Adam and Eve
Have you heard of the Emergent Church? It’s an ultra-liberal circle within Protestantism. In 2008, a young Evangelical woman named Kristen Scharold wrote the following in First Things regarding the Emergent Church movement:
And it should not be so counterintuitive that young evangelicals such as myself prefer theology rooted in tradition to a spirituality waffling in relativism. We want a story with a climax so profound that it leaves us worshiping God, not reducing him to fit into our cultural paradigm.
Certainly sounds pretty conservative to me. She doesn’t want any watered down theology, but instead wants the real thing. She doesn’t want to worship an idol that society wants God to be but the God of the Bible who created the Earth and Heavens. The entire article can be found here:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/05/the-emerging-church-and-its-cr
A few days ago, Kristen Scharold published an article in the New York Times. It talks about how she moved from the Midwest to Brooklyn and started attending a conservative Church there. She was looking for a husband until this woman entered her life and then she stopped searching for a husband. She started dating this girl and they eventually told the Pastor. They were both expelled from the Church. At one point Kristen says:
In Jess, I saw the love Jesus preached, one unconstrained by conditions and extended to everyone, especially the forgotten, the stranger. Jesus never mentioned homosexuality. His cosmology was not studded with creeds, crimes and contempt; its essence was loving the marginalized. Every fiber of Jess’s being reflected this. She embodied the attributes Jesus was most passionate about: compassion, kindness, justice. How could loving someone who loved so well be wrong?
The article can be found here:
This article is very depressing to read for a number of reasons. An interesting thing to point out is that Kristen never seemed to be uncomfortable with her sexuality before she met Jess. She started attending the conservative Church as an adult with the full intention of finding a husband. I’m going to guess that Jess was the same way since a conservative Church is not the ideal place to go in searching for a homosexual partner.
I firmly believe that if either of these women would have had the right guy come along in time, things would have ended out well. After all, that is what Kristen was looking for.
Another depressing thing is that these girls are not bad people in regards to anything else. They never had any bad feelings toward their Church or Evangelicalism in general. They were faithful Evangelicals in every way with the exception of their homosexuality. In everything I’ve read from Kristen, she seems very kind and polite.
Articles like this are powerful. They will change the minds of an Evangelical in regards to homosexual “marriage” far quicker than the arguments of Matthew Vines. Emotion is power and articles like this bring out emotion. Secularists will look at this article, point to traditional Christians and say that we’re heartless for not supporting stories like these. We’ll be made out to be the bogeymen in their vicious smear campaigns. None of that matters to me since I find truth to be more important, despite how unpopular it will make me.
I will admit that I felt emotion when reading this article. I felt so bad for Kristen that she didn’t find the husband that she was looking for. I felt bad that before she realized what was going on, she was dating this woman from Church. I felt bad that she didn’t have the courage to go to her Pastor sooner when things started to get deep between her and Jess. I felt bad that she never looked to Matthew 19 or Ephesians 5 while ironically teaching a Bible study at her Church.
A young woman educated at Wheaton College gave into secular culture and it’s empty promises. I guess at the end of the day we should realize that no one is invincible. Whenever someone is in need of help I simply tell them to stay close to Christ. He is the answer to everything and I hope that one day He liberates Kristen Scharold.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.