One of the viral things going around lately is this Washington Post op-ed called “Fat. Single. Christian. In church, being overweight and dating feels like a sin.” It’s by a Christian woman who is approaching middle age without ever having been married. She’s saying something important about how a cataclysmic demographic shift is starting to impact individual Christians’ lives.
That’s quite a lot of deception both in and out of one person, but it’s really more out of his tribe rather than himself; he’s not advocating much that is really very different than what they as a group are coming to believe. But he thinks he’s presenting something very innovative and different, and today we’re going to talk about why–and what about the book really is scandalous.
That’s quite a lot of deception both in and out of one person, but it’s really more out of his tribe rather than himself; he’s not advocating much that is really very different than what they as a group are coming to believe. But he thinks he’s presenting something very innovative and different, and today we’re going to talk about why–and what about the book really is scandalous.
Preston Sprinkle’s book People to Be Loved outlines the right-wing Christian case for opposing same-sex relationships and tries to offer a new approach for such Christians to deal with LGBTQ people generally. Today we’ll touch on the three specific beliefs in that flavor of the religion that inform this book.
Preston Sprinkle is trying to find the same have-it-both-ways middle ground between bigotry and acceptance that his “third way” peers are struggling to find. Today I’ll show you one suggestion he’s making to find that nonexistent middle ground.
Preston Sprinkle is clearly trying to find a way to square himself with his tribe’s culture war in his book, People to Be Loved. I wanted to touch on what the “third way” is, how it came about, where he differs with it, and why the idea ultimately fails before I talk more about his various suggestions for Christians and LGBTQ people.
Preston Sprinkle is clearly trying to find a way to square himself with his tribe’s culture war in his book, People to Be Loved. I wanted to touch on what the “third way” is, how it came about, where he differs with it, and why the idea ultimately fails before I talk more about his various suggestions for Christians and LGBTQ people.
The book is meant to be a tightrope walk between the evangelical tribe’s current antipathy toward gay people and full affirmation, all laced with Bible verses and lots of careful hermeneutics. In its primary suggestion to his fellow evangelicals, its foundational assumptions ultimately destroy whatever good might have been intended–or accomplished.
Preston Sprinkle brings a full set of assumptions to the party and refuses to let go of them, and ultimately those assumptions bury any good intentions he might have had. Today we’ll talk about those assumptions and why they’re wrong.
As we discussed last time, Christians’ condemnation of gay people is not only quickly becoming one of their core marker beliefs, but it’s also becoming one of the beliefs they’re fighting the hardest to protect–and arguably the belief that is costing them the most in terms of both adherents and credibility. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a single other belief for right-wing Christians that is costing them as much as this one is. Today I’ll touch on why this belief is so hard for right-wing Christians to shake–and why Preston Sprinkle, in his book People to Be Loved, is starting his quest for understanding by asking the wrong question.