In the circles we run, there is one common answer to the question: What will be the next thing when it comes to sexuality?
Their answer? Polyamorous relationships.
What do you know about them? (Other than that they are a romantic, sexual relationship between three or more people?)
Did you know that 24% of church-going people think that consensual non-monogamous relationships are morally acceptable? Or that as many as 1 in 5 Americans have been in a consensual non-monogamous relationship, and 5 percent are currently in one? (That’s about as many people who identify as LGBTQ+.)
How can we biblically respond to people exploring polyamorous relationships with outrageous love and winsome truth? Dr. Branson Parler is back to walk us through it.
Highlights:
“Start with listening. Start with understanding. Start by asking, ‘What does [polyamory] mean to them?’” —Branson Parler
“If someone says to me, ‘This was allowed in the Old Testament, why can’t it be allowed today?’ I would say, ‘It’s because of confusion about what time it is.’ Jesus has come. The new creation has been inaugurated … God regulates and allows a number of things that are a less-than-ideal reality [in the Old Testament]. But when Jesus comes and the Spirit is poured out, you see this new creation reality that connects up with God’s original intention in creation.” —Branson Parler
“What our culture doesn’t believe is that anybody is ever faithful … They see that in relationships, their parents’ marriage … Why even go down that route? The only solution to that is to stop looking at faithless people and start looking at the faithful Savior. Only that—only looking at our faithful Savior—will give us the ability to truly be faithful to another person.” —Branson Parler
Do the Next Thing:
Check out Branson’s site here
Find Branson’s pastoral paper on polyamory for free here
That Christianity Today article we mentioned? Here
Branson also recommends N. T. Wright’s Scripture and the Authority of God. (In the final chapter, he deals with monogamy and polygamy as a case study and how to read Scripture on those topics.)
Follow us and our shelter-in-place life where we are the most active here on IG