March 9, 2025, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:

Author says church is Christians' main family

By Mike Haynes

                For a woman who has a Cambridge University Ph.D. in English Renaissance literature and a theology degree from Oak Hill College in London, Rebecca McLaughlin had no trouble getting her message across clearly to a group of Oklahomans and at least two West Texans.

                I don’t think her three talks Feb. 14-15 were over anyone’s heads.

Rebecca McLaughlin at First Presbyterian
Church in Edmond, Oklahoma.

                And for someone who has written more than a dozen books, she certainly doesn’t sit in an academic ivory tower. She came across as someone who clearly walks the talk as she laid out answers to critical questions and offered guidance on living a genuine Christian life.

                For Valentine’s Day this year, my wife and I didn’t go out to eat or to see a movie. Instead, we drove the four hours to Edmond, Oklahoma, to hear McLaughlin talk in person about “The Art of Connecting: Love, Relationships and the Gospel.”

                The 45-year-old was the opposite of pretentious in jeans, a knit shirt, jacket, boots and a ponytail as she covered several key points from her books, including “Christianity Today” magazine’s 2020 book of the year, “Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion,” 2021’s “The Secular Creed: Engaging Five Contemporary Claims” and 2023’s “No Greater Love: A Biblical Vision for Friendship.”

                Standing near the front pews and in front of a shiny communion table cross in the elegant sanctuary of Edmond’s First Presbyterian Church, McLaughlin discussed practical approaches to challenging situations. To this Texas Panhandle native, her English accent gave her an air of gravitas, but her words would have been valuable if they had come with “y’all”s and “fixin’ to”s.

                That’s because everything she said was based on an immersion in scripture and her knack for applying it to modern issues.

 

Rebecca McLaughlin at First Presbyterian
Church in Edmond, Oklahoma.

               A common refrain in her three presentations was the status of the church as the key Christian family. On Valentine’s night, she acknowledged the important role of marriage as Paul describes it in Ephesians 5. In addition to the mutual love and respect the apostle urges for wives and husbands, the passage compares marriage to the relationship of Christ and the church. McLaughlin said the purpose of marriage is as a metaphor for that bond between Jesus and his people.

Referencing I Corinthians 13, she said, “The classic love passage is not about marriage. It’s about the church.”

                She pointed out the Old Testament comparison of God as a husband and Israel as an unfaithful wife.

                “Our vision of marriage is both too small and too big,” she said. Too small in that we may not realize how important the metaphor is in pointing to the ultimate, Christ-church relationship, and too big when we place marriage above that eternal connection.

                “It was always about Christ and the church,” she said. “There is a much bigger vision of what marriage is about than just about one man and one woman.

                “This is why marriage is male and female and why husbands and wives perform different roles. Marriage is meant to point us to Christ, but it’s also meant to disappoint us.

                “Because even the best Christian marriage can only be a tiny echo of Jesus’s love for us. We elevate it to a position that the Bible doesn’t.”

“Jesus takes the marriage bond exceedingly seriously,” she affirmed, but its purpose is to point to the Christ-church relationship. “It’s the greatest love story that’s ever been told,” she said.

                McLaughlin said in our culture, sexual and romantic fulfillment is one of the greatest of our idols. The narrative is, she said, that without that fulfillment, “you’re missing out on life.” But focusing on the more significant relationship – Christ and the church – takes pressure off couples to have the “perfect” marriage and also off single people who discover that they don’t have to find a partner to be happy.

                “The primary family is the family of the church,” she said.

                McLaughlin’s first Saturday morning session focused on parenting. She acknowledged that protecting their children is the first job of parents but said they can overdo sheltering them from spiritual threats in the world.

“Sometimes, we protect kids so much that we don’t give them a chance for discipleship,” she said. “Kids are not fragile. They need some flexibility, like a tree, in order to grow. Our job is to teach them the Bible and walk alongside them as they encounter ideas that are not biblical.”

She encouraged instilling a biblical view of sex in children but said, “If you don’t repent and trust in Jesus, all the Christian sexual ethics in the world won’t help. The first priority is the gospel.”

                In her concluding talk Saturday, McLaughlin addressed issues from her book “The Secular Creed,” such as race relations and same-sex marriage. She is open about her life-long attraction to women and her decision to place Christ above it. She has been married for 17 years to Bryan, an Oklahoma City native with whom she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with their 14-, 12- and 6-year-old children.

                She said the church should love, not criticize, LGBTQ people. She recalled a woman who said the love that was evident on McLaughlin’s podcast was what made Christianity sound real to her. Aware of Jesus’s command, the woman said, “You guys have to love me.”

                McLaughlin doesn’t shy away from controversial topics in her books, her podcasts or in person. She was surprised, however, that she has received the most pushback about where she sits in church.

                She and her husband often sit apart during worship with the purpose of interacting better with visitors or people sitting by themselves. They believe everyone should feel welcome in God’s family. “You don’t go to church to be alone,” she said.

                In Edmond, she graciously signed my copy of “Confronting Christianity” and our sister-in-law Cheryl’s copy of McLaughlin’s Bible study workbook, “Navigating Gospel Truth.”

                Kathy and I departed First Presbyterian encouraged by McLaughlin’s messages but even more impressed by her commitment to Christ.

Pastor Eric Laverentz said attendance was down from the usual turnout for guest speakers. That’s a shame, because those who missed it would have learned much more about love from McLaughlin’s insight than from the regular Valentine’s hearts and flowers.