Union Theological Seminary is hosting weekly virtual chapels to observe “Pride Month.” In the chapel services, they celebrate and talk about gender and sexuality issues and their relation to Christianity.
The seminary has a notorious history of promoting a Christianity that is often more concerned with advocacy for the progressive political positions of the day than historic Christian orthodoxy. This is evident in their opposition to RFRA laws, their ‘Hard Core Holy Week’ of liberation theology, and their 2019 plant confession service.
Their celebrations so far this June have been no exception to their unorthodox approach. Within the first two weeks one speaker deemphasized the need to use Christ’s name in worship saying, “You can use another word for Jesus, I know that Jesus may not be something that you want to say and that’s totally fine”, another speaker encouraged listeners in a meditation session to “crawl into the lap of our loving Mother, our holy Mother God who created us in Her image and likeness,” and another speaker identified the Trinity as “the God who is three-in-one, but never a binary.” However, the most troubling part so far was one sermon in which Miguel Escobar argued against religious freedom as it is historically understood.
He alleged, “over the past year that this country has a pretty messed up notion of freedom.” and that religious freedom “is increasingly being used as a license to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community.” For an example of this practice, he cites the timely Catholic Social Services (CSS) case, among other examples.
He notes that “Catholic Social Services is hoping to be able to prevent LGBTQ+ couples from adopting or fostering the children under their care.” CSS seeks to continue this practice, affirming historic Catholic teaching on the family and sexuality.
Escobar notes that practices like this stem from “a theology which sees LGBTQ+ couples as inherently disordered.” He argues that this practice is “hateful foolishness” that requires “us [to] stand firm, therefore, and never submit again to a bigoted, anti LGBTQ+ form of Christianity.”
The problem is that Escobar does not show the whole picture of what the Catholic Church teaches about sexuality and he is inaccurate in his claim that the teaching is hateful and bigoted. As he alludes to, it is true that the Church understands homosexual action to be “intrinsically disordered.” However, the Church is also eminently clear that this should not be used as an excuse for hatred. Along with calling homosexual inclinations disordered the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that homosexual people “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”
According to Catholic teaching, faithful Catholics should not treat homosexual people with hatred or unjust discrimination; however, this does not mean that homosexual practice should be accepted or promoted. These are not mutually exclusive principles.
The prohibition against homosexual activity is not an arbitrary targeting of homosexual people. The restriction is instead intended to promote a flourishing life that accords with reason and revelation. This is not a random injunction, but an attempt within a wider context to promote what the Church views as the proper end of marriage: unity and procreation. As Escobar notes, it would also apply to other non-traditional couples (such as those cohabiting outside of wedlock).
CSS has the policy that they do because they are trying to live up to this Catholic truth. They give preferential treatment to traditional families not because they want to unjustly discriminate against homosexual people, but because they believe that growing up in a traditional family is a morally better alternative for the children.
Escobar does not have to agree with Catholic principles to allow CSS to freely live out their faith. CSS is not forcing him to subscribe to their philosophy. Escobar, on the other hand, is trying to make CSS subscribe to his.
Escobar also greatly exaggerates the obstacles homosexual people would face if CSS is able to continue operation. The Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on adoption agencies, so homosexual couples are in no way restricted from adopting if they so choose. They just could not adopt through faithful Catholic agencies. There would be very little, if any, impact on their lives.
On the other hand, if Escobar got his way, none of the Catholic adoption agencies would be allowed to legally function unless they changed their policy to fit his beliefs about sexuality and gender. By doing so he would be requiring the state to raise the dogmas of secular orthodoxy above those of the Catholic faith.
The historic American understanding of religious freedom gives the rights of conscience for religious believers a primacy. The consequences of what Escobar is advocating for would flip this on its head, downgrading the right religious practice to a second-class status.
