October 4 1999

ARTICLE TOOLS

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CT convened four leading Christian thinkers to discuss how Christians should address homosexuality in the public sphere. The participants all started from the assumption that genital intimacy between persons of the same sex is not scriptural and is incompatible with the holiness to which God calls Christian disciples. The question was not how to deal with homosexuality in the church but what Christians have to say in the public arena about homosexuality and how they should communicate it.

The forum was chaired by Richard Mouw, president and professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. Panelists included David Jones, professor of theology and Christian ethics at Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri; Stephen Spencer, professor of systematic theology at Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas; and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, professor of psychology and resident scholar at the Center for Christian Women in Leadership at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

Richard Mouw: What is essentially wrong with homosexual practice? Many gays and lesbians can say, "Well, having this very intimate sexual relationship with one other person, so long as it's consensual, is not hurting anybody. Why should society care about it? Why should Christians?"

David Jones: Our sexuality is part of the way we are made; God made us for each other, male and female. We run up against something that is very structural in that relationship, which means that no other relation outside of the marital relation can live up to how we are designed as human beings.

Stephen Spencer: I agree that homosexual practice violates the creational order that God made; whether people are satisfied with alternatives ...