In a word, No—unless you’re willing to throw out the Bible. But even in some Adventist circles there persists an effort to remake God in a postmodern image. The Bible tells us how, in the beginning, God created humanity in His own image (Gen. 1:26-27). The trouble is, humanity has been trying to return the favor ever since.

The worship of idols, so strongly condemned in Scripture, is but one of the ways human beings have done this. Wrong ideas about God are just as dangerous, perhaps more so. Ellen White speaks of how “the god of polished fashionable circles, of many colleges and universities, even of some theological institutions—is little better than Baal, the sun-god of Phoenicia” [1].

The fact that bad as well as good religion exists in human thought and society is a point beyond dispute. What must be reaffirmed, however, is that for the Bible-believing Christian, the objective Word of God remains the sole arbiter as to which expressions of religion bear the divine seal of approval or the divine stamp of condemnation (Isa. 8:20; Acts 17:11).

In a recent article seeking acceptance of the LGBTQ+ lifestyle in the church, one prominent author in the theologically liberal camp wrote as follows:

I have come to believe that it’s religion, not God, that’s the problem. Religion tends to be corrective, not acceptive; religiously conformist, not spiritually creative. It is against our organizational psychology to listen to a person and love them for who they are. And this is true not just about LGBTQ+ people; we in churches are experts at disapproval generally. The concept of “sinner” is central to our theology, as is changing and overcoming. Sadly, though, while we acknowledge our own sins in a sort of general way, it is others’ sins, particularly those having to do with sex, that we tend to fret about [2].

Certainly the centuries-old obsession of so many cultural conservatives—Christian and otherwise—with sexual sin, is beyond dispute. While sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual monogamy is condemned without qualification throughout the Bible, much more is said about other sins, such as those involving social injustice. Hopefully we can all agree that whenever Christians focus on the peril of certain sins while ignoring or touching lightly on the peril of others, they get into trouble.

And it is fair to say, as the above author says, that too many Christians do in fact obsess more about others’ sins than about their own. And that is never a good thing, though the Christian who recognizes the Biblical truth that we are in fact our brother’s keeper (Gen. 4:9) will not turn a blind eye to the missteps and shortcomings of others. But those are about the only positive observations any Bible-believing Christian—Adventist or not—could make about the above statement by the afore-quoted author.

Throwing Out the Bible

The biggest problem with the above statement, and others along similar lines in the same article, is that they set aside in the largest way possible the Biblical view of ultimate reality. Totally apart from the LGBTQ+ issue and what the Bible does or does not teach concerning it, the above statement finds fault with the fundamental polarity of righteousness and sin that permeates both Old and New Testaments, the teachings of the Old Testament prophets as well as those of Christ and His apostles.

The author’s insistence that “religion tends to be corrective not acceptive; religiously conformist, not spiritually creative” [3], is a statement that could be made about the entire Bible, as much about the teachings of Christ Himself as those of notable figures in either Testament called upon by God to instruct the faith community. The apostle Paul wrote that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), and Jesus declared, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). And that’s just the tip of a very large iceberg so far as Biblical theology is concerned.

If in fact “it’s religion, not God, that’s the problem” [4], what god is the author suggesting that we embrace? If it’s a god not found in the Sacred Scriptures, where are we to find him, her, or it? The author goes on to say:

I am here arguing—and please understand, this is offered on practical moral principles, not from a biblical text, for the Bible did not anticipate this question—that we people of faith need to acknowledge gender-identity divergences early, and not wait until people have suffered years of psychological pain [5].

The author clearly doesn’t consider the Bible to be a time-transcendent document, nor a document whose teachings necessarily speak with relevance to the present day. What is more, it seems this author has accepted the apparent theory of so many who advocate for acceptance of non-heterosexual sex in the church; namely, that somewhere—in the Bible, or perhaps elsewhere—there exists a divine right to sexual intimacy. When the author writes that “the Bible did not anticipate this question” [6], he is obviously addressing the question of gender confusion and the various sexual options viewed by many as acceptable in light of this confusion.

