Both the PCA and the CRC have made godly decisions in line with Scripture (although at different places in the struggle for Biblical morality); continued courage and perseverance against sin will be necessary to remain and become ever more faithful churches of God.

Christians have a duty to obey God in all circumstances, regardless of the cost. This doesn’t change even if there is no institutional support, as this writer discussed several years ago. But it is better if we have a church faithful to the Word of God to be part of. In our day, faithfulness is measured by fidelity to the sexual morality revealed in Scripture. When a denomination makes its decision on this, it decides everything – whether it will continue in faithfulness to God and his gospel of salvation from sin, or whether it will follow the world and its gospel of self-actualization and gratification.

Summer is the time when Protestant denominations’ governing bodies commonly meet, and just as this has been a momentous summer for the Supreme Court, so it has been for three denominations considered Evangelical in recent decades, which met and took decisive action in one direction or another.

Other than certain differences on questions of divorce and remarriage, sexual morality was not much of an issue for churches before the sexual revolution. Even here, the standard of divorceless opposite-sex monogamy is clear from Scripture, and the general acceptance of this by a Christian society made any admonitions to sexual purity focus on avoiding the temptations of fornication and adultery. Commands against sodomy in both testaments were strong and clear, and to common sense admitted of no exceptions.

Beginning with the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and the advent of a movement for homosexual liberation, it became necessary to make binding pronouncements against homosexuality (although to previous generations the Biblical condemnations would have been quite sufficient for church discipline). What then followed was denominations with formal statements against homosexual practice  and growing minorities in vocal dissent, moved by the larger society and activist groups within the denominations. Eventual formal acceptance of homosexuality today comes in the form of formally accepting same-sex marriage. Those who disagree either leave the church or find a personal justification for remaining.

More than a year ago, this writer reviewed an excellent defense of opposite-sex only monogamy by a pastor in the Mennonite Church U.S.A., Darrin W. Synder Belousek, who offered a Biblical defense of opposite-sex only monogamy independent of the Biblical condemnations of homosexuality. Synder Belousek was concerned about the drift of his denomination toward the acceptance of same-sex marriage. Earlier the denomination’s largest conference, the Lancaster Mennonite Conference, had left the denomination, concerned about the increasing acceptance of homosexuality.

Late this spring, as was reported at the beginning of last month, the Mennonite Church U.S.A. formally accepted same-sex marriage, and signaled an utter rejection of Christian sexual morality in effectively apologizing for its previous Biblical standard, calling for repentance from it. Typical of the current homosexual/transgender apologetic, it effectively claims that the pain and humiliation Biblical morality causes is sufficient to establish that it is oppressive, setting aside God’s absolute authority, and Jesus’ call to accept the painful, narrow gate to life.

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