The issue of gay marriage now rocks our culture and our politics, generating new headlines almost daily.  At a time like this, it seems both odd and out of character for the PC(USA) to be presently keeping silent.

The cost of keeping silence on this issue is quietly present in the legions of anguished souls who have been driven away from our congregations, away from Christian faith, and sometimes away from life itself by the unrelenting personal condemnation they hear in the church’s proclamation.

But there is another, equally grievous cost to our silence: Our church’s quiet complicity in the status quo now serves to undermine the credibility of the Gospel.

While the PC(USA) keeps silence, other churches across the land loudly proclaim that their opposition to gay marriage is deeply rooted in the Gospel and the Scripture. And because of this, broad reaches of American culture have become convinced that the Christian Gospel is something hateful.

Not only have our churches turned a deaf ear to the voices of gay people, we have also shut our ears very selectively to the voice of our own theological tradition…

Covenant Network week, with its focus on same-sex marriage, continues at ecclesio.com with an excerpt of Mark Achtemeier’s “The Plan-B God,” an address delivered to the Twin Cities Area Regional Conference in October 2012.  Read the excerpt and the full address.

A second lecture, “The Redemption of Our Bodies,” continued the argument at the Covenant Network regional conference in Kansas City in November 2012. Both addresses will be part of a forthcoming book by Dr. Achtemeier on same-sex marriage and the Bible.