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The Divisions In Christianity Over Sex

The sun rises behind the steeple of Maranatha Baptist Church Sunday, Aug. 23, 2015, in Plains, Ga. The Baptist church where former President Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School classes and he and wife Rosalynn are deacons has been at the heart of their life since they returned to Georgia in 1981. On Sunday morning, Carter will teach his first lesson since detailing the intravenous drug doses and radiation treatment planned to treat melanoma found in his brain after surgery to remove a tumor from his liver. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
The sun rises behind the steeple of Maranatha Baptist Church Sunday, Aug. 23, 2015, in Plains, Ga. The Baptist church where former President Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School classes and he and wife Rosalynn are deacons has been at the heart of their life since they returned to Georgia in 1981. On Sunday morning, Carter will teach his first lesson since detailing the intravenous drug doses and radiation treatment planned to treat melanoma found in his brain after surgery to remove a tumor from his liver. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

With guest host Tom Gjelten. 

Five hundred years after the church was split by the Protestant Reformation, there’s a new division in Christianity. Now, it’s all about sex. Can the fissure be healed?

Guests:

Russell Moore, president of ethics and religious liberty commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. (@drmoore)

Peter Marty, senior pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa and publisher of The Christian Century magazine.

Amelia Boomershine, deacon-in-residence at Grace Church, a Methodist church in Dayton, Ohio.

From The Reading List:

Nasvhille Statement excerpt: “WE AFFIRM that God has designed marriage to be a convenatal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman, as husband and wife, and is meant to signify the covenant love between Christ and his bride the church. WE DENY that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous or polyamorous relationship.”

Boston Declaration excerpt: “As followers of Jesus, the Jewish prophet for justice whose life reminds us to, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mark 12:31) we hear the cries of women and men speaking out about sexual abuse at the hands of leaders in power and we are outraged. We are outraged by the current trends in Evangelicalism and other expressions of Christianity driven by white supremacy, often enacted through white privilege and the normalizing of oppression.”

Five hundred years ago, Christianity was split in two by the Protestant Reformation. Today, Christians are divided again. But this time, it’s not the authority of the pope or the nature of worship in question, it’s sex. What’s moral, what’s not; what the Bible says, what it doesn’t say. What does it mean to be a Christian in the midst of a culture war? Two sides, with dueling manifestos. This hour, On Point: sex and the future of Christianity. —Tom Gjelten 

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