Wheaton College Invites Leftist, Pro-Homosexual Evangelical Jim Wallis to Speak

  Wheaton College speaker Jim Wallis says affirming homosexual couples is a “justice issue.” See the Wheaton  announcement here: www.wheaton.edu/news/events/events_07_08/02.19.08_CaceWallis.html

By Peter LaBarbera 

With polls showing more evangelicals — especially younger evangelicals — warming to the idea of voting Democratic (despite the party’s rigid pro-abortion-on-demand and pro-homosexuality agendas), we found this item of interest: this coming Tuesday, Wheaton College will be hostng liberal evangelical advocate Jim Wallis as a featured speaker at the college’s Center for Applied Christian Ethics (CACE). See the CACE announcement here: www.wheaton.edu/news/events/events_07_08/02.19.08_CaceWallis.html

This follows on CACE last September inviting homosexual “gay christian” activist Harry Knox to speak at a panel discussion on “HIV and Morality,” as a representative of the (traditional-Christian-bashing) homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign. You may recall that it was Knox who, in a TV debate with CWA’s Matt Barber (watch it HERE), called his homosexuality an “unchangeable gift from God, one for which I am very grateful. And it would fly in the face of my respect for God to give that gift back.” (We insensitive Bible-thumpers at AFTAH called that “Satan’s Talking Points.”)

If I’m not mistaken, Harry talked about his relationship with his male partner at the Wheaton panel discussion, which was titled, “Thy Kingdom Come: Christian Moral Engagement in the World.” I don’t believe there was much if any critical “engagement” of Knox when he brought up his homosexual relationship. What a pity. (You can listen to the discussion by going HERE and clicking on the “HIV and Morality Panel” links; there is Part One and Part Two.)

I’m reading Wallis’ new book, “The Great Awakening” (introduction by pro-abortion-rights, pro-homosexuality Jimmy Carter), and I’m not quite sure how Wallis can square his own “applied Christian ethics” with the inspired and authoritative Word of God, which is hardly nuanced on the sin of homosexual behavior. Of course, Wallis, as a leading light of the Religious Left, has plenty of his own criticisms of us on the “Religious Right.”

It would seem appropriate that Wheaton College — as one of the most respected and Biblically faithful Christian colleges in the United States– would at the very least allow equal time for an orthodox evangelical spokesman who is more in line with Christian conservatives on moral issues– perhaps even a stellar representative like Rev. Al Mohler, who surely will not be voting for the Democrats this November.
 
If my memory serves, Wallis (as a liberal) and his Sojourners Magazine once stood against the Left on homosexuality, but it appears that he has since buckled to worldly agendas and flipped — always a sad spectacle for a Christian leader. The liberals who routinely excoriate the likes of AFTAH would say that Mr. Wallis has “grown,” but is this the sort of maturation that honors a holy Creator? Our God does not quake in fear of the successes of the “gay” movement, nor does He tremble before the well-heeled pro-abortion lobby. Wallis would have more credibility on the need to see fighting poverty as a moral issue if he did not sell out God on the issue of sexual morality.

Men are weak and sinful, and we constantly stray from God’s righteous path. Our sources — mostly parents with kids at Wheaton — tell us that at the alma mater of Billy Graham, as we presume at all Christian colleges, there is a battle over adherence to Scripture, with some professors less committed to the inerrancy and divine authority of the Bible than others.

The quotation below from Wallis’ book has little basis in Scripture: how could enabling homosexual relationships — based on behavior God calls an “abomination” (see www.robgagnon.net) – be a “justice issue” for Bible-believing Christians? What’s next? Affirming multiple-partner relationships as a justice issue (you know, the ones based on “consensual love”)? It also appears that Wallis is going along with today’s open-ended, newfangled definition of “family.”  

The following excerpt (emphasis added) is taken from page 229 of “The Great Awakening” — after Wallis argues for more church-inspired action against no-fault divorce laws (we heartily agree with you on that, Jim!):

“I support civil rights laws for same-sex couples. That, for me, is a justice issue. Many Christians, and I include myself, prefer the solution of ‘civil unions’ from the state, and even spiritual ‘blessings’ for gay couples (from congregations prepared to offer them), rather than altering the church’s sacrament of marriage as between a man and a woman, but those differences should not be fundamentally divisive. Gay marriage should not be the primary battleground in the fight for the health and stability of marriage and family in our society. In a pluralistic democracy, we should support civil and human rights for all our citizens, regardless of our different theological and biblical interpretations of the complicated and thorny issues surrounding homosexuality. New evidence and understanding around those issues could cause any of us to alter our views. But we should find common ground by supporting concrete practices and practical policies that strengthen families and nurture all our children.”

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Here is the Wheaton College announcement:

http://www.wheaton.edu/news/events/events_07_08/02.19.08_CaceWallis.html

February 19, 2008

Political Lecture: Jim Wallis
Wheaton College’s Center for Applied Christian Ethics (CACE) and the Department of Politics and International Relations and Urban Studies welcomes Jim Wallis to campus Tuesday, February 19. Wallis is on tour for his new book The Great Awakening.

Wallis is a bestselling author, public theologian, preacher, speaker, activist, and international commentator on ethics and public life. His last book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (HarperCollins, 2005), was on The New York Times bestseller list for four months. He is president and executive director of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, where he is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine. Jim Wallis speaks at more than 200 events each year and his columns have appeared in major newspapers such The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe, among others.

Free and open to the public, the lecture will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Kresge Room, located in the east wing of the Edman Memorial Chapel at Washington and Franklin streets in Wheaton (campus map). For more information, call the CACE office at 630.752.5886, e-mail cace@wheaton.edu or visit: http://www.wheaton.edu/news/events/events_07_08/02.19.08_CaceWallis.html