Rich Stearns is right: Other Christians aren't the enemy

A few years ago, my family started sponsoring a child through World Vision. I knew that the organization was generally evangelical, and that we are generally not. But this massive parachurch organization does good work, and I trusted them enough for a minuscule portion of that good work to be on our behalf. For 35 dollars a month, we’ve been contributing to the health, education, and general welfare of a little girl in Haiti, who was born the same day as our older daughter. Whatever theological differences I have with World Vision seem immaterial to this.

Theological differences may be slightly more material for some of the organization’s conservative supporters. In an interview with Christianity Today published yesterday, World Vision president Rich Stearns made a surprising announcement: the organization will no longer refrain from hiring Christians in same-sex marriages. Stearns presented this decision as World Vision “deferring to the authority of churches and denominations on theological issues”—as a way to stay out of the fray over same-sex marriage.

Today, they’re very much in the fray. Within hours, the CT article generated hundreds of comments and a firestorm in social media. Some are thrilled; a lot of conservative evangelicals are not. Many people announced that they would discontinue their participation in World Vision’s child sponsorship program—no matter that they may have photos of these children and drawings by them tacked to their refrigerators.