THE CHURCH OF SEX

THE CHURCH OF SEX

Exclusive: David Kupelian challenges Pastor Mark Driscoll about his 'obsession'

Warning: The following column contains sexually explicit language.

Being pastor of one of the fastest-growing mega-churches in the country and announcing that, out of the entire transcendent Bible – which holds the secrets to heaven and hell and eternal happiness or eternal darkness – your favorite part is about stripping?

There’s a new form of Christianity sweeping the U.S. Its main focus: sex.

Don’t be surprised. We already have a Christian denomination catering to every other worldview, comfort zone and obsession, so why not sex? As I said in “The Marketing of Evil”:

“No matter what kind of person you are, a form of Christianity has evolved just for you. There’s a politically liberal Christianity and a politically conservative Christianity. There’s an acutely activist Christianity and an utterly apolitical Christianity, a Christianity that holds up a high standard of ethical behavior and service, and a Christianity for which both personal ethics and good works are irrelevant. There’s a raucous, intensely emotional Christianity drenched in high-voltage music, and there’s a quiet, contemplative Christianity. There’s a loving Christianity and a hateful, racist Christianity, a Christianity that honors Jews as God’s chosen people and a Christianity that maligns Jews as Satan’s children.”

So, it was just a matter of time before we got a version of Christianity for people obsessed with sex.

Pastor Mark Driscoll

And while there is a surprising number of preachers, teachers and Christian websites today whose main focus is sex, the most prominent is Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of the wildly popular Seattle mega-church Mars Hill Church. According toMars Hill’s website, Driscoll’s mostly youthful flock has grown from a handful of people in a home Bible study to over 19,000 people meeting across 14 locations in four states.

“One of the world’s most-downloaded and quoted pastors,” says Driscoll’s official bio, “his audience – fans and critics alike – spans the theological and cultural left and right. He was also named one of the ’25 Most Influential Pastors of the Past 25 Years’ by Preaching magazine, and his sermons are consistently No. 1 on iTunes each week for Religion & Spirituality with over 10 million of downloads each year.”

By the way, as runner-up for top mega-church pastor in “The Church of Sex,” I’d nominate Ed Young, senior pastor of Dallas-based Fellowship Church, who recently staged “a 24-hour bed-in with his wife atop his church,” a stunt designed to publicize his just-released New York Times best-seller, “Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy With Your Spouse.”

But back to Driscoll: I have nothing personal against this popular, hip, tough-talking young pastor in blue jeans, and I totally understand the appeal of his blunt, masculine, passionate style – a refreshing respite from all the stuffy, pretentious and cowardly pastors out there.

However, let’s just state the obvious: Mark Driscoll is utterly obsessed with sex.

He tells, for instance, the following story of one female member of his congregation who – and I quote – “brought her husband to Christ” by giving him oral sex, in accord with Driscoll’s specific pastoral advice to her. Here’s how Driscoll, during a Nov. 18, 2007, sermon in Edinburgh, Scotland, described this particular husband’s “conversion”:

She [the wife] says, “I’ve never performed oral sex on my husband. I’ve refused to.” I said, “You need to go home and tell your husband that you’ve met Jesus and you’ve been studying the Bible, and that you’re convicted of a terrible sin in your life. And then you need to drop his trousers, and you need to serve your husband. And when he asks why, say, ‘Because I’m a repentant woman. God has changed my heart and I’m supposed to be a biblical wife.’” She says, “Really?” I said, “Yeah. First Peter 3 says if your husband is an unbeliever to serve him with deeds of kindness.” [Laughter from audience] How many men would agree, that is a deed of kindness. He doesn’t want tracts. Those won’t do anything. What we’re talking about here could really help.

Really, people? Is this what we now stoop to in our efforts to make the magnificent Christian faith – the moral foundation of Western civilization – more appealing to a rudderless, confused and sex-drenched generation? Is this what now passes for pastoral counseling and preaching the Bible? I call it abuse and exploitation. I would even call it blasphemy (“… tell your husband that you’ve met Jesus … And then you need to drop his trousers …”).

