It Can Happen Here
Copyright 2003 by Shea Oakley
All Rights Reserved
The ongoing battle being fought out in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of the first openly homosexual bishop seems far away to many American Evangelicals. We tend to expect this kind of thing from the liberal wing of the mainline church and if Evangelicals here talk about the issue at all it with a sort of dismissive disdain. What, after all, do you expect from people who forsook the word of God a long time ago?
The problem with such a smug attitude is that it wrongly assumes such a thing could never corporately happen to us.
The erosion of biblical standards in the mainline denominations did not occur overnight. The departure from orthodoxy was a gradual process, one which conventional evangelical wisdom tells us began in their seminaries and trickled down to the person in the pew. However along the way it is safe to assume that cultural forces hostile to the truth of God’s Word had a major impact on the process. The World began to influence the Church far more than the Church did the World. The advent of higher criticism of the Bible is often given the lion’s share of credit for destroying the integrity of whole denominations but it was not the only catalyst. It should not be forgotten that the larger secular society of the time exerted its own pull. The same is true today with the born-again church because the fact is we are not immune to such a pull either. Is it impossible that, if the Lord tarries, fifty years down the road Evangelical churches may be ordaining homosexuals? This may sound unlikely but we cannot assume ‘it can’t happen here’.
It is safe to say that fifty years ago the acceptance of divorce among Christians was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today. Polls have shown that the Evangelical divorce rate (including second marriages) is similar to that among the American culture at large. What once would have been almost unthinkable among believers today is commonplace. Why? Because the Church has allowed itself to be influenced by the World. Another example is in the area of popular entertainment. While it may indeed be true that movies are not inherently evil the truth is that in 1953 Christians would have been absolutely horrified by the extended sex scene at the beginning of Matrix 2 or the gratuitous carnage of Terminator 3. Today many Christians are lining up to buy tickets to both pictures.
The above examples are illustrative of the fact that yesterday’s taboos have become today’s accepted practice by a large number of believers. At the very least they are tolerated to a degree that would shock the Evangelicals of the not so distant past. What then will the next half-century bring?
In answering this question it is instructive to note that not all of the Episcopalians defending the ordination of gays completely write off the Bible. Some of them interpret the Scriptures to say that homosexual rape was the only practice being condemned in the Old and New Testaments. Others claim that, with the advent of Christ, the prohibition against same-sex relationships passed away along with other Levitical laws. Such views are fairly easily refuted by reading passages which condemn homosexuality in context. Unfortunately such a careful reading of the Bible is becoming less and less the norm among the average Evangelical today. Perhaps our attention spans have become too short for such study. Whatever the reason verses are taken out of context by believers all the time. Combine this shallow reading and understanding of Scripture with the wiles of a society where anything goes and we have a recipe for disaster. The standards held up as recently as a generation or two ago are becoming ever fuzzier as we bend the Bible to conform to the seductive culture we live in.
There is, however, a second path. The Church has been lukewarm before, in other places and times, and the result has not always been irretrievable disaster. In mercy God has brought repentance and revival to His erring people through the powerful movement of His Spirit. Often this has come because of the faithful prayers of the few who "did not bend their knees to Baal". Revival always begins with the earnest prayer of those who ache for the Church to be the spotless bride of Christ. Today we can only hope that such Christians remain among us for we are in desperate need of a revival that will once again bring us back to where our Lord wants us to be.