Is Christianity's stance on gay marriage costing churches followers?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Short answer is yes and since there is no solid NT evidence that Jesus (not Paul) disliked gays in any way, it would be sensible to abandon the anti-gay elements in church doctrine ASAP.

I just don't see how that position is tenable considering Paul has regular inspiration from Jesus starting from Jesus' visitation to Paul that caused his conversion.  Discounting Paul is basically saying "Only stuff Jesus said in the flesh counts, not stuff he said after his Resurrection."

Does he? I never perceived Paul as laying claim to most of his interpretations being direct revelation, more like he was the only one who could possibly be right because he had been privileged with that conversion vision (and, importantly, commission) from Christ. I could of course be off-base on this interpretation of how revelation worked for him.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My assumption is that 'the Gospel I preach' is referring to the general set, there, rather than anything specific to Paul, but you're right that that's certainly not as clear as I'd thought. I hadn't considered that interpretation before. Thank you.

Anyway, Mikado's right that even though there can certainly be different types or levels of reading or interpretation deployed for different things we can't just write off Paul for the crime of not actually being Jesus. Saying 'it's Paul, it doesn't count' is intellectually lazy. There are any number of much more nuanced and interesting attitudes to take to the Epistles.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Not making a theological statement, but when examining the growth and decline of various denominations and forms of churches over the last 60 years, it's clear that abandoning some kind of Scriptural fidelity (real or perceived) almost never results in a higher number of attenders. I say real or perceived because the fastest growing churches tend to be those that claim to hold a high view of Scripture, but (in my opinion) in practice do not.

Agreed, the pews have continued to empty since the C of E started ordaining women after Lambeth 1978. Fracturing has occurred over homosexuality and I don't think that any doctrinal changes will cause any increases in attendance.

Before that too. There were changes in the culture and positioning of mainline churches in the 1950s or thereabouts that made them start to be less attractive options for people who want a certain type of surety to their church polity.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Anyway, those individuals who leave the church because it isn't gay-friendly aren't really Christian in the first place, if they allow their morality to dictate their religion rather than the other way around.

But that's partially the issue. The relationship between 'religion' and 'morality' should not be a dictatorship, in either direction. If there's a perceived disconnect between these two things then something's gone wrong with one or the other or both (often, I think, both).

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...what?

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...what?

officepark is Catholic.

Are Popes and bishops and consistories suddenly not 'members' of the Catholic Church. They're a different, exalted class of members, but they're still members, unless officepark has an excessively literal definition of 'Vicar of Christ'.

Another reason to love Anglicanism. All the pageantry and hieratic states that having bishops brings, with the added benefit that they're allowed to be and be treated as human.

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...what?

officepark is Catholic.

Are Popes and bishops and consistories suddenly not 'members' of the Catholic Church. They're a different, exalted class of members, but they're still members, unless officepark has an excessively literal definition of 'Vicar of Christ'.

Another reason to love Anglicanism. All the pageantry and hieratic states that having bishops brings, with the added benefit that they're allowed to be and be treated as human.

Like that's a good thing.

In the context of religion, it is.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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...what?

officepark is Catholic.

Are Popes and bishops and consistories suddenly not 'members' of the Catholic Church. They're a different, exalted class of members, but they're still members, unless officepark has an excessively literal definition of 'Vicar of Christ'.

Another reason to love Anglicanism. All the pageantry and hieratic states that having bishops brings, with the added benefit that they're allowed to be and be treated as human.

I would think by "members" in this context he meant laity, but even there the influence of a bishop should be fairly minimal if the Church is to truly be universal, the only exception being the Pope or a council. If individual bishops start to change too much in their diocese the cohesiveness of the Church would start to fall apart. But I still think he was probably referring to the laity and allowing the laity to influence anything that isn't superficial (ie. music, Mass times, etc) would turn the Church into a political club.

Well, I know, and I understand that line of thinking, it's just that the starkness of the laity/clergy distinction in the Roman Catholic Church and the firmness of the hierarchy are just kind of...well, odd to me, as an admittedly very high-church Protestant whose chief familiarity with another religion is with a type of Japanese Buddhism that, while more hierarchical than some, is still quite latitudinarian on most political issues (Tendai has a pretty clearly set and coherent theology but with Buddhism you always run into a sort of double-meaning between theological orthodoxy and folk belief or practice).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My assumption is that 'the Gospel I preach' is referring to the general set, there, rather than anything specific to Paul, but you're right that that's certainly not as clear as I'd thought. I hadn't considered that interpretation before. Thank you.

Anyway, Mikado's right that even though there can certainly be different types or levels of reading or interpretation deployed for different things we can't just write off Paul for the crime of not actually being Jesus. Saying 'it's Paul, it doesn't count' is intellectually lazy. There are any number of much more nuanced and interesting attitudes to take to the Epistles.

Well, given the stuff Paul says about women and gays, I have a hard time reconciling those passages with the overall message of Christ. "Paul doesn't count" is the position of many Scandinavian Lutherans today, but maybe we are lazy... I prefer to stick to what Christ actually said in the flesh. That is the core of the Christian message, which also makes for a significantly more tolerant religion.

Well, yes, and that's a coherent reason for rejecting parts of the Pauline Epistles. I don't think that's lazy at all; my church does the same. I just get irritated by people who write off Paul for being Paul rather than Jesus, when it's perfectly fine and easy to write him off because there are parts of his writings the actualization of which is actively detrimental to the extension of the Love of God. I'm also not sure what I think of the idea that denying actualization to parts of Paul necessarily means that one is ignoring him or writing him off as such...

Of course the actual text of the Gospels takes absolute precedence, though; denying that is just perverse. And, I might add, vaguely idolatrous.

Regarding an all-male priesthood, one has to wonder if the fact that the people in a position to be prominent followers of and teachers after Jesus were at the time all or almost all male has or should have any bearing whatsoever on determining who's in a position to fulfill those roles now. They were also all members of ethnic groups of the Eastern Mediterranean basin. It's possible to hold forth in favor of an all-male priesthood philosophically, but just because one can think up a theoretical justification for something doesn't necessarily mean one should.