For Christian Millennials, gay marriage debate produces new views on morality

(The Christian Science Monitor) Few were surprised when America’s largest denomination of “mainline” Presbyterian Christians voted to redefine marriage Tuesday, officially changing its church constitution to extend the sacred union between “a man and a woman” to “two people, traditionally a man and a woman.”

After all, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is one of the more socially liberal within the cacophonous swirl of American Protestantism, in which local congregations or regional governing bodies are often empowered to shape their own understandings of faith and Scripture.

Yet the redefinition also points to larger issues involving same-sex marriage that younger American Christians, in particular, are wrestling with. As gay and lesbian people have become a visible part of mainstream life in the past decade, many of those who have grown up with this new visibility have begun to question the previous generation’s moral condemnations.