A Personal and Biblical Journey Towards LGBTQ+ Inclusion

This is my attempt to present where I am and how I got here regarding LGBT+ inclusion within the church from both a personal and a Biblical perspective. I have grown increasingly passionate about this subject — hence taking time here to share this in spite of the fact that my energy for writing is very low at present. I want to be clear that, in sharing this, I do not intend to put anyone else down and also that I am speaking as an individual member of God’s church rather than as a leader as such.

We all, including me, come to this subject with a filter of our own which is drawn from a mixture of influences including our own journey and also the context from which and into which we speak.

My own journey

I acknowledge that I write from the privileged position of being a white, educated, middle class hetero man. Someone who has journeyed from total ignorance about the existence of alternative sexualities in 1970’s, to a fairly unthought through and unexpressed conservatism in 1980’s, to beginning to be more open in 1990’s — but still with a touch of the the ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ mantra. This represented movement but was still ‘safe’, for me at least. I now understand that this position doesn’t sound as welcoming to LGBT+ people as we think it does.

The key factor on my journey has been encountering gay people and building relationship. Unlike those younger than me, I was in my 30’s before knowingly meeting anyone gay! The first gay Christians I met were clearly those in whom God lived and through whom He worked. This challenged me and I am grateful to them. Then, in the 2010’s one of my sons came out as bisexual and within our family we now also understand that instead of a niece, we have a trans nephew, bringing the subject closer to home and making it personal more than theoretical.

I wonder where you are on your journey? Who do you know? Who have you sat down and eaten with?

The Church’s Journey

Even as we acknowledge personal journeys, we also notice that the established church has made similar, remarkable journeys on other issues which themselves were once considered highly controversial. Some of them still are. e.g.

· Copernican heliocentrism, the name given to the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus Copernicus, was published in 1543, 30 years after being written because of fear. It took a further 200 years for conservatives to accept because it appeared to contradict both received science and the then traditional understanding of the Bible.

· Slavery, and later black inclusion/apartheid was fully backed by many churches on a Biblical basis. Look at the right wing ‘evangelical’ response to BLM movement as a contemporary example.

· Creationism v evolution once considered a marker of being orthodox, and in some circles still is!

· The death penalty remains in conservative evangelical USA and elsewhere.

· Even social pursuits such as going to the cinema or dancing were, in my lifetime, considered very dubious activities for a Christian.

· Women in ministry/leadership — as recently as late 1980’s at theological college, this was still controversial and a cause of division in college. Women were not ordained priest until 1994 in the Anglican church. The presence of women in leadership and teaching ministries is still controversial in more conservative circles on Biblical grounds. Many charismatic evangelical churches have broken that barrier, although there is still some way to go.

· Divorce was, quite recently, not coped with at all. In the 1980’s, people could be excluded from Communion just for being divorced. I wrote my Theological College dissertation on Pastoral Care of Divorced People which was then quite revolutionary (apart from within the divorced Christian community!). The letter of the Bible and received Church tradition said all divorce was wrong, with the possible exception of infidelity, and that to remarry was to commit adultery. But pastoral experience showed it’s more complicated than that, so we took another look. Now divorce is widely accepted. In the best settings, people are supported and included. Priests and even bishops are allowed to remarry. The Bible has not been abandoned or marriage undermined.

My point is that the practice of both journeying and eventually making change has precedent — and at each stage there remains a conservative rump which is slower to/never fully accepts the change. The question then begged is: what else are we having a blind spot about? Hence the urgency of current questions surrounding issues in sexuality.

What does the Bible Say?

This is important to me. My heart is for acceptance and inclusion, but I do not want to ignore, abandon or lay aside God’s word.

Having said that, I do not intend here to spend much time on the half dozen or so ‘proof texts’. Not because the Bible is not important but because they so clearly speak into specific context which requires interpretation. (Cf women in leadership) They are all able to be interpreted in different ways and the statement “The Bible says…” is not enough in itself.

