Who will sit together at the heavenly feast?

The heavenly banquet - from the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome

Rachel Held Evans is like Jesus in many ways, not least that her impact continues to grow after leaving this earth.

Many have written their tributes to her, but others have seized on the occasion of her death one week ago to write vicious criticism cloaked as tribute.

One supporter of Rachel wrote that she and her conservative evangelical opponents will sit at opposite ends of one long table in the kingdom of heaven.

But blogger Anne Kennedy replied:

And so we are not sitting at opposite sides of one long table.  We are not eating of the one bread and drinking out of the one cup...
We are talking about two different faiths, two different kinds of love, two different lords... 
Christians must speak the truth about who that God is, and who we are as his [sic] creatures.

Two different faiths!  And all because of Rachel's decision to support gay and lesbian Christians as fully equal to straight Christians, blessed by God if they marry or become pastors.  

Since when does the Nicene Creed include specific beliefs about heterosexuality vs. homosexuality?

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father...

by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made [hu]man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures...

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life...
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

There just isn't a clause in those early creeds saying that committed same-sex relationships are wrong and that if you disagree, please step aside and don't call yourself a follower of Jesus.  You are in a "different faith" with a "different lord."

There is a clear expectation that God is male, but there isn't even a statement that the Bible has to be interpreted literally and without its social context.  

Rachel gave up the belief in creationism that she was taught in Dayton, Tennessee, and the belief that women could not be pastors, and the belief that the three brief references to homosexuality in the New Testament could be applied to faithful same-sex relationships in the 21st century.

Because Rachel's understanding changed regarding these subjects, Anne Kennedy claims Rachel is outside the bounds of proper Christianity, serving a different lord.  These opponents of Rachel doubt whether she will make it inside those pearly gates.  

Rod Dreher agrees with Kennedy in his recent blog post on The American Conservative site:

What so many of the people on that side cannot seem to grasp is that for the things they believe about LGBT to be true, they have to do such radical revision to fundamental Christianity that they render it into essentially a different religion.  

He and Kennedy agree:
And so an unapologetic embrace of the LGBTQ agenda is not biblically Christian.  Those who teach and preach it can be said, without any confusion at all, to be outside the visible boundaries of biblical faith.

Early statements of faith don't matter to them, and careful contextual examination of each word of the Bible doesn't matter either.  They have a new creed, established since 1980, that defines Christians by their stances on gay rights and legalized abortion, not on their love for and commitment to a risen Savior.  

For an analysis of this change in the rules of orthodoxy, see Franky Schaeffer's Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of it Back.

See also Randall Balmer's The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond.  

John Stonestreet is another one of these right-wing evangelicals who sparred with Rachel on Twitter and then wrote a less-than-friendly tribute to her that Christianity Today posted on its website two days after her death.  He got so much blowback that the article was quickly removed and CT editor-in-chief Mark Galli had to post an apology on the website.

The good news in all this hubbub over Rachel's death is that more people everywhere are learning that there are progressive evangelicals in this country.  Not all born-again Christians support Trump and guns while opposing gays and abortion.  

Right-wing churches may draw lines that shut progressives out, but the circles of Jesus followers continue to expand.  Believers like Rachel Held Evans and Pete Buttigieg are changing the public perception of Christianity.  

Let's listen to Jesus when it comes to deciding who is right and who is outside the bounds of faith: "Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.... By their fruits shall ye know them."   (Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7: 16-20)