The 3 - July 7, 2019

This week's edition of The 3 includes the action of a denomination in removing a church and its pastor which had embraced homosexuality, in opposition to church teaching.  Also, the Blandensburg "Peace Cross" case has resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court sending a Pensacola case involving a veterans' memorial in the shape of a cross back to a lower court.  And, a British student has received positive court action in the U.K. after being removed from school due to social media content opposing homosexuality.

Evangelical Covenant Church removes MN church and pastor relative to same-sex marriage beliefs

It seems as if denomination after denomination is dealing, to some degree, with the issue of homosexuality.  It's not just the so-called "mainline" denominations, either.  Recently, Southern Baptists and the Presbyterian Church in America, in their annual gatherings, passed statements regarding the topic.

And, now, you have this dramatic move from the Evangelical Covenant Church, which, according to ReligionNews.com, recently "voted to remove a congregation from its roster over its position on LGBTQ inclusion." This was the first such occurrence in the 134 years the denomination has been in existence. The story states:

The vote to expel the First Covenant Church, a prominent and historic Minneapolis congregation, for being “out of harmony on human sexuality,” took place at the denomination’s annual meeting in Omaha on Friday (June 27).

The Minneapolis church has never performed a gay marriage, though a lesbian couple had an off-site wedding performed by its music director in 2014, which produced a series of conversations about its future over the past few years.

The denomination also expelled from its roster the Rev. Dan Collison, the church’s pastor.

The actions come after First Covenant said it would treat LGBTQ members as equals, allow married gay clergy and would be open to hosting same-sex marriages.

According to the article, the denomination's position is "that heterosexual marriage, faithfulness within marriage and abstinence outside of marriage constitute the Christian standard."

U.S. Supreme Court sends Pensacola cross case back to appeals court to reconsider

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of a large veterans' memorial in Maryland in the shape of a cross, there will no doubt be implications for religious displays all across the country.

Case in point: a memorial in a Pensacola park that was ordered to be removed by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  As Liberty Counsel reports on its website, the high court...

...ordered a lower court to reconsider its earlier ruling that a World War II-era memorial cross in Pensacola must be removed. In Kondrat’yev v. City of Pensacola, a federal appeals court had ruled that the 78-year-old cross must come down, with two of the three judges saying that the outcome was “wrong” but that their “hands were tied” because of the so-called “Lemon Test.”

Referring to the Maryland decision, the website states:

In its 7-2 decision last week, the High Court made it clear that the so-called “Lemon Test” was not useful for cases involving ceremonial, celebratory or commemorative monuments that include religious imagery. Instead, the justices adopted a “strong presumption of constitutionality” for longstanding monuments. The ruling recognized that “a government that roams the land, tearing down monuments with religious symbolism and scrubbing away any reference to the divine will strike many as aggressively hostile to religion” which the Constitution does not require. The Supreme Court said that although “the Cross is undoubtedly a Christian symbol. . . the Cross does not offend the Constitution.”

British student expelled for views against homosexuality wins court victory

Felix Ngole was a student in Great Britain at the University of Sheffield until 2016, when he posted opinions opposing same-sex marriage on Facebook.  An article at the ChristianHeadlines.com website traces the timeline:

In 2017, after mounting a legal battle against his dismissal and arguing that his human rights had been violated, the UK’s High Court ruled in favor of the University.

Now, in a momentous decision, the Court of Appeals has overturned the previous ruling and slapped down the university for its discriminatory action, urging them to reconsider Ngole’s case.

What did Felix do that was so egregious? According to the article: "Ngole shared Bible verses which supported the traditional view that marriage is God-ordained and should be exclusively between one man and one woman. He also asserted that 'the Bible and God identify homosexuality as a sin,' according to the BBC.

In the story, "Christian Concern, the UK-based advocacy group helping Ngole with his case," is quoted, saying,“The mere expression of religious views about sin does not necessarily connote discrimination..."  The Christian Concern website states, "the Court of Appeal held that it was the university that was ‘lacking insight’ in not understanding a Christian viewpoint."  The site also says:

The Court ruled that: “The mere expression of views on theological grounds (e.g. that 'homosexuality is a sin') does not necessarily connote that the person expressing such views will discriminate on such grounds.” It was further recognised that Felix had never been shown to act in a discriminatory fashion.

The outcome of this case will have significant implications not only for Christian freedom of speech, but in relation to all free speech. For example, comments made by people on social media (often many years ago) have recently been arbitrarily used to silence viewpoints that people dislike or disagree with.