“The Bible clearly says” reduces Scripture to blocks of words stripped of historical & canonical context, read literally instead of within its genre and idiom, apart from divine or authorial intent. So-called ‘plain readings’ fail to ‘accurately handle the word of truth’ (2 Tim 2:15).” “The Bible clearly says strips our reading of the illumination of the Spirit, the Gospel of Christ and the heart of Abba. Thus, our life breathing message is reduced to a dead letter. (1 Cor 2) Brad Jersak.

And this… “If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate or honour women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an outdated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it. This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not “what does it say?”, but “what am I looking for?” If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.” Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood

So also, Benny Hazlehurst, of Accepting Evangelicals concludes “(Having) looked at the clear and numerous Bible verses which condemn same-sex relationships… it is clear that what the Bible condemns is not those loving committed relationships which groups like Accepting Evangelicals are advocating. Simply repeating the mantra ‘the Bible says no’ is not an option. The few verses of Biblical evidence which exist are at the very least unclear, rooted as they are in the context of historical cultures very different to our own.

And yet the church has used these half dozen verses to place a burden of judgment and shame on LGBT people which the rest of us would find impossible to bear. If we continue to do so, we will be no better than the Pharisees who Jesus reprimanded. “They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23:4)”

Rather than look at these individual ‘proof texts’ I prefer to consider a few theological themes and patterns throughout Scripture…

Creation

My big stumbling block to radical inclusion was Gen 1–3, the amazing theological truths of how things were from the very beginning. Taking Gen 1 as my model, I was stuck with seeing same sex relationships as falling short of a Creation Ideal of binary hetero relationship, which is another way of saying sinful because of who they are as much as what they do.

However, more recently, as I have wrestled with this over some time, I have noticed that whilst we interpret the statements on sexuality and ‘marriage’ (although it is important to note that marriage theology has its own very long history which is much more varied than we usually allow) as binary, pretty much everything else in the creation myth is interpreted as spectrum. The opening words: Let there be light! Who would have believed that pure light is made up literally of a spectrum? Look again at Gen 1–3 and notice the spectrums of

Light through to dark

Sea through to land

Wet to dry

Then when we look at our knowledge of creation itself, we see there is much which does not ‘fit’ the binary one size fits all mold.

The presence of intersex raises questions about binary.

Scientists observe gender fluidity within the animal and fish kingdoms: a world with hermaphrodites, asexual, changing sex, homosexual etc.

The human tendency is to prefer the simplicity of binary, dualistic thinking rather than more complex understandings. George Bebawi, my Egyptian Rabbi/Theology teacher, would always challenge us to be less Greek and more Hebraic in our understanding.

The dance of gender seems to be a foundational opposition in the human mind, which is why many languages (but not English) call even inanimate objects masculine or feminine. Our deep preoccupation with gender also helps explain why dualistic gender taboos are often the very last and hardest to be resolved, even among people who consider themselves quite open-minded educated, and progressive. Gender seems to be a very deep archetype in the psyche. As long as we read reality in a non-contemplative, dualistic way, any gender identity that doesn’t follow our binary “norm” will invariably be challenging and usually resisted. Binary divisions seem to give the psyche both simplicity and some kind of comfort.

Both sexuality and gender are mysteries much broader than genitality and intercourse. It is an inner drive toward the other and beyond the small self, which some call eros. Someone can be celibate and still experience this pull to give oneself to another. Someone can be genital and be totally self-absorbed, which is not eros at all, but “lustful.” Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Franciscan Media: 2014), 120–122.

What if the emphasis on the partnership between two different and contrasting beings should not be understood on the basis of their sex or indeed on their sex acts, but on the beautiful coming together of 2 different and complementary beings through leaving and then cleaving together in such harmony that they become something entirely new — a ‘one flesh’? Is being One Flesh just about the hetero sex act or is it about something so much more and deeper than that? Perhaps in a similar way to how Sacramental theology speaks of an outer sign of an inner reality. Consider the couple who are married but unable through some physical issue to have sexual intercourse. Are they any less One Flesh than another?

