The Gospel Coalition is no stranger to bad takes, and while arguing that grace rejects, rather than perfects or transforms, nature is in vogue in Big and Mid Eva, The Gospel Coalition’s article, “Spouses, Please Stop Sitting Together,” went viral from all the way down under.
So here’s our take: spouses, consider whether you always sit together in church. That might be a radical idea for some. Please don’t hear me suggesting that sitting with your spouse is wrong. However, as Julie and I discussed it, we thought it was worth calling Christian couples to re-imagine what it’s like walking into church on your own, and then to think of church less like a date and more like a deployment.
The gist of the argument is that Christians should use seating in church to evangelize newcomers in the church, and how the author, Dave Moore, remarked how infrequently he and his wife sat next to each other.
And this raises a bigger question; if church is meant to be a gathering of our spiritual family, why are we sitting in our earthly families in the first place?
This question is where the article goes full retard, presupposing that grace rejects nature, and that there is a contradiction posed.Â
As Stephen Wolfe pointed out, “That TGC article is actually quite good if you read it as a parody of Owen Strachen’s rhetoric. Same language, premises, applied to spouses. Genius actually.” This is certainly the same exact logic used to oppose Christian Nationalism, with regard to nations instead of families.
The article was roasted online so hard that The Gospel Coalition in both Australia and the US published rebuttal articles. The Gospel Coalition also renamed the article to “Spouses, Consider Where You Sit at Church” with an editor’s note: Editors’ note:
“This title of this article has been changed to better reflect its content. Both The Gospel Coalition Australia and The Gospel Coalition USA have published articles interacting with it.”
