Back in the spring, we did a GetReligion podcast that was accompanied by a post with this title: “What parents (and journalists) can learn from LGBTQ debates at Calvin.”
The Big Idea in that podcast was that Calvin University isn’t just another Christian college — it’s the base camp for a kind of Reformed intellectual A-team that punches way, way, way above its weight in the Council For Christian Colleges and Universities (the global network in which I worked and taught for a quarter of a century or so). Thus, I stated: “What happens at Calvin doesn’t stay at Calvin.”
If you have followed Calvin closely in recent decades, you know that a significant chunk of its faculty believes (this is my summary) that those who truly honor and teach the great Reformed Tradition of Calvinism know that it’s time for new Reformers (that would be them) to reform the out-of-date theological conclusions of their ancestors. You can see similar streams of thought among Methodists, Anglicans, Catholics and even (in a few zip codes) the Eastern Orthodox.
With that in mind, it’s time for this week’s “Crossroads” episode (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which offers an update on Calvin and tensions inside its denomination, care of a Religion News Service story with this headline: “Christian Reformed Church codifies homosexual sex as sin in its declaration of faith.” Actually, if you read carefully, the CRC affirmed 2,000 years of Christian teaching that (a) sex outside of marriage is a sin and (b) Christian marriages unite a man and a women. Here is the overture of that RNS story:
(RNS) — The Christian Reformed Church, a small evangelical denomination of U.S. and Canadian churches, voted … at its annual synod to codify its opposition to homosexual sex by elevating it to the status of confession, or deration of faith.
The 123-53 vote at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, caps a process begun in 2016 when a previous synod voted to form a study committee to bring a report on the “biblical theology” of sexuality.
The vote, following a long day of debate, approves a list of what the denomination calls sexual immorality it won’t tolerate, including “adultery, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, polyamory, pornography and homosexual sex.”
“The church must warn its members that those who refuse to repent of these sins — as well as of idolatry, greed, and other such sins — will not inherit the kingdom of God,” the report says. “It must discipline those who refuse to repent of such sins for the sake of their souls.”
Just asking: That “what the denomination calls” language is interesting. Doesn’t that kind of imply that these teachings belong to the CRC alone — as opposed to being doctrines affirmed by the world’s largest Christian bodies, such as the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Third World Anglicans and most evangelical and Pentecostal believers.