When we focus on love as sex in a hetero way which excludes any non hetero expressions of sex we are in danger of limiting that big word LOVE to something sexual, and narrowly so, and omitting the bigger aspects like mutuality, affection, kindness, commitment, loyalty, faithfulness, purity, covenant all of which the Bible seems to have more to say about.

Looked at more generally, a spectrum-like variety pervades every aspect of creation. How many shades of green are there for example, ands when does green become blue as it moves through turquoise? ? The idea that our creative God does not merely manufacture 1m daisies but rather creates each and every one individually, and with delight. Each and every aspect of creation bears His handiwork in its myriad of varieties including every other aspect of humanity. None of us is the same in looks, likes, genetic make-up etc. Although we are God’s handiwork, he has brought us to this point through a complex and hardly understood evolution which does not deny his hand. But the result is even more difference and variety, and perhaps that was always the intention.

In the light of this, I ask the question: What if we have taken a genetic constituent like sexuality and made it a compulsory binary instead of part of our genetic make-up, more like we do with eye colour, or height or sporting ability? Can we imagine excluding anyone from full belonging on the basis of any of these characteristics?

Eschatology

The Biblical language of the Church being the Female Bride of the Male Christ forms part of the Preface to the Marriage service and thus has been part of affirming the historic binary and heterosexual pattern. But is it helpful to read too much sexuality into this beautiful metaphor? Although Jesus was born and lived as a man, it is his humanity rather than his maleness that matters theologically. Also, the female nature of the church fits with the male Christ, but we all know that the church is made up of the whole spectrum of genders. We are looking forward to a Oneness which goes beyond sex or gender which will be so good and so lasting that it will require the best banquet ever in celebration.

We are not specifically talking transgender issues here, but many of these thoughts apply to those people too. The likelihood of spectrum rather than binary. How male/female am I is not a straightforward question?!

This applies also to sexuality. Kinsey posited a scale of 0–6 from Pure Hetero to Pure Same Sex. Yougov research has shown that: “With each generation, people see their sexuality as less fixed in stone. The results for 18–24 year-olds are particularly striking, as 43% place themselves in the non-binary area between 1 and 5 and compared to 52% placing themselves at one end or the other. Of these, only 46% say they are completely heterosexual and 6% as completely homosexual.” (https://yougov.co.uk/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2015/08/16/half-young-not-heterosexual)

There’s lots we do not know about the nature of heaven, but when addressing marriage in the kingdom, Jesus responded to the Sadducees by saying “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” Matt 22:30 What is this saying about the permanency of sex and gender?

For all of the beauty and power of sexuality, it is still under the rubric of the floating or passing self, rather than the Self eternally anchored in God. I believe our gender is going to pass away when we do. I think that’s what Jesus is referring to in Luke 20:34–37. Our personality and physicality are gates to the temple — the place of union. We often confuse the gates of embodiment with the temple itself. In the end, there is only universal love where “God will be God in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Richard Rohr

Salvation History

From the beginning to the end of Scripture, God seems to want to include not only all people but all of creation. (Col 1) One way of reading salvation history is that whilst God is always trying to widen inclusion (Creation, Abraham, a blessing to many nations, the prophets, the promised Messiah, Jesus going beyond the Jewish territories and breaking down all sorts of boundaries, Paul the apostle to the Gentiles). God’s people, on the other hand, are always trying to narrow down this inclusion. We like being the special group — so long as we are in it that is! One way we do this is to create rules which include us and exclude others. Sometimes these are more formal (God’s 10 commandments become the scribes’ hundreds of rules). Sometimes they are less formal but nonetheless real — if you don’t look or behave like me, you are not really welcome in my church. One of my most treasured accusations from my first church as vicar was the person who said to me: this church used to be respectable until you came along!

