Adapted from my upcoming book Are Christian Sexual Ethics Outmoded? In confronting the routinization of same-sex marriage (SSM) we are witnessing the collapse of a massive “plausibility structure.” By “plausibility structure,” I mean what Peter Berger has described as a humanly constructed coercive objectivity that has gained the “power to constitute and to impose itself as [...]
Month: July 2013
Liberalism 3.0
Theological liberalism narrowly considered is identified with a movement in Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but its theological impulse — to conform the Faith to the spirit of the age — has been around since the Garden of Eden. (In this sense, the ancient Jews, when they syncretized their [...]
Same-Sex Marriage and Cultural Routinization
The U. S. Supreme Court has paved the way for wholesale cultural routinization of same-sex "marriage." By “routinization” I mean the blithe acceptance of homosexuality as no more odd than relatively rare human phenomena like red-headedness or left-handedness. We wouldn’t say redheaded or left-handed people shouldn’t marry, would we? This is routinization. It has been [...]
A DISTINCTIVELY NEO-REFORMATIONAL PARADIGM FOR CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT
Commencement address delivered Friday, June 14, 2013 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Pharr, Texas, Edinburg Theological Seminary Introduction I congratulate you graduates on your accomplishment. Seminary isn’t easy, but nothing in life worth having is easy. What you have learned at ETS will shape your entire life and ministry. I am grateful to President Vallencia and [...]
