Posted on 10/23/2012 7:00:05 PM PDT by Gamecock
The son of author and speaker Brian McLaren, who is often identified as part of the controversial emergent church, married his same-sex partner this past weekend.
Trevor Douglas McLaren, 28, wed Owen Patrick Ryan on Saturday in Washington, according to The New York Times. The marriage ceremony was officiated by a Universal Life minister, and his father, Brian McLaren, led a commitment ceremony with "traditional Christian elements" afterward.
The elder McLaren recently recalled to NPR the time his son – one of four sons – came out to him.
It had just been a couple of years when McLaren shifted his thinking and abandoned the traditional view of homosexuality being a sin that he grew up with.
"I had gone through my change in this view before I ever guessed that any of my kids might be gay," he said on the radio program.
"I was a good kid, I believed what I'd been told. And as a pastor, I started having gay people come out to me and what became clearer and clearer to me is that their experience was not explained by the theology I inherited," he explained. "And that it would be unjust to continue to uphold what I'd been taught. Maybe I could say it like this: My call to love God and love my neighbor was in conflict with what I'd been taught the Bible required me to say and do."
Recalling the time his son came out to him, McLaren stated, "So I went through that shift in my own thinking. Couple of years after that, when I really in some ways come out myself as a person who no longer supported the traditional view and one of my sons came out to me, I just remember I cried and cried because my thought is 'Oh no, if my son has been going through the same kind of pain so many other people did and I didn't know it, I just couldn't live with that.'"
To his relief, he said, his son Trevor never worried about his parents accepting him.
McLaren is the author of A New Kind of Christianity and most recently Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road?. Decades ago, he and a number of pastors had started what was called the emerging church movement to reach young people. But that later became divided as some pastors, including Mark Driscoll, left over theological concerns.
Matthew Schmitz, deputy editor of First Things, summed up McLaren's journey in an article Tuesday: "Brian McLaren started out wanting to reach the unchurched end up performing a commitment ceremony that stood outside the church not only physically (at the Woodend Sanctuary of the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase, Md) but also doctrinally - in contravention of clearly delineated Christian teaching on the nature of sex and marriage. His desire for a more authentic and less abstracted faith took him away from the concrete body of Christ."
I've never heard of McLaren unless he runs a Formula 1 team as well, but this title smacks of Universalism
Are you referring to Brian McLaren, his son, or both?
The whole nut-wagon lot of them, the fruit loops and flakes too
So much better to worship icons and weeping statues and every Mark, Luke and Mary instead of the true path of going to heaven through the salvation of Jesus.
Jesus is the only Saint, the only deity we are told to pray through to reach God.
McLaren is simply a symptom of the “Emergent Church Movement.” He is only one of dozens of “Christian” leaders with this world view.
I’ve come to recognize that this heretical teaching is infiltrating even traditionally orthodox churches. When a church begins segregating services into “traditional” and “contemporary” worship, be assured that this is the beginning of this leaven working its way into the whole body.
We start out damned, because of our sins. We then can choose salvation, and thereby become saved. If we do nothing, we remain damned.
Dude, you know nothing about McLaren or "emergent" Christianity. They hate Protestantism. It is a post-modern mindset that believes there is no such thing as truth, only individual "narratives". The hate is strong in you.
Oh, come on. That is a ridiculous statement and your heart very well knows it. It would be as ridiculous as saying that romanism is much easier than true Christianity. You don’t have to worry or pray about what to think or say or do, just do what the system tells you and have the dead pray for you so you don’t have to face God.
You know that you know better. But yet you took the time to type something like that. sigh...
“The Holy Church of Christ Without Christ: where the blind don’t see, the lame don’t walk, and what’s dead stays that way.” - Flannery O’Connor
BUMP
None of this nonsense is marriage...’if wishes was fishes’...
avenir wrote:
“ It seems odd, but the God who rightly condemns is the same God who provides salvation from His own rightful condemnation!”
Nicely phrased. You have succinctly encapsulated the out-of-this-world nature of God, “who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”
I guess we are going to have to disagree on the doctrine of total depravity to a degree. We begin wounded by original sin, but not damned by it. Can we agree, as Thomas Aquinas wrote, that special Grace is necessary for us to do any supernaturally good act, to love God, to fulfill God's commandments, to gain eternal life, to prepare for salvation, to rise from sin, to avoid sin, and to persevere, and that we must cooperate with that special Grace?
Peace be with you
LOL “Married”? LOL Hardly. This isn’t a real marriage, this is a FLUKE partnership
The term “marriage” should only be reserved for couples who can produce young. They need the tax break to take care of their offspring. It is biologically IMPOSSIBLE for homosexuals to procreate.
Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman. Anything else is a joke. The government can claim these 2 men are “married” all they want, they aren’t married in my eyes.
2 men are friends, not spouses
Catholics know all about Jesus...He founded our religion. Your statements concerning Catholics show that you know little or nothing....Noone "worships" icons...we decorate our buildings with them.
This is wrong on so many level it suggests that it is intentionally so. Catholics worship only the Triune God. We do not worship icons, statues (weeping or otherwise) or saints. Eastern Catholics believe that icons represent a window to a heaven through which we can more accurately contemplate God in all His glory. It is strictly a tool to help focus the mind, much like religious art of all kinds in the Roman Rite. We do not worship saints, we venerate them. Perhaps your error arises from too narrowly defining the verb "to pray" and being synonymous with worship.
Jesus is the only Saint, the only deity we are told to pray through to reach God."
Jesus is not a Saint, He is the second hypostasis in the hypostatic union that is the Trinity. He one in being with the Father, wholly God.
Peace be with you
really????the christian church (Catholic) did just fine for 1500+years. The along came Luther who not only made up his own rules, but added the alone to an Epistle of St. Paul. Along came Zwingley, Calvin, Henry VIII, Wesley, and all had their own interpretation of what the rules should be. Birth control is O.K., divorce and remarriage is perfectly fine with God, some don't allow organ music in their churches, some are into handling snakes.....
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
O.K.
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