Azusa Pacific Okays Gay Romance (But Not Sex and Marriage)

By amazon Thursday, September 27, 2018 Comment Edit

Christian university is also now hosting a formerly underground LGBT student group.

Azusa Pacific University (APU) has dropped a policy preventing students from engaging in “romanticized” same-sex relationships.

The Southern California member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) also dropped longstanding language from an eight-point statement on human sexuality which had declared: “homosexual acts” (among others) are “expressly forbidden” by Scripture; “heterosexuality is God’s design for sexually intimate relationships”; and “humans were created as gendered beings” in order to be fruitful and multiply.

The Christian school, which still requires celibacy of unmarried students, now has a shorter six-point statement that more succinctly states that marriage is between “a man and a woman, which Jesus reaffirms,” and refers to humans as created “male and female” instead of “gendered.”

The new statement drops a list of sexual behaviors prohibited by the Bible. It also drops the word sin from its concluding sentence, which previously read: “Any deviation from a biblical standard of sexual behavior is sin and therefore is an opportunity for repentance, grace, and redemption, so that as a community we might honor one another and glorify God.”

“APU believes in a biblical definition of marriage as defined as between one man and woman,” Rachel White, a school spokesperson, told CT. “All others living outside of that definition are called to abstinence.” (APU does not offer married housing.)

“A change in policy does not change practice,” the university said in a written statement, which also says the new sexuality statement “strengthened” ...