Mortal Remains
Where the Gulf Is Fixed
A chap I grew up with told me that while browsing Internet news sources he got distracted by one of those links to an online test. This one proposed to assess not only his knowledge of the Bible, but also his level of academic attainment. He told me it was a straightforward Bible knowledge test, with no unusually demanding questions. Out of fifty he answered forty-nine correctly, and the test told him he was an impressive Bible scholar with a Ph.D. This we found amusing, for any reasonably attentive ninth-grader raised in an Evangelical church such as we attended could have done the same, and doubtless Becky the Pastor's Daughter would have gotten all fifty—when she was ten.
I have noted that people outside this world, especially when they're doing up poll questions, don't distinguish between mere church members, including those who attend regularly, and those who regard the Scriptures as the Word of God and are on intimate terms with the Bible. The second is a very distinct and significant subclass of the first. (The Catholic equivalent would perhaps be someone with an accurate and extensive knowledge of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.) Nor is there much understanding of the extent to which the worldview of the knowledgeably devout Bible-Christian, usually identified as "Evangelical," is directed by the Scriptures, nor of the extent of his freedom (some might say depth of insulation) from opinions controlled by the universities or the secular media, which his allegiance to higher authority not only affords but demands.
It also appears to be a long and rare step down the road of understanding (although a few unabashed Nietzscheans are clear-sighted on this) to recognize that the fundamental problem secular liberals have with "Evangelicals" is not with some kind of Christian, but with Christianity itself—that the antique beliefs progressives find so offensive are ecumenical (thus non-fanatic) among serious Christians of all denominations, arising from a common view of the essential nature, order, and destiny of reality under God. This view of universal history is shared by conservative Evangelicals with the doctrinal core of the older catholic churches over against the modern secularism in which the name of God serves primarily as an expletive, or as something to jeer at conventions of Democrats. (Saying this we remember the observant Jews and Muslims for whom also the name of God is ineffable and holy.)
Absolute Alienation
It is this ignorance of Christianity, cultivated in progressivist culture because of the importance of caricaturing and demonizing the faith, that makes it difficult for members of the Democratic Party to understand the gravity to serious Christians of the changes that have taken place in that party and its analogs in other Western nations during the last several generations—in particular (and this is my principal concern in this piece) the absolute character of the alienation effected between Christians and modern liberals by the acceptance of homosexuality—a bottomless and categorically different alienation than that produced by the other great party contention: abortion.
Those who wish to assure themselves that the Democratic Party's losses in its steady march leftwards are much due to its abandonment by bigots and ignoramuses should understand that the bigotry and ignorance to which they are referring are now primarily the explicit teachings of the Christian Scriptures—in spite of apostate conventicles that display rainbow banners and profess to be "welcoming"—for the constitutional documents are unalterably against them, and will not go away.
In a fundamentally different way than in the abortion controversy, advocacy of homosexuality and related sexual confusions has established an uncrossable frontier, and thrusts what is at issue between sexually emancipated modernism and Christianity into an eschatological framework. While it has been possible for a Christian to argue that abortion is in certain limited cases justifiable, and thus be more weakly opposed to it than he might wish to be, he cannot in like manner sanction sexual perversion, for while the wrongness of abortion is a derivative teaching for which a case must be made, the Bible without question proscribes sexual perversion and says it is damning. While forgiveness and cleansing from this and other sins is offered to the penitent, the unrepentant homosexual and those who approve of his moral disorder "will not inherit the Kingdom of God."
Clear & Unequivocal
This could hardly be made plainer than it is in the New Testament epistles. Because "it is written," axiomatic, and so not open to serious debate, ultimately it makes no difference to Christians if the advocates of homosexuality appeal in the most provocative ways to love, sympathy, kindness, and every virtue to excuse it, and identify those who hold it sinful as haters and hateful, the very antithesis of "Christian"—and threaten persecution by referring to them increasingly in terms of unlebenswertes Leben that the world would be better without—for now they are pressing their attack on ground where there is no reasonable confusion, and the Christian Nay is as clear and unequivocal as it can possibly be.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
28.5—Sept/Oct 2015
on Our Sacred Duty to Teach the Devil to Death by Marcus Johnson
24.3—May/June 2011
The Making & Endurance of the King James Bible, 1611-2011 by Barton Swaim
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