Even as we acknowledge the sacredness of gender and sex, we also need to realize that there’s something deeper than our gender, anatomy, or physical passion: our ontological self, who we are forever in Christ. As Paul courageously puts it, “There is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Those who have already begun to experience their divine union will usually find it very easy to be compassionate toward people who are not like them because they know they share the same essential self that is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Richard Rohr

Way back in 1993 I was preaching to the mostly elderly evening congregation in my first parish on Isaiah 42: 1–12. I was just beginning to grasp some of this then…

“God’s vision is broader than we could imagine! It includes but then goes beyond a calling to be servants to one another. It breaks out of the boundaries of our own church family. We are to

bring hope for all, through service to all. Repeatedly throughout this passage the people of Israel are called to look beyond their own boundaries. v 1 bring justice to every nation. v 3 Lasting justice to all. v 4 speaks of justice on the earth/ of distant lands eagerly waiting for his teaching. v6 speaks of all peoples and light to the nations. vv 10–12 too.

The breadth of God’s vision for our service couldn’t be clearer and it couldn’t be wider! And there’s a very good reason for this — God’s concern for us to reach out to the whole world is because the whole world belongs to God! In v 5 we are reminded that the one who calls is the one who “created the heavens and stretched them out.” God is the creator and sustainer of all life. He is sending us out into His world. That means He cares for all people on earth. He is not interested in only a few, he created us all. God is sending his servant into the world he created to the creatures he cares about.

But God’s people have always struggled with sharing the breadth of His vision for our servanthood. Ever since God called Abraham in order that he might become a blessing to many nations, He has had to cope with his people’s failure to be just that. The very people God chose in order to live as a witness to the whole of God’s world, became an exclusive people, with their own ways, their own language, their own rituals, which acted as a barrier between outsiders and God.

And we too can fall prey to this natural tendency, this inherited disease, which causes us to see ourselves existing for our own benefit, rather than existing to reveal God to the world by our service to the world, by our welcome of the world.”

By their fruits/Acts 15

God says to Moses in Exodus 33:19, ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.’ Jesus says in John 3 “The Spirit blows wherever he wants…” When Samuel is searching for a King, he looks at the outward stuff but God teaches him that what really matters is the heart. 1 Sam 16.

Jesus invites us to judge people (or perhaps discern their authenticity) not by conforming to a set of behavioural rules: which was the norm for the religion of his day, but according to their fruits. (Matt 7: 15–20). What do we see of the fruits of the spirit in a person seems more important than conformity to a norm. On this basis those who respond with hatred to LGBT+ people from within the church (some of which is really horrible) judge themselves.

Similarly, Jesus never talks about homosexuality. Even when describing the defilement which comes from within (Matt 7), as opposed to through not following cleanliness rules, he makes quite a list but does not include homosexuality — unless you argue that it falls under fornication. It does include lying though!

The Apostolic Council in Acts 15 is also informative here. I am challenged to perceive how radical are the implications of this divisive issue for the early church. I have seen those who the church says should be excluded show clear signs of being filled with the Spirit, serving God diligently and living faithfully with their partners. In Acts 15 the apostles had to cope with what to do when they saw the Gentiles welcomed and used by God. It caused quite a debate and was significant enough to be recorded in some detail.

The controversy was about the grounds upon which people are included. Howard Marshall describes this chapter as the pivotal point both theologically and structurally in the Book of Acts. As the missional outreach of the early church stretched into previously excluded sectors i.e. Gentiles, the crucial question concerned the manner of their inclusion. Did they need to keep the whole Jewish law, and did they need to be circumcised? It was so hard for those who had only ever known the importance of obedience to a particular set of laws as a basis for their identity and belonging to now believe belonging could be by grace alone.

It feels as if we are at a similar point in time today as we face the joyful ‘problem’ of the Gospel’s reach to the (relatively newly — although they have always been there!) emerging LGBT+ community whose behaviour doesn’t fit the established orthodoxy. So what might apply?

Acts 15: 8 says “God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us.” (Cf again 1 Sam 16) I have already commented on those LGBT+ people I know who are clearly filled with the Holy Spirit. v 11 continues: “No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

Indeed the more I reflect on this truth, the more amazed I am at how God’s welcome exceeds our own — and that it isn’t a half-hearted or conditional welcome either. The invitation is to join with the relationship of intimacy which is the Trinity and that is not prohibited to people on the basis of their sexuality or gender.

