Same-sex attracted, celibate and ‘out’

Dear Editor,

That anyone turns to Christ and leaves homosexual behaviours is a miracle to be celebrated! We should listen to the writer of ‘I am same-sex attracted, committed to celibacy’ to discover more about his journey. I relate to his pain. When I shared with my own pastor about changes in my life and the help I received, his celebration was only partial. He thought I was brave, but he didn’t want me, a married man, to tell anyone in the church! I felt silenced and my experience marginalised.

What would help me is to hear more about why his identity as a ‘Gay Celibate Christian’, is so important to him and what the nature of his celibacy is. In counselling, an early step is to check that the labels people use about themselves are their own, and in the case of Christians, whether they reflect Biblical teaching, as they understand it.

Would he agree that with regards to sex, ‘celibacy’ (a word not found in the NT) is either a consensual, short-term commitment between a married man and woman to abstain for spiritual benefit, or in some cases a life-long commitment to God as a calling to His service? If he is celibate and unmarried, is he saying that he has made a commitment to God that, even in the event of meeting a woman to whom he is sexually attracted and whom he could marry, he will not do so? Or does he mean, with reference to God and Biblical teaching, that he is ‘abstaining’ from sexual sin and now living a ‘chaste’ life?

How we share testimonies are important teaching moments. When the ‘gay’ identity, generally thought to be innate and unchangeable, is brought home to the church, pastors must recognise how this act introduces a new teaching. We need to test all things. This thought may bring tears, but I’d rather cry now than later.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Mike Davidson Core Issues Trust

Dear Sir,

In response to the article ‘I am same-sex attracted, committed to celibacy; please hear my voice’, the key point to understand is why it is that the Church of England is in danger of splitting over human sexuality.

It is not because Conservative Evangelicals as such are unwilling to welcome same-sex attracted people, or people with gender identity issues, into their churches. Tragically, there may be individuals and individual churches where this is true, but such individuals and churches are acting in a way that is contrary to generally accepted Evangelical teaching as set out by representative bodies such as the Church of England Evangelical Council and the Evangelical Alliance. What Conservative Evangelicals are unable to accept is not people, but particular forms of behaviour, namely same-sex marriage, same-sex sexual relationships, and people who are biologically male or female living as members of the opposite sex, or as members of some form of alternative sexual identity.

The reason that they are unable to accept these forms of behaviour is that they go against three fundamental Christian principles: firstly, that people should honour God by living as the people God made them to be; secondly, that people’s God-given sex is determined by their biology; and thirdly, that marriage is the only legitimate context for sexual intercourse and that marriage can only be between two people of the opposite sex. These principles are not a mere Evangelical ‘shibboleth’, but the teaching of the Bible and the historic teaching of the Christian church as whole. They are a central part of what C.S. Lewis famously called ‘mere Christianity’.

If the Church of England is not in danger of splitting because Conservative Evangelicals are unwilling to welcome same-sex attracted people, or people with gender identity issues, into their churches, then why does this danger exist? It exists because there are people both inside and outside the Church who are seeking to make the Church of England abandon these principles. As Carl Trueman has convincingly argued in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, the prevailing view in Western culture is that people should be free to understand themselves how they like and adopt those forms of sexual identity and behaviour which feel right for them. To fail to affirm their choices is to assault their identity and is thus unacceptable. It follows that traditional Christian teaching and practice with regard to sexual behaviour and identity is unacceptable and must therefore be changed either voluntarily, or under government compulsion (which is the motivation for the current campaign for a ban on conversion therapy).

For Conservative Evangelicals, if the Church of England were to go in the direction which is being called this would be a rejection of fundamental Christian teaching. Therefore, unless the Church allows them an appropriate degree of differentiation, which will permit them to publicly repudiate such a change, and will guarantee them the long-term freedom to continue to uphold traditional Christian teaching under the oversight of bishops who likewise uphold it, they may be left with no choice but to leave the Church of England, in the same way that orthodox Anglicans have been forced to leave other Anglican provinces around the world in recent years.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Martin Davie
Theological Consultant to the Church of England Evangelical Council and assistant lecturer in Christian Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.

