Gov. Bobby Jindal Hosts Prayer Gathering

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal recently hosted a prayer gathering at the governor's house, in anticipation of the upcoming Response Louisiana rally. (Hat tip to Right Wing Watch.)

Commentary Tidbits: Charlie Hebdo Edition

"Not Afraid." Powerful image from Paris tonight. #JeSuisCharlie (Photo: Thibault Camus/AP) http://t.co/72ppgK49MG pic.twitter.com/6YgrXakVnc
— Meredith Frost (@MeredithFrost) January 7, 2015

On January 7th, gunmen killed twelve people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine based out of Paris, France, reports NPR. Charlie Hebdo was renown for its satirical take on politics, religion, and current events. Witnesses claim that the gunmen shouted "Allahu akbar" ("God is great") during the siege, suggesting that the attack was motivated by Islamic extremism. One of the suspects, Hamyd Mourad, surrendered to police, while two other suspects, Cherif and Said Kouachi, remain at large. Cherif Kouachi reportedly had ties to radical Islamists, according to the Guardian.

Mourners hosted vigils at the Place de la République in Paris, as well as in cities worldwide, according to the Guardian. The hashtag #jesuischarlie trended on Twitter as observers showed solidarity with the slain. Muslim leaders around the world have loudly condemned the attacks, while others fear that the incident could inflame anti-Muslim sentiments in Europe.

Commentary abounds on the importance of free speech, free press, and the right to criticize religion in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. To read commentary on the attack, visit the following links.



Infidel753: Je suis Charlie

Good As You: Conservative Radio Host Erick Erickson Equates Gay Activists with Paris Terrorists

Juan Cole: Sharpening Contradictions: Why al-Qaeda attacked Satirists in Paris

Christian Science Monitor: Charlie Hebdo attack: Why Western satire especially riles some nations and groups

NPR: 'Charlie Hebdo,' A Magazine Of Satire, Mocks Politics, Religion

The Daily Beast: Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Our Duty Is to Keep Charlie Hebdo Alive

A pile of pens at vigil in Paris for #CharlieHebdo victims. #JeSuisCharlie pic.twitter.com/7hJYMe48AX
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 8, 2015

News Tidbits

Pew Research Center: Faith on the Hill: The Religious Composition of the 114th Congress

New York Times: Home Schooling: More Pupils, Less Regulation

Edge Media Network: Virginia: Hope Bill Targets Conversion Therapies 

Pink News: Catholic bishops: Equal marriage in Florida ‘threatens religious liberty’

Commentary Tidbits

The Daily Beast: The Evangelical Apocalypse Is All Your Fault

Women's eNews: Holy and Unholy Misogyny; I See Them Linked Now

Thought Catalog: A Glimpse Into The Abstinence-Only Sex Education Classroom

Washington Post: Why Mike Huckabee matters — a lot

Leaving Fundamentalism: Why creationism matters

Huffington Post: I Was a Teenage Fundamentalist: How I Resolved the Conflict Between Jesus and My Sexuality

OneThing 2014: Mike Bickle's Nightmarish Vision

To read about Reinhard Bonnke's talk at OneThing 2014, click here.

Every December, the International House of Prayer (IHOP) hosts its annual OneThing celebration. OneThing gatherings feature music, ecstatic prayer, and talks from New Apostolic Reformation speakers on everything from the end times to anti-abortion activism to overseas missionary work to shunning non-Christians. OneThing 2014 took place on December 28-31 at the Kansas City Convention Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The gathering featured speakers such as Christ For All Nations' Reinhard Bonnke and various IHOP leaders, including Mike Bickle.

Mike Bickle delivered a talk on December 28th entitled "The End-Time Crisis: God's Response to the Rage Against Jesus" (available at YouTube). Bickle's talk focused on Psalm 2 and its supposed implications for today's degenerate society. I was startled by Bickle's ominous rant, which was paranoid even for him. With feverish intensity, Bickle foretold violence in the streets, incarceration of Christians, and state-sanctioned slaughter of believers, magnifying the usual Religious Right persecution complex into an end times nightmare.