But the Bible does in fact address the question of what the author calls “gender-identity divergences” [7]—it states quite clearly that God does not acknowledge them. The Bible speaks as follows of the original creation of humanity:

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them (Gen. 1:27).

It is on the basis of this binary gender design, intended to reproduce the image of God in the human experience, that the Bible forbids without exception any and all same-gender sexual intimacy (Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:26-27; I Cor. 6:9-10; I Tim. 1:10). Loving sexual oneness between male and female in the context of marriage (I Cor. 7:2; Heb. 13:4) offers an intimate reflection of the divine image that is not found in sexual oneness between two men or two women, however loving such persons may believe that oneness to be.

Despite claims by the author in question that a friend of his (a former Adventist pastor) “has studied for years to show how the Bible is essentially not an anti-LGBTQ+ book, and her arguments are excellent” [8], it is quite clear that the author in question doesn’t accept the soundness of his friend’s arguments, else he wouldn’t have written that “the Bible did not anticipate this question” [9]. If in fact the Bible didn’t condemn such relationships without qualification, it could perhaps be said that some form of such relationships is arguably acceptable within the Biblical worldview, and that obviously the God who inspired the Bible had laid out a nuanced way in which this question was to be answered. And if the Bible were simply silent on the subject, even the most conservative Bible students would be forced to consider the possibility that the issue should just be left to the discretion of the conscience.

One is led to wonder, of course, how one could claim that “the Bible did not anticipate” the question of LGBTQ+ relationships, when in fact such relationships and the moral challenges they pose have existed in human society since the beginning of civilization. This is by no means a uniquely modern moral dilemma, as the Biblical references to these practices bear witness.

No Christian with a loving heart can deny the real pain brought about by gender confusion and the absence of opposite-sex desires in those experiencing this confusion. Godly and empathetic compassion must ever attend the labors of pastors and others who interact with such persons, whether inside or outside the church. But this compassion cannot include accommodation to sexual intimacy between persons of the same gender. If such accommodation is the standard the church must meet in order to viewed as loving and accepting by the LGBT+ community, the faith community cannot—in the light of God’s Word—conform to such a standard, regardless of social or cultural consequences. To conform to such a definition of compassion is to throw out the Bible.

Let us clarify once again than when we speak of the church’s relationship to the LGBTQ+ community, we are speaking of conduct, not inner urges. The Bible is clear that choice, not inner urges, is what sin is all about (Eze. 18:20; James 1:14-15). The Bible is no more concerned about sexual orientation than it is about sinful orientation of any kind, so far as humanity’s fleshly nature is concerned. Echoing the Biblical message, Ellen White declares that “there are thoughts and feelings suggested and aroused by Satan that annoy even the best of men; but if they are not cherished, if they are repulsed as hateful, the soul is not contaminated with guilt and no other is defiled by their influence” [10].

But the author in question and those of his persuasion are not arguing simply for the exercise of loving tolerance toward those struggling LGBTQ+ desires. Rather, they are urging the church to make room in its pews and pulpits for those choosing to live out these desires within whatever contours they see fit.

Leading and Following

The author alleges that “things of timely moral significance rarely come from the top of any denomination,” that “the church doesn’t lead on moral matters; it follows, and only when doing so seems in its best interests” [11]. Tragically this has often been true in the history of many faith communities, perhaps at times even in our own. But whether the author in question admits it or not, the church to which he belongs has a better track record in this regard than quite a few others. One can’t help asking whether or not it was in the “best interests” (temporally and pragmatically) for Ellen White to counsel Seventh-day Adventists to defy the infamous Fugitive Slave Law [12], when the penalty for such violation included a $1,000 fine (equal to $31,110 in 2020) [13]. The stance of Ellen White and early Adventism on the slavery issue was without question a radical stance at that time in the history of the United States, even among many opponents of slavery.

