Should Christians attend gay weddings?

I recently joined Pastor David Hannah for a conversation with parents at the Church at West Franklin, a campus of Brentwood Baptist Church. We fielded lots of questions, including the perennial question about whether Christians should attend gay weddings.

I'd encourage you to prioritize maintaining relationship, treat sacred what God treats sacred, and be consistent.

Whenever possible, I err on the side of attending the wedding, particularly if one or both of the betrothed are non-Christians. And if I decide I can't attend, I try to explain my decision in a way that honors and cares for the couple.

At the same time, there's a big difference between two non-Christians of the same sex getting married in a field without invoking God versus two Christians of the same sex quoting Scripture and using Christian marriage liturgy in a church.

Historically, Christian marriage attendees participated in the ceremony liturgy by testifying that God was indeed joining the couple in Christian marriage and committing to help the marriage thrive.

Because God enters into, joins, and sustains Christian marriage in such a powerfully particular way, I feel compelled to ensure I can confidently confirm God's work at Christian weddings.

In practice, this means I feel comfortable attending most non-Christian same-sex weddings, where as I'm more careful when invited to weddings of two Christians of the same sex.

Here's the challenge: most weddings aren't cleanly at one of these extremes. Most gay wedding are somewhere along a spectrum between these two hypothetical weddings.

The next time you get invited to a gay wedding, I encourage you to humbly weigh how your presence might be misinterpreted versus how your absence might affect your relationship with the betrothed (and your potential to have a gospel impact on them in the future).

(Again, I generally err on the side of preserving relationship, but if I couldn’t attend a wedding, I would go to great lengths to reassure the couple of my love for them, that I wasn’t judging them, and that I needed to respect my own convictions.)

Lastly, regardless of where your personal comfort it along that spectrum, I want to challenge you to be consistent. Many opposite sex weddings fall just as short of God's vision for Christian marriage.

If you're invited to the wedding of two non-Christians of the opposite sex, a Christian and a non-Christian of the opposite sex, or two opposite-sex Christians who don't take seriously biblical purposes of Christian marriage and unbiblical divorce/remarriage—if the opposite-sex union you're invited to celebrate falls short of God's design for Christian marriage in their own way, I challenge you to respond the same ways you do to a same-sex couple whose union falls short of God's design for Christian marriage.

I'd also hesitate to attend those weddings.

Consistency is key. If you care about people taking all of God's wisdom for Christian marriage seriously, then apply that to all weddings.

Because when you don't—when you refuse to attend gay weddings but attend straight weddings that fall short of God's vision for Christian marriage yet claim to be joined by God, your motivations aren't concern for God's wisdom.

Listen to the rest of the conversation at https://open.spotify.com/episode/0hx35CNmd3Kq7YJzJDnU7D?si=wnVCxhuuSLGc2kt4v_qhCA.