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.”
Debate over women in Southern Baptist pulpits flares on social media, Baptist News Global (Bob Allen)
“A Southern Baptist Convention seminary professor who teaches that males and females are created for distinct and complementary roles in the home and church criticized the denomination’s president and a popular Bible teacher for suggesting it can be OK for a woman to preach. Owen Strachan, associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, posted a blog May 7 saying the Bible places the responsibility to lead, guide and teach the assembled congregation on ‘only godly men.'”
Trinity University rejects students’ request to remove Chick-fil-A, San Antonio Express-News (Liz Teitz)
“‘We do not make vendor decisions based on their political or religious beliefs,’ administrators told students in the email, sent Friday. In a resolution passed unanimously on May 1, the Student Government Association had asked the administration to remove Chick-fil-A from the twice-monthly rotation of restaurants served at Revolve, a food station in the Commons Food Court. ‘Trinity’s values of diversity and inclusion and Chick-fil-a’s values regarding the LGBT+ community are mutually exclusive,’ the resolution stated.”
Letter from a nun: ‘We are all children of God,’ she writes in allowing same-sex union news in alumnae magazine, The Washington Post (Joe Heim)
“Sister Mary Berchmans, the school’s president emerita, wrote the letter that has provoked so many reactions. In her carefully worded missive that emphasized following ‘the Gospel commandment of love,’ Berchmans said the 220-year-old Catholic girls academy will publish announcements of same-sex unions in its alumnae magazine.”
California overhauls sex education guidance for teachers, Associated Press (Adam Beam)
“California has overhauled its sex education guidance for public school teachers, encouraging them to talk about gender identity with kindergartners and give advice to LGBT teenagers for navigating relationships and having safe sex.”
Lawmakers Vote to Effectively Ban Abortion in Alabama, The New York Times (Timothy Williams and Alan Blinder)
“The Alabama Senate approved a measure on Tuesday that would outlaw almost all abortions in the state, setting up a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the case that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy.”
Mormon church opposes LGBT nondiscrimination measure, ABC News (Brady McCombs)
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced its opposition Monday to a comprehensive nondiscrimination bill that faces long odds in Congress, saying the legislation doesn’t ‘meet the standard of fairness for all,’ contending it would strip key religious freedom protections.”
Homophobic Bullying Rises in Children When LGBGT Rights Get Publicly Debated, Newsweek (Kashmira Gander)
“The authors of the study published in the journal Pediatrics looked at the results of surveys completed between 2001 and 2014 by almost 5 million middle- and high-school students from about 5,000 California institutions. The team noted rates of homophobic bullying before and after the vote on Proposition 8, a statewide ballot initiative that asked voters to decide whether same-sex marriage should be banned, and whether only opposite-sex couples should be allowed to wed.”
Defiance and Arrests at Cuba’s Gay Pride Parade, New York Times (Reuters)
“But many L.G.B.T. activists said that they believed the government was reacting more to pressure from evangelical churches, which have a growing following in Cuba and have campaigned against the expansion of gay rights. ‘This isn’t a political march; this is a celebration to give the L.G.B.T. community visibility,’ said one activist, Myrna Rosa Padrón Dickson. The march was promoted on social networks thanks to an expansion of the internet in Cuba in recent years that has more broadly resulted in increasing numbers of Cubans mobilizing online over certain issues, sometimes apparently managing to influence policy.”
Podcast: Christians, the LGBTQ Community, and the Call to Hospitality, Crossway (Matt Tully and Rosaria Butterfield)
“In this episode of The Crossway Podcast, Rosaria Butterfield, author of The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in a Our Post-Christian World, recounts her own encounter with radically ordinary hospitality as an unbelieving lesbian—sharing how God used such hospitality to break down her preconceived ideas about Christians and get her reading the Bible for herself.”
A Sex Strike to Nowhere, National Review (Rich Lowry)
“Alyssa Milano, the actress and political activist, declared a sex strike to try to stop Georgia from protecting unborn children in the womb. The state just passed and signed into law a so-called heartbeat bill to outlaw abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detectable. This led Milano to conclude that women can’t risk pregnancy until further notice, and that they must stop having sex, at least stop having sex with ‘cis men.'”
Should churches allow women to preach to men?, DennyBurk.com (Denny Burk)
“I have written about this issue numerous times in the past (e.g., here and here), so it is no secret where I stand on all this. Still, it is worth considering Kathy Keller’s challenge on this point. Is it really “injustice” and “disobedience” when churches do not allow women to teach or to lead men? This is a question worth considering because contemporary conversations are being pressed more and more in terms of justice.”
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