Kirsten Powers is a new Christian. Writing in an article for Christianity Today in 2013, she explains:

“Just seven years ago, if someone had told me that I’d be writing for Christianity Today magazine about how I came to believe in God, I would have laughed out loud. If there was one thing in which I was completely secure, it was that I would never adhere to any religion—especially to evangelical Christianity, which I held in particular contempt.”

Since her conversion, Powers has been speaking out on Christian issues. Her latest choice of issues is on gay marriage.

The first thing I look at when someone addresses a topic is the sources they use. If you are going to present a position on something as controversial as homosexuality, you are obliged to consult the very best material on both sides of the debate.

In her USA Today article “Christianity’s New Look on Gays,” Powers only consults pro-homosexual sources. Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, has written the definitive work on the Bible and homosexuality: The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (2001).

Here’s what one reviewer had to say about Gagnon’s work:

“Gagnon’s work should be in every Christian leader’s library. It will serve as a valuable reference in the tumultuous days ahead! As one who has heard Dr. Gagnon’s teaching personally, this reviewer can vouch for the author’s attention to biblical detail and concern to be faithful to the biblical texts under consideration.”

Instead, Powers references Matthew Vines’ new book God and the Gay Christian where “he examines the six passages on same-sex behavior and argues that they do not address today’s long-term gay relationships.”

Powers also mentions in support of the pro-homosexual position James V. Brownson’s Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships (2013).

Powers should have not only have mentioned Gagnon’s book but those written by James R. White and Jeffrey D. Niell (The Same Sex Controversy) and James B. DeYoung (Homosexuality: Contemporary Claims Examined in Light of the Bible and other Ancient Literature and Law).

Then there are some of the arguments that are used to support same-sex marriage. Powers quotes Vines:

“Christians did not change their minds about (the sun revolving around the Earth) because they lost respect for … the authority of Scripture. They changed their minds because they were confronted with evidence their predecessors had never considered.”

The church didn’t base its earth-centered cosmology on the Bible. The Bible was being read through the works of Aristotle:

“Aristotle—not the Bible—taught explicitly that ‘everything moves around the earth.’ . . . Galileo was condemned, not because the Bible conflicted with observation but because he differed with the church over what authority should be used to interpret it.”1

Medieval science as practiced by Christians went astray when “the Bible was . . . read through ‘Greek’ spectacles.”2 The same methodology is taking place by some Christians who are abandoning the Bible for the latest politically correct amoral trend.

The push for same-sex relationships is based on the same type of bad science, history, and logic that led the church astray for more than 1500 years in choosing Aristotle over the Bible regarding cosmology and slavery.3

Powers writes that the church has changed its views on slavery. If the Bible had been followed, there never would have been slavery as it was practiced in the United States. The Bible called for the death penalty for the crime of “man stealing” (KJV): “He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death” (Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7; 1 Tim. 1:9-11). It was the failure of some Christians to follow what the Bible explicitly said about slavery that led to the slave trade.

Can you imagine where we would be today if that law had been followed? The slave trade would have been designated a criminal act.

Powers and those who support same-sex relationships are the ones who are perverting the Bible. The Bible is as clear on prohibiting same-sex relationships as it is in prohibiting slavery.

Kirsten Powers needs to do more homework before writing on the topic of homosexuality and Christianity.

1. Philip J. Sampson, 6 Modern Myths About Christianity and Western Civilization (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 39. [↩]
2. R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), xiii. [↩]
3. “Of all the ideas churned up during the early tumultuous years of American history, none had a more dramatic application than the attempts made to apply to the natives there the Aristotelian doctrine of natural slavery: that one part of mankind is set aside by nature to be slaves in the service of masters born for a life of virtue free of manual labour.” (Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians (London: Hollis & Carter, 1959), 12–13). [↩]