The stakes couldn't be any higher

German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg (who's far from a flaming conservative) lays out in stark terms what's at stake for the church in the current debates over homosexual practice and same-sex marriage:

The entire biblical witness includes practicing homosexuality, without exception among the kinds of behavior that give particularly striking expression to humanity's turning away from God. This exegetical result places very narrow boundaries around the view of homosexuality in any church that is under the authority of Scripture. What is more, the biblical statements on this subject merely represent the negative corollary to the Bible's positive views on the creational purpose of men and women in their sexuality.

These texts that are negative toward homosexual behavior are not merely dealing with marginal opinions that could be neglected without detriment to the Christian message as a whole. Moreover, the biblical statements about homosexuality cannot be relativized as the expressions of a cultural situation that today is simply outdated. The biblical witness from the outset deliberately opposed the assumptions of their cultural environment in the name of faith in the God of Israel, who in Creation appointed men and women for a particular identity....

Here lies the boundary of a Christian church that knows itself to be bound by the authority of Scripture. Those who urge the church to change the norm of its teaching on this matter must know that they are promoting schism. If a church were to let itself be pushed to the point where it ceased to treat homosexual activity as a departure from the biblical norm, and recognized homosexual unions as a personal partnership of love equivalent to marriage, such a church would stand no longer on biblical grounds but against the unequivocal witness of Scripture. A church that took this step would cease to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. [emphasis mine]

Are you listening my PCUSA brothers and sisters? Are you listening Tony Jones and Brian McLaren? Are you listening my fellow Christians who wish to avoid these issues? The above is just a portion of Pannenberg's article entitled Revelation and Homosexual Experience -- perhaps the best thing I've read on this -- in which he makes the case that the Old Testament, New Testament, and Jesus, leave no wiggle room for the church.

Read the whole thing. (pdf)