Some of my dearest friends are gay.
Most of my dearest friends are Christians.
And more than a few of my dearest friends are gay Christians.
As an evangelical, that last part is not something that, traditionally and culturally, I'm supposed to say out loud. For most of my life, I've been taught that it's impossible to be both openly gay and authentically Christian.
When a number of my friends "came out" shortly after our graduation from Wheaton College in the early '90s, first I panicked and then I prayed.
What would Jesus do? I asked myself (and God).
According to biblical accounts, Jesus said very little, if anything, about homosexuality. But he spent loads of time talking, preaching, teaching and issuing commandments about love.
That was my answer: Love them. Unconditionally, without caveats or exceptions.
I wasn't sure whether homosexuality actually was a sin. But I was certain I was commanded to love.
For 20 years, that answer was workable, if incomplete. Lately, though, it's been nagging at me. Some of my gay friends are married, have children and have been with their partners and spouses as long as I've been with my husband.
Loving them is easy. Finding clear theological answers to questions about homosexuality has been decidedly not so.
That's why I'm grateful for a growing number of evangelical leaders who are bravely offering a different answer.
In his new book Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self and Society, Jay Bakker, the son of Jim Bakker and the late Tammy Faye Messner, gives clear and compelling answers to my nagging questions.
Simply put, homosexuality is not a sin, says Bakker, 35, pastor of Revolution NYC, a Brooklyn evangelical congregation that meets in a bar.
Bakker, who is straight and divorced, crafts his argument using the same "clobber scriptures" (as he calls them) that are so often wielded to condemn homosexuals.
"The simple fact is that Old Testament references in Leviticus do treat homosexuality as a sin ... a capital offense even," Bakker writes. "But before you say, 'I told you so,' consider this: Eating shellfish, cutting your sideburns and getting tattoos were equally prohibited by ancient religious law.
"The truth is that the Bible endorses all sorts of attitudes and behaviors that we find unacceptable (and illegal) today and decries others that we recognize as no big deal."
Leviticus prohibits interracial marriage, endorses slavery and forbids women to wear trousers. Deuteronomy calls for brides who are found not to be virgins to be stoned to death, and for adulterers to be summarily executed.
"The church has always been late," Bakker told me in an interview this week. "We were late on slavery. We were late on civil rights. And now we're late on this."
Examining the original Greek words translated as "homosexual" and "homosexuality" in three New Testament passages, Bakker (and others) conclude that the original words have been translated inaccurately in modern English.
What we read as "homosexuals" and "homosexuality" actually refers to male prostitutes and the men who hire them. The passages address prostitution -- sex as a commodity -- and not same-sex, consensual relationships, he says.
(The word "homosexual" first appeared in an English-language Bible in 1958. Bakker is part of a group petitioning Bible publishers to remove the words "homosexual" and "homosexuality" from new translations and replace it with terms that more precisely reflect the original Greek.)
"We must weigh all the evidence," Bakker writes. "The clobber scriptures don't hold a candle to the raging inferno of grace and love that burns through Paul's writing and Christ's teaching. And it's a love that should be our guiding light."
Bakker's clear voice on homosexuality is not alone in the evangelical community.
Tony Jones, a "theologian-in-residence" at Minnesota's Solomon's Porch, one of the pre-eminent "Emergent'' churches in the nation, echoes many of Bakker's arguments. Peggy Campolo, wife of evangelist Tony Campolo, has been saying this kind of thing for years, despite her husband's disagreement.
And while he stops short of explicitly saying "it's not a sin'' in his 2010 book, A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren, godfather of the Emergent church movement, condemns a Christian preoccupation with homosexual issues as "fundasexuality.''
"We could really use someone like Rob Bell to step forward and say this, too,'' Bakker said in the interview, referring to the 40-year-old pastor of the Michigan megachurch Mars Hill and author of bestselling books such as Velvet Elvis and Sex God.
Bell, a classmate of mine at Wheaton, is a rock star in emerging Christian circles, despite eschewing the "Emergent" label or any other apart from "Christ follower."
Only time will tell whether more evangelical leaders -- Emergent, emerging or otherwise -- will add their voices to the chorus calling for full and unapologetic inclusion of homosexuals in the life of the church.
