Ron Belgau

During the debate over Galileo, some theologians appealed to verses of Scripture to “prove” that Galileo’s sun-centered model of the solar system could not be correct. For example, Psalm 93:1 says, “the world is established; it shall never be moved.” Along with 1 . . . . Continue Reading »

The Fall, 2013 issue of  Leadership Journal  has an article by Stanton Jones up entitled, ” Help, I’m Gay .” It is billed as “A pastoral conversation about same-sex attraction.” The editors chose to illustrate the article with the picture at left. This would . . . . Continue Reading »

In his excellent posts from Monday ( Celibacy Is Not the Gospel  and  Celibacy in Light of the Resurrection ), Wes attempted to respond to the following concern: “If we’re going to ask gay Christians to give up gay sex, that self-denial must be demonstrably  good  for . . . . Continue Reading »

Over at Spiritual Friendship, I have posted two excerpts from C. S. Lewis on how Christians should respond to homosexuality. Rather than repost both in their entirety here, here are links: C. S. Lewis on Homosexuality & Disgust  In the first excerpt, taken from  Surprised by Joy , . . . . Continue Reading »

Celibacy has a kind of  duck-rabbit  quality, at least in my experience. If you catch me in one mood, and ask me what celibacy is like, I will be inclined to point out that one needs to be honest about the struggles and frustrations that go with it, and recognize how difficult a burden . . . . Continue Reading »

One of the common criticisms of a traditionally Christian sexual ethic is that it forces a lot of gay people into  involuntary celibacy , which some find very lonely, painful, frustrating. I want to start by saying I think this critique is at least partially right. Trying to be faithful to a . . . . Continue Reading »

In my  last post , I pointed out the way that some Christians have exploited the ambiguous meaning of the word “gay” to make misleading promises (like “You don’t have to be gay”) to others. Today, I want to look at how the word is sometimes used to mislead . . . . Continue Reading »

In contemporary culture, “gay” is the most common word for describing homosexual persons. This has become so much a part of the default language that  Pope Francis used it as a neutral description of a person’s sexual attractions  in response to a question at a recent . . . . Continue Reading »

When I was an undergraduate, I read two of the most important ex-gay books of the time:  Coming Out of Homosexuality   by Bob Davies and Lori Rentzel, and  Straight & Narrow?   by Thomas Schmidt. Coming out of Homosexuality  was 208 pages long, and offered three . . . . Continue Reading »

For almost 20 centuries, there was little controversy over Christian teaching about homosexuality. For the last few decades, there has been an extraordinary amount of controversy. How should Christians respond to this changing situation? In a helpful  recent blog post , Christopher Damian . . . . Continue Reading »