Dear Editor,

Please thank your ‘same-sex attracted and celibate’ author for a very powerful and necessary article. As he or she writes, ‘… the conservative evangelical church simply does not realise how big a credibility problem it has with the secular world.’

Indeed so: and not just over this.

Yours sincerely,
Anne Atkins By email

Dear Editor,

In his moving and heartfelt article, in last month’s en, ‘I am same-sex attracted, committed to celibacy: please hear my voice’, the author says that evangelical churches are not listening to the experience of same-sex attracted (SSA) Christians, and that they tend to focus on the sinfulness of individual acts, causing people with SSA to feel that their ‘problem’ is seen as ‘uniquely terrible’.

First, I believe the perspective articulated by the anonymous author has been heard. The church’s duty to provide special care for those with SSA who seek to live according to the Bible’s teaching has been emphasised in evangelical circles in recent years. It would be good to acknowledge this.

Then, the danger for the church is not when individuals fall into sexual immorality, a temptation not just affecting people with SSA. Sin can be confessed and forgiven; the Spirit empowers for holy living. Care can be offered without judging, because we are all saved sinners.

The problem comes when:

· The church abandons confidence in God’s word, and instead finds truth in ‘deceitful philosophies’ (Col. 2:8), e.g. Western secular humanism.

· Lifestyles outside heterosexual marriage or abstinent singleness are declared to be not sinful, even good.

· People define their deepest identity based on their sexual orientation, rather than as in God’s image, with family and community heritage, and sexed bodies, called to be new creatures in Christ.

· Dissent from the values and norms of the sexual revolution is silenced.

The crisis that we face is cultural and spiritual. It cannot be blamed simply on evangelical failures in compassion and winsome communication.

Yours sincerely,
Andrew Symes (Revd) Executive Secretary, Anglican Mainstream

Dear Editor,

I’d like if I may to respond to a point raised in the article by the same-sex attracted person ( February issue of en).

Firstly, thanks to the writer for your commitment to a Biblical lifestyle which encourages me and I’m sure many others.

Regarding the question at the end – ‘If there are no “out” celibate gay Christians in your church, ask yourself: “Why not?” – I’m not sure I see the necessity of being ‘out’. If some people choose to be out, that’s their decision, but surely it’s also ok, isn’t it, to keep these things to oneself?

Now I’m going to guess here that the need to be ‘out’ arises because of the need for pastoral care. If so, please allow me to ask a question. In my church, which isn’t particularly big, I can think of at least four of us who are over 50 and still single. The chances of getting married would now appear to be very slim. Are we not facing the same challenges or at least extremely similar challenges to people like yourself?

I’m not sure that any of us needs any more or less pastoral care than someone like yourself.

Do correct me if I’m wrong though.

Yours sincerely,
Peter Whale Rugby

Dear Editor,

The article in the February issue of en calls for greater pastoral care and understanding for Christian gays who are trying to live Biblically, and we should all agree. The True Freedom Trust does great work in this respect, and churches need to do more. I have to say though that most evangelicals I know are quite sympathetic to gays without feeling the need to agree with them. If seculars call disagreement ‘hate’ then that’s their problem and their misrepresentation. And it might be also helpful for the author to acknowledge that quite a bit of hate comes from the LGBT movement against Christians. People are losing their jobs and attempts are being made to criminalise dissent against the LGBT orthodoxy – see the debate around Conversion Therapy.

Then when Christians look around and see the negative effects of the sexual revolution, fatherless children, broken homes, abortion (200,000 a year in the UK), sicko porn, gay propaganda in schools, increasing mental health problems in young people and the whole trans movement with teenagers encouraged to take puberty blockers and have surgery, they also see gay activists, e.g. Stonewall, at the forefront of it all: get rid of heteronormativity!

And on gay marriage, evangelicals see a lie embedded at the heart of our culture, a false equality which insists that what gays do is the same as what husbands and wives do to have children and also to have a great time. It isn’t. Do I have to go into details? Being legal is not the same as being right. It’s not enough to say gays can love each other – they can. But we have a creational and incarnational faith which says our bodies and what we do with them really matters. And gay culture does have its problems. It is often very promiscuous and has serious health issues -look at the NHS website on gay health. OK so do heteros also, to a degree.

Yours sincerely,
Ian Cooper Cambridge