But I'm sensing a change in the wind (and the Spirit.)
Might the evangelical church be on the verge of a Gay Awakening?
I prayerfully hope so.
A version of this column first appeared via Religion News Service.
Cathleen Falsani is author of Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace, The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers and The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People.
Follow Cathleen Falsani on Twitter: www.twitter.com/godgrrl
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If God says something is sinful, it is.
You hear this all the time, especially from officials in the Church of Rome; but it makes absolutely no sense -- it's a little like saying that it's okay to have eyes as long as you don't use them to look at anything. If your essential sexuality is okay in the sight of God, then there's no reason for not "acting on those desires", using the same ehtical and moral standards that would apply to heterosexuals. I suspect that people who take this seriously still believe the canard about gays being uncontrollable sex machines -- sort of like black men are still perceived by racists -- whose relationships never go any further than a makin'-whoopie one night stand. But that's not so.
***Don't you people know they story of Sodom and Gomorrah and why God destroyed that city? ***
Yes, and plenty of "we people" have read the further commentary on S&G in the Hebrew Bible; they were judged to be wicked because of their greed and violence toward strangers. And that's thoroughly illustrated in the original story; the people who surround the house demanding that the male visitors be sent outside so that they could "know" them weren't thinking of a relationship. Gang rape was more what they had in mind.
Alas, we can make words depict whatever we want them to, for example, "Collateral Damage”.
You see, it's mythology. I choose to believe this particular brand of mythology, but it's mythology nonetheless. But it's mine.
I don't use that mythology to advocate discrimination against my fellow neighbor, nor do I condemn myself to death for loving someone of the same gender as I would love a spouse, a husband, a life partner.
You shouldn't either. Because if you actually read the Good Book and claim it as your personal brand of mythology, you'll find that the hero of Act II never once says anything about the loving relationship I have with the man who would be my husband, if that type of contract were offered in our state.
The hero of Act II has most of the good answers for how we're to treat one another. Perhaps you need to pass a reading comprehension test.
Brainwashing doesn't follow logic.
The current King James version is based on a source from the middle ages - nothing earlier exists. Aside from a couple of millenia having passed, the Masoretic texts suggest that this was probably translated from Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek and back to Hebrew
The certitude over the Bible as the inerrant word of God is impossible to comprehend given its highly flawed provenance. Other explanations make a great deal more sense. Employing Occam's Razor would seem to be prudent.
Some things that are not sins: polygamy, owning and beating your slaves so long as they don't die from the injuries, hating someone on account of their ethnicity, killing anyone who works on Sunday, female prostitution...
Some things the Bible requires of you: casting your female relations out of the city to live in a tent during their menstrual cycles, throwing rocks at adulterers, cutting off the hand of a woman who grabs a man's genitals during a fight, punishing the children and grandchildren of sinners for the sins of the sinner, preventing children born out of wedlock, or their offspring (for ten full generations) from joining the church.
Remember, if you don't live every word of the Bible, you may as well stop living any of it.
I agree with you totally. People believe a MURDERER can go to heaven, but do not belive a homosexual can go to heaven. That blows my mind.
1. We're to respect and treat others as we would like to be treated. But we don't have to agree with their lifestyle. In fact if we truly loved and wanted to help them we would talk to them about their lifestyle and try to get them to see that it is biblically and naturally wrong, but do it in a loving and respectful manner.
2. God loves the sinner but hates the sin. He does love each person and wants a relationship with them but if there is unconfessed sin in their life then a true relationship is impossible.
3. In Romans it speaks of "unatural relations" as being a sin...its not just in the old testament. I choose to support fairness for all as long as it edifies God, but special rights to make people feel better about themselves is not fair, and isn't right. Anyway, this is how I think and feel.
I guess you like being treated like crap eh? You are entitled to think and feel as you wish, but since I truly love you I have to tell you that you are biblicaly and naturally wrong in how you treat your neighbor, you have judged and will be judged, you cast stones but are not without sin, you are full of sinful pride in claiming to know the mind of god on the issue to the point you feel you can speak for him and tell others how they offend him...despite his son being quite silent on the issue...and his never advocating your rude behavior. Romans does not address homosexuality...no matter how much you wish it to. Neighbor.