A story from the San Francisco Chronicle shows how the secular culture has dramatically re-shaped the church in recent years. The story reports how a busload of homosexual students is traveling around the country to "visit" Christian colleges and how they are being received. At Liberty University, the homosexual students were arrested after trespassing on the private campus. Trying the same tactic (obviously for publicity purposes which the Chronicle fails to explain), several others were arrested at Regent University in Virginia Beach.But the West Coast is a lot friendlier to the "Equality Ride" -- Biola University (once a bastion of conservative theology and morality) gave the homosexual activists an official welcome...even though the practice of the visitors is to pass out pro-homosexual literature, sing, hold public forums, and openly criticize the teachings of the Bible regarding sexuality.
Jacob Reitan, the 23-year-old Minnesotan who organized the "Equality Ride" is quoted in the article: "We really see these schools as abusing the sanctity of religion by using faith to discriminate."
"We're at a place where we really want to learn from these students," said John W. Back, dean of students at Biola University in La Mirada (Orange County), which prepared for Tuesday's visit for several months. The school might have had a different response three years ago, he said, but now "we're praying for other institutions that they be at a place where they're able to do this..."
The openness of schools like Biola and Azusa Pacific to activists promoting the homosexual agenda is a sign (says the article) of an emerging trend in conservative Christianity to engage rather than shun, said Josh Matlock, who is the minister for college students at the 2,000-member Calvary Church of Santa Ana (Orange County).
Matlock held a series of events last year, called "Confessions of a Sinful Church," where the church publicly apologized for Christianity's past dealings with gays, its early views of slavery and its recent views of science.
"There's a willingness to say we've burnt some bridges and not shown the love of Christ," Matlock said. "It's a new thing happening more and more in the church."
Yes, Reverend Matlock, but why do you believe the love of Christ needs to be positioned counter to the truth of Christ? An official welcome for people aggressively pushing a sin that the Scriptures call an unnatural abomination? Christians need to learn from them?
And what's that goofiness about apologizing for the Church's "recent view of science?" Just what science did Christians dis that got you in a bother? Embryonic stem cell experimentation? Darwinian evolution? Chemical abortion? Genetic manipulation? The selling of the West to the pharmaceutical industry?
Of course, those in the Church have issues, problems and "easily besetting sins" that must be dealt with. We are, after all, commanded to walk in holiness. And to converse with homosexuals (or any other sinners) in a patient, caring way, desiring them earnestly "to come to a knowledge of the truth" is also mandatory. But to compromise God's truth in an effort to appear nice, open-minded and, above all, given to that distorted view of tolerance as defined by non-believers? No. That kind of sell-out is what truly deserves an apology.
