The UK evangelical ministry Courage lent its support to a new anti-discrimination campaign this past weekend.
Courage began in 1988 as an ex-gay ministry, but announced it was gay-affirming in 2001. Now the pioneering organisation is among the supporters of Would Jesus Discriminate?, a campaign being run by the Metropolitan Community Church in Bath, England. Other UK Christian organisations backing the initiative include Ekklesia and Accepting Evangelicals.
At the heart of the campaign is an appeal to Scripture, with a call to look again at the biblical teaching on homosexuality, beginning with an examination of Jesus and the Gospels:
The gospels are clear. Jesus refused to be bound by cultural prejudice. Repeatedly, he took up the cause of the oppressed and defended them against narrow-minded religious leaders. Unfortunately, the Church has often failed to live up to Jesus’ example.
Perhaps most significant is that the majority of the campaign’s proponents are evangelicals. Ekklesia challenges the perception that the gay debate is simply a liberal-vs-evangelical issue (as Exodus’s Randy Thomas recently argued):
Since the current sad argument within the churches over human sexuality and the status of LGBT people is mainly presented in the media as a fight between ‘liberals’ and ‘evangelicals’, Ekklesia has given priority, once more, to voices who wish to challenge this simple and misleading polarity.
The UK campaign follows the MCC’s recent high-profile campaign of the same name in the US.
The Ekklesia website was excellent, in my opinion. They again show that the question is not “about Biblical authority”, but is rather about ‘what did Jesus teach by his words and example’ and then, allowing judgment to ‘begin at the house of God’.
I also find some gay and ex-gay advocates brave enough to call the church to task with obvious comparisons of pastoral behavior to Jesus’ example: Would Jesus have refused dialog with an outcast? Would Jesus have ordered his followers to remove the Samaritan woman from His presence? Would Jesus have driven the lepers away from his assemblies? Would Jesus have told the outcast to ‘repent on your own, change your ‘lifestyle’, and then return to my assembly’? Would Jesus have dinner with outcasts? Would Jesus be promoting political action to differentiate the marriage rights of Canaanites, Samaritans, Romans, and Jews based on their differences in ‘life style’ or ‘impact on the families’?
Randy Thomas, I read your site’s 26 Sept 2007 post concerning ‘Biblical authority’. If you read this, I hope you’ll respond with what Exodus is doing to educate churches on the imitation of our Lord and Master towards the outcasts. At this point in my understanding, I need to hear what Exodus states churches should do towards the outcasts — not just what they must ‘not’ be doing. Most sincerely; Caryn