EDITORIAL
Ducking the Issue
Phil Robertson's Problem Is Ours
by S. M. Hutchens
There is a very popular television program called Duck Dynasty that features men with long beards. I've never seen it and don't know what it's about, but it was hard to miss the news a few months ago that one of the men, a Christian named Phil Robertson, was suspended by the A&E Network, which produces the show, for what it regarded as his anti-gay remarks. As far as I can tell, what Robertson did was, during an interview, cite homosexuality as an example of sin, going on to place it in the canon of 1 Corinthians 6, which lists sins and sinners that shall not enter the kingdom of heaven: the drunkards, the covetous, the fornicators, and so forth, the homosexuals among them.
The most dismaying thing about the inevitable reaction to Robertson's remarks was not the predictable rage of the homosexualists, but of widely broadcasted Christians who said that Robertson had, in expressing his "opinion," done something not just a little stupid, but un-Christian as well. We'll take as an example the conservative pundit and very amateur theologian Bill O'Reilly, who in grave and magisterial tones used his authority as someone who has written a book about Jesus to declare that Robertson was out of line for taking it upon himself to condemn people whose hearts only God knows.
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S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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