Well, it’s long past time I wrap this up, and I say that knowing there is so much more that can be said. I’d like to use this concluding post to both synthesize what I’ve analyzed where that may prove helpful and talk about my shift in perspective.
Methodist theologian Albert Outler synthesized the work of John Wesley into an incredibly helpful tool called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. It’s a tool used for theological interpretation that identifies the roles of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. In Outler’s interpretation of Wesley’s work, scripture is a supreme and governing piece of the quadrilateral. Catholic Franciscan and mystic, Father Richard Rohr, proposes that in reality we all use a tricycle (his metaphor) which stands on scripture, experience, and tradition (he combines the tradition with reason). Rohr’s eyebrow raising claim is that experience is the front wheel of that tricycle. Note this is not a prescriptive claim, but a descriptive one. Said differently, whether or not we are willing to admit it, we all give experience pride of place. When I first heard Rohr’s claim I balked. I was a Martin Luther protestant that was standing firm on 500 years sola scriptura.
The hermeneutical challenge of this conversation began a process of questioning in me that has led me to believe that Rohr is right. Even for the theological conservatives among us, experience is the front wheel. It became evident to me as a read pro-slavery accounts of 18th C. clergy. It became evident to me as began to untangle Christian missions with colonialism. It became evident to me as 21st C. evangelical churches offer unqualified political support to candidates whose platforms and behavior live incongruent with not just the Sermon on the Mount (though one thinks that would be enough), but also the espoused values of their own party 20 years ago. We all inhabit a world with a religious world view and retrospectively search the scriptures afterwards to make sense of our ethical instincts.
As for my experience? That’s what sent me considering in the first place. I repeatedly met queer friends who were not just thriving in their identity, but sincerely trying love God and belong to a community in a way that I wanted to. They were bearing fruit, to use a benchmark Jesus offers us in Matthew 7. I have noted how often when I speak with folks how are not affirming, but seemingly pained by their own position, that they are quick to point out to me their proximity to their queer friend(s) and highlight how friendly the relationship is. This strikes me as odd. While I’m very familiar with the threadbare evangelical adage, “love the sinner, hate the sin,” it does not make sense to me that one would speak so gleefully about their friendship with a person whose entire identity they considered to be sinful and destructive. Which is also why the bait and switch tactic of evangelical churches who invite everyone because they “accept everyone,” but whose acceptance does not include affirming same-sex relationships is destructive and hurtful. I’m not challenging the notion that you can believe same-sex relationships are wrong and have a meaningful friendship with a queer person, but I am suggesting that there are limits to the relational intimacy that can be had (marginalized people often navigate relationships with a generosity out of necessity i.e. it’s the best their culture will offer them). To put it starkly, would you be friends with someone if they thought your marriage/relationship was illegitimate? Would you go happy hour with them after work? Would you go their house for dinner? Or to watch the game over the weekend? What if the couple was not queer, but interracial? Because that was a problem for many Christians in America not that long ago.
As for the bible which I’ve given three years of master education to studying and fifteen years of my vocational life teaching, readers that hung around this long may be surprised to hear me say yet again in this post, as I did previously, that I think one would be hard pressed to argue that key biblical texts can be reinterpreted in a way that allows for same-sex relationships. But the task of the church with the help of the Spirit is to continue to interpret the liberating work of God. In John 16 when Jesus is speaking of his departure and consequent replacement with God’s Spirit, he says, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” This is imperative ethical discerning work we do as a community. It’s the work abolitionists did the 18th C. and the work feminists did in the 20th C. and I believe the work that the church has been tasked with doing for the queer community in the 21st. C. Marriage is a school of virtue. Who can participate in that school? Who is allowed to discover that their bodies are an occasion for someone else’s joy? Whose unnatural predispositions are subsumed into the identity of God? I hope all of us.
So if you are a person who has a queer friend who you want believe is just fine, but can’t because of what the bible says. Or a parent who wants to wholeheartedly accept and bless their queer child, but can’t because of what the bible says, I’ll ask you to consider this. That unnerving feeling you have where your experience is telling you one thing, but the scriptures seem to be saying something else … we’ve been there before. We’ve been there before in the Christian tradition, and we’ve even been here before in the Bible. When Peter was commanded by God to get up, kill, and eat the animals that were prohibited for Jewish consumption in Acts 10, and he correctly interpreted that as God’s instinct to include Cornelius, he did despite what the scriptures said, not because of what they said. And Peter took his bible a lot more seriously than we do, I promise. And case you are objecting that, “well that’s fine and good, but there was a precedent for God to include the occasional outsider like Ruth or Rahab.” To that I say, there’s also a precedent of God including the sexually queer despite what the scriptures say. Consider the hermeneutical trajectory of the eunuch. Deuteronomy 23:1 says that “no eunuch, or castrated man, is permitted to enter the assembly of the Lord.” That’s from the Torah, hermeneutical holy ground in Jewish life if there ever was one. But hey yo! Look what happens when Isaiah (56:4-7) starts playing fast and loose with the scriptures, “To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me, And hold fast My covenant, Even to them I will give in My house And within My walls a place and a name Better than that of sons and daughters.” And we know how this trajectory takes expression in the New Testament. Philip baptizes the Ethiopian Eunuch without qualification.
I’ll close by posing a question. For those of you who are not affirming. For those of you who believe that the sanctifying work of God happens in lives of believers who are graciously drawn toward God through the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit. Why does God keep failing queer people? Why doesn’t God “heal” them? Why do they thrive when given rights like marriage, the ability to adopt children, and claim dependents on their insurance? Where are the natural consequences promised by Paul through God’s withdrawn Spirit? Because the optics aren’t very good. In 2019 gay Christian Justin Lee spoke on Baylor’s campus. I remember one part of his presentation more clearly than the rest of it. It was series of slides that showed queer folks who were “restored,” and consequently started/participated in conversion ministries and eventually “relapsed.” You can find that clip at the 16-minute mark here, but in case you don’t want to click over and watch I’ll list them for you:
John Paulk – “Homosexuality and Gender Specialist” for Focus On The Family/Chairman of the Board for Exodus International
Alan Chambers – President of Exodus International for 10 years (Admitted that 100% of the people who came through the program didn’t de:convert)
McKrae Game- Hope For Wholeness Network
Darlene Bogle- Paraklete Ministries
Colin Cook- Homosexuals Anonymous
Jeremy Marks – Courage UK
Anthony Venn-Brown – Founder Youth Alive NSW
Gary Cooper & Michael Bussee- former leader & co-founder, Exodus International
Tim Rymel – former outreach director Love In Action
Ann Phillips – former women’s program director, Love In Action
Randy Thomas – former executive vice president, Exodus International
John Smid – former director, Love In Action (portrayed in the film Boy Erased)
I would never pretend to be able to judge or evaluate someone’s experience. I’m aware of at least one prominent writer who maintains she was de:converted and has continued to abide in a heterosexual relationship. But if the data is a reflection on God’s batting average, God’s approach to restoration seems idiosyncratic at best.
So, I have wagered something with my theology, and I suppose my life. I have decided to believe the stories of queer people and concluded that the flourishing I see in their lives is a result of God’s generous inclusion.