Pete Buttigieg & Christianity’s Ongoing Western Collapse
Pete Buttigieg is the homosexual “married” mayor of South Bend, Indiana (population 101,000), and he’s a major contender in the Democratic presidential primary race. He’s only 37 years old and perceived by many as the voice of a new generation of young politicians. Because of this perception, and his potential social impact, his synthesis of homosexuality and Christianity is worth considering.
Mayor Pete claims God created him to be homosexual and that acting on those impulses and “marrying” another man has brought him closer to God. He responded to Vice President Mike Pence’s religious opposition to homosexuality by saying: “And yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God.”
It’s likely Buttigieg’s view on homosexuality and Christianity is predominant among Christian Millennials, but democracy has never swayed God’s mind. When the Israelites cried out against Moses in the wilderness God had to be restrained from destroying them all. The Washington Post was able to report shortly after Franklin Graham’s negative reaction to Buttigieg’s views with an article claiming that most Christians now agree that homosexual behavior and Christian identity are compatible. Can we, as Christians confidently deny the Post's claim?
I’m currently part of a network of small house churches that’s around 80% Millennial. Most of us come from the Church of Christ and affiliated universities. And yet, I can count on one hand how many of us would agree that homosexual “marriage” is sinful. I know that’s anecdotal evidence, but I’ve seen plenty of statistics suggesting my experience is normal. The Millennial generation is more woke than God, and I’m afraid we’re going to pay a terrible price for that.
Before my generation decides to embrace homosexuality, however, it might be worth asking the very important question of why we should identify at all with a religion that spent the last twenty centuries encouraging the oppression of an innocent minority group? Never in the history of Christianity has homosexuality been accepted as anything but an abomination, and now we’re on the verge of reforming all that, and yet we still claim to believe in that religion. Pat Buchanan asked similar questions in a column on Buttigieg’s comments:
Buchanan predicted a “coming crackup” of Christianity. Our churches and other institutions have already begun capitulating on the God given moral doctrines we’ve taken for granted for the last two millennia. Even nominally “conservative” (whatever that even means anymore) churches are internally divided by politics and generational miscommunications that complicate the possibility for clear dividing lines between the orthodox and liberal camps.
From a Western perspective, everything is moving towards the collapse of historically recognizable Christianity. Christians are apostatizing at record rates, churches are abandoning any pretense of biblical morality, and our institutions are almost tripping over themselves in an effort to conform with sustainable long-term financial planning in accordance with social expectations (i.e. the jettison of any substance unapproved by secular liberal capitalism).
However, from a global perspective the West is an increasingly ridiculous aberration. Christianity is exploding around the world, and these new Christians are beginning to look at Western society as immoral, decadent, and declining. Western theology is more and more removed from the Bible and consumed with weird liberal obsessions relating to the proliferation of absurd new “human rights,” wacko mutations of social justice, and deconstructing “oppressive structures” like family, gender, ethnicity, and authority. The West, and the Western church aligned with its trajectory, is being provincialized of its own accord. Its freakish death spiral into an orgy of drug fueled mass immigration feminist suicide is viewed with appalling confusion outside the confines of “baizuo” (白左) bubbles. The future of Christianity is increasingly non-Western not because the rest of the world is surpassing the West, but because the West decided to kill itself, and Western Christians decided they wanted to take themselves and their religion down with it.
The Church of Christ, however, is not very global in comparison with other traditions like Catholicism and Pentecostalism. The vast majority of our members are located in the Southern United States, and that region is increasingly infiltrated by the ideas Pete Buttigieg represents.
How do we move forward? I think it’s important to realize the trajectory of history. Our civilization is in terminal decline. We no longer have the ability to self-correct. I’m not capable of having a serious discussion about the issue of homosexual “marriage” with almost anyone in my house church without almost immediately being shouted down as some kind of horrible bigot who’s “holding us in the past” or “oppressing people with hateful attitudes.” There’s no way back. The path to reform lies on the other side of a dialogue we’re incapable of having.
The solution is acceleration. Something has to break. Little is possible before a collapse takes down the skeletal diseased captain now steering the sinking western church. Only when we’re floating on pieces of wood in the middle of the ocean praying for God to save us will we have the possibility of finding a way forward towards something purer and in line with God’s ancient truth. This disintegration is too complete for us to expect to be able to build counter institutions. The flailing passengers of this doomed vessel are too violent to allow for any sane person to provide a reasonable repair plan. They’re so consumed with delusion that they’ll deny we have a problem as the water rises over our knees. Those of us who want to reform/restore the church to its former glory should start blowing up the hull and speeding up the water intake, and maybe a few of our ironically woke peers will finally awaken to the truth.
