Do Evangelicals have to condemn gay sex?

Benny Hazlehurst of Accepting Evangelicals, in a comment on my post I’m an Evangelical – don’t let them steal the name, raises the issue of whether one can be an Evangelical and not condemn homosexual practice. He does so by linking to a post at the Accepting Evangelicals blog by Jeremy Marks, Why I am an Evangelical gay Christian…

Jeremy MarksJeremy Marks is the founder of Courage, “a UK-based … evangelical Christian ministry” primarily for “Gay and lesbian Christians who are seeking a safe place of friendship in which to reconcile their faith and sexuality and grow towards Christian maturity”, and which also seeks, among other objectives, “to dialogue with our brothers and sisters in churches who find homosexuality difficult to understand or accept”.

In his post Marks explains how and why Courage moved from “the traditional view” to a position of encouraging “embracing our true God-given sexual orientation”. He also links to a 2005 article by Roy Clements on the Courage website, What is an Evangelical? Clements is the former pastor of Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge, and council member of the Evangelical Alliance, who resigned from both in 1999 and “came out” as gay. Clements makes some important points here about Evangelical identity, including this:

Evangelicals, I say, occupy the middle ground between the fundamentalist and liberal “extremists”.

There is a story here in which the Evangelical Alliance does not come out as well as I suggested in my previous post. The article Cast Out by Roy Clements, on the Courage website, includes as an Appendix a 2002 press release from the EA explaining why it asked Courage to resign. The EA’s official position on homosexuality is given at the end of the press release:

1. The Alliance affirms that monogamous heterosexual marriage is the form of partnership uniquely intended by God for full sexual relations between people

2. We affirm God’s love and concern for all humanity, including homosexual people, but believe homoerotic sexual practice to be incompatible with his will as revealed in Scripture

3. We call upon evangelical congregations to welcome and accept sexually active homosexual people, but to do so in the expectation that they will come in due course to see the need to change their lifestyle in accordance with biblical revelation and orthodox church teaching.

4. We repudiate homophobia insofar as it denotes an irrational fear or hatred of homosexuals. We do not accept, however, that to reject homoerotic sexual practice on biblical grounds is in itself homophobic.

This is taken from the EA’s 1998 publication Faith, Hope and Homosexuality, still recommended on their website.

Personally I would accept this position. However, I would not make it a condition for being accepted as an Evangelical. I would not want to expel from the EA all Christian ministries which fail “to welcome and accept sexually active homosexual people”, not least because not many would be left inside. Nor would I want to expel all ministries which do not make explicit “the expectation that [sexually active homosexual people] will come in due course to see the need to change their lifestyle”.

The Alliance took issue mainly with Courage’s “New Approach” according to which

while homo-erotic sexual practices cannot be actively commended there are certain circumstances in which it would be inappropriate overtly to condemn them.

Well, surely the EA’s call for “evangelical congregations to welcome and accept sexually active homosexual people” implies that their sexual practices are not always to be overtly condemned. But the real point seems to be that Courage

refuses to take a clear position on homo-erotic practice

– and presumably the only acceptable position would be against it. I guess it was a step too far in 2002 for the EA to allow a member simply to refuse to take a clear position on this controversial issue. Quite likely other members would have left if Courage did not. I wonder if things would be different in 2011?

In a second comment on my previous post Benny Hazlehurst makes a distinction between

‘gay-affirming’ and ‘gay-accepting’ Evangelicals.

I am happy to declare myself ‘gay-accepting’ in the sense that, in Benny’s words,

although I may not agree the theology of openly gay Christians, I do accept their Christian integrity.

But what does it mean to be ‘gay-affirming’? If this means to take the position that homosexual and heterosexual practice are entirely equal in God’s sight, I would have trouble accepting that as Evangelical. But if it means what Courage seems to be saying, that gays and lesbians should be accepted as Christians and not condemned for their lifestyle, then I would accept this as a possible Evangelical position although not one that I fully share.

0 thoughts on “Do Evangelicals have to condemn gay sex?