Driscoll was “preaching” the Song of Solomon, which he has said repeatedly is his favorite part of the Bible and about which he preaches often. It’s also a major focus of “Real Marriage,” his brand-new No. 1 New York Times best-seller – which is mostly about sex – co-authored with his wife, Grace.

For Driscoll, the Song of Solomon amounts to a soft-porn sex manual, which inspires him to admonish women – those who aspire to be “biblical wives” – to awaken their husbands each morning by sexually servicing them in the same way the aforementioned wife “converted” her husband “to Christ.” (Actually, I’m not really too sure she converted him to a deep Christian faith, but no doubt he was converted into an enthusiastic member of Driscoll’s fast-growing church.)

To his credit, Driscoll condemns fornication, adultery and homosexuality. But for married folks, Driscoll – citing his chief inspiration Solomon, who had 700 wives – promotes sex toys, imaginary sexual role-playing, cybersex, what used to be called “sodomy” (both oral and anal) and wives becoming strippers for their husbands.

In fact, the wives-should-become-strippers teaching is not only in the Bible, gushes the enthusiastic Driscoll, it’s in his favorite part of the Holy Scriptures.

“This is my favorite chapter in the whole Bible!” Driscoll exclaimed during the same 2007 sermon. “I believe in the resurrection of Jesus. It’s great too. But this is an amazing chapter of the Bible: [Song of Solomon] Chapter 6 verse 13. It’s awesome. It’s awesome. … Now, what do you think the dance ofmah haneim is? It’s an ancient strip tease. Stripping is biblical. You’re welcome. [Laughter from audience] It’s biblical.”

I am not a Bible scholar, far from it. But it’s fair to say the Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs) – a short love poem of only eight chapters – is probably the most controversial book in the Bible. It is never quoted in the New Testament. Because of its often erotic language, “ancient Jews and Christians alike rejected its literal interpretation and allegorized it,” explains the editor’s note in my King James Bible: “For the Jews, it referred to God’s dealings with his bride, Israel. The early Christians saw it as representing the relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church.” This spiritual interpretation pretty much held sway for the first 19 centuries after Christ.

But in modern times, of course, we like to think we understand such things much better than those ignorant, superstitious, early Christians who knew Jesus and the apostles. Kind of like the way today’s judges see things in the U.S. Constitution – gay marriage, abortion, banishing the Ten Commandments from courthouses – that jurists in all previous generations somehow missed.

In any event, however you interpret the Song of Solomon, it’s undeniable that weird and sometimes disastrous things happen when you base your worldview and ministry on one or two allegorical and controversial scripture passages. I mean, check out this YouTube video of a room full of “Christian worshipers” ecstatically handling multiple poisonous snakes. That’s right, there are some churches, mostly in the Southeastern U.S., that believe handling venomous snakes and drinking poison are an important biblical test and proof of their faith. Why? Because in the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus said: “And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18).

Common sense tells us – however we interpret Jesus’ actual meaning – that He didn’t intend for the faithful to “tempt God” by drinking strychnine and strutting around on stage with rattlers and cottonmouths, practices that every year result in one or more deaths being reported from these churches. But to proponents of snake-handling and poison-drinking, “it’s biblical.”

In the same way, common sense tells us God did not create women – including married women – to have to compulsively service the needs of oversexed, insecure, angry, egotistical men at all hours of the day and night. And women definitely shouldn’t be psychologically manipulated by authority figures into believing they are disobeying God, Jesus and the Bible if they don’t become sexual Stepford wives.

Which brings me to this question:

Why has Liberty University – a great Christian college, and one of the few schools in the nation that doesn’t infect students with a highly sexualized culture the moment they set foot on campus – agreed tobring Driscoll to its campus in Lynchburg, Va., next month to teach and preach – twice – to all the young Christian students entrusted to that school’s care?

