both Purity Culture and Hook-Up Culture Failed Me, Christianity Today (Abigail Murrish)

“Although it’s taken me years to learn this lesson, I know deeply that I am not so much holding onto my faith as it is holding on to me. And that ‘holding on’ means pouring my life into the community of God and in turn allowing them to meet me, love me, work alongside me, and sit with me in the midst of hard and harrowing times. I am reminded day in and day out that although we don’t always have tidy answers, we have a Savior who enters our isolation and pain, sits with us in it, and promises to restore all things.”

How Revolutions End, First Things (Dan Hitchens)

“It may seem ridiculous to wonder about the end of the sexual revolution at a time when that revolution appears triumphant: rewriting laws around the world, occupying great cities with its parades, advancing toward new goals like the deconstruction of the male-female binary. But the Soviet example suggests that it is never a complete waste of time to look for signs of the end.”

Social Science Is Not Enough, Public Discourse (Scott Yenor)

“All the science in the world does not answer the deepest questions of political importance. Pretending that questions of political priority are merely technical or scientific questions is the lie of modern times. Conservatives must relearn this lesson in order to defend essential public goods like marriage and the family.”

Mario Lopez Was Smeared. Score One for the Mob, National Review (Heather Wilhelm)

“In case you care about what Lopez actually said (and apparently not that many people do), here is a brief summary: When it comes to gender identity, he suggested, parents should exercise caution when a three-year-old makes a declaration that, if acted upon without question, would affect the rest of the child’s life. He also said that sexual-assault cases should be addressed with due process, because false accusations unfortunately do exist.”