Evangelicals Are Changing Their Minds on Gay Marriage
And the Bible isn’t getting in their way.
By JIM HINCH July 07, 2014
Amy Tincher is an evangelical Christian who plays bass in the band at her suburban Ohio church, where she and her fellow congregants firmly believe the “words we adhere to” are those in the Bible. But last summer, without telling her husband and two kids exactly what she was doing, she boarded a plane for a conference in Kansas whose purpose many evangelicals would plainly consider heretical.
Tincher was one of 50 people flown from around the country and the world—Canada, China, Nigeria and South Korea—to a four-day Bible boot camp dedicated to discussing, and embracing, gay relationships. The gathering was organized by Matthew Vines, who by then was enjoying modest fame for a 2012 YouTube video in which Vines, looking even younger than his 21 years, delivers an hour-long lecture arguing that the Bible does not, in fact, condemn all same-sex relationships. The video has gone viral, racking up more than 730,000 views to date, landing Vines on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Styles section and helping him raise $100,000 for the conference, where he launched The Reformation Project, a nationwide network of pro-gay evangelicals committed to ending their church’s longstanding hostility toward gay people.
Tincher told me she had once “tried on” an anti-gay attitude to fit in with her conservative community in Liberty Township, outside Cincinnati, but like many evangelicals, she struggled to see how homophobia could accord with an all-loving Christian God. So when her pastor sent her a link to Vines’ video, she recalls, “I remember sitting in my kitchen and just crying. I knew it in my heart, but I had never been told that from the pulpit.”
It’s no secret that attitudes toward same-sex relations have changed in this country: Gay marriage is legal in 19 states plus the District of Columbia, and all major public opinion surveys now show a majority of Americans are in favor of it. But Matthew Vines and Amy Tincher are no longer outliers either: Increasingly, even evangelical Christians, long known for doctrinally condemning homosexuality, are embracing gay people, too.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/evangelicals-gay-marriage-108608.html#ixzz36rKffRWY
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"God's word is never changing," they say, but it changes, or is interpreted differently, quite often.
Most don't know that the Southern Baptists were founded as a breakaway from national Baptists because they wanted to keep slavery intact. They did apologize for that, though, in about 1994, so that made everything OK. And yes, the bible was used in the debate against slavery, but was used more forcibly to allow it to happen in the first place.
If reasonable denominations hadn't sat by and allowed louder, hate-filled "christian" groups to dominate the discussion over the past 30+ years, they might not be losing members as fast as the obvious haters are (though the haters may be gaining thanks to giving out guns, I don't know).
There was something I learned about not being lukewarm, etc. too bad, church mouses, should have made some noise. (Yes, I know, "mice."
On edit: forgot to mention the prophet motive. Changing views brings in members = cash.