Are the students’ parents cool with making their kids a captive audience for Driscoll’s sex-book tour? And what are the decision-makers at Liberty thinking? It’s not as though I’m the first person to point out Driscoll’s weird overemphasis on sex. The Christian blogosphere has long been fired up over Driscoll. The Baptist Press reported that a major Christian radio network, the Bott Radio Network, canceled Driscoll because of his over-sexed sermons. Even a recent Seattle TV news story about a controversy at Mars Hill Church revolves around – you’ll never guess – sex.

Or check this out: Driscoll tells his congregation he has spiritual visions – which he calls a divine “gift of discernment” – but guess what he spiritually discerns with this sixth sense? Right. As this rather creepyYouTube video reveals, Driscoll has detailed and graphic visions of sexual sins involving his flock, including (in this particular clip) molestation and adultery.

Or how about this story Driscoll told during the same sermon from which I’ve been quoting:

We were in a grocery store recently, and my wife and I were holding hands and just, you know, shopping. I said, “Why don’t you walk ahead of me for awhile.” She said, “What for?” I said, “I just want to watch your butt for a while.” She said, “Watch my butt?” I said, “Yeah, I like your butt. I like you and I like walking with you. But I’d like to watch your butt for a while, at least through the vegetable section. I want to watch your butt.” [Laughter] … Let her know.

Supporters of Mark Driscoll (including the decision-makers at Liberty University), it’s time to wake up. This is not normal. Asking your wife to walk ahead of you in public so you can ogle her rear end is not normal. Having mystical visions of parishioners in sex acts is not normal. Counseling female members of your church to bring their husbands to Jesus through sex acts – that’s not normal. Being pastor of one of the fastest-growing mega-churches in the country and announcing that, out of the entire transcendent Bible – which holds the secrets to heaven and hell and eternal happiness or eternal darkness – your favorite part is about stripping?

That’s not normal.

Modesty, moderation, self-denial, humility, patient endurance – remember that old stuff? Those are the spiritual qualities of a Christian, which are consistently extolled throughout the entire New Testament. “For to be carnally minded is death,” warns Paul; “but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:6 KJV). The apostles constantly admonish believers not to get too caught up with “the lusts of the flesh.”

In “real marriage” – that is, a marriage made in heaven between sincere and spiritually seeking men and women – wives actually appreciate a little nobility, patience and self-restraint on the part of their husbands. Without the manly virtue of self-control and even a little self-denial in their relationship, women can feel trapped – like they have no choice but to become seductive sexpots to keep their husband happy. And if perchance this creates conflict within her own conscience – conflict with a part of her that is not so sensuous, but more angelic and childlike and innocent – her husband has no clue what is happening. But she suffers the conflict nevertheless, perhaps dealing with it by pleasing him more and more, in the vain hope it will relieve her conflict. It doesn’t.

Friends, one of life’s great challenges for fallen, broken beings like each of us is that we somehow, through God’s grace, eventually rise above all the various temptations and pulls of “the world” and livesolely unto Him. It would really be nice if our pastors and other spiritual authorities, who claim to represent God, would exemplify and exhort us along this high road – rather than lead us in the opposite direction. source:

The American Daddy Blues: An Open Letter To Kirk Cameron

The American Daddy Blues: An Open Letter To Kirk Cameron

BY SERGE BIELANKO

Dear Kirk Cameron,

I am writing this open letter to you today because like a lot of people my age (40) who had simply forgotten that you even exist, you came semi-roaring back to life this weekend.

Dear Kirk Cameron;

I am writing this open letter to you today because like a lot of people my age (40) who had simply forgotten that you even exist, you came semi-roaring back to life this weekend.

Sheesh, it’s been awhile, huh?

I mean, I have seen you on your old sitcom Growing Pains. And then after that thing fizzled out, I remember you crossing my radar here and there in subsequent years too. Usually it was you popping up onEntertainment Tonight or someplace like that, usually spouting off about some God stuff that you had gotten yourself all jazzed up about.

To be honest though man, I never really understood exactly what it was that you were saying.

I mean, I was a grown American man in the evening of my workday, letting my daughter crawl up on my knees, trying not to let her spill my can of beer while she pulled on my beard and I leaned around her to check out the screen.

You know how it is, Kirk: you come home from work and you’re super exhausted and you want to just set back on the couch and slip away.  You want to sit there and let your work pants settle in under your fat butt and feel them smooshing their drywall dust/ joint compound boogers all down into the cheap micro-fiber of the furniture that’s holding your weary bones up.

Or maybe you don’t know that feeling, huh?

So anyway, yeah. I wasn’t really paying attention to you that much.

But still there you were on my TV, standing out in the middle of college campuses handing out Jesus pamphlets or giving some sort of  speech to a handful of people whose faces always seemed smirky, like people who end up running into Kirk Cameron outside some mall in El Segundo or somewhere.

Still, I reserved judgement on you.

I figured well, if this guy has his ear to the so-called heavenly rails then good for him. I mean, he needs something to do, right? Even the saddest lonesome Hollywood tumbleweeds deserve a little wind now and then, I told myself.

Then, the other day, I guess you just decided it was time for you to throw some good old fashion gasoline on the burning skillet. Someone decided you were worth interviewing for whatever reason and the host of the show asked you what you would say to one of your children if he or she came to you and told you that they were gay.

I figured you would tiptoe through those tulips, Kirk. I really did.

But you hardly skipped a breath, dude. Seriously.

“There’s all sorts of issues that we need to wrestle through in our life and just because you feel one way doesn’t mean we should act on everything that we feel,” you said.

Your eyes were sparkling. You seemed strangely excited, like a starving racoon that’s just figured out that it can actually eat itself

I stopped chewing my food there for a second. I stopped chewing my food and I just sat there staring at your face on the screen.

I flipped over to Guy Fieri.

He was talking excitedly to a shank of lamb wearing a garlic medallion.

I felt close to him, to both of them.

It was as if all the world figured out at the same exact time that you might be the worst kind of vampire that ever lived. source:

HOMOSEXUALITY AND HALAKHAH

Traditional sources on homosexuality.

By Rabbi Michael Gold

The following article is reprinted with permission from Does God Belong in the Bedroom? Two claims made by Gold in this article are disputable and should be noted. First, is the assertion that Judaism is not concerned with inner feelings. While it is true that in Judaism actions are more often than not privileged over thoughts and feelings, certain manifestations of Judaism, including hasidism and musar (a 19th century movement that focused on the study of Jewish ethics and values), do stress the importance of inner feelings. Second, is Gold’s assertion that natural law is a concept foreign to Judaism. While some scholars have assumed this to be true, others disagree.

An important point to make from the outset is that Jewish law does not teach that it is forbidden to be a homosexual. On the contrary, Jewish law is concerned not with the source of a person’s erotic urges nor with inner feelings, but with acts. The Torah forbids the homosexual act, known as mishkav zakhar, but has nothing to say about homosexuality as a state of being or a personal inclination. 

In other words, traditionally, a person with a homosexual inclination can be an entirely observant Jew as long as he or she does not act out that inclination.

The Biblical Sources

The basis of the prohibition against homosexual acts derives from two biblical verses in Leviticus: “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence” (Leviticus 18:22) and “If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing; they shall be put to death—their bloodguilt is upon them” (Leviticus 20:13). The Torah considers a homosexual act between two men to be an abhorrent thing (to’evah), punishable by death—a strong prohibition.

The Torah gives no reason for this commandment. Some commentators have looked for a rationale in the story of Sodom, in which the men in the town attempt to rape the visitors to Lot’s house. (See Genesis 19; the word “sodomy” comes from this incident.) However, the occurrence in the story was a case of homosex­ual rape, hardly a legitimate precedent for the kind of consensual homosexual acts we are considering. Others see the root of the prohibition in the verse “No Israelite woman shall be a cult prostitute, nor shall any Israelite man be a cult prostitute” (Deuteronomy 23:18). Cultic prostitution, both hetero‑ and homosexual, was a common feature of idolatrous worship in the ancient Near East, but, like the story of Sodom, it is no longer a relevant precedent for modern homosexuality.

Various rabbis have tried to come up with other reasons for the biblical prohibition of mishkav zakhar. (Note, however, that a Torah prohibition always stands on its own even if no cogent rationale can be found for it.) Some rabbis have argued that homosexuality is forbidden because procreation is impossible. Others have defined the homosexual act as intrinsically unnatural and therefore opposed to the purposes of creation. There are difficulties, however, with both explanations. Judaism grants sexuality a purpose above and beyond procreation, and natural law, although influential in the Catholic Church, is not an authentic Jewish concept.

A Talmudic Interpretation

A more likely explanation for the ban against homosexual behavior is given in the Talmud by Bar Kapparah, who makes a play on the word to’evah (“abomination”), claiming that it means to’eh atah ba(“you go astray because of it”). Both Tosefot and the Asheri (medieval commentators) comment on this passage that a man will leave his wife and family to pursue a relationship with another man. In other words, homosexuality undermines and threatens the Jewish ideal of family life, of marriage and children, articulated in the Torah. Heterosexuality is the communal norm for Jews; homosexuality, a perversion of that norm.

The Assumption of Heterosexuality

Rabbinic literature assumes that Jews are not homosexual. For example, the Mishnah presents the following disagreement between Rabbi Judah and the Sages: “R. Judah said: A bachelor should not herd animals, nor should two bachelors share a single blanket. The Sages permit it.” The halakhah follows the Sages because the Talmud says, “Israel is not suspected of homosexuality.”

The Shulhan Arukh (a foundational work of Jewish law from the 16th century) never explicitly mentions the prohibition against homosexual acts but mentions the precaution that a male should not be alone with another male because of lewdness “in our times.” However, Rabbi Joel Sirkes ruled about one hundred years later that such precautions were unnecessary because of the rarity of such acts among Polish Jewry.

A more recent responsum was brought by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi in Palestine. A rumor that a certain shohet (ritual slaughterer) had committed a homosexual act provoked the question of whether he should be disqualified for the position. Rav Kook ruled that the shohet could be retained because, even if the rumor were true, the man might have since repented of his act. It is noteworthy that Rabbi Kook’s responsum considers homosexuality an act of volition for which one can repent.

Lesbianism

Lesbianism is never mentioned in the Torah. One talmudic passage refers to homosexual acts between women: “R. Huna taught, Women who have sex one with the other are forbidden to marry a Kohen(priest).” The halakhah rejects Rav Huna’s opinion and allows a lesbian to marry a Kohen. However, Maimonides ruled that lesbianism is still prohibited and should be punished by flagellation. The prohibition is not as stringent as that against male homosexuality because the Torah does not explicitly prohibit les­bianism, and because lesbianism does not involve the spilling of seed.

A Summary

We can now summarize the classical halakhic position:

Judaism is concerned with explicit acts, not inner feelings.
A homosexual act between two men is explicitly forbidden in the Torah.
A homosexual act between two women is forbidden by the rabbis (i.e. it was not forbidden by the Torah, but was in later times forbidden; this type of prohibition is less severe).
Homosexuality is considered an act of volition for which one can repent.
The reason for the prohibitions seems to be that such behavior undermines the Jewish family ideal of marriage and children as set out in the Torah.
Rabbinic thinkers in the past did not consider homosexuality a Jewish behavior problem. source:

Rabbi Michael Gold is the rabbi at Temple Beth Torah, Tamarac Jewish Center in Tamarac, Florida. He is the author of four books, and his articles have appeared inMoment, Judaism, Jewish Spectator, B'nai Brith International Jewish Monthly, and numerous other publications. He also served as co-chair of the Rabbinical Assembly's committee on human sexuality.

.