Post-Gay? Post-Christian?: Anatomy of a Cultural and Faith Identity Crisis

Few people possess the surgical tools that Debbie Thurman uses to dissect the gay rights movement and its impact on the major pillars of established society, including the Church. Thurman walked the tightrope of sexual identity confusion from childhood into married adulthood. She was brought up as a Southern Baptist, who both loved and feared the Church and wondered about her own salvation. She hid her struggles from view, unable to understand her personal demons (which included...
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Few people possess the surgical tools that Debbie Thurman uses to dissect the gay rights movement and its impact on the major pillars of established society, including the Church. Thurman walked the tightrope of sexual identity confusion from childhood into married adulthood. She was brought up as a Southern Baptist, who both loved and feared the Church and wondered about her own salvation. She hid her struggles from view, unable to understand her personal demons (which included feelings of low self-worth and major depression) and unsure of who could help her, let alone understand this turmoil. After seeing God work several miracles of healing in her life, Debbie realized He had placed a call on her heart to apply this healing balm to others like her. This ministry call was two-pronged: to witness truth-in-love to those who are conflicted or broken in their sexuality and to help the Church form a more redemptive outreach to these special prodigals and to their families. That call led Debbie to serve in recovery ministry in her church (Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia) for seven years. She worked as a small group leader with men and women weighted down by depression and anxiety, and with women who were conflicted in their sexual identities. In 2008, Debbie formed a ministry outreach of her own?The Formers'and connected with many fellow strugglers, as well as men and women who believed themselves to have been created by God to be gay. She has been a voice of reason on a number of well-known blogs devoted to these issues. After many discussions, debates and prayers, she emerged from her foray into what is perfunctorily known as ?ex-gay ministry,? wiser and as committed as ever to ensure that the whole truth is conveyed about homosexuality. Post-Gay? Post-Christian? is the result of her long journey. In the book, the author painstakingly scrutinizes homosexuality as a philosophy, a lifestyle, and a quest for supra-constitutional rights. She examines four major societal areas of concern, and the impact the gay rights agenda is having on each: the media, the education system, the medical/mental health establishment, and the Church. While Christians have wrestled for centuries with the question of why God allows certain kinds of pain and suffering, the past few decades have seen a shift in thinking that has decoupled homosexuality from this track. Today, growing numbers of Christians are beginning to view homosexuality as a benign human variable created by God, presumably to bring more color and diversity to His world, rather than a unique ?school? for spiritual growth. Somehow, they have managed to ?jump the shark'to redefine what served for millennia as ironclad evidence for the God-designed complementarity of the sexes. In preaching for love and acceptance'not merely tolerance'of gays and lesbians, these social engineers have instead pronounced the ultimate unloving sentence on them. They have denied them the very truth that would make them the image bearers, wholly, of God that they were intended to be. Understanding this conundrum from the inside out, Debbie Thurman seeks to bring back our misplaced sanity and to restore our all-but-forgotten vision of who we are as a people and who the Church is to Jesus Christ. This book offers godly insight and hope to the hopeless and seeks to focus the Church on the redemptive, compassionate ?ministry of reconciliation? that all believers are to carry out in the name of Christ.