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Several of you have attended the Passion Conferences, organized and spearheaded by Louie Giglio. If you haven’t already heard, Giglio was asked by the President’s Inaugural committee to pray at the President’s second inauguration. Yesterday, after blogs and news outlets started reporting that he had preached a sermon on the biblical view of Homosexuality in the 90’s Giglio withdrew from the ceremony.  If you want to listen to the sermon yourself, you can download it here.

The relevant facts seem to be these:

1. Evidently, in the sermon (which I haven’t listened to), Giglio does no more than clearly explain the biblical stance on homosexuality, offer views on the advance of the Gay-rights movement in our culture, and call people engaged in a homosexual lifestyle to repentance, claiming that God loves them and can help them change.
2. The sermon was given in the 90’s, and since then, Giglio has devoted his life to preaching the gospel, with a strong emphasis on social justice issues like ending human trafficking. Notice, for instance, the irony behind CNN’s twin coverage of this story on the Passion conference which was just held just and raised more than $3 million to end human slavery, and their simultaneous coverage of Giglio’s exit from the inauguration ceremony.
3. Giglio voluntarily withdrew from the ceremony, but The New York Times has reported that the Obama administration initiated his withdrawal: “An official with Mr. Obama’s Presidential Inaugural Committee said the committee, which operates separately from the White House, vetted Mr. Giglio. People familiar with internal discussions between administration and committee officials said the White House viewed the selection as a problem for Mr. Obama, and told the panel on Wednesday night to quickly fix it. By Thursday morning, Mr. Giglio said he had withdrawn.”
4. The president’s spokesperson for the event issued this statement: “We were not aware of Pastor Giglio’s past comments at the time of his selection and they don’t reflect our desire to celebrate the strength and diversity of our country at this Inaugural. Pastor Giglio was asked to deliver the benediction in large part for his leadership in combating human trafficking around the world. As we now work to select someone to deliver the benediction, we will ensure their beliefs reflect this administration’s vision of inclusion and acceptance for all Americans.”

Yesterday on his blog, Justin Taylor highlighted three of the best responses from around the American Christian community:

Joe Carter:

For the past several decades voices inside and outside the church have said that Christians have hurt our witness by focusing on issues that challenge individualistic sexual permissiveness. They say that if we would only focus on actions that show how much we love our neighbor, actions like ending human trafficking, we would be welcomed in the public square. But as the Giglio incident reveals, no amount of good works can atone for committing the secular sin of subscribing to the biblical view of sexuality.

It’s not even enough to stop talking about the issue. As Giglio says in his statement,
“Clearly, speaking on [homosexuality] has not been in the range of my priorities in the past fifteen years.” But for the sexual liberationists, both secular and religious, it is not enough to have stopped talking about an issue decades ago. Anyone who has ever spoken about the issue—or at least has not recanted from believing what God says about homosexuality—is to be treated as a bigot.

Russell Moore:

When it is now impossible for one who holds to the catholic Christian view of marriage and the gospel to pray at a public event, we now have a de facto established state church.  Just as the pre-constitutional Anglican and congregational churches required a license to preach in order to exclude Baptists, the new state church requires a “license” of embracing sexual liberation in all its forms.

Note, this now doesn’t simply exclude harsh and intemperate statements or even activism. Simply holding the view held by every Roman pontiff and by every congregation and synagogue in the world until very recent days is enough to make one “radioactive” in public.

As citizens, we ought to insist that the President stand up to his “base” and articulate a vision of a healthy pluralism in the public square. Notice that the problem is not that this evangelical wants to “impose his religion” on the rest of society.  The problem is not that he wants to exclude homosexuals or others from the public square or of their civil rights. The problem is that he won’t say that they can go to heaven without repentance. That’s not a civil issue, but a religious test of orthodoxy.