"There is a crisis that's in the land that's escalating quickly," Bickle told the audience. I believe that we're in a season actually in human history, and we're entering a new hour, a very, very sober time." Bickle cited Psalm 2 as a descriptive Biblical passage for today's society. At the 5:01 mark, he interpreted Psalm 2 in such a way as to suggest that today's leaders despise God and seek to remove God's word from society.

"For three verses, David describes their rage against God, against his Christ, the anointed, the Messiah. What the rulers of society want to do, according to David, they want to remove the influence of the word of God out of society and away from culture entirely, that's their goal. You can see that trend escalating right now. Many of the kings, but also the rulers of society, which are not the kings, the leaders in industry and business and sports and media, they're taking a bold stand, challenging the truths of the word of God, wanting to remove the influence of the word of God out of culture entirely, that's what their design is, according to David."

Throughout his talk, Bickle raged at leaders of society for wanting to free themselves from God's "bondage". At the 25:07 mark, he claimed these leaders reject God because they've grown tired of slavery under the Almighty.

"They see the word of God as slavery. They see the moral standards of Jesus' leadership as slavery that is hindering their human potential, hindering and interrupting the dignity and equality of humans. They say, 'let's take the word of God, the bonds that enslave us, let's cast them away, let's break them! Let's show God who's in control."

Later in Psalm 2, God tells the leaders of the earth that their machinations will fail. At the 6:32 mark, Bickle had this to say.

"He tells the kings of the earth, 'Your plans will come to nothing! For I've already determined that my son will be acknowledged as king in every nation of the earth, and I'm going to speak and move and act against you, and I will break your powers so you will not be able to resist my king effectively.' They will for a season, but only for a short season."

Bickle elaborated on the significance of Psalm 2, telling listeners that many "kings" of the earth are resisting Jesus, and that much of the Christian church stands with them. Some people in the church even oppose God's truth under the guide of scholarship and biblical literacy, he claimed. At the 13:37 mark, he accused these Christians of giving lip service to Jesus but being "biblically illiterate".

"Right now a lot of believers are intimidated by the stand that the leaders of culture are taking against the Christ. Many in the church are echoing the stand of these leaders. They don't know the Bible. They're biblically illiterate. They have language -- 'Jesus' -- they know how to say grace, they know how to say 'kingdom of God'. They don't know the details, I mean, even the broad strokes of what the Bible said. So the voices of the culture seem convincing. Many people in the church are confused."

Older generations are in a better position to appreciate the supposedly sinister changes in American society, Bickle argued. At the 16:45 mark, he listed the "gay agenda" and the "explosion of pornography" as signs of a society plummeting into darkness.

"Those of you that are in your twenties and younger, you can't maybe fully appreciate appreciate the escalation, the speed of which this is increasing like those of us that might have a forty-year-plus point of view looking back. I mean, the escalation is so intense. I mean, the phenomenon in the last five years of the gay agenda taking center stage in the conversation of our culture. This was unthinkable ten years ago! There were whispers ten years ago. The explosion of pornography in the last five years ... Where this will be in ten years is a moral crisis in our nation beyond anything we can imagine. And then ten years after that, and ten years after that if the Lord tarries."

Heterosexual marriage was also imperiled by the advance of the "gay agenda", he argued. "Today, they're already talking about outlawing marriage, making the institution of marriage obsolete because of the controversies," Bickle claimed at the 40:10 mark.

Of course, Bickle denied that he hated LGBTQ people. At the 31:53, he insisted that he loved all people regardless of sexual orientation, right before warning his audience that the gay agenda was about to teach homosexuality to small children. Um, Mike? Spouting homophobic vitriol isn't loving, I thought.

"I love all human beings, regardless what their sexual orientation is, but God has clear definitions and standards of what love is. We have to line up with the Lord and with his Christ, and not against him ... In a few moments from now, they'll be teaching the six years-olds, in first and second grade, third and fourth grade, they'll be teaching them the details of homosexuality as part of mandate, by law, in the curriculum."

One example of the spiritual confusion engulfing the church is the emphasis on feelings, Bickle claimed. At the 18:07 mark, he warned that young people who have been "seduced by the lies" of the surrounding culture use their feelings as the measure of truth. Was this a subtle jab at gay and transgender youth, I wonder?

"The father has very strong feelings about how many in the church are echoing the popular sentiments of culture, the preachers that are telling lies about the word of God to keep it popular, keep it positive; the young people that don't have a biblical foundation that are seduced by the lies, thinking that the things they feel must be the standard of truth, for they feel it, so it must be true. Their feelings are real but they're not based on truth."

