No, Christianity Doesn’t Need To Endorse Homosexuality To Grow

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This is an interesting article for many reasons, not just the homosexual angle. 

No, Christianity Doesn’t Need To Endorse Homosexuality To Grow

... the number of adults attending liberalizing mainline churches has tanked precipitously from 35 percent of the American population in 1972 to 12 percent in 2016.

The Harvard/Indiana University research also shows that the churches that take the Bible as the reliable word of God are doing very well.

Research conducted jointly at Columbia University and the University of California at Los Angeles by scholars who are not shy about supporting gay politics found that gay- and lesbian-identified people are 2.5 times more likely to attend churches that took a more conservative view on Christianity (including homosexuality) than the so-called “welcoming and affirming” congregations that celebrate it.

The authors of this study were paternalistically perplexed about why same-sex-attracted people would choose churches that they assumptively described as having a “hostile social environment to LGB individuals,” as if such people don’t know what’s good for them. Well, maybe same-sex-attracted individuals find such churches are indeed not hostile or hateful. So much for how conservative churches are unwelcoming to homosexuals!

People seeking Christ are not looking for a scripture-denying church. They want the real thing, not in spite of it making real demands upon them and teaching the scriptures as they are, but very likely because of it. It seems that people often want to be held accountable for their behaviors.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/06/no-christianity-doesnt-need-endorse-homosexuality-grow/

[dgrimm60]

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that  you for  posting this  article===it  was   interesgting

dgrimm60

[Bravus]

Here's the study itself. I always try to go to the source:

https://www.sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-4/november/SocSci_v4_686to700.pdf

The word 'homosexuality' appears exactly one time in the manuscript, and that's in the title of a reference.

This study is not about homosexuality.

It basically says "Those who are intensely religious tend to remain religious, those who are moderately religious are more likely to leave religion".

I'm not sure that's a particularly surprising finding. And it's not about homosexuality or the acceptance of same.

[Bravus]

The 'secularisation thesis' in sociology is basically that as countries become more developed and stable the influence and importance of religion in them decreases. This has been seen in the Scandinavian countries as well as countries like the UK and Australia. The authors note that to some extent the US seems to buck this trend.

I'm not sure they're right. The secularisation thesis talks about the proportion of the total population that is religious, and that is indeed falling in the US. It is true that the most intensely religious - and yes, that also tends to mean the most literal and evangelical and conservative - remain religious, but I suspect that is also the case in other, more secular countries. Those who drift out of religion tend to be those who it had a relatively light grip on all along, while the True Believers remain.

I do think America is exceptional in relation to this issue, but the reason is not likely to make many Christians happy.

Another sociological finding is that it is not being a developed/wealthy country in itself that leads to secularisation, and conversely being a poor/developing country that leads to - or at least as correlated with - strong religious belief.

Rather, religious belief tends to be stronger where the conditions of life are more precarious. Where people are in danger from war or famine, where their physical safety, food security, home and so on are not secure. As people's life circumstances become more secure they tend to drift away from faith. The Bible even talks about being 'rich and increased with goods' to explain the lukewarmness of the Laodiceans.

The thing is, for many people in America, although it is a very wealthy country, their living conditions are not secure. The wealth is very unequally distributed, and many people live very difficult and insecure lives. 

It's possible that, from a sociological perspective, this explains some of the anomolous additional religiosity on the part of Americans relative to the citizens of other developed countries.

[Bravus]

Sorry, yes, I didn't mean that at all, I just meant 'the quality of being religious or adhering to a religion'. The phenomenon that was being explained is that Americans are anomalously religious relative to other countries of similar levels of development.

Dictionary.com gives two senses of the word:

noun

1. the quality of being religious; piety; devoutness.

2. affected or excessive devotion to religion.

 

 

I meant the former, not the latter.

[B/W Photodude]

15 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

There is a lot NOT in this "study."

14 hours ago, Bravus said:

Here's the study itself.  ... The word 'homosexuality' appears exactly one time in the manuscript, and that's in the title of a reference.

The article had several studies listed. Some were behind abstracts with a hefty buy the article fee. And there were more than one book references. So, this author in writing his opinion used multiple sources to arrive at his conclusion. So, if one study only mentioned homosexual one time, it is irrelevant. Read the other sources.

[Bravus]

The other academic study listed is this one: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-27485-006

I have access without paying through my university, and read the paper. I can also send it to anyone who is interested by DM. Shouldn't post it here for ethical reasons.

The study is focused on 'internalised homophobia': the extent to which LGB people internalise negative attitudes to homosexuality.

The mentioned statistic that gay people are 2.5 times more likely to attend a non-affirming than an affirming congregation comes from this study: https://www-tandfonline-com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/doi/abs/10.1300/J236v05n02_07 

(which is almost 20 years old, so it may well be that trends have shifted somewhat since, but there's no evidence on that)

I can send you that one too, if you're interested.

This study had only 66 participants, so it is by no means a large or generalizable research study. The authors acknowledge "Nearly two-thirds of the participants in this study reported that at the time they were coming out they perceived a conflict between their religion and their emerging sexual orientation. Although this sample may not be representative of all LGB people (as those who have perceived a conflict might be more likely to respond to a survey of this nature), still, this finding suggests that those who work with LGB clients can expect to encounter religious issues."

The '2.5 times' number was not explicitly mentioned in the article, but more of those who completed the survey were Catholic or mainstream Protestant than were atheist, Jewish or 'other' faiths. These numbers, though, largely reflect those for the US population in general. That is, LGB people are of particular faiths at the same rate as everyone else. It's not that gay people actively search out anti-gay churches, it's (usually) that they are born and raised in those churches and then come out as gay.

The Schuck and Liddle study is focused on the same things as the Subhi and Geelan study I co-authored and have shared elsewhere: the ways in which people work through the tensions between their faith and their sexuality. It also has similar conclusions, despite being completed a decade earlier in a different country.

I'd encourage everyone to read the original papers. The conclusions in the article linked in the OP are incidental to, or inferred from, the papers cited, rather than reflecting the intentions and findings of those papers. I do not believe that the evidence adduced supports the conclusion arrived at.