# First LGBT Student Club Sanctioned by a Major Evangelical Seminary



## DMcFadden (Jul 13, 2013)

> PASADENA, Calif. — Nick Palacios struggled to get his conservative Pentecostal parents to accept him as a gay evangelical Christian for nearly a decade before his family found a common ground through faith.
> 
> Now, *as an openly gay seminarian, the 29-year-old hopes to carve out a similar acceptance for other gays in the broader evangelical community through his role as president of the nation's first LGBT student club sanctioned by a major evangelical seminary.* The group, called OneTable, formed last fall at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, one of the world's largest multi-denominational seminaries, and has attracted about three dozen students.
> 
> ...



For some time my alma mater has been a pioneer in all kinds of "firsts" (cf. fellow alum Rob Bell). Now Fuller, boasting 4,500 students, is the first "major evangelical seminary" with its very own "LGBT" club "sanctioned" by the seminary. The fine print in the lengthly article suggests that the school still requires celibacy for its LGBT students, officially at least. However, it is difficult to see this as anything else than a gigantic shift from the traditional evangelical position on homosexual practice.

Founded: 1947 as a bastion of "neo-evangelicalism" (i.e., non fundamentalist orthodoxy) with a commitment to inerrancy
Doctrinal Shift: December 27, 1967 address by D.P. Fuller at the Evangelical Theological Society, advocating a modification of inerrancy
Change in Doctrinal Statement: 1972 (?) - drop "inerrancy" in favor of "infallibility"
Change in traditional Christian practice: 1975 Paul K. Jewett publishes "Man as Male and Female," arguing that Paul was "wrong" in his teaching on women in 1 Timothy 2.
Official acceptance of LGBT student group: 2013.

Founded on the proposition that the Bible was fully inerrant, within 20 years there was a modification to separate the salvific from the non-salvific materials while professing that the Bible is still the "infallible rule of faith and practice." At least in the areas of egalitarianism and homosexuality Fuller has proven itself remarkably flexible in "changing with the times" to embrace the contemporary Zeitgeist with respect to Christian practice in areas of human sexuality.

As for the student reaction . . .



> For years, Palacios armed himself with biblical verses and religious texts he could use to defend his identity as a gay Christian. Now, after years of their son refusing to repress his sexual orientation, Palacios' parents have become more accepting and were even amicable toward a former boyfriend.
> 
> "Just as it has taken me the better part of 20 something years to figure out the blend of faith and orientation I can't expect my friends or family to get it that quickly," he said.
> 
> ...


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## jogri17 (Jul 13, 2013)

If the celibacy requirement is enforced and encouraged, I think this is more than perfectly acceptably. People who struggle with the same sin are the best in helping another with that very same sin.


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## arapahoepark (Jul 13, 2013)

Quite honestly, from all you have written about Fuller and even from what I heard from others, I am surprised this came about only in the last year and not even a decade before.

It's also unfortunately how when these 'homosexuals' find a dichotomy between sexuality and their faith, they'd give up the faith rather than their sexuality.


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## Andres (Jul 13, 2013)

jogri17 said:


> If the celibacy requirement is enforced and encouraged, I think this is more than perfectly acceptably. People who struggle with the same sin are the best in helping another with that very same sin.



I could certainly be wrong, but I didn't at all get the impression that the young man in the article was "struggling" with homosexuality. There is a world of difference between someone struggling and somone who is seeking acceptance for their homosexual lifestyle.


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## Rich Koster (Jul 13, 2013)

Let's see what C. Peter Wagner and Rick Warren have to say


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## SolaScriptura (Jul 13, 2013)

Andres said:


> jogri17 said:
> 
> 
> > If the celibacy requirement is enforced and encouraged, I think this is more than perfectly acceptably. People who struggle with the same sin are the best in helping another with that very same sin.
> ...



I agree with you 100%. This article conveyed that he has embraced and celebrates his homosexuality and does not think it incompatible with his "evangelical" religious beliefs. There is no struggle there.

An example of someone struggling is myself. See, as I type this I am sitting on my deck watching my kids run around. They've been antagonizing each other, shrieking at each other, and I am really _struggling_ with the urge to shoot them in the behind with my Daisy BB gun. But I haven't given in to that urge... yet. 

That's struggle. 

Saying, "This is who I am, and let's start a club so I and others can celebrate our lifestyle," is NOT struggling.

See the difference?


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## Bill The Baptist (Jul 14, 2013)

Am I the only one who as soon as they read the headline knew the school that must be involved?


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## arapahoepark (Jul 14, 2013)

Bill The Baptist said:


> Am I the only one who as soon as they read the headline knew the school that must be involved?



No


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## DMcFadden (Jul 14, 2013)

jogri17 said:


> If the celibacy requirement is enforced and encouraged, I think this is more than perfectly acceptably. People who struggle with the same sin are the best in helping another with that very same sin.



How do you spell "f-i-g l-e-a-f"?
Standing "behind" the official statement while sanctioning the development of an official LGBT club does not strike me as logically or practically compatible. For some time, the direction of the seminary has been moving towards offering a theological rationale for gay marriage and gay ordination. 

By 1991, my seminary theology prof, Paul Jewett, was decesed, but his posthumous theology came out, "God, Creation, and Revelation." In treating God's attributes, he notes that "God determines the meaning of *her* power" and "God's power is *her* personal will." Then, in 1996, "Who We Our: Our Dignity as Human" was published as the second volume of his systematics. In the section of the book that he calls “A ‘Conclusion’ of Sorts,” Jewett asserts: 


> “Something has to be wrong with teaching that evokes absolute hatred, loathing, and disdain for homosexual people. …We are left with the feeling that the church has overdone it, no matter how you cut it; and that homosexuals have certainly suffered more wrong than they have committed; and that there must be flaws in whatever theology of nature or hierarchy of sins has made homosexuality be viewed as the nadir of depravity (even as something was wrong with the theology of place that was used to justify the Crusades). This feeling increases when one becomes acquainted with responsible, Christian, homosexual people.” He ends by asking: “when we defined marriage as a unique relationship between a man and a woman, should we have added, ‘or, on occasion, between a man and a man, or between a woman and a woman’? Is there a real possibility here that we have somehow missed? Or must the celebration of love between people of the same sex perhaps wait for heaven … when, we trust, all that is precious in the myriad forms of frustrated love will at last be fulfilled?”



That the AP piece notes that the president of the club's parents have modified their former opposition to his being gay and that they have developed an amicable attitude toward his former boyfriend, does not suggest that the fig leaf will be large enough to cover the behavioral implicates of the official club. That Rob Bell, another alum of the same school and profs, would recently state his support for gay unions only strengthens my suspicions.

If the AP author got the story wrong, and if the club is a support group for Christians struggling with gay impulses, I will humbly reverse my opinion. However, having sat under professors in Pasadena makes this seem unlikely. When Jewett came out with his "Paul is wrong" view in 1975, I opined that it would make just as much sense to argue that Paul might also be wrong in his teaching against homosexuality. Gay unions and gay marriage would seem consistent conclusions drawn from the hermeneutic Jewett employed in 1975. So, if someone wants to suggest that the LGBT club is simply a support group and not an advocacy group, I stands needin' to be persuaded.

In any case, the polls continue to demonstrate that there has been a gigantic shift in public opinion since my youth. Particularly among the young, there is an openness to homosexuality today. I keep hearing people arguing that "Bible" believing folks were wrong about slavery 150 years ago, they were wrong about women 40 years ago, and they are wrong about homosexuals today. Perhaps no other publication has chronicled this changing tide as clearly as "Christianity Today." The CT of the Carl Henry era is much like the Pasadena seminary he helped form in the late 1940s. The CT of today also closely mirrors the kinds of things taught in that same Pasadena seminary nowadays. In both cases, the profession of "evangelical" identity is proudly paraded while the particulars of that profession continue to be molded in partial conformity to the latest trends in American society. Both institutions "affirm," "proclaim," and "enforce" enough broad evangelicalism to appear beyond reproach. However, it is not so much the answers as the questions left hanging with no answers that give pause.

When dealing with a place with a self-conscious desire to carve out a "third way," neither conservative nor liberal, like Fuller, there is always an "on the one hand" and an "on the other hand." "On the one hand" the institution affirms that the Bible is infallible with respect to matters of "faith and practice." "On the other hand," this does not preclude positing errors in the Bible, admitting that Paul was "wrong," suggesting that we can "move beyond" the specific dicta of the biblical teachings in light of current understanding or the dynamic leading of the Holy Spirit, or flirting with any number of radical critical theories and theological constructs. So, on the one hand, the community standards regarding same sex activity are clear. On the other hand, the school gives official sanction to a group including "openly gay" students who do not want to "forsake their sexuality." Makes sense to me . . . not.


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## DMcFadden (Jul 14, 2013)

> I wasn't going to have to forsake my faith for my sexuality," Palacios said of his struggle for acceptance.



If "sexuality" is defined as a preference for a particular gender without "acting" on it, why would that cause one to fear that he might "forsake" his faith? Would it not only involve such a fear of "forsaking" your faith if you expect to express your "sexuality" in sexual activity that appears to run contrary to the Bible? Cognitive dissoanace would most likely arise if you are _acting_ in ways that are contradictory to your _believing._


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## kvanlaan (Jul 14, 2013)

I am greatly offended. But mostly because they are calling Fuller a 'major evangelical seminary'. Disgusting.


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## DMcFadden (Jul 14, 2013)

kvanlaan said:


> I am greatly offended. But mostly because they are calling Fuller a 'major evangelical seminary'. Disgusting.



I think the "major" part relates to the 4,500 students.


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## Bill The Baptist (Jul 14, 2013)

DMcFadden said:


> kvanlaan said:
> 
> 
> > I am greatly offended. But mostly because they are calling Fuller a 'major evangelical seminary'. Disgusting.
> ...



I think that Kevin was probably objecting to the words "Evangelical" and "seminary", and not "major"


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## kvanlaan (Jul 14, 2013)

Yep, Bill's nailed it. When you are unleashing Rob Bell upon society and calling it good (see Pres Mouw's support of 'Love Wins'), you are no longer 'evangelical'. The _evangelion_ is good news; this is not good news, nor any application thereof from a Biblical perspective. I suppose it is indeed a seminary of a sort, but not an evangelical one.


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## DMcFadden (Jul 15, 2013)

A little tongue in cheek on my part. But, look at the elasticity of the term "evangelical" today: Open Theism, partial inspiration, denial of hell, philosophical physicalism, theistic evolution, pro choice, pro gay, Word of Faith, syncretistic views of other religions, vaticinium ex eventu, acceptance of radical critical views, embrace of neo-Protestant theologies, reductionistic redaction criticism, denial of sola scriptura, revisionist views of justification, etc. As Inigo Montoya might say: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."


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## JML (Jul 15, 2013)

DMcFadden said:


> By 1991, my seminary theology prof, *Paul Jewett*, was decesed, but his posthumous theology came out, "God, Creation, and Revelation." In treating God's attributes, he notes that "God determines the meaning of her power" and "God's power is her personal will." Then, in 1996, "Who We Our: Our Dignity as Human" was published as the second volume of his systematics. In the section of the book that he calls “A ‘Conclusion’ of Sorts,” Jewett asserts:
> “Something has to be wrong with teaching that evokes absolute hatred, loathing, and disdain for homosexual people. …We are left with the feeling that the church has overdone it, no matter how you cut it; and that homosexuals have certainly suffered more wrong than they have committed; and that there must be flaws in whatever theology of nature or hierarchy of sins has made homosexuality be viewed as the nadir of depravity (even as something was wrong with the theology of place that was used to justify the Crusades). This feeling increases when one becomes acquainted with responsible, Christian, homosexual people.” He ends by asking: “when we defined marriage as a unique relationship between a man and a woman, should we have added, ‘or, on occasion, between a man and a man, or between a woman and a woman’? Is there a real possibility here that we have somehow missed? Or must the celebration of love between people of the same sex perhaps wait for heaven … when, we trust, all that is precious in the myriad forms of frustrated love will at last be fulfilled?”



Is that the same guy that wrote the book against infant baptism?


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## Pilgrim (Jul 15, 2013)

DMcFadden said:


> However, it is difficult to see this as anything else than a gigantic shift from the traditional evangelical position on homosexual practice.



Yes, but not so seismic considering the writings of Jewett from the 90's that you quote later. That however was not official institutional policy. I'm not sure if he was still an official faculty member at the time, although the trajectory was obvious. 

Other than being a tragedy all around, this will give the liberals one more club to beat orthodox evangelicals with. "But see, not all evangelicals are so bigoted as you."


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## Pilgrim (Jul 15, 2013)

John Lanier said:


> DMcFadden said:
> 
> 
> > By 1991, my seminary theology prof, *Paul Jewett*, was decesed, but his posthumous theology came out, "God, Creation, and Revelation." In treating God's attributes, he notes that "God determines the meaning of her power" and "God's power is her personal will." Then, in 1996, "Who We Our: Our Dignity as Human" was published as the second volume of his systematics. In the section of the book that he calls “A ‘Conclusion’ of Sorts,” Jewett asserts:
> ...