No IHOP gathering would be complete without anti-abortion rhetoric, and OneThing 2014 was no exception. Bickle blasted abortion as another sign of a fallen society, raging against "50 million babies, slaughtered in their mothers' womb, applauded by their culture."

Love, as the fallen culture allegedly defines it, disgusted Bickle. At the 29:22 mark, he contrasted God's love with "humanistic love", which many people allegedly worship as an idol now.

"God is calling young people to be bold, to take a stand for truth ... with humility, with love, love as God defines love, not as the humanistic culture. Right now, love is god to many people. Humanistic love is their god, and they'll throw a little Jesus language in every now and then, but humanistic love is the god they're worshiping and serving. God says 'No, it has to be love on my terms. I'm the God of love. Love is not god. I am the God who is love.' They're very different. Human sentiment is not the final word of what love is, but the written word of God."

Bickle's talk took an ominous turn, with visions of draconian persecution and violence. At the 14:46 mark, he claimed that criticism of God by celebrities and political leaders would give way to outright persecution of Christians. Believers who teach their children about salvation or criticize same-sex marriage will be arrested and incarcerated, he warned.

"It's going to escalate beyond the opinion of sports figures, movie stars, famous singers, famous actors, political leaders. It's going to go beyond their opinions ... They're going to use the power of the state eventually to enforce their ways. The days are coming where if a mom and dad tells their five year-old child, 'There's only one way of salvation', it'll be considered a crime. They tell their child, 'Homosexual marriage is contrary to the word of God, the Bible calls it a sin', they'll actually go to jail for it."

The paranoid predictions continued. At the 20:07 mark, Bickle warned that at impending financial crisis would produce nightmarish "violence in the street" soon.

"I'm not even talking yet ... [about] the financial crisis that's right around the corner, far beyond 2008. There is a financial crisis looming over this nation and the nations of the earth. But this financial crisis will create a state, a context for violence in the street beyond anything we could imagine."

The height of society's depravity would be the wholesale slaughter of Christians, Bickle told the audience. At the 40:57 mark, Bickle spouted paranoid predictions about world leaders passing legislation that would order the execution of believers as "enemies of society". The fact that governments murdering Christians en masse around the world would be both insane and logistically impossible did not occur to him.

"The rage is going to escalate. They will kill believers ... The day is coming where the kings of the earth, in their rage, will establish legislations where they will kill believers in the nations of the earth. They will see them as enemies of society, believers. They will see them as enemies of the people. This is an hour for you and I to decide are we going to go deep in the Lord and be faithful to truth?"

After frightening his audience with visions of violence, Bickle offered the antidote. Prayer, he assured them, could set back the crisis by several decades. How convenient, I thought. Praying with IHOP will avert the impending nightmare. 

Jesus will prevail over all the nations, and God will laugh at the "kings" of the earth for their hubris, he said. Bickle urged listeners not to be silenced or intimidated by the voices of the surrounding culture, since victory is assured.

Bickle comforted his audience with the assurance that some political leaders still love God, even though the percentage is small. Really? I thought. The Religious Right was still a strong presence in politics, the last time I checked. Bickle praised Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal for arranging the Response Louisiana rally, and Texas Governor Rick Perry for arranging the 2011 Response rally.

Mike Bickle's OneThing talk can be summarized as such: The world is decaying because of non-Christians and phony Christians and abortion and dirty pictures and gays! The outside world is the enemy! They'll arrest us and kill us, and the only way you can stop it is to pray with IHOP!

Only a fearful worldview could produce this vision of the future. Only a worldview that sees outsiders as a poisonous force could produce this us-versus-them attitude. Fear, bigotry, paranoia, and insularity do not make for good spirituality.

This isn't healthy. IHOP enthusiasts, wake up.


To download the talk, visit mikebickle[dot]org/resources/series/onething-conference-2014

Humanum: Theresa Okafor Offers Commentary

To read an introduction to the Humanum conference, click here. To read about Pope Francis' opening address at Humanum, click here. To read about Russell Moore's talk, click here. To read about Rick Warren's talk, click here.