Mayor Pete claims God created him to be homosexual and that acting on those impulses and “marrying” another man has brought him closer to God. He responded to Vice President Mike Pence’s religious opposition to homosexuality by saying: “And yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God.”
It’s likely Buttigieg’s view on homosexuality and Christianity is predominant among Christian Millennials, but democracy has never swayed God’s mind. When the Israelites cried out against Moses in the wilderness God had to be restrained from destroying them all. The Washington Post was able to report shortly after Franklin Graham’s negative reaction to Buttigieg’s views with an article claiming that most Christians now agree that homosexual behavior and Christian identity are compatible. Can we, as Christians confidently deny the Post's claim?
I’m currently part of a network of small house churches that’s around 80% Millennial. Most of us come from the Church of Christ and affiliated universities. And yet, I can count on one hand how many of us would agree that homosexual “marriage” is sinful. I know that’s anecdotal evidence, but I’ve seen plenty of statistics suggesting my experience is normal. The Millennial generation is more woke than God, and I’m afraid we’re going to pay a terrible price for that.
Before my generation decides to embrace homosexuality, however, it might be worth asking the very important question of why we should identify at all with a religion that spent the last twenty centuries encouraging the oppression of an innocent minority group? Never in the history of Christianity has homosexuality been accepted as anything but an abomination, and now we’re on the verge of reforming all that, and yet we still claim to believe in that religion. Pat Buchanan asked similar questions in a column on Buttigieg’s comments:
“What Buttigieg is saying is that either God changes his moral law to conform to the changing behavior of mankind or that, for 2,000 years, Christian preaching and practice toward homosexuals has been bigoted, injurious and morally indefensible. If Pete is right, since the time of Christ, Christians have ostracized and persecuted gays simply for being and behaving as God intended. And if that is true, what is the defense of Christianity?”Why should we remain Christians if our religion was so horribly wrong about critical issues like LGBT rights for such an incredibly long period of time?
Buchanan predicted a “coming crackup” of Christianity. Our churches and other institutions have already begun capitulating on the God given moral doctrines we’ve taken for granted for the last two millennia. Even nominally “conservative” (whatever that even means anymore) churches are internally divided by politics and generational miscommunications that complicate the possibility for clear dividing lines between the orthodox and liberal camps.
From a Western perspective, everything is moving towards the collapse of historically recognizable Christianity. Christians are apostatizing at record rates, churches are abandoning any pretense of biblical morality, and our institutions are almost tripping over themselves in an effort to conform with sustainable long-term financial planning in accordance with social expectations (i.e. the jettison of any substance unapproved by secular liberal capitalism).
However, from a global perspective the West is an increasingly ridiculous aberration. Christianity is exploding around the world, and these new Christians are beginning to look at Western society as immoral, decadent, and declining. Western theology is more and more removed from the Bible and consumed with weird liberal obsessions relating to the proliferation of absurd new “human rights,” wacko mutations of social justice, and deconstructing “oppressive structures” like family, gender, ethnicity, and authority. The West, and the Western church aligned with its trajectory, is being provincialized of its own accord. Its freakish death spiral into an orgy of drug fueled mass immigration feminist suicide is viewed with appalling confusion outside the confines of “baizuo” (白左) bubbles. The future of Christianity is increasingly non-Western not because the rest of the world is surpassing the West, but because the West decided to kill itself, and Western Christians decided they wanted to take themselves and their religion down with it.
The Church of Christ, however, is not very global in comparison with other traditions like Catholicism and Pentecostalism. The vast majority of our members are located in the Southern United States, and that region is increasingly infiltrated by the ideas Pete Buttigieg represents.
How do we move forward? I think it’s important to realize the trajectory of history. Our civilization is in terminal decline. We no longer have the ability to self-correct. I’m not capable of having a serious discussion about the issue of homosexual “marriage” with almost anyone in my house church without almost immediately being shouted down as some kind of horrible bigot who’s “holding us in the past” or “oppressing people with hateful attitudes.” There’s no way back. The path to reform lies on the other side of a dialogue we’re incapable of having.
The solution is acceleration. Something has to break. Little is possible before a collapse takes down the skeletal diseased captain now steering the sinking western church. Only when we’re floating on pieces of wood in the middle of the ocean praying for God to save us will we have the possibility of finding a way forward towards something purer and in line with God’s ancient truth. This disintegration is too complete for us to expect to be able to build counter institutions. The flailing passengers of this doomed vessel are too violent to allow for any sane person to provide a reasonable repair plan. They’re so consumed with delusion that they’ll deny we have a problem as the water rises over our knees. Those of us who want to reform/restore the church to its former glory should start blowing up the hull and speeding up the water intake, and maybe a few of our ironically woke peers will finally awaken to the truth.