Yes. And I think the baptism book came a few years after the one in which he wrote that Paul was wrong on women elders and that his teaching in 1 Cor and the pastorals contradicted his teaching in Galatians.

The "Battle for the Bible" in the 70's that culminated in the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy was in large part a result of internecine warfare among then current and former faculty members of Fuller Seminary. The man who wrote the book by that name, Harold Lindsell, was on the Fuller faculty.


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## Damon Rambo (Jul 16, 2013)

> "Jesus wanted us to experience the full expression of humanity.


 Um, where did Jesus EVER say such post-modern non-speak?? BIBLE VERSE *PLEASE*!!!!

I thought we were supposed to repent of "experiencing the full expression of humanity." Sinful humanity is at enmity with God, why would we want to "experience" that??!

My word, I am seriously sick of this nonsense.


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## Pilgrim (Jul 16, 2013)

Pilgrim said:


> John Lanier said:
> 
> 
> > DMcFadden said:
> ...



This fact also points out the subtlety and incremental nature of liberalism. Whether one agrees or disagrees with infant baptism, if one only read Jewett's baptism book, I think he'd find little hint (if any) of his aberrant views on gender/sex issues and inerrancy and would thus suspect that he must have been a solid conservative evangelical.


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## DMcFadden (Jul 16, 2013)

Today I received an e-mail from the Fuller Alumni Network, addressing the AP story. Here is some of what the new president says:



> Fuller has received comments about the Associated Press news article that ran over the weekend about OneTable and the seminary. We here at Fuller have long welcomed the opportunity to engage over vigorous issues of debate within the church and within culture. We understand that this leaves us vulnerable to critique from a broad spectrum.
> 
> We want to provide some clarity about the following points and questions that have been raised in response to the article: What is Fuller's position regarding same-sex marriage? What is the OneTable student group and its purpose? What are Fuller's hopes in discussing issues of sexuality?
> 
> ...


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## Pergamum (Jul 16, 2013)

?

What does that mean?


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## SolaSaint (Jul 16, 2013)

I have to ask why don't we see an Adultry Club start up? Sorry I just get so tired of the LBGT crowd trying to push their agenda into all facets of life.


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## DMcFadden (Jul 17, 2013)

> Now, as an openly gay seminarian, the 29-year-old hopes to carve out a similar acceptance for other gays in the broader evangelical community through his role as president of the nation's first LGBT student club sanctioned by a major evangelical seminary. The group, called OneTable, formed last fall at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, one of the world's largest multi-denominational seminaries, and has attracted about three dozen students.
> 
> "It quickly became apparent to me that I was going to be OK and that I wasn't going to have to forsake my faith for my sexuality," Palacios said of his struggle for acceptance.



"Openly gay seminarian"? "The nation's first LGBT student club sanctioned by a major evangelical seminary"? No advocacy here. Hoping to "carve out acceptance of gays in the broader evangelical community" doesn't imply a shift in institutional policy. 

"These aren’t the droids you’re looking for … He can go about his business … Move along.”

I actually feel sorry for President Mark Labberton. One of the residents at our retirement community, Eddie Gibbs (former FTS prof), thinks that Labberton is a solid fellow who wants to keep Fuller true to its evangelical heritage. However, in my opinion with some of the faculty and some of the student body, that will be a "challenging" project.


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## mercyminister (Jul 18, 2013)

"No" still means "No," "Never," and "Absolutely not!" What is it that liberals find confusing about this? Paul was very clear in his teachings.


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## Jeffriesw (Jul 19, 2013)

DMcFadden said:


> > PASADENA, Calif. — Nick Palacios struggled to get his conservative Pentecostal parents to accept him as a gay evangelical Christian for nearly a decade before his family found a common ground through faith.
> >
> > Now, *as an openly gay seminarian, the 29-year-old hopes to carve out a similar acceptance for other gays in the broader evangelical community through his role as president of the nation's first LGBT student club sanctioned by a major evangelical seminary.* The group, called OneTable, formed last fall at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, one of the world's largest multi-denominational seminaries, and has attracted about three dozen students.
> >
> ...



I believe his statement above may speak volumes about his "faith". Christ called us to give up all to follow him, not be willing to trade Him in, when it strikes our fancy to do so. That is not faith, but some feel good psuedo spirituality.


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## kappazei (Jul 19, 2013)

Is there a caveat anywhere that says any student at Fuller needs to verbally and in writing affirm the biblical position that homosexual practice is sin? And that the belief that homsexual practice is sin is the only biblical position?


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