But we shift from Geneva back to the United States, where you find conversation about many of the same issues. And of course, as we're thinking about the culture clashes and the big theological and moral challenges of our day, there is no way to escape the constant and seemingly unavoidable conversation, almost every day, about the issues that go these days under the rubric of LGBTQ. That comes to mind with a conference announced, sponsored by some who identify as evangelical or great tradition Christians. The conference is to be held at the end of July in St. Louis, Missouri. The name of the conference is Revoice. The use of the word there is, of course, not accidental. This is the labeling of the conference, and by using the word revoice, the organizers of the conference indicate they want to change the voice of evangelicalism on these crucial questions.

What's really interesting about this conference is how much attention that it has received even before the event has been held. Normally, there's more conversation after this kind of conferences held than before. That may yet be the case, but there's no doubt at this point that there is a great deal of evangelical conversation about this conference even before it has been held. The question will be, why. Some of those questions are immediately answered by a closer look at the call for the conference itself, the materials released on the website of the conference known as Revoice.

It's very important to take the organizers at their word when they write: "Revoice exists because we want to see LGBT people who adhere to the historic Christian sexual ethic flourish in their local faith communities. We envision," they wrote, "a future Christianity where LGBT people can be open and transparent in their faith communities about their orientation and/or experience of gender dysphoria without feeling inferior to their straight, cisgender brothers and sisters; where churches not only utilize but also celebrate the unique opportunities that life-long celibate LGBT people have to serve others; where Christian leaders boast about the faith of LGBT people who are living a sacrificial obedience for the sake of the Kingdom; and where LGBT people are welcomed into families so they, too, can experience the joys, challenges, and benefits of kinship."

What's most important at the onset to recognize is that those who've organized this conference are identifying as Christians who adhere to the historic Christian sexual ethic, and what's also important is to understand that this places this conference in a very different place than others who are also talking about the LGBTQ issues. And some of those others are arguing for a reversal of the historic Christian biblical understanding of sexual morality and of sexual behavior.

When it comes to sexual behavior and expression, the organizers are also very clear. They wrote: "We believe that the Bible restricts sexual activity to the context of a marriage covenant, which is defined in the Bible as the emotional, spiritual, and physical union of a man and a woman that is ordered toward procreation." Now the statement goes on when they say, "At the same time, we also believe that the Bible honors those who live out an extended commitment to celibacy, and that unmarried people should play a uniquely valuable role in the lives of local faith communities. Together, these two convictions," they said, "constitute the traditional sexual ethic, because it represents the worldview that the Bible consistently teaches across both the Old and New Testaments and that Christians have historically believed for millennia."

Let's be very honest and clear and note that the organizers of this conference are stating their agreement with the historic Christian sexual ethic that centers in marriage as the union of a man and a woman and that is a covenant union oriented towards procreation. They are very clear about that, and for that we should be thankful. So, why then would there be controversy? This is where we need to look closely and we're also going to have to listen closely.

As we look closely, we will notice that there are a couple of issues that come almost immediately to attention on the website of the conference known as Revoice. One of those issues is the kind of language that is used pervasively. For example, in that first statement I read referenced to LGBT people. Language is very important here. And so we really need to ask the question, do we want biblically and theologically to refer to individuals as LGBT people, especially when we're talking about Christians, or do we want to talk about, especially as we talk about Christians, believers who may be struggling with one form of temptation or with one set of issues or another?

The language becomes more problematic with the conference with references to, for example, sexual minorities, and as we think about that for a moment, we come to understand there's something more here than just words. This is a part we must presume of the revoicing that the conference organizers want to take place. But this is where biblically minded Christians had to think very, very clearly, even as we think very, very compassionately.

The question is this: Do we really want to speak of believers with our understanding of the gospel and of the holiness to which we are called and the sanctification, that is God's work in the life of believers, do we really want to define persons in this way? Is the use of the language such as LGBT people or references you may hear to LGBT Christians or to gay Christians, is that right languages that the clearest language we should use? What is implied in that language?

Well, at least a part of what's implied in that language seemingly is that this kind of sexual orientation or sexual identity gets right to the very being of an individual, and that becomes a huge question as we want to think carefully. That very issue becomes far more complicated when we think about the history of a term like sexual minorities.

Kevin DeYoung recently pointed to the origin of that term as we know it in a book written in Sweden in the 1960s entitled The Erotic Minorities: A Swedish View. But as DeYong points out, when you use the word minority in this kind of context, you're not just using it descriptively. The use of the word minority, given the background in the politics and sociology and cultural analysis of the 20th century, you're talking about a group that is presumed to have a certain political status and a certain identity.