Rather than lay any heavy burden of requirement before these previously excluded people the first apostles offered them full inclusion on these bases: “You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.” We do not tend to emphasise the food regulations anymore, which leaves us with sexual immorality.

The reference being made is to regulations in Leviticus 18 whose explicit context is about maintaining religious purity as they enter a land where there is no such purity. The key word used is porneia which (as in many of the ‘proof texts’) is open to interpretation. It implies illicit sexual intercourse, which may throw us back into a circular argument regarding LGBT+ people — if our definition limits sexual intercourse to heterosexual expression then this condition remains, although we may still want to ask if we should, in that case, still be requiring food purity rules or explicitly forbid heterosexual intercourse during menstruation, as Leviticus 18 requires.

However, if the illicitness of sexual relations is to do with it being saved for the beauty of lifelong committed faithful covenanted relationships, then LGBT+ people need not be excluded. Indeed, it is arguable that our exclusion of them from marriage forces them into an illicitness not of their desire or making.

Indeed this group of people are the only group to which we make an effective requirement of church enforced celibacy for which there is no Biblical precedent. And we do so often as married, hetero husbands and fathers. Both Jesus and Paul speak of celibacy as a potentially good thing but also as something which is of the nature of vocation rather than consequence of who we are.

A moment in time:

It feels to me that we are at an historic Kairos moment. A pastoral and missionary opportunity to not only align with God’s heart but to actively promote inclusion rather than exclusion. Time to stop a world where we treat our friends as excluded or simply non-existent. I have been appalled, as I know many others have also, even if you cannot go as far as me on this, by the hostile treatment of people I know and know of.

We have noted in Scripture that it tends to be God’s people that exclude and Jesus that includes… eg in general women, younger brothers, prostitutes and those with shady sexual histories, foreigners, children. See for example the disciples keeping children away and Jesus welcoming them, angry not with them but the disciples, not checking out their beliefs or lifestyles were correct but gathering them into his arms and blessing them.

One of @stonewalluk’s latest pieces of research (LGBT in Britain — home and communities), found that of the 5,000 LGBT people surveyed, 32% of LGB people of faith, and 25% of transgender people of faith weren’t open about their orientation/gender identity in their faith community. @Diverse_Church found that only 2 in 5 LGBT people believe their faith community is welcoming of LGB people, and 1 in 4 believe their faith community is welcoming of transgender people.

I know of people to whom that applies. There are individuals in other churches who have been brought to mental breakdown and suicide by feeling unable to ‘be themselves’, the most notable, but not the only, example being 14 year old Lizzie Lowe in Disbury (https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/lizzie-lowe-death-). What is the message a gay or transgender person hears, even within our ‘all our welcome’ stance? These are real people struggling with the deepest of issues whilst longing to be faithful Christians behind each of our policy decisions.

And a word here about the nature of sin. Discovering oneself to be LGBT+ is not a personal choice — indeed, it is often resisted and fought against for many years, especially by those who have grown up with traditional beliefs on sexuality. Neither is it generally an act of rebellion against God or his church. But something strange also happens when they allow themselves to be who they are. Whereas giving in to temptation and sin inevitably leads to disappointment and shame, genuine relationships, including LGBT+ ones, lead to fulfilment and growth. Ignatian discernment invites people to follow their sense of where they are most fully alive in their relationship with God. Could we ask people: are you living your best life in obedience to Jesus Christ and what he calls you to? Is that a good enough ‘test’ of suitability for ministry, for belonging, for marriage etc.?

Finally…

This is a very personal account. It is not exhaustive (although it may be exhausting). I have not looked at scientific studies on sexuality and gender, there is much more that could be said on the theology of marriage and its history and much more besides. However, these are the elements of my own particular journey, out of which I have a dream of a faithful and Spirit-led church which is genuinely, unashamedly and widely open to all — one to which, though a few may walk away, and some will need to be educated, many more will flock in to be part of a new community of graceful and gracious inclusion — including, I hope, those who do not agree with us!

Paul Swann October 2020