The Nashville Statement from CBMW

Never tell me the odds!

This is the clear dividing line in contemporary Western “Christianity” - the issue of sexuality and identity. There are all sorts of news stories out today from progressive apostates and heretics against the Biblical posiition on human sexuality. The Washington Post recently published a short piece about a Roman Catholic priest (excommunication, anyone?) who tweeted out this in response to the Nashville Statement:

I affirm: That God loves all LGBT people. I deny: That Jesus wants us to insult, judge or further marginalize them.
I affirm: That all of us are in need of conversion. I deny: That LGBT people should be in any way singled out as the chief or only sinners.
I affirm: That when Jesus encountered people on the margins he led with welcome not condemnation. I deny: That Jesus wants any more judging.
I affirm: That LGBT people are, by virtue of baptism, full members of the church. I deny: That God wants them to feel that they don’t belong
I affirm: That LGBT people have been made to feel like dirt by many churches. I deny: That Jesus wants us to add to their immense suffering.
I affirm: That LGBT people are some of the holiest people I know. I deny: That Jesus wants us to judge others, when he clearly forbade it.
I affirm that the Father loves LGBT people, the Son calls them and the Holy Spirit guides them. I deny nothing about God’s love for them.

This is the contemporary battlefield.

Gagnon’s remarks:

If it quacks like a heresy, it’s a heresy. Homosexualism is heresy (as is its kin Transgenderism). It is a cancer on the church, now infecting even Evangelicalism (to say nothing of high officials in the Roman Catholic Church and some academics and clerics in the Orthodox church). The sooner this is recognized and faced (as does Article 10 in the new Nashville Statement), the better off the church will be. If the people of God retreat from this assertion out of fear of the le…ftwing forces of the world, the citadel will be overwhelmed.

Our battle is not against flesh and blood but it is against every human thought and practice that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. The church must absolutely exercise compassion for same-sex attracted persons and for persons who experience gender identity confusion. That compassion requires clarity, clarity about the truth regarding the male-female foundation for human sexual ethics that, according to the Lord Jesus Christ himself, serves as the standard and basis for all other commands pertaining to sexual purity (save the prohibition of bestiality). Without that clarity, people perish and what masquerades as compassion turns out to be functional hatred. True haters will call us hateful and spew out all sorts of vile condemnations, all in a tactical effort at intimidation and diversion from what has always been the stance of the orthodox church.

The idea, peddled by some, that this is not heresy because it is not addressed in the great creeds won’t wash. Church councils were ad hoc affairs; that is, they dealt with pressing heresies rather than covered all possible heresies. The promotion of homosexual unions and transsexualism never had a voice in the church until very recently and so never required a separate council.

On this issue will turn many other central features of the faith, including other positions in sexual ethics (consensual polyamory and incest), normative ethics generally, and the authority of Scripture even as it pertains to core matters of faith and practice. Ultimately, nothing less than the Lordship of Jesus Christ is at stake. If what Jesus treated as the essential foundation for all sexual ethics can be overturned, then the confession of Christ’s Lordship has become little more than a facade for human self-exaltation against the Creator.