Churches & Same Sex Marriage
by Mark Tooley, Juicy Ecumenism:
How has same sex marriage changed or affected America’s churches? Not much AND a great deal.
Almost all of official Christianity continues to disapprove same sex marriage and affirm sex only within male female marriage. No major church body has changed their stance since the 2015 court ruling and none are likely. Several declining oldline denominations had already abandoned traditional Christian teaching before the ruling. They are the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, plus the Christian Church Disciples of Christ. They collectively represent perhaps 5% or less of USA church members and are fast declining. Their example is instructive to others who might be tempted.
There is to my knowledge no Christian denomination in world that has abandoned marriage teaching that was not already declining and did not suffer further and usually accelerating decline afterwards. In the USA, the three largest religious bodies affirm only traditional marriage: Roman Catholicism, Southern Baptist Convention, and United Methodism. The latter of course surprises many because it is the largest historically liberal oldline Protestant denomination. But its membership is global, and its growing and soon to be majority overseas African membership has kept it orthodox, to the exasperation of USA liberals. The UMC even has an official stance affirming laws in civil society defining marriage as union of man and woman.
America’s largest religious demographic is evangelicals. There is a growing evangelical left that’s embarrassed by Christianity’s and specifically Evangelicalism’s counter cultural teachings especially on sex. In the Evangelical Left mythology, Christianity without serious sexual restrictions would be more inclusive, more welcoming and therefore more evangelistically successful. These voices are typically uninformed about or just ignore the oldline Protestant example even as they advocate evangelicalism become more like the fading Episcopal church.
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