Episode Details

For the last few weeks, all eyes, at least evangelical eyes, have been locked on Atlanta. When North Point Community Church announced the “Unconditional” conference, held this past weekend, many noted that two of the speakers were men “married” to other men. Many of the rest were on the record as “affirming” same-sex relationships, recognizing LGBTQ as legitimate categories of human identity, and describing their work as hoping to convert Christians to their ideas about sex, identity, and marriage. Would this conference mark Andy Stanley’s final departure from historic Christian teaching on human sexuality?  

Stanley, who is among America’s most prominent pastors, defended the conference and choice of speakers due to the focus of the event. In his Sunday sermon, he responded to the criticism, stating that this conference was not about the theology of human sexuality, or even about talking someone out of an LGBTQ identity. Rather, he said, it was aimed at “parents of LGBTQ+ children and ministry leaders looking to discover ways to support parents and LGBTQ+ children;” in other words, parents who had already tried (and failed) to talk their children out of these identities and now only wished to stay in relationship with them.  

Even if the conference was intentionally designed to not address the questions of the morality of same-sex relationships and alternate sexual identities, as apologist and “Unconditional” conference attendee Alan Shlemon noted, it answered these questions “by virtue of who they platformed, their resources, their recommendations. It’s a confusing message at best, and at worst it’s ... saying that homosexual sex would be permissible, (and) satisfying transgender ideations would be permissible. (To hear more of Shlemon’s perspective, watch his interview with fellow apologist professor Sean McDowell here.) 

On Sunday, Stanley maintained that the conference successfully met its stated goal without implying any kind of moral or theological shift. This is possible because of something Stanley has said both about this conference and about the overall work of the Church. Introducing in another context the work of “Unconditional” conference speakers Greg and Lynn McDonald, founders of “Embracing the Journey,” Stanley stated the following: “This is the reality for those of us who are in ministry. ... We’re dealing with real people and real relationships. ... It is not political for me. ... It is relational, because we are in ministry, and because we’ve learned to distinguish between theology and ministry, we can figure this out.”   

This is, I think, Stanley’s primary and most problematic contention: that pastoral ministry can be, and really must be, “unhitched” from theology. With this presumption, Stanley has continued to insist that North Point remains committed to biblical teaching about sex as only for marriage and about marriage as only for a man and a woman. At the same time, though he has never publicly and officially come out as “affirming” of homosexuality, Stanley has consistently described it as something that simply is, something that is part of people’s lives and not something that we should expect to change or be changed. He has praised the faith of people who, though they have embraced an “alternative lifestyle,” still wish to be connected to the Church, including the “married” men who presented at the “Unconditional” conference. He has also described gay marriage as a reasonable alternative if singleness is “not sustainabl