My first post on LGBTQ
Now that I have your attention, I’ll try to say something useful
This rainbow-themed crosswalk was temporarily installed in June 2024 for last year’s LGBTQ pride festival in my home city of Colorado Springs, Colorado. This year, the city declined to authorize a similar crosswalk.
A gently provocative blog on global Christianity is not doing its job if it evades big controversies. But on this topic, nerves are really raw. Even friends whom I consulted for input went to extraordinary lengths to avoid offending me. I hope to receive thoughtful replies, which I may discuss in future posts.
Conflicting views on same-sex marriage and matters of LGBTQ inclusion have played a major role in recent denominational splits among Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Anglicans. “Who am I to judge?” became five of the most memorable and most controversial words of Pope Francis’s tenure. Laws proscribing homosexuality have received strong support from Christians in Africa, to the dismay of some Christians in the West.
I’ve been thinking about this topic for a long time. While in college, I read prominent US pastor Jerry Kirk’s The Homosexual Crisis in the Presbyterian Church and, at a friend’s request, Letha Scanzoni and Virginia Mollenkott’s Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? At that time, I was skilled in debate and totally unskilled in sensitive interpersonal care. It never occurred to me that my friend might have asked me to read the latter book because she was struggling with homosexual attraction herself.
Thirty years later, when my son Kyle told me that he was gay and that he could not be both gay and Christian, I was more sensitive. I immediately responded that many people believe one can indeed be both gay and Christian, and that I would rather him Kyle hear Scripture read and preached in that kind of church than nowhere. (Kyle has stayed away from church for the 12 years since then.)
My belief that God has designated heterosexual marriage as the proper place for sexual activity has not changed. To some radical LGBTQ advocates, that means I am a bigot and my voice should be delegitimized. Happily, many people of various views remain able to engage in mutually respectful conversation on this topic.
My views are well reflected in three articles I published while serving as editor of the Evangelical Review of Theology, by Gregory Coles, Wesley Hill, and Jill Nelson.
The Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in North America has been wrestling intensely with LGBTQ issues. The CRC voted in 2022 to give “confessional status” to its position against homosexual activity, resulting in strong objections from progressive members. At Calvin University in Michigan, a leading intellectual bastion of US evangelicalism, philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff and theologian James K. A. Smith have called for receptivity to LGBTQ Christians. Some anticipate that the university may disaffiliate with the CRC, as the Toronto-based Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) did earlier this year.
A few decades ago, Christian pro-LGBTQ advocates generally sought to neutralize biblical passages on homosexuality, arguing that the Old Testament passages no longer applied and that the meaning of the key New Testament passages (Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1) was indeterminate, or asserted that God has given us “more light” that supersedes biblical teaching. However, the primary line of argument at a May 14 ICS webinar was more nuanced. Speakers Sylvia Keesmaat and Len Vander Zee contended that the Bible is a varied, multifaceted book that contains evidence of believers making cultural adjustments, such as when they jettisoned aspects of Jewish law while taking the gospel to Gentiles, and that the Holy Spirit can guide us to do similar things today.
When I took Kyle to lunch with an LGBTQ-affirming ordained minister and asked her what book she would encourage Kyle to read, she recommended Matthew Vines’s God and the Gay Christian. Vines claims that a high view of Scripture and acceptance of diversity in sexual activity are compatible. Most evangelicals have not been persuaded.
The gap is large and the stakes are high. Conservatives see LGBTQ affirmation as a rejection of biblical truth and of God’s design for marriage. Progressives passionately insist that holders of the traditional view are driving young people with homosexual orientation toward depression and suicide.
I cannot bridge this gap, but perhaps I can encourage us to look for ways to reduce it. Those who hold a traditional view of sexuality could seek ways to walk kindly with and support their LGBTQ-attracted brothers and sisters. LGBTQ-affirming persons could avoid shaming those whose interpretation of Scripture prevents them from moving beyond a traditional view of marriage.
Here are a few modest proposals for ongoing discussion.
1. Although the idea of LGBTQ Christians remains disorienting for many, we should be happy that people like Vines still value the Bible as a God-inspired, authoritative book rather than simply walking away from the Christian faith.
2. If homosexual practice is sinful, it is just one of many sins, not the unforgivable sin.
3. The prevalence of divorce and pornography use suggests that the church, while not neglecting issues around homosexuality, could do better in promoting the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.
4. We should always be open to reconsidering our beliefs in the light of new experiences. But if we thoughtfully develop our beliefs in the light of Scripture, tradition, and experience, then we will be equipped to react in a God-honoring manner to an unexpected situation. Some parents react angrily upon learning that one of their children is gay; others revise their whole theology to align with their child’s expressed sexual orientation. I was able to respond calmly and kindly to my own son because I had already reflected deeply on the issues. Having a gay son did not change my views at all, though it did reinforce my conviction that sexual orientation is not always chosen.
5. Calling a celibate individual who identifies as gay unfit for ministry, as some Christians do, seems to make no more sense than disqualifying people who experience and are seeking to control a predilection to alcoholism or anger.
For additional reflection
After I completed this post, an advance reviewer directed me to an article on “survivors of Christian nonsexual spiritual abuse.” I would encourage anyone who teaches or counsels on LGBTQ issues to read it. The primary author reports having been raised in an evangelical home, attending a Christian college, and being kicked out of the house after telling her parents she was homosexual.