  1. Thank you Peter for this thoughtful and detailed post. I am delighted (but not surpized) that you would identify yourself as ‘gay-accepting’ in the terms I described.

    You asked what ‘gay affirming’ means.

    For us, being gay-affirming would mean that someone feels able to affirm loving, faithful, eclusive same-sex relationships as acceptable to God. That would include the implication that most of these relationships would be sexual.

    This is something which I struggled with for a long time (although I am not gay), and I only changed my mind in the end, after revisiting scripture and concluding that the Biblical prohibitions were not written with such faithfull committed same-sex partnerships in mind.

    The story of that change “By their Fruit” can be read at http://www.acceptingevangelicals.org/stories/

    This understanding is not, of course, the only one which can be held with integrity, but it is where I and a growing number of others have got to.

    Thank you again for your thoughtful post on this most emotive of subjects.

    God Bless
    Benny Hazlehurst

  2. Benny, you’re welcome. I am not ‘gay-affirming’ according to your definition. I think I would accept as Evangelical someone like yourself who came to this conclusion “after revisiting scripture and concluding that the Biblical prohibitions…”. I would have more problems with someone who took a position more like that these biblical prohibitions can be ignored because we know better in the modern world.

    I agree that stories are important and will start to look at some of the ones you linked to.

  3. Peter, whilst I hold fairly traditional / conservative views on sexuality, I do think there is a lot of inconsistency, even hypocrisy, on this subject. Roy Clements did point this out, but there has been very little real engagement by the evangelical theological world with the issues he raised. The subject is taboo and you will be ostracised if you dare to question the accepted position. This does concern me as it suggests that this position may well be a weak one, however I’m not qualified to evaluate it.

  4. Pingback: Real Evangelicals are not anti-gay extremists - Gentle Wisdom

  5. I normally don’t reply to articles on websites but this one caught my attention, it makes me wonder if we all reading the same Bible or not. And why has God’s words become subjective to a body (group) of people who think they can do what they like. Then people wonder why Christianity is so ruined.

  6. As an evangelical Christian with traditional views on the subject I wonder if I can suggest that the constant ping pong on scripture is actually doing the Church more harm than good. The secular world has been persuaded that homosexuality is quite acceptable and any views to the contrary are restrictive, anti-people and in the extreme ‘nasty’. When our arguments seem to go again and again to the Bible what happens is that the Bible and its whole message is gradually being put in the bin as something to be ignored, disliked and dumped.

    I want to say that, though we do not like to go there, attention ought to be on sexual science and common sense. Yes the Bible agrees with that but I don’t think we should start there. We would do better by looking at what sex is for physiologically and asking why say genito/anal sex is not an unnatural perversion of the design of the human body – which it is, and physically not congenial to the human body.

    Francis Bacon tells of a medievil monastery which sought to come to an answer as to how many teeth a horse had. They called a special gathering and pulled all the most learned and sacred books out on the subject however a new stable boy made the quite unholy suggestion that perhaps they might look in the open mouth of a horse. He was immediatley shooed away as knowing nothing about determining knowledge.

    All I am suggesting is that we point a lot more in the direction of reproductive biology, physiology, epidemiology and more.

  7. Leslie, that is a very sensible suggestion. There are more things you could add. As I mentioned in a comment this morning, evolutionists should, to be consistent, deprecate gay sex as disadvantageous to evolution because it does not contribute to the propagation of the species. There are also well documented but not so well publicised health hazards associated with anal intercourse. But I think it would be an uphill battle to get people to abstain for these reasons.

  8. Peter – Oh yes, I wasn’t thinking about people abstaining on health grounds though tearing the lining of the innards and chronic fecal leakage through the weakening of the sphincter muscle should give pause for thought but more that those outside the gay movement altogether but who have been persuaded to acquiesce in it might stop and wonder “What on earth have I been led into thinking?”

    I think the story of the Emperor’s clothes has something to say and I would hope there might be enough ‘little boy’s’ with clear eyes to see and point to the Emperor’s Fine Clothes and bring at least some around to see that what they have been taught and encouraged to think is really kind of ridiculous.

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