Humanum organizers posted videos not only of conference speakers, but of observers as well. Among the observers was Thereas Okafor, director of the Foundation for African Cultural Heritage in Lagos, Nigeria and World Congress of Families regional director in Africa. Okafor received the World Congress of Families' 2014 Natural Family Woman of the Year Award for her "outstanding contributions to promoting a greater understanding of the centrality of the "natural family"", according to a press release. Not surprisingly, Okafor has a history of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ statements, as demonstrated in a 2012 interview with Europeinfos.

Throughout the short video, I was struck by how Okafor's rhetoric resembled that of her western counterparts. At the beginning of the video, she described marriage and family as institutions that must be protected, as they are supposedly coming under attack.

"The family is a reality that cannot be denied. It's a social reality, it's biological, it's metaphysical, it's something we cannot deny, and the family is what determines the sustainability of society. And so, in Africa, we seek to protect the family against those who seek to fragment it."

Okafor praised "the western religion" for its contributions to Africa.

"Think African families stand to give back what we received from the West. Obviously, the western religion came to Africa, bringing lots of values, lots of principles of fraternity, of harmony, of complementarity between the man and the woman."

I was puzzled that Okafor referred to Christianity as a western religion, since Christianity emerged in the near east and spread to northern Africa early in its history. Perhaps Okafor meant western interpretations of Christianity that have been spreading across the continent.

Like her American counterparts, Okafor frowned upon the alleged relegation of children's upbringing to schools and the state. Was this a jab at secular schools?

"Marriage needs to be protected. Marriage needs to be preserved, and also, the upbringing of children is not something that needs to be relegated to the state or to the schools. It's something that should take place in the family."

Okafor's video commentary is a reminder that such rhetoric is not limited to the U.S. Religious Right activists speak in similar terms across the world, no doubt because of Religious Right networking.

Humanum: Rick Warren on Marriage

To read an introduction to the Humanum conference, click here. To read about Pope Francis' opening address at Humanum, click here. To read about Russell Moore's talk, click here. To read about Theresa Okafor's commentary, click here.

Humanum: The Complementarity of Man and Woman took place in Vatican City on November 17-19. Rick Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Foest, California, devoted his talk to exalting heterosexual marriage and laying out requirements for sustaining it.

Warren began his talk by claiming that heterosexual marriage is under attack, much like his right-wing brethren. At the 3:11 mark, he insisted that heterosexual marriage has been ridiculed and dismissed by many people.

"Sadly, today, we all know marriage is dishonored by a lot of people. It's dismissed as archaic, man-made tradition. It's denounced as an enemy of women. It's discouraged as a career-limiting choice. It's demeaned in movies and television. It's delayed out of fear that it will limit one's personal freedom. So today, instead of being honored, marriage is ridiculed, resented, rejected and redefined. What are we going to do about this? The church cannot cower in silence ... The stakes are too high."

Warren proceeded to share suggestions for safeguarding heterosexual marriage. At the 4:31 mark, he argued that God's will is the final authority on what constitutes marriage.

"Affirm the authority of God's word. That's the starting point. We don't base our worldview on fads, or feelings, or opinions, or political correctness. We build our lives on the unchanging truth of God's word."

After quoting from the New Testament, Warren argued that Jesus laid out five convictions about marriage that are "unchangeable, incontrovertible, and unmovable". At the 6:40 mark, he insisted that binary gender categories and heterosexual marriage were decreed by God, and the only acceptable setting for sexual activity is heterosexual marriage (for the sake of procreation, of course).

First ... gender is God's idea. God chose to make us either male or female, our identity is either a man or a woman. It's far deeper than a sociological construct, psychological condition, a personal preference. God made us male and female.
Second ... marriage is God's idea. He defines it. He defines it, not us. It's not a man-made idea that we can just toss away. God created marriage.

Number three, sex was created for marriage. God created the male and female body parts to fit naturally together. That's obvious, but they don't just fit together, they fit together for a purpose, and that is the creation of life, and even if you disbelieve the Bible, every human body and every living person is a witness and a testimony to God's intended purpose for sex. Sex was not created for recreation, but it was created for connection of a husband and wife and procreation of life."

