Candidate Pete Buttigieg: "I Will Unite Religious America"

South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg has come from political obscurity to political significance in the Democrat race for the presidency of the United States.

We noted several weeks ago that Christians and conservatives should be aware of this candidate and what he's saying.

He now has a "compelling" plan to "unite religious America," because "God does not have a political party.'

Be informed.

In a CNN town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Monday, Buttigieg said this:

CAMILE CALDERA: Mayor Buttigieg, you’ve talked openly about your strong Christian faith, as well as your identity as a happily married gay man. I, myself, am a bi-sexual Christian woman. How will you challenge the right’s moral monopoly on Christianity to unite conservative, moderate, and liberal Christians alike behind you and your platform?

PETE BUTTIGIEG: So, as you know, it can be challenging to be a person of faith, who is also a member of the LGBT community. And yet to me, the core of faith is regard for one another and part of how God’s love is experienced according to my faith and tradition, is in the way that we support one another, and in particular, support the lest among us. […] Frankly, it couldn’t be more radically different than what I see certainly in this White House, where there is a lot of chest-thumping and self-aggrandizing, not to mention abusive behavior, but also political agenda that seems to always be revolving around that idea that somehow it’s too easy for poor people in this country. It’s just so different from what I get when I read scripture. I get that one of the things about scripture is different people see different things in it But, at the very least we should be able to establish that God does not have a political party.

I agree on one thing: God does not have a political party.

However, political parties are how we in America govern and decide who will govern---and they do so by consent of the people.

The plan is that if they don't act according to the will of the people, they are not re-elected. Someone else is chosen to serve.

In this, political parties exist to represent the will or worldview of the people.

The media find it impossible to understand---or they simply refuse to admit--- that "evangelical Christians" are not loyal to the Republican Party. We are affiliated with the Republican Party because it, in its platform, most closely identities with our biblical beliefs and values.

The religious Left, like Jim Wallis and his Sojourners organization, the "Revoice" movement, and the LGBTQ Identity (born that way) movement are trying to put new and different words in God's mouth and redefine Scripture to affirm what they want to be true. The Democrat Party best defines this worldview.

It's called "Revisionist Gay Theology". It's premise echos Eve's words, "Did God really say..."

Did God really say...

The issues of homosexuality and "gender identity" and homosexual rights are dominating the discussion in our culture today.

The attempt is to normalize what is not "normal," nor is moral by biblical standards. So the movement is ushering in an uncritical acceptance and promotion of homosexuality into the wider culture and it's now centered on churches and uninformed Christians.

It began in 1989 when homosexual strategists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen published a landmark homosexual relations manual (After The Ball) instructing gays "to muddy the moral waters," that is to undercut the rationalizations that 'justify' religious bigotry and to jam some of its psychic rewards.

The method was to "raise serious theological objections to conservative biblical teachings." And to further "undermine the moral authority of homohating churches"...by portraying them as "antiquated backwater institutions, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology."

Kermit Rainwater, writing for Focus on the Family, identifies three broad categories of arguments that gay revisionists make to cast doubt on God's Word and cause confusion among uninformed Christians:

1. Christian's prejudice against homosexuals leads them to misread biblical texts about homosexuality.
2. Scriptures that supposedly condemn homosexual behavior have actually been mistranslated.
3. Scriptures that supposedly condemn homosexual behavior have been taken out of context and do not apply to our present society.

He then gives an overview of rebuttal to these false deceptive statements that some of you may have heard within your own church or even family.

• The Bible is wholly reliable, trustworthy and true in all that it affirms. It clearly teaches the honor, dignity and value of the two sexes as created in God's image – intentionally male and female – each bringing unique and complementary qualities to sexuality and relationships.
• Sexuality is a glorious gift from God – meant to be offered back to Him either in marriage for procreation, union and mutual delight or in celibacy for undivided devotion to Christ.
• Revisionist gay theology violates God's intentional design for gender and sexuality by saying that women don't need men and men don't need women.
• Revisionist theology places human feelings and desires above biblical truth, leading people to believe lies. Often those having a personal interest in the promotion of gay revisionist theology twist the plain teaching of Scripture to support and justify their behavior.
• Scripture begins and ends with the picture of marriage as an institution ordained by God – designed for the union of a man and a woman in a life-long, faithful, covenantal relationship. This view is affirmed by Moses, Christ, and Paul, and has been upheld through thousands of years of Judeo Christian history and tradition. Gay revisionists usually do not even attempt to address God's created intent for human sexuality, but instead, twist Scripture and argue against those texts which condemn same-sex behavior.
• It remains highly unlikely that Bible translators mistranslated five references to sexual ethics in two different testaments of Scripture. Even more unlikely is the possibility that they only mistranslated Scriptures regarding homosexual behavior.
• Scriptures that testify against homosexual behavior—including Leviticus 18:22, 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:9-10—are so clear and specific that they defy reinterpretation. It is intellectually dishonest to say that conservative individuals and leaders "interpret" such clear verses as "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman" out of prejudice against homosexuals.
• Homosexuality in Leviticus, Romans, 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy is mentioned in the wider context of sexual, immoral, and prohibited behaviors, all of which elaborate on the commandment, "You shall not commit adultery," prohibiting sex outside of a male-female marriage.
• This casts doubt on the argument that Scriptures condemning homosexuality have been taken out of context.
• References condemning homosexual behavior were addressed to highly different Ancient Near East cultures (from Hebrew to Greco-Roman) – nullifying the argument that scriptural passages against homosexuality are culturally bound and inapplicable to today's society.
• The argument that Jesus said nothing about homosexuality in the gospels is misleading and illogical for at least five reasons.

These are the 5 reasons:

1. The gospels are not more authoritative than those books of the Bible that condemn homosexual behavior. All authors of Scripture were inspired by God's Holy Spirit.
2. The gospels are not comprehensive. Some of the Bible's most important teachings—the explanation of spiritual gifts, the Priesthood of Christ, the doctrine of man's old and new nature—appear in other books of the Bible.
3. The gospels do not claim to be a complete account of Jesus' life or teachings. Sections of Jesus' life are not discussed in the gospels and we cannot be certain that Jesus never spoke about homosexual behavior.
4. Scripture teaches that Jesus kept all the Law and affirmed all that the Law and the Prophets taught. Undoubtedly, this would have included the affirmation of committed, monogamous male-female marriage and an unwavering condemnation of homosexual behavior. Given that all first century orthodox Jews would have held to this standard, the question of affirming homosexuality would not have been open to discussion in Jesus' day.
5. Jesus clearly referred to heterosexuality as a standard. He specifically described God's created intent for human sexuality: "

Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Seminary, responded to the "Revoice" conference in St. Louis last summer with a paper written for pastors and all biblical Christians. The paper is titled, "Torn Between Two Cultures? Revoice, LGBT Identity, and Biblical Christianity."

There is not room in this article to include a review of what Mohler has written, but I strongly encourage you to read it and use it as a resource. The "Revoice" movement requires a total redefinition of morality, cultural authority, and personal identity. It is making an impact in churches where members are uninformed biblically.

Dr. Mohler sorts it all out from a biblical view.

I personally doubt that candidate Pete Buttigieg will become the Democrat nominee for president of the United States, however, he is the darling or the Party and the media at the moment.

In any case, he will certainly make an impression on Christians who are uninformed.

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Faithful. Be Prayerful.