Recently, the Barna Group released a "Spiritual Profile of Homosexual Adults" that, according to the group, contained "some surprising results" about the spiritual lives of gays and lesbians:
George Barna, whose company conducted the research, pointed out that some popular stereotypes about the spiritual life of gays and lesbians are simply wrong.
“People who portray gay adults as godless, hedonistic, Christian bashers are not working with the facts,” declared the best-selling author of numerous books about faith and culture. “A substantial majority of gays cite their faith as a central facet of their life, consider themselves to be Christian, and claim to have some type of meaningful personal commitment to Jesus Christ active in their life today.
“The data indicate that millions of gay people are interested in faith but not in the local church and do not appear to be focused on the traditional tools and traditions that represent the comfort zone of most churched Christians. Gay adults clearly have a different way of interpreting the Bible on a number of central theological matters, such as perspectives about God. Homosexuals appreciate their faith but they do not prioritize it, and they tend to consider faith to be individual and private rather than communal.
“It is interesting to see that most homosexuals, who have some history within the Christian Church, have rejected orthodox biblical teachings and principles – but, in many cases, to nearly the same degree that the heterosexual Christian population has rejected those same teachings and principles. Although there are clearly some substantial differences in the religious beliefs and practices of the straight and gay populations, there may be less of a spiritual gap between straights and gays than many Americans would assume.”
Predictably, Peter LaBarbera is opposed to the entire notion that someone who is gay can also be a Christian:
Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, believes Barna speaks "too cavalierly" about "homosexual Christians."
"My test is [to] substitute another sexual sin and see if it makes sense. Would we be talking about a survey of porn-using Christians or incestuous Christians? That sounds stark, but that's, I believe, the appropriate biblical analogy," he contends.
Barna, LaBarbera says, is naïve if he thinks the homosexual activist movement is not made up of "hedonistic Christian bashers."
"I think there are Christians who struggle with the sin of homosexuality -- but proud homosexual Christians? That's an oxymoron to me in the same way as I would say proud adulterous Christians," he adds. "And so, I think we have to be very careful because I see the tactic of the Emergent Church and the Christian left is to start talking more and more about 'gay Christians,' and what they end up doing is demonizing the so-called 'Religious Right' and saying that the Religious Right is all wrong in the way it has talked about homosexuality."
None of that is particularly surprising, this comment made me literally laugh out loud:
A book by Barna Group president Dave Kinnaman titled UnChristian contends that "hostility toward gays has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith;" however, LaBarbera says he does not know any born-again Christians who hate homosexuals.
Um, considering that LaBarbera just participated in a press conference with Matt Barber and Sally Kern, it seems that, including himself, he knows at least three born-again Christians who fit that description.