As I argued in a prior post, none of these practices are eternal or divinely ordained. Whether fundamentalists want to admit it or not, people simply don't fit into neat, binary boxes. Notions of gender and marriage have varied widely across cultures and eras, as have notions of what constitutes licit sexual activity. Additionally, the Biblical God does not offer sound advice on what constitutes moral marital and sexual behavior. Practices such as polygamy, concubinage, and forced marriage were justified in different books of the Bible that Warren holds dear, but we rightly reject those practices today.

At the 9:54 mark, Warren continued to list Godly expectations of marriage, including the lifelong permanence of marriage and the illegitimacy of same-sex marriage.

"The fourth thing Jesus said in that passage was that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Now there are many other kinds of relationships, but those aren't marriage. Definitions matter. And then fifth ... marriage is to be permanent. Jesus repeats Genesis saying what God has joined together, no human being should separate."

The fact that marriages involving two men or two women can be successful, that same-sex marriages can be characterized by love, trust, and honesty, escapes him. To boot, Warren ignores the fact that divorce is sometimes good and necessary when marriages become toxic and reconciliation is impossible. How does pressuring couples to stay in miserable marriages benefit anyone?

At the 10:15 mark, Warren insisted that his statements about marriage were true, regardless of whether other people agreed with them.

"We know that all five of those truths that I just gave you are disputed, debated, and denied today, every one of them. But a lie doesn't become a truth, and wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good just because it becomes popular. Truth is truth."

He encouraged religious leaders to celebrate heterosexual marriage in their congregations through testimonies, regular renewals of vows, and rewards for people in long-term marriages. But many churches already treat married heterosexual couples as a superior caste, I thought. Won't this make singles, divorced people, and LGBTQ people feel even more excluded?

Warren listed the supposed benefits of heterosexual marriage, telling listeners that married people are healthier and more financially successful than their single counterparts. God created marriage because a single mother with a child has never been a viable economic entity, he said. This slap in the face to divorced women and single mothers stunned me. Sometimes single mothers don't have a choice in the matter. Sometimes being a single mother is better than staying in an abusive relationship. Often, non-nuclear family arrangements can be successful. Furthermore, this argument attributes poverty among divorced women and single mothers to the absence of a husband. Such thinking ignores societal factors that burden unmarried women, such as pink collar ghettos, the exorbitant cost of child care, and a frayed social safety net. Glorifying heterosexual marriage won't solve these problems; fair social policies will.

Warren repeated an old argument against same-sex marriage, insisting that children who grow up with a father and mother are healthier and more successful. However, research shows that children raised by same-sex couples also do very well, so being raised by an opposite-sex couples is not in and of itself what produces well-adjusted children. Maybe the most vital variable is having two stable, responsible adults in a child's home, rather than the sex of those adults.

Naturally, Warren had to depict marriage as under attack. He encouraged the audience to engage the media because "opponents of marriage" are out-marketing fundamentalist Christians. At the 18:14 mark, he had this to say.

"Right now, friends, the church is being out-marketed by the opponents of marriage ... and the minority view is getting the majority of the press. And they're the minority, they're so far the minority, and yet you would think they were the majority."

I assume that by "opponents of marriage", Warren meant supporters of same-sex marriage. If so, supporters of LGBTQ equality are not a minority anymore, either at home or abroad. Even if they were a minority, it would not make their demands any less legitimate.

Despite his refusal to take same-sex couples seriously, Warren adamantly denied that he was homophobic. At the 24:05 mark, he claimed that the public has accepted two alleged lies about the subject.

"Our culture has accepted two lies today. One of them is that if you disagree with somebody's lifestyle, then you either hate them or are afraid of them. I don't hate them and I'm not afraid of them. I'm not phobic, and I'm not hateful. I just disagree. That's a myth. And the other is that if you love somebody, you must agree with everything they believe or do. Well, that's nonsense because nobody agrees with everything you do, including your wife or your husband, or whatever. Both of those are nonsense."

The gusto with which the Religious Right opposes LGBTQ equality tells me that yes, they do hate and fear the LGBTQ community on some level. Decrying a fundamental part of a person's identity is hateful. Accepting someone's sexual orientation and gender identity is loving and respectful, because those traits are inseparable from the person's nature. Finally, denying rights to LGBTQ people is profoundly hateful. You're not phobic? Is that what you tell yourself to sleep at night? I thought.

