Michael Brown discusses his upcoming debate on homosexuality with Matthew Vines

An interview with Dr. Michael Brown from Charisma News.

Intro:

Dr. Michael Brown is author of Can You Be Gay and Christian? Responding With Love and Truth to Questions About Homosexuality and host of the nationally syndicated talk radio show The Line of Fire on the Salem Radio Network. He is also president of FIRE School of Ministry and director of the Coalition of Conscience. And on June 28, he’ll be directly debating Matthew Vines on Moody Radio’s program “Up for Debate.”

Matthew Vines has recently become the face of the current “gay Christian” movement, publishing God and the Gay Christian after his speech advocating Christian acceptance of homosexuality went viral in 2012.

Here’s a part I liked:

You have stated publicly that homosexual sin is a central, gospel issue. In my own life, I’ve known at least one person who has turned their back on the gospel because of the Bible’s stance on homosexuality and used Vines’ material to justify that decision. What words would you have for someone who has rejected Christianity over this issue?

Actually, what drew me into the this issue was the impact of homosexual activism on our society, but the more I talked with those who identify as LGBT and the more I read their stories—especially those who professed to be followers of Jesus—the more my heart broke for them.

So, it’s very painful to hear about your friend’s experience, but we’ll be hearing it more and more in the coming days. The problem is when I start with “me” and then go to the Word, I will be deceived; if I start with God and then go to “me,” I’ll find truth and freedom. Everyone needs to give himself or herself to Jesus unconditionally to be a disciple, and in doing so, we find the path to life. But if we say, “This is who I am, and God must satisfy my needs,” then we will create a new and alien faith.

What first prompted you to have an open debate with Vines?

To be perfectly clear, I’ve always been willing to have civil, public debates on any controversial issues of the faith that I’m focused on, which is why I’ve been debating rabbis for decades as a Jewish follower of Jesus. So, I’ve been open to debating Matthew or any other qualified representative of the “gay Christian” position for many years, and I’m pleased to have this opportunity through Moody Radio.

In fact, if Matthew feels that the one-hour radio format doesn’t allow us sufficient time to plumb the issues in sufficient depth, as a follow up to this radio debate, I’d love to help set up a formal, multi-hour debate where he could be joined by an academic colleague like Dr. James Brownson and I would be joined by Dr. James White, and we could spend a few hours together, in public, and recorded for the world to see on YouTube.

I feel that events like this radio debate and other types of fair, moderated debates can only advance the cause of truth.

What do you want this debate to accomplish?

By God’s grace, I want listeners to realize that there is zero scriptural support for the idea that God ever blesses or approves of committed, same-sex relationships, that homosexual practice is always sinful in His sight, that there is really no debate at all in term of what the Bible says. At the same time, I want listeners to realize how deeply God loves LGBT people, how Jesus shed the same blood for them and offers the same salvation to them, and how following Jesus unconditionally is the path to life and freedom.

I like Dr. Brown – he’s a good advocate for the cause of Christian morality.

Previously, I blogged about a debate between Michael Brown and Eric Smaw. There’s a video and summaries of the opening speeches in that post.

North Carolina passes bill to prohibit discrimination against religious and political groups

From Campus Reform.

Excerpt:

The North Carolina House passed a measure last week to prohibit university administrators from denying facilities, funding, or recognition to political or religious groups on the basis that they are exclusionary.

The bill came in response to Christian groups that have been stripped of their student organization status because they did not allow students with other beliefs to become leaders in their organization.

The bill, which has now been passed by both chambers of the North Carolina legislature, awaits Governor Pat McCrory’s (R) signature.

“Our society is engaged in an ongoing cultural battle,” said Rep. Bert Jones (R), the bill’s primary sponsor. “There is a war on God…Unfortunately these efforts have been extended to our campuses.”

[…]“We need to make clear that just because a student decides to attend our public schools and universities … that does not somehow mean that the student forfeits his rights to the university. This bill also recognizes that there is an important difference between education and indoctrination coercion,” Jones said.

The bill passed the North Carolina House of Representatives by a vote of 78-37 last Wednesday. All 37 votes against the bill were cast by Democrats.

Lest you think that universities are not really doing this to Christian and conservative clubs, here is an example.

From the radically leftist New York Times.

Excerpt:

For 40 years, evangelicals at Bowdoin College have gathered periodically to study the Bible together, to pray and to worship. They are a tiny minority on the liberal arts college campus, but they have been a part of the school’s community, gathering in the chapel, the dining center, the dorms.

After this summer, the Bowdoin Christian Fellowship will no longer be recognized by the college. Already, the college has disabled the electronic key cards of the group’s longtime volunteer advisers.

In a collision between religious freedom and antidiscrimination policies, the student group, and its advisers, have refused to agree to the college’s demand that any student, regardless of his or her religious beliefs, should be able to run for election as a leader of any group, including the Christian association.

Similar conflicts are playing out on a handful of campuses around the country, driven by the universities’ desire to rid their campuses of bias, particularly against gay men and lesbians, but also, in the eyes of evangelicals, fueled by a discomfort in academia with conservative forms of Christianity. The universities have been emboldened to regulate religious groups by a Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that found it was constitutional for a public law school in California to deny recognition to a Christian student group that excluded gays.

At Cal State, the nation’s largest university system with nearly 450,000 students on 23 campuses, the chancellor is preparing this summer to withdraw official recognition from evangelical groups that are refusing to pledge not to discriminate on the basis of religion in the selection of their leaders. And at Vanderbilt, more than a dozen groups, most of them evangelical but one of them Catholic, have already lost their official standing over the same issue; one Christian group balked after a university official asked the students to cut the words “personal commitment to Jesus Christ” from their list of qualifications for leadership.

[…]The consequences for evangelical groups that refuse to agree to the nondiscrimination policies, and therefore lose their official standing, vary by campus. The students can still meet informally on campus, but in most cases their groups lose access to student activity fee money as well as first claim to low-cost or free university spaces for meetings and worship; they also lose access to standard on-campus recruiting tools, such as activities fairs and bulletin boards, and may lose the right to use the universities’ names.

So if you agree with the secular and liberal elites, you can form a club. But if you disagree with them, you can’t. Either way, you pay them your money.

You may also find this column by conservative professor Mike Adams to be of interest. He replies to a concerned parent who wants to know how bad secularism and leftism really are on campus.

Supreme Court rules that pro-lifers have free speech right at abortion clinics

From USA Today.

Excerpt:

Abortion remains an issue that divides the Supreme Court, but the justices had less disagreement Thursday in defending the free speech rights of abortion opponents.

The court ruled unanimously that Massachusetts went too far — literally — when it created 35-foot buffer zones around abortion clinics to keep demonstrators away from patients.

The decision united Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberals, who said the distance improperly removed demonstrators from public sidewalks and spaces. The other conservative justices would have issued a more sweeping verdict, striking down the ban on grounds that it targets abortion opponents’ specific point of view.

“Petitioners wish to converse with their fellow citizens about an important subject on the public streets and sidewalks — sites that have hosted discussions about the issues of the day throughout history,” Roberts wrote. Though the state has an interest in public safety, it “pursued those interests by the extreme step of closing a substantial portion of a traditional public forum to all speakers.”

[…]The court’s other four conservative justices agreed with the verdict in the Massachusetts case but would have gone further by striking down the law as one that illegally targets abortion opponents.

“It is clear on the face of the Massachusetts law that it discriminates based on viewpoint,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “Speech in favor of the clinic and its work by employees and agents is permitted; speech criticizing the clinic and its work is a crime. This is blatant viewpoint discrimination.”

The article has a reactions from a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman. She was against the ruling.