Other issues that come immediately to mind appear from the language on the website. For example, one session bears the title "Redeeming Queer Culture and Adventure." Some of the texts concerning that session includes this statement: "Christians have often discarded the virtues of queer culture along with the vices, which leaves out culturally connected Christian sexual minorities torn between two cultures, two histories, and two communities. So questions that have until now been largely unanswered remain." Listen carefully to the language, I quote exactly: "What does queer culture and specifically queer literature and theory have to offer us who follow Christ? What queer treasure, honor, and glory will be brought into the New Jerusalem at the end of time?" Then cited Revelation 21:24-26.

At this point, we realize we've entered into a very different conversation. Now, we're being directed to look at the virtues of queer culture. This is where Christians have to ask some very fundamental questions, and these questions are sometimes new questions to Christians in the 21st century. We're having to think about issues, we're having to answer questions we've never had to confront before.

There can be no honest question. The implicit in this language is the assertion that queer culture as it is defined here has something morally and theologically positive and profitable to add to Christianity. There can honestly be no other interpretation of language which ask what queer treasure, honor, and glory will be brought into the New Jerusalem at the end of time. But that means that we also have to look from the end of the biblical story back to the beginning to the doctrine of creation, and here we have to understand that at least some of the speakers at this conference are arguing that in the garden, that is before the fall, there was some form of a same-sex sexual attraction, something that bears some kind of meaningful connection with what is now claimed to be LGBT identity.

One of the individuals involved in the conference and a book published just last year asked the question: "Is it too dangerous, too unorthodox, to believe that I am uniquely designed to reflect the glory of God? That my orientation, before the fall, was meant to be a gift in appreciating the beauty of my own sex as I celebrated the friendship of the opposite sex?" That's an astounding question.

We should remember that one of the recent turns in the argument for accepting homosexual behavior as well as homosexual orientation is the argument that homosexual relationships and homosexual desires were present before the fall. Thus, a part of the goodness of God's creation, but that is actually contradicted by Scripture. It's not only contradicted by explicit texts of Scripture, it's contradicted by the flow of biblical history and by any kind of biblical theology that understands the inherent connection between the perfection of creation in the beginning and the perfection of the new creation at the end. In between, of course, is sin and God's act of redemption. But it's not just sin and God's act of redemption, it is also God's creation of a church in Christ and Christ union with that church.

Furthermore, it is Christ's call to holiness and obedience in that church. So, sanctification and holiness are central to gospel Christianity, and thus we raise the question as to whether or not what is defined by so many as sexual orientation is actually compatible when put in this context with our understanding of the gospel and sanctification.

Honest Christians recognize that something that might be defined as a sexual orientation exist. We understand that a pattern of sexual attraction and sexual desire comes as known to us even as it is often, as we know it, unbidden. It's unchosen. We understand that, but this is where biblical Christianity points out that even as there is such an orientation or such a pattern of sexual attraction, that has to be measured over against the plan and purpose of God, the glory of God in creation and God's explicit teachings in his word. This is where we must ask: Is a desire as set over against a behavior also understood to be the result of the fall and is that desire understood to be in itself sinful? Here's where the wealth of the Christian tradition would require us to understand that a sinful desire is sinful in itself, even if that sinful desire does not end in the actualization of sexual or sinful misbehavior.

My biggest concern in this conference and in the language that is used and in the conversation that many evangelicals are now having is that what you see in this conference is the acceptance of the idea that our sexual identity or any individual's sexual orientation becomes a defining issue that isn't changed by the gospel and isn't transformed by sanctification.

I did not say that coming to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ results in any kind of immediate transformation of sexual desire. What I am arguing is that holiness and sanctification as revealed in the New Testament means that progressively whatever sinful desires mark us should become less a part of us and we should seek to identify with them in a lesser way, not in a greater way, by the Holy Spirit's work in our hearts and in our lives in sanctification.

But finally, as we try our best to think compassionately and clearly about these issues, I think we have to turn to a text such as First Corinthians chapter 6, verse 11, where Paul writes: "And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." Now in First Corinthians 6 as in Romans chapter 1, Paul mentions specific sins, but by implication, he is indicting the entire human race. But speaking of our identity as sinners saved by grace, he says, "Such were some of you," and then uses the language of being washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. It can't be an accident, and we must not miss the power of that verb tense: "such were some of you."

That's not just a message for those who've organized and will be attending the Revoice Conference. That's a word for every single Christian all the time.