Albert Mohler:

The Presidential Inaugural Committee and the White House have now declared historic, biblical Christianity to be out of bounds, casting it off the inaugural program as an embarrassment. By its newly articulated standard, any preacher who holds to the faith of the church for the last 2,000 years is persona non grata. By this standard, no Roman Catholic prelate or priest can participate in the ceremony. No Evangelical who holds to biblical orthodoxy is welcome. The vast majority of Christians around the world have been disinvited. Mormons, and the rabbis of Orthodox Judaism are out. Any Muslim imam who could walk freely in Cairo would be denied a place on the inaugural program. Billy Graham, who participated in at least ten presidential inaugurations is welcome no more. Rick Warren, who incited a similar controversy when he prayed at President Obama’s first inauguration, is way out of bounds. In the span of just four years, the rules are fully changed.

The gauntlet was thrown down yesterday, and the axe fell today. Wayne Besen, founder of the activist group Truth Wins Out, told The New York Times yesterday: “It is imperative that Giglio clarify his remarks and explain whether he has evolved on gay rights, like so many other faith and political leaders. It would be a shame to select a preacher with backward views on LBGT people at a moment when the nation is rapidly moving forward on our issues.”

And there you have it — anyone who has ever believed that homosexuality is morally problematic in any way must now offer public repentance and evidence of having “evolved” on the question. This is the language that President Obama used of his own “evolving” position on same-sex marriage. This is what is now openly demanded of Christians today. If you want to avoid being thrown off the program, you had better learn to evolve fast, and repent in public.

This is precisely what biblical Christians cannot do. While seeking to be gentle in spirit and ruthlessly Gospel-centered in speaking of any sin, we cannot cease to speak of sin as sin. To do so is not only to deny the authority of Scripture, not only to reject the moral consensus of the saints, but it undermines the Gospel itself. The Gospel makes no sense, and is robbed of its saving power, if sin is denied as sin.

An imbroglio is a painful and embarrassing conflict. The imbroglio surrounding Louie Giglio is not only painful, it is revealing. We now see the new Moral McCarthyism in its undisguised and unvarnished reality. If you are a Christian, get ready for the question you will now undoubtedly face: “Do you now or have you ever believed that homosexuality is a sin?” There is nowhere to hide.

There’s one more section from the Time Magazine article I discussed yesterday which bears some thought. It comes near the end of the article, and offers this quote from Frances Kissling, “a long-time abortion-rights advocate, and former president of Catholics for Choice.”

Kissling opposes the specific state laws pushed by pro-life activists but says the pro-choice movement’s effort to “normalize abortion” is counterproductive.

“When people hear us say abortion is just another medical procedure, they react with shock,” she says.

“Abortion is not like having your tooth pulled or having your appendix out. It involves the termination of an early form of human life. That deserves some gravitas.”

It’s hard to overstate the amount of hypocrisy and double-speak in this short statement. And it begs some questions:

• If abortion isn’t “just another medical procedure,” what is it? Are people right or wrong to be “shocked” by that idea? If it shouldn’t be “normalized,” why not? Is Kissling just out manipulate perceptions, or is she after a clear discussion of truth?
• Why is abortion not like “having your tooth pulled,” exactly? Isn’t that the line we’ve all been sold for a couple generations? I can’t imagine being taught in my public schooling that abortion was fundamentally different than any other operation. The immediate question would have been–why not?
• Kissling’s answer to the question is itself pretty shocking, for someone in the center of the pro-abortion movement: “It involves the termination of an early form of human life.” What does this mean? What is “termination”? Is it killing? What is “an early form of human life”? Is it a person? Can there be such a thing as “human life” without a human? What is she saying? (Can you imagine hearing this from the mainstream media, who regularly say “fetus” to make us forgot we’re talking about a baby?)

The fact that this kind of speech can be used to cover and obscure what’s really happening, even when a proponent of the cause admits what’s happening in the pages of Time, displays where we are really heading as a culture. We are not interested in determining what actually is, only in securing our ability to make life-style choices without interference or consequence. And we’re willing to kill in order to have our way.

Paul says of God-rejecting people (in Romans chapter 1) that they “suppress the truth” (v.18), they “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” (v.25), and they refused to keep God in their thoughts (v.28). I can’t help but notice the active verbs here, and see it connected to our current national dialogue about Abortion. We are even willing to step over what science tells us about babies in the womb, and what the consciouses of the very advocates of abortion tell them about the human status of the unborn, to have what we want.