This past Saturday we completed our third annual online academic conference, Ecclesia and Ethics. This year our focus was on Human Sexuality. We heard several great papers from speakers like Jenell Paris, Tremper Longman III, Preston Sprinkle, Wesley Hill, Irmtraud Fischer, Mark Yarhouse, Andrew Marin, Frank Heinrich, Gabriel Dy-Liacco, and many others. If you’re interested in listening to some of the recordings from this year’s conference you can do so by registering (which simply includes a $10 donation to charity). The recordings will be up on our website soon.
Throughout the conference I was challenged again and again. I thoroughly enjoyed each of the presentations, but I wanted to share one particular insight that I thought was really profound. One of our keynote speakers, Dr. Wesley Hill—whose newest book, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian, will be out next month—gave a talk assessing the past five years since the publication of his first book, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality. During the talk, Dr. Hill provided a quote from Rodney Clapp about the resurrection and singleness that stood out to me. I thought I’d share this quote with all of you as a challenge near the end of this Lenten season. Whether single or married, I hope you find this concept as compelling as I did.
The married Christian ultimately should trust that his or her survival is guaranteed in the resurrection; the single Christian ultimately must trust in the resurrection. The married, after all, can fall back on the passage of the family name to children, and on being remembered by children. But singles mount the high wire of faith without the net of children and their memory. If singles live on, it will be because there is a resurrection. And if they are remembered, they will be remembered by the family called church.
Christian singles are thus radical witnesses to the resurrection. They forfeit heirs—the only other possibility of their survival beyond the grave—in the hope that one day all creation will be renewed. The Christian single life makes no sense if the God of Jesus Christ is not living and true [Rodney Clapp, Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options, 101].
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