Why are Christians Changing their Minds about LGBTQIA+ People?
If you look really, really closely at churches today, you may have noticed tiny little cracks starting to form in their discussion around sexuality.
Jokes. It’s more like a giant with a sledge hammer has plowed his way through an antiques store and we find ourselves in a situation where church leaders (across every denomination) are scratching their heads, wondering how he got in, and who gave him the hammer. The stats might vary depending on who you ask (I mean, who doesn’t swing numbers in their favour), but everybody seems to agree that a seismic shift is taking place in how people understand the Bible in regards to LGBTQIA+ discussions.
And what’s more, this doesn’t just seem to be a fad. If the (rather extensive) research is to be believed, there has been a consistently steady rise for decades, and not just among young people – the elderly are getting on board to (and in some instances leading the way!)
So one has to ask, why is this happening? There are a range of ways that one could answer that question, but for what it’s worth, here are three thoughts:
1) The internet is a thing, and provides us with new information
In the not too distant past (we’re talking less than 20 years), if a person had a question about theology and sexuality (say for example, ‘what does the Bible say about being gay?’) they would go to the only person in their circles who could answer the question – the local church minister. Back in those days (I’m talking pre Facebook) The clergy acted as the unofficial (and often supremely unqualified) gatekeepers of information.
For better or for worse, things have changed. Today, people have a universe of information at their fingertips 24/7... and they’re using it. Sure, the local minister might still field questions about sexuality, but it no longer ends there. A person can now Google it, read discussions, discover blogs, access scholarly journals and flick through monographs (really big, boring books).
When they do this, they discover that the 6 passages in scripture that speak about homosexual activity are deeply embedded in cultures vastly different from our own. They discover (for example) that the words broadly translated as ‘homosexuals’ in 1 Corinthians 6:9 weren’t translated that way until our extremely recent history, and almost certainly can’t refer to faithful monogamous gay and lesbian relationships.
Unlike any era before, the internet has opened up a world of scholarly literature that is enabling everyday church goers to access information about the biblical world at unprecedented levels. The minister is no longer the sole source of information – they’re still worthy of respect, but people are discovering that they can read the Bible for themselves, and that’s a good thing.
People are meeting people who are speaking…
Gay people are real. Trans people exist. This may not sound particularly groundbreaking, but if we rewound just a couple of generations, we’d discover that the vast majority of people didn’t believe in such a thing as gay people. Sure there were ‘perverts’ who fooled around with other dudes, but it all happened behind closed doors. Sure there were people who secretly cross-dressed, but it was never allowed to be seen. In reality, nobody knew gay, lesbian, or trans people (or at least, they thought they didn’t).
As society rolled on, the margins became a somewhat safer space to inhabit, and people started speaking up, sharing their stories and raising their hands. It was intimidating at first (and often still is, believe me), but eventually the trickle of stories became a steady stream, and the steady stream broke the banks as person after person removed their mask and bravely shared their journeys.
These days, when the topics of gender or sexuality arrive, someone invariably pipes up with either ‘I have a cousin who is gay’ or ‘my best friend from school is a lesbian’ or ‘I’m worried that my son might be trans’ or ‘I have two mums’, etc etc. The thing is, these people are in our lives, all around us. They are leaders in our communities, pillars of virtue and courage. At some point, it’s hard to ignore them.
And the truth is, more often than not, they’ve been hurt. Badly. The church doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to this topic, and once you’ve heard the effects that non-affirming theology has on people – the self-loathing, the endemic depression, the lonely confines of the closet and the alarming suicide stats – it’s hard to unhear them. If these are the effects of our theology, we’d be fools if we didn’t at least stop to ask, ‘have I understood the Bible correctly on this one?’ We don’t shape the Bible to fit our experiences, but there is no doubt that our experiences drive us back to the Bible with new questions.
3) The closet is hard to shut
As it turns out, there is a huge (and rapidly growing) movement among Christians who hold that God, in all divine glory, has room at the table for non-heterosexual and gender expansive people. When I stumbled across this newish way of reading the Bible, it was entirely destabilising, but in the end I couldn’t deny that this way of understanding it was faithful, rigorous and informed by deep thinking, Spirit filled seeking, and rich research.
History has landed us in a time and place where people of sexual minorities and diverse genders are all around us, and we have the profound opportunity to live with them, learn from them and journey through life with them. One thing is for sure. They (and by that I mean we) are not going anywhere. The church is scrambling for answers, and the ones they are so often producing just don’t have the theological rigour to be satisfying. The onus in the end is on people like you and me, informing ourselves and preparing ourselves to love well as we keep pointing one another to Jesus.
Movement creates movements
And who knows, one day we might find out that it was Jesus who sent that giant along, just to, you know, shake things up a bit.
Want to read more? Check out these amazing resources:
David Gushee’s book Changing Our Minds
Karen Keen’s book Scripture, Ethics and the Possibility of Same Sex Relationships