This would pose grave dangers to religious liberty. Not only would CSS be forced to violate their religious convictions in this case or face legal consequences, but it would also open the door up to all sorts of other legal consequences for anyone who seeks to practice a faith that goes against any part of the new and ever-changing LGBTQ+ ideology.
The reality is the discrimination against homosexual people that takes place when CSS practices its historic faith is nothing in comparison to the unprecedented level of religious freedom discrimination Escobar would impose on religious believers in the workplace by opposing the continued operation of faithful Catholic adoption agencies.
You can find the chapel services on Union Theological Seminary’s Facebook page here and the video of the sermon referenced can be accessed here.
Comment by David on June 16, 2021 at 1:08 pm
Let’s call Union and other such institutions what they are….non-Christian entities. They espouse a religion that is not Christianity, because they proclaim a false gospel and a false Christ. It’s as simple as that.
Comment by td on June 16, 2021 at 7:14 pm
Pagan churches. Perfectly nice people, but they are pagans and not christians.
Comment by Jeff Allen on June 16, 2021 at 8:57 pm
Speaking of pagan, I now live in Denver. I think that Illiff Seminary is post Christian. ,They are very diverse having all religions including wiccan/pagan . They even have a few students who are not LGBTQXXX.
Comment by Star Tripper on June 16, 2021 at 11:55 pm
I am not so sure that these pagans are perfectly nice people. I see them as heretics wishing to destroy Christ’s church and lead their followers into damnation. No, not nice at all.
Comment by Tass on June 16, 2021 at 11:56 pm
EDS at Union has been an incubator for LGBTQ+ discrimination within TEC, just look at the “Episcopal Rainbow” fiasco.
Comment by Diane on June 17, 2021 at 12:56 am
Catholics can discriminate against whomever as long as my tax dollars don’t support their agencies and “services”. .law-abiding Americans have equal civil. rights.
When faith-based entities choose to use the tax dollars contributed ny all Americans, including lgbtq Americans, they have a choice: stop taking the tax dollars and discriminate at will. Otherwise, everyone is treated equally.
Comment by Mike on June 17, 2021 at 8:27 am
Diane, you are so blinded in your prejudice that you fail to see the point. LGBTQ couples are not in the least bit stopped in their quests to adopt children by CSS’ refusal to serve them-they can go to any number of other agencies that will deal with them.
If CSS is forced to shut down, there will be more children who are not able to find a loving home where they will be cared for by Christian standards. Are you willing to tell these children that they are being sacrificed to the bigotry of the Left? Are you so blinded in your hatred of anyone who does not go along with acceptance of the LBGTQ lifestyle that you would wish that upon those unfortunate enough to need the services of CSS and other agencies who hold to the same services?
Comment by Loren J Golden on June 17, 2021 at 9:07 pm
As hard as it seems to believe, New York’s Union Theological Seminary was, for several decades after its 1836 founding, a theologically orthodox seminary. William G. T. Shedd, one of America’s greatest theologians, taught there from 1863 until shortly before his death in 1894.
Yet even during Shedd’s tenure, UTS began its slide into the theological liberalism that has marked the institution for most of its 158-year history. In 1876, UTS called Charles Augustus Briggs, a champion for liberalism’s ignominious Literary/Historical Critical Method of dismantling the Bible, to its Chair of Hebrew and Cognate Languages. In January 1891, UTS appointed Briggs to the Edward Robinson Chair of Biblical Theology, whereupon he declared war on the reliability of Scripture in his inaugural address. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), with which UTS was then affiliated, vetoed Briggs’ appointment. The following year, UTS rescinded the GA’s right to veto its professorial appointments and went forward with Briggs as its Professor of Biblical Theology. After the PCUSA GA the next year suspended Briggs from ministry in the denomination, “for propagating ‘views, doctrines, and teachings’ contrary to the doctrine of Holy Scripture and standards of the church and in violation of his ordination vows,” UTS disaffiliated from the PCUSA, although it continued filling PCUSA pulpits with its graduates, many of whom faced charges for teaching and preaching heresy. Indeed, it was the heresy trial of UTS graduates before the 1925 GA for denying the Virgin Birth that precipitated the appointment of “a Commission…to study the present spiritual condition of our Church and the causes making for unrest, and to report to the next General Assembly, to the end that the purity, peace, unity and progress of the Church may be assured.” The unanimously-accepted report of this commission to the 1927 GA was the tipping point that sent the PCUSA (later the UPCUSA, and now the PC(USA)) on its unswerving trajectory toward Biblical infidelity, paralleling UTS’ own madcap race down the road to theological ruin.
Today, UTS can no longer be considered Christian in any sense of the word, having long abandoned fidelity to anything remotely resembling the God of the Bible. It “has a pretty messed up notion of” Christianity, its students’ heads are filled with the nonsense outlined in Mr. Gunter’s post, above, and its graduates are totally unfit for Christian ministry. Mr. Escobar’s rant against religious freedom is just more evidence of a church that (1) has prostituted herself to the world, (2) has married the spirit of the modern age, (3) now finds itself widowed in the postmodern age, and (4) continues to prostitute herself to a world that has cast her aside, hoping against hope that the callous, unfeeling world will change its mind and come back to her again.
Rather than criticizing Christians for regarding homosexuality, transgenderism, and the rest of the LGBTTQQIAAP agenda as sexual immorality (which they are), the UTS faculty (and most PC(USA) clergy) should carefully consider that the rest of worldwide Christianity has spurned their institution, not for their undying, faithful zeal for Jesus Christ, but for their blatant faithlessness toward Him, and should find their reflection in Ezekiel 16 and repent, before they find their reflection in Revelation 17-18.
Comment by Rev. Dr. Lee D Cary (ret. UM clergy) on June 18, 2021 at 8:36 am
UTS deploys half-measures : Their notions are virtue signaling with fingers crossed. Why not be bold? Which would mean…
Jesus was the first variant-sexual. Neither man, nor woman. Not trans-sexual, nor bi-sexual. Not straight, gay ,nor both (see US Senator from Arizona as partial example).
Hir (the woke word for him/her) had no gender. And , hir could be any gender hir desired to be at any time hir wished.
UTS needs to step-up to the ‘new woke’ of Christianity. A new model for Seminary Leadership in the Faith. Amen (oops, sorry) Aperson.
Comment by Paul Zesewitz on June 21, 2021 at 2:24 am
As I understand it, Union was liberal long before Dr. Briggs began teaching there. Back in the 1800s, Presbyterians were divided into two schools: old school and new school. The Old School (conservative side) founded Princeton Seminary in 1812. The New, or liberal side, founded Union in 1836. You’re welcome for the info.
Comment by Loren J Golden on June 21, 2021 at 1:49 pm
Mr. Zesewitz,
To characterize New School Presbyterians of the early and mid-19th century as “liberal” is to do them a great disservice. New School Presbyterians of this era were focused on evangelism and social action with respect to combatting alcoholism with abstinence teachings and combatting the institution of slavery with abolition. With respect to evangelism, they were willing to downplay, or even compromise on, distinctive Presbyterian doctrines, such as Predestination, Covenant Theology, Infant Baptism, and Postmillennialism/Amillennialism. They did not question the infallibility of Scripture, the reality of Miracles, the Virgin Birth, the Substitutionary Atonement, or the Bodily Resurrection, as many American graduates of European theology schools (like Briggs) did, when began to fill seminary professorships and promulgate Theologically Liberal teachings to future pastors of American churches. That many New School Presbyterians proved receptive to such heresies does not mean that all New School Presbyterians did, especially when many did not. The modern-day heirs of early and mid-19th century New School Presbyterianism, the EPC and the ECO, are today regarded as faithful, Evangelical denominations, as opposed to the thoroughly Theologically Liberal PC(USA).