In conclusion, Rick Warren's talk at Humanum contained the same Religious Right rhetoric on marriage that I've heard over and over: marriage is a heterosexual institution, gender is binary, divorce is bad, marriage is under attack, we're not haters. The Religious Right seems to think that if it repeats statements enough times, those statements become true.

Commentary Tidbits

Churchplants: Dear Church, Here’s Why People Are Really Leaving You

Roses and Revolutionaries: Here’s Your Ticket To The Circus (Which You Didn’t Ask For)

The Life and Opinions of Kathryn Elizabeth, Person: How Many More Dead Kids?

The Daily Beast: Your Husband Is Definitely Gay: TLC’s Painful Portrait of Mormonism

Rachel Held Evans: The False Gospel of Gender Binaries

Doug's Dribblings: I Recognize That Road

National Catholic Reporter: Complementarity of the sexes: A trap

Friendly Atheist: Conservative Columnist Seriously Wonders Why Christians Are Turning Into Atheists

News Tidbits

New York Times: Gay Marriage Prompts Call for Clergy to Shun Civil Ceremonies

Forbes: Creationism In Europe? You Bet.

Christian Post: Answers in Genesis Sets Up Religious Freedom, 'Cross of Christ' Video Billboard

U.S. News & World Report: What the Battle Over Abortion Will Look Like in 2015

Humanum: Russell Moore on Marriage, Sex, and Gender

To read an introduction to the Humanum conference, click here. To read about Pope Francis' opening address at Humanum, click here. To read about Rick Warren's talk, click here. To read about Theresa Okafor's commentary, click here.

Humanum: The Complimentarity of Man and Woman took place in Vatican City on November 17-19. Among the speakers at Humanum was Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Moore's talk exalted heterosexual marriage and binary gender roles, caricaturing people who rejected these paradigms as sinister.

At the 0:17 mark, Moore opened his talk by accusing people who reject binary notions of gender of seeing humans as "machines", of deluding themselves with a "Faustian myth". Moore champions a binary notion of gender, painting any notions of gender outside of this narrow paradigm as "arbitrary". In Moore's eyes, those who accept binary gender roles accept their created role as defined by scripture, while those who do not are ignoring natural "limits".

"Poet Wendell Berry observed several years ago in reacting to the technological utopianism of naturalistic scientism that the key question of the modern era is whether or not we will think of persons as machines or as creatures. I believe that this question frames the entire discussion that we have today.

If we are creatures, then we have meaning and purpose and dignity, but with that, we have limits. If we see ourselves as machines, then we will believe the Faustian myth of our own limitless power and the ability to reshape even what it means to be human. And this is, it seems to me, the question at the heart of the controversies that we face around marriage and sexuality.

Are we created, as both the Hebrew scriptures and Jesus of Nazareth put it, male and female from the beginning, or are these categories arbitrary or self-willed? Do our bodies and our sexes and our generational connectedness, do they represent something of who we were designed to be, and thus place both limits on our ability to recreate ourselves and responsibilities for those who will come after us?"

I would argue that the "limits" Moore imposes are arbitrary. First, we are not created only "male and female". Like other complementarians, Moore ignores the existence of intersex people. Second, sex and gender are not synonymous, as Moore's talk implies. One's biological sex does not dictate one's gender presentation, strengths, skills, temperament, and life path, which all vary from individual to individual. Gender roles vary across eras and cultures, with some cultures acknowledging more than two possible genders. Few people perfectly fit their culture's notion of "masculine" and "feminine", and some people transcend those man-made categories altogether. As much as Moore would like to think otherwise, sex and gender are complex, and always have been.

Moore applauded heterosexual marriage, asserting that such unions are "embedded into the creation order". Any other notion of marriage was creation of the state, he insisted, saying, "Marriage and family were not created or crafted by any human state, and thus cannot be redefined by any human state."

Heterosexual marriage is the "means of human flourishing", not "the arena of individual human desires and appetites", Moore argued. In saying this, Moore insultingly refused to acknowledge that love, trust, and devotion could exist in unions other than heterosexual marriages, reducing them to a matter of urges.

