Christianity Today's Evangelical Authority and Gay People

Christianity Today embodied the postwar evangelical aspiration toward critical but constructive engagement with American culture. Abandoning the fundamentalist label that they saw as tainted in the wake of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, evangelicals crafted a narrative of decline and rebirth, calling themselves “neo-evangelicals.”Footnote ¹⁹ Theologian Carl F. H. Henry's 1947 The Uneasy Conscience of American Fundamentalism, which served as the movement's unofficial charter, called for renewed commitment to social issues that he claimed had been lost in the previous decades. Evangelist Billy Graham, radio evangelist Charles E. Fuller, and Boston's Park Street Church pastor Harold Ockenga fostered a shared identity among conservative Protestants through an overlapping set of institutions: the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942, to unite churches with evangelical sympathies from different denominations as a counterpoint to the more ecumenical National Council of Churches (until 1950 the Federal Council of Churches); Fuller Theological Seminary in 1947, to train pastors and theologians outside of “liberal” seminaries and sectarian fundamentalist schools; and the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in 1949, to foster associations among conservative Christian intellectuals and, shortly thereafter, scholarship through its journal.Footnote ²⁰ Neo-evangelicals could not claim to have given birth to undergraduate Wheaton College—it dates to 1860—but several leaders were graduates and it grew in the postwar decades into another key evangelical institution.Footnote ²¹

The last piece in this loosely woven interdenominational evangelical quilt was CT, launched in 1956 after two years of groundwork through Graham's vision and conservative oil magnate John Howard Pew's funding. Unlike most evangelical institutions, it was aimed at lay people rather than scholars and pastors. Graham claimed that the magazine would be a vehicle for moderate views, as the editors sought to “plant the evangelical flag in the middle of the road, taking a conservative theological position but a definite liberal approach to social problems. It would combine the best in liberalism and the best in fundamentalism without compromising theologically.”Footnote ²² Rhetorically, Graham's irenic vision had little place for a culture war against those at either end of the Protestant spectrum. Founding editor Henry shared Graham's convictions, including the desire to “give the liberally oriented Christian Century a run for its biases” and to plant itself firmly in the theological center, sparring with “far left ecumenist and far right fundamentalists” alike.Footnote ²³ In the magazine's inaugural October 1956 issue, Henry offered a nearly 3,500-word answer to the question, “Why ‘Christianity Today’?” that rejected the putative fundamentalist disengagement from American culture while offering an unapologetically biblical solution to current problems:

As appealing as this moderate stance may have been rhetorically, CT was both reliably conservative and combative from the outset. Though evangelicals attempted to express their views less stridently than their fundamentalist predecessors, they adopted a culture-war mindset and their position on many issues was an outgrowth of prewar conservatism.Footnote ²⁵ Evangelicals “played an increasingly important role in constructing a political counteroffensive” to New Deal liberalism in the early Cold War period.Footnote ²⁶ This included Graham and the institutions he helped build. His fiