This post  is part of my What If… series which is a series of ques­tions meant to agi­tate the imag­i­na­tion about God, Church and Faith.

Or do you not know that the unright­eous will not inherit the king­dom of God? Do not be deceived; nei­ther for­ni­ca­tors, nor idol­aters, nor adul­ter­ers, nor effem­i­nate, nor homosexuals…1 Corinthi­ans 6:9

In the more than three decades that I have been a Chris­t­ian, there are three things I have seen spark pas­sion­ate debate : the doc­trine of hell, the issue of women and lead­er­ship and the ques­tion over whether or not God cre­ates gay men and women.

It is this third con­tro­versy that I want to tackle in this post, and though it will by no means be exhaus­tive, I want to agi­tate our imag­i­na­tions about our gay broth­ers and sis­ters and their place within the body of Christ.

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I was read­ing the lat­est issue of Chris­tian­ity Today this morn­ing when I came across a review for a new book called Torn: Res­cu­ing the Gospel from the Gays vs. Chris­tians Debate.  Pub­lished by new­comer, Jeri­cho Books, Torn is writ­ten by the  founder of the Gay Chris­t­ian Net­work, Justin Lee.  I loved the head­line of the CT review: The Love  We Dare Not Ignore. The review was pos­i­tive, even affirm­ing, of the mes­sage of Justin’s book -

Many of us evan­gel­i­cals may believe that LGBTQ folks are far removed from our churches and min­istries. Surely gays and les­bians are out there, some­where else, not here in our dis­ci­ple­ship small groups or kneel­ing at the Com­mu­nion rail beside us– are they? But if Lee, the God Boy of his high school who could quote John 3:16 in his sleep, is an exam­ple of what it means to be “gay,” then yes, they are. They’re here in our churches, and they’re here to stay, forc­ing us to recon­sider what is might mean to love our own spir­i­tual sib­lings.  (empha­sis by author)

Lee, like many gay Chris­tians, has landed in a place where being gay is not a lia­bil­ity or dis­qual­i­fier to being in a lov­ing rela­tion­ship. Lee cham­pi­ons for gay Chris­tians to be who they are:  attracted to same-​​sex part­ners and devoted to fol­low­ing Jesus.

But the reviewer, an admit­ted celi­bate gay Chris­t­ian, has landed in the more “bib­li­cal” camp by being open about his sex­u­al­ity yet com­mit­ted to a life of celibacy.  Who can’t respect that?  I remem­ber talk­ing at length with a gay Chris­t­ian who said to me, “I wish I could have a part­ner and be in a rela­tion­ship, but I would be in sin. So I have to be alone to obey God.”

The reviewer con­cludes his arti­cle with this:

Con­form­ing our lives to to Scripture’s dif­fi­cult eth­i­cal teach­ing is pre­cisely the way we demon­strate that we’ve made our home in Jesus’ love. And that’s a path that Lee’s book, for all its com­mend­able hon­estly and salu­tary insights, chooses not to explore.

I should have seen that com­ing when in the open­ing  para­graphs of the review the writer puts quo­ta­tion marks around the words “gay’ and “gay Chris­t­ian.” Not sure why he put quo­ta­tion marks, but for me it brought up images of folks using “air quotes” when speak­ing and refer­ring to some­thing that they want to com­mu­ni­cate as “questionable.”

I don’t want to bela­bor review­ing a review. I brought it  up since it serves as a great cen­ter­piece to the What If ques­tion of this post:

What if being a gay Chris­t­ian was not controversial?

Another way to ask this is what if gay women and men were uncon­di­tion­ally accepted in the body of Christ with­out regard to their sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion much in the same peo­ple of all races are  uncon­di­tion­ally accepted? What if faith com­mu­ni­ties did not cage their men and women in by their sex­ual iden­tity? What if it was no big deal?

I heard the­olo­gian Phyl­lis Tickle preach a few years ago and she pre­dicted, “The issue of gays in the church will be a non-​​issue within 25 years.”

The church has come a long way in the last 25 years from where we were in the last part of the 20^th cen­tury. We are at least hav­ing the con­ver­sa­tion. Gay Chris­tians can, depend­ing where they live, find resources of sup­port and com­mu­nity, if not where they live than most def­i­nitely online, such as with Justin Lee’s Gay Chris­t­ian Net­work. (which, btw, I’ve referred sev­eral gay peo­ple to GCN when they emailed me ask­ing for help. I’m not a gay Chris­t­ian resource, but because I’ve blogged on this topic I some­times get emails from folks who are search­ing for answers.  Like the time a young woman I knew from my charis­matic years emailed me. She wrote, “I love my girl­friend, but I love Jesus, too. Is that ok?” )

I myself have come a long way in the last 25 years. I remem­ber debat­ing my lib­eral minded younger sis­ter when we were in our twen­ties as she tried to defend “the gay lifestyle” and I solemnly con­demned it as an abom­i­na­tion for “that’s what the Bible says.” Less than ten years ago, when the Defense of Mar­riage Act (DOMA) was a blaz­ing con­tro­versy fueled by the 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion,  I helped orga­nize a prayer meet­ing to rally Chris­tians together to pro­tect the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage from becom­ing cor­rupted by legal­iz­ing same-​​sex unions.

