Hypocrisy Alert: (Anti Virginity Proponent) Russell Moore to Pastors: Don’t Do Wedding Ceremonies for Couples Living in Sin
This is the same Moore who (Link): attacks and ridicules adult Christian virgins for being virgins until marriage.
So this doofus has a hella lot of nerve lecturing Christian preachers about not performing Christians who are living in sexual sin.
Moore: you do not honor Christian adults who are Virgins who are waiting ’til marriage to have sex, (which is a very basic Christian sexual ethic), so how do you square away bad-mouthing and shaming Christian couples who may be “shacking up?”
You actually have, in the past, criticized and shamed singles who are living sexually pure life styles. You are being absolutely hypocritical here:
(Link): Russell Moore to Pastors: Don’t Do Wedding Ceremonies for Couples Living in Sin by S. Smith
Excerpts:
- Leading Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore is encouraging pastors not to perform wedding ceremonies for couples who are not Christians and those who are living in sin simply because members of their families belong to their church or their congregation is pressuring them to do so.
- Moore, who is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, spoke at a conference on “The Church and Sexuality” that was held at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, by the state’s Baptist and Southern Baptist leaders on Monday.
- (Link): Alabama.com reports that Moore told the crowd of about 500 people that pastors cannot hold non believers and those already living in sin accountable to their wedding vows if they are already not living their lives by God’s design.
- “You cannot marry anyone except believers and people under the authority of Jesus Christ,” Moore explained. “Unbelievers, you cannot hold accountable to their vows.”
- Moore added that pastors need to be able to resist congregational pressures to perform wedding ceremonies that they know they shouldn’t conduct.
- “It takes courage not to do weddings, to say, ‘I’m not going to do that,'” Moore said.
- Moore expanded by providing a hypothetical scenario in which a deacon wants the pastor of his church to marry his daughter, who the pastor knows to be living in sin outside of marriage.
- The pastor still has the obligation to refuse conducting such a ceremony even though it might put he or she at odds with the deacon, Moore said.
- “You’ve got a crisis,” Moore added. “Think about what’s at stake. You have to have courage to do that [take a stand].”
- During his keynote address, Moore touched on the “Christian sexual ethic” by implying that if a Christian chooses to overlook the sexual morality laid out in the Bible, it is tantamount to discarding Christianity.
- “If we are a Gospel people, that means our interpretation of a Christian sexual ethic is not a matter of our choosing,” Moore said. “It’s a mandate that He has given to us. If we are able to discard a Christian sexual ethic, then that means we invented it, which means we should not only discard the sexual ethic, we should discard the Christianity.”
- “The texts of the Christian Scripture are very clear,” Moore said. “Marriage is designed to be a Gospel tract. It is designed to point beyond itself to the union of God and His Church.”
- Moore added that God purposefully designed marriage to be a lifelong and faithful union between one man and woman.
- “Adulterous unions preach a different Gospel, that Christ is not faithful to his bride. That male-female, lifelong permanent union in marriage, all these relationships are intended to point to the Gospel of Jesus Christ,”
Moore continued. “They are to train us to recognize the Gospel when we see it.” - “God’s good design is resilient. There are going to be a lot of refugees from the sexual revolution, because the sexual revolution cannot keep its promises.”
Regarding this portion:
- “Adulterous unions preach a different Gospel, that Christ is not faithful to his bride. That male-female, lifelong permanent union in marriage, all these relationships are intended to point to the Gospel of Jesus Christ,”
Marriage is not the Gospel.
I think complementarians (such as Moore) make much too much out of marriage.
If you want to go this route, I can argue that adult singleness also displays the Gospel: Jesus taught there will be no marriage in the afterlife, so adult Christian singles in the “here and now” are already modeling the Gospel as it will look in the future. So how do you like that?
But neither martial status (or others: divorced, widowed, etc) are the Gospel either, and I don’t think that marriage models the Gospel, either. Jesus Christ models the Gospel. Not marriage.
—————-
Related Posts:
(Link): No, Christians and Churches Do Not Idolize Virginity and Sexual Purity
(Link): The Single American Woman via NY Magazine
(Link): Single Adults – Why They Stay and Why They Stray From Church – Book Excerpts
(Link): The Nauseating Push by Evangelicals for Early Marriage
(Link): Are Single People the Lepers of Today’s Church? by Gina Dalfonzo
(Link): The Christian and Non Christian Phenomenon of Virgin Shaming and Celibate Shaming
(Link): Lies The Church Tells Single Women (by Sue Bohlin)
(Link): Please Stop Shaming Me for Being Single by J. Vadnal
(Link): A Response by Colon to Regnerus Re: Misguided Early Marriage Propaganda
(Link): Christian Preacher Admits He Won’t Preach About Sexuality For Fear It May Offend Sexual Sinners
(Link): Family as “The” Backbone of Society? – It’s Not In The Bible
(Link): Creepy: ‘Barna: [Christian] Women Value Family Over Faith’
(Link): Pew for One: How Is the Church Responding to Growing Number of Singles? by S. Hamaker
(Link): Our Bodies Were Not Made for Sex by T. Swann
(Link): The Christian and Non Christian Phenomenon of Virgin Shaming and Celibate Shaming
(Link): Article: Our Born-Again Virgin Bachelor – Secondary or Spiritual Virginity
Christian Pundit 