Like other speakers at Humanum, Moore depicted heterosexual marriage as intrinsically good, ignoring examples of unhealthy marriages. In his haste to glorify heterosexual marriage as a universal good, he ignored blights such as domestic violence, reproductive coercion, child marriage, and forced marriage around the globe. To boot, for gays and lesbians, heterosexual marriage would be inappropriate and deeply unsatisfying for both spouses. Marriage is a social good when it involves adults whose sexual orientations and temperaments are compatible, but it is not a universal good per se.

"Sexual difference" is rooted in the "natural order", Moore claimed. At the 5:16 mark, he argued that alleged gender differences and heterosexual marriage were created by God.

"The man needed someone similar to him and yet different from him, and fitted together, they form an organic union, as a head with a body. Humanity then, in the image of God, created male and female, with male and female identities that correspond to one another and fulfill one another, we are not created as Spouse A and Spouse B, but as man and as woman, and in marriage as husband and wife, and parenting as mother and as father. Masculinity and femininity are not aspects of the fallen order to be overcome, but they are instead part of what God declared from the very beginning to be very good."

Moore's talk of "a head with a body" made me uncomfortable. The head does the thinking for the rest of the body, so was he implying that the husband should do the thinking for the wife? My suspicions were conformed at the 6:07 mark, when Moore waxed poetic about male "servant leadership" over the family.

"A man is created then to be other-directed, to pour himself into his family. Headship, in God's design, is not Pharaoh-like tyranny, but Christ-like sacrifice."

Fundamentalists Christians justify male dominance over the family by calling it "sacrifice" and "servanthood", as if playing fast and loose with word definitions somehow makes the practice less repugnant. Such reversals do not change what male dominance is. As much as complementarians speak of "sacrifice" and "servanthood", male dominance doesn't look like this in real life. More often than not, such "headship" encourages boorish behavior among husbands, silences wives, and robs wives of adult autonomy. No matter how much fundamentalists sugar-coat it, male dominance is still unethical and unfair to women.

Moore blasted noncommittal sex, cohabitation, divorce, and evolving notions of marriage, ignoring the fact that these are not new phenomena. At the 7:39 mark, he caricatured feminism as a misguided force trying to tear down patriarchy with free-wheeling sexuality. He further caricatured male sexuality outside of heterosexual marriage as a "Darwinian" and dangerous force that the sexual revolution had unleashed.

"Western culture now celebrates casual sexuality, cohabitation, no-fault divorce, marriage definition, and abortion rights as parts of a sexual revolution that they say can tear down old patriarchal systems. But this is not the case. The sexual revolution is not liberation at all. The sexual revolution is merely the imposition of a different sort of patriarchy. The sexual revolution empowers men to pursue a Darwinian fantasy of the predatory alpha-male, rooted in the values of power, prestige, and personal pleasure. [Applause] Does anyone really believe that these things will empower women and children, when we see the wreckage of sexuality as self-expression all around us?"

Where to start? First, Moore depicts the "sexual revolution" as something recent and monolithic, ignoring the fact that sexual mores have always evolved across eras and cultures. Second, Moore ignores the boons that non-stigmatized sex, divorce, and reproductive freedom have bestowed. I fail to see how forcing women to bear unwanted children, forcing people to stay in unhappy marriages, and stigmatizing premarital sex between consenting adults creates anything but misery.

Finally, Moore demonizes male sexuality outside of marriage as the path of the "predatory alpha-male" defined only by "power, prestige, and personal pleasure". The implied message seems to be, Ladies, keep those legs closed and get married, or those bad men out in the world will devour you! He ignores the fact that some men behave this way in heterosexual marriages, and that not all men behave this way outside of marriage. Plenty of men value consent, trust, honesty, and intimacy in their sexual lives, because they understand that their partners are human beings. Plenty of other men (both single and married) still need to learn these values, but heterosexual marriage does not automatically instill these virtues. Healthy communities, open communication about sex, and quality sex education do. Demonizing all men as beasts who must be tamed with heterosexual marriage is dishonest and unhelpful, and such stereotypes will not help people cultivate healthy sexuality.

Listening to talks by Pope Francis and Russell Moore made me realize that Humanum is less about championing strong families, and more about championing rigid gender roles and facile notions of sexuality. The world is changing, however, and more people recognize that gender, sexuality, and marriage don't have to look a certain way. Humanum represents a segment of society that sees society evolving, and cannot accept it.