So what if churches accepted gay peo­ple with­out dust­ing up con­tro­versy? I remem­ber one church leader lament­ing how she wanted to offi­ci­ate a same-​​sex com­mit­ment cer­e­mony for a young woman she cared deeply about, but she knew that it would spin her faith com­mu­nity into a tor­nado of divi­sive­ness. She had to say no in order to pre­vent dis­unity from frac­tur­ing the flock.

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Author and founder of The Marin Foun­da­tion, Andrew Marin,  wrote a gem of a book a few years back, Love is an Ori­en­ta­tion, that squarely con­fronts the fear and hes­i­ta­tion of faith com­mu­ni­ties to keep their dis­tance from our gay brethren. Andrew, whom I met and spoke with when he was in Port­land a cou­ple years ago, is ded­i­cated to bridg­ing the gap between gay and Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties.  In an effort to cul­ti­vate rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, he won’t pub­licly declare whether or not he thinks the Bible can be inter­preted con­demn­ing homo­sex­u­al­ity or if homo­sex­u­al­ity is some­thing that the Bible can affirm. He does nei­ther in his deter­mi­na­tion to avoid deep­en­ing the chasm between gays and Chris­tians, but he does make clear that he is com­mit­ted  to being a  cham­pion for the love and accep­tance of gay men and women every­where, includ­ing in the church. ( My review of Andrew’s excel­lent book can be found HERE)

So back to my ques­tion : What if being a gay Chris­t­ian was not controversial? 

For starters, books like Andrew’s and Justin’s would not be nec­es­sary. There would be no gap­ing hole of hurt and mis­un­der­stand­ing for writ­ers to her­ald. It would be like some­one try­ing to pub­lish a book on why slaves ought to be allowed to be ordained.

If homo­sex­u­al­ity was a non-​​controversial issue in the world of church, our gay broth­ers and sis­ters would be unhin­dered from con­tribut­ing with their gifts and tal­ents and Pres­ence. That is what we ‘re miss­ing the most, our miss­ing mem­bers who do not have free­dom to be among us for we are too busy debat­ing whether or not that being gay is moral, amoral or immoral.

I hope Phyl­lis Tickle is right. I hope that within 25 years the church col­lec­tive will look back with bewil­der­ment and won­der, Why did we make such a fuss?

But that day is not today. Today gay men and women have to make dif­fi­cult deci­sions of whether or not to come out to their fam­i­lies, bio­log­i­cal as well as spir­i­tual. Many will endure rejec­tion to one degree or another. Many will expe­ri­ence some dis­tanc­ing of their church if not out­right shun­ning. An acquain­tance of mine, Tim­o­thy Kurek, became intrigued by this and con­ducted a year long exper­i­ment of pre­tend­ing to be gay to see what that would be like in his com­mu­nity. The result is a new book that comes out later this month, and though I’m not sure what I think about deceiv­ing the peo­ple around us for a social exper­i­ment, gay men and women are all too famil­iar with hid­ing who they  really are just to stay in fellowship.

So what if being a gay Chris­t­ian was not controversial?

The church would be all the more rich, in my opin­ion, just as it is when the ques­tion of women in lead­er­ship is not debated but is prac­ticed. When the prac­tice of accept­ing our gay brethren for who they are, cre­ated in the image of God as much as straight men and women are,  is a wide reach­ing reality,then that day, I believe, will be the day the body of Christ will be less torn and closer to reflect­ing the whole Gospel of Jesus to our bro­ken humanity.

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I’ve writ­ten about homo­sex­u­al­ity a lot in the past. Here’s some posts to consider:

• Same-​​sex Unions : Ought a Chris­t­ian Sup­port Them?  (this post includes a short paper I wrote for a bib­li­cal ethics class that pro­vides more agi­ta­tion for the imag­i­na­tion con­cern­ing the church and homo­sex­u­als)
• The March for PRIDE and Redemp­tion  ( a post where I tell why I marched in a local Pride parade)
• Not On My Watch: How My Mind is Chang­ing Towards Same-​​sex Unions 

***I wel­come your thoughts on this. Whether you agree with what I’ve writ­ten here, dis­agree, or are in that unsure place of sort­ing it out, let’s dia­log about this. Espe­cially if you are gay or love some­one who is. I espe­cially would like to know if you agree with Phyl­lis Tickle’s pre­dic­tion. Do you think being gay will be a non-​​issue 25 years from now?