In his biography of Malcolm X, whose mother was a Seventh-day Adventist, Jack Rummel identifies the Seventh-day Adventist Church as “one of the few mainly white religious groups that ignored America’s color line” [14]. Describing a meeting organized by her and other civil rights activists during the 1940s, civil rights veteran Dorothy Height makes the following statement about the meeting’s venue:

After a while, Dr. Smith indicated that it was time to connect with Augusta Roberts, and the three of us proceeded to the Seventh Day Adventist college—one of the few local places that would allow an interracial meeting [15].

It’s very difficult not to see such openness to an interracial gathering—in the South, no less—as leadership on the part of the local Adventists in this story, especially when you remember that this was the time when hosting and even attending such gatherings could result both in deadly violence and indifference to such crimes on the part of local law enforcement. A more recent report describes the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America as “the most diverse church group” in the United States [16].

None can fairly deny, despite the above observations from the outside, that our denomination has often failed to adhere to Biblical principles of racial equality, and even now falls short in any number of ways. However, when an author claims that “the church doesn’t lead on moral matters; it follows, and only when doing so seems in its best interests” [17], the above testimonies from non-Adventist sources should certainly give pause to one voicing such allegations.

Ultimately, of course, it is the written counsel of God which alone can guide the church in its discussion and declarations relative to moral controversies, regardless of where that counsel places us on someone else’s ideological spectrum. On racial justice, the clarity of the written Word is unqualified so far as equal treatment and standing in God’s sight is concerned. On the LGBTQ+ issue, by contrast, the same Word is equally unqualified in its condemnation of such behavior, even though in a non-theocratic state such choices merit societal protection as part of the principle of church-state separation. But the state is not the focus of the present discussion; we are talking about the church. And within a church that holds to the supremacy of Biblical authority, acts of non-heterosexual sex are fully out of bounds for those seeking membership and/or employment within the church’s ranks.

Conclusion

At the bottom line, what is most alarming about the tone of the article under review is not the author’s stance on the LGBTQ+ issue, wrong as his stance on that issue is from a Biblical standpoint. What is most alarming is what can only be called a wholesale dismissal of the spiritual worldview found in the Bible. What is dismissed as “religion” appears to be any spiritual construct which seeks to correct any behavior with which someone has made peace. Despite the repetitive message of Scripture, “changing and overcoming” is explicitly disdained by the author as a wrongful approach to the spiritual lives of professing believers.

This isn’t merely a rejection of classic Adventism on the author’s part; it’s a fundamental rejection of Biblical Christianity.

The author’s distinction between religion and God is one he doesn’t even try to defend from the Bible. One can speculate as to what his understanding of God truly is. But at the bottom line, by any postmodern measure, the God defined and depicted in Scripture stands not at all in contrast with what most would call religion. If religion is understood as a system in which right and wrong are objectively spelled out, a system in which wholehearted, divinely-empowered conformity to the right and wholehearted, divinely-empowered rejection of the wrong is held to be the imperative determiner of one’s ultimate destiny, then the God of the Bible is indeed a religious God, not an open-ended, postmodern accommodator of everyone’s chosen ways.

REFERENCES

1. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 583.

2. Loren Seibold, “On Full Acceptance of LGBTQ+ People in the Church,” Adventist Today, Sept. 24, 2021 https://atoday.org/on-complete-lgbtq-acceptance-in-the-church/

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. White, That I May Know Him, p. 140.

10. Seibold, “On Full Acceptance of LGBTQ+ People in the Church,” Adventist Today, Sept. 24, 2021 https://atoday.org/on-complete-lgbtq-acceptance-in-the-church/

11. White, Testimonies, vol. 1, pp. 201-202.

12. “Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850

13. Jack Rummel, Malcolm X (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989), p. 25.

14. Dorothy Height, Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), p. 106.

15. Leonard Blair, “The Seventh-Day Adventist Church is the Most Diverse Church Group in America, Says Study,” Christian Post Reporter, Aug. 4, 2015 https://www.christianpost.com/news/the-seventh-day-adventist-church-is-the-most-diverse-church-group-in-america-says-study.html

16. Seibold, “On Full Acceptance of LGBTQ+ People in the Church,” Adventist Today, Sept. 24, 2021 https://atoday.org/on-complete-lgbtq-acceptance-in-the-church/

Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan