We are unhappy to report that Doug Wilson and New Saint Andrews College will be including the strongly pro-gay speaker Andrew Klavan within the line-up for their upcoming high school conference.
A respected crime and suspense novelist, Andrew Klavan is also known as the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” podcast on The Daily Wire.
Klavan’s areas of focus go beyond the topic of homosexuality. We have no reason to believe he would use the “Called” conference as a platform for his erroneous ideas on the topic, nor as a place to continue accusing orthodox Christians of antigay prejudice.
Klavan is a compelling speaker.
In Klavan’s capacity as a political observer, orthodox Christians may find value. Nevertheless, we question the wisdom of including a man who claims homosexuality doesn’t offend God at an event aimed to “challenge Christian high school students to become the next generation of cultural leaders.”
The New Saint Andrews College “Called” conference will take place July 15-20.
The website promises:
“A conference that will challenge Christian high school students to become the next generation of cultural leaders, because they are CALLED…
→ to put on the whole armor of God
→ to engage culture
→ to advance the Kingdom
Was it not possible to find a speaker more suited to this high calling?
As a member of the Episcopal Church, with women priests, women bishops, gay priests, gay bishops, etc, Andrew Klavan has little claim to be representing “Christian” culture.
Rather, for more than a decade he has clearly proclaimed his belief that homosexual relationships are a morally good option—and that Christians are wrong to echo Scripture in condemning homosexuality.
Craven’s words:
“Many of my fellow Christians tell me that homosexuality is a sin. Maybe so, but it’s not my sin. Me, I feel that heterosexuality is the human norm, but there are harmless variants outside the norm and, you know, who cares?”
UPDATE:
Benjamin Merkle of New Saint Andrews College contacted us with the following:
Your recent post was forwarded to me addressing our upcoming Called Conference. You raised the concern that we are hosting Andrew Klavan as a speaker at this conference, despite Klavan’s erroneous position on gay marriage. I’m writing to respond to that concern.
The reason that we invited Klavan to speak at Called was to hear him on the subject of abortion. He wrote the screenplay for the film Gosnell and we wanted to hear from him about the challenge of engaging our culture through film on such a controversial subject.
However, one of the challenges that we face on controversial cultural issues like abortion is that as soon as you find an ally on that issue, you usually find that you are really opposed to that same person on other issues. Abortion is a particularly good example of this dilemma. For instance, I deeply appreciate the work of David Daleiden to fight abortion, despite the fact that I am very opposed to his Catholicism. Klavan is similar. I really appreciate what he has done on abortion, while I would disagree with him deeply on other issues. So Christians have to have a strategy that can make sense of this.
Since we want to teach our students how to engage with culture, we need to walk them through this dilemma. Our plan at this conference is to have Klavan speak on his work on the subject of abortion. And then later we will have a debate/panel with some of our own faculty and Klavan together on the subject of gay marriage where we will express our opposition to his opinion.
One other thing to note – from your post it looked like you were taking the invitation of Andrew Klavan to this event as a move of Doug Wilson. The Called Conference is hosted by New Saint Andrews College and its organization and speaker selection are not under Pastor Wilson’s direction.
NSA’s position on homosexuality remains the orthodox, biblical position of one man and one woman until death do they part. We are unashamed about this and have no intention of softening our witness on this.
Pastor Wilson also addressed it here.
We discussed the tendency to compromise when hosting (or attending) Christian conferences in this article, and hope that Pastor Wilson and the good folks at New Saint Andrews College will consider it.
