Categories: evangelicalism, sexuality
Date: 20 April 2010 15:52:57
This morning I sat going through a couple of articles in Anvil which I think might be worth noting because they fit in with regular themes on the blog, (i.e. evangelicalism and sexuality).
The first, which I won't say too much about because I don't want to bring my academic work in here, was "Reinventing English Evangelicals: Reviews and Response" by Andrew Atherstone (review one), Pete Broadbent (review two) and Rob Warner (response). For those who haven't come across Rob Warner's book "Reinventing English Evangelicalism 1966-2001" I heartily recommend it. Basically it explores the Evangelical Alliance during the 80's and 90's and the history surrounding that period, from the late 60's to 2001 by which time things had started to change again. It gives useful insight into why the US influenced pan-evangelicalism that Adrian Warnock promotes as normative isn't, and why I spoke against in this post.
Further on in the journal is an interview with Andrew Marin, who is founder of The Marin Foundation and author of Love is An Orientation. Basically this is a straight guy who found out three of his best friends were gay, freaked, got convicted by the holy spirit and started getting missional. He was one of the speakers at Spring Harvest this year, and so the talks are available from Essential Christian. What is particularly interesting within his article is (i) the way he says that the UK is currently in a unique place, where the US was but then moved away from. That place is one where we can actually build bridges between the church and "the gay community", if we choose, because the divisions between the two are not yet so entrenched that they cannot be reconciled. Basically, this means if we don't blow it we can demonstrate what reconciliation means. (ii) He refers to the way the "don't ask, don't say" attitude of the British church (in various denominations) is damaging, particularly to young people who are left in a position of not knowing what to think. (iii) The final point he makes is about the way many in churches don't think there is any problem, and don't understand why groups such as Stonewall have had the "Some people are Gay, Get Over It!" poster campaign. It's an interesting and useful article because it is a US based, theologically conservative guy, who is beyond the "them" and "us" position and is rather in the "let's understand the situation and be serious about getting missional" position. Because he has come and critiqued the UK from an outsider position, but as an outsider with insight he has some useful stuff to be learnt, if the UK is ready to hear. Additionally, yet again this article underlines why the UK church, (in all its forms) does differ from the US in many ways and so why it is useful to learn our history, which books such as Rob Warners and David Bebbington's Evangelicalism in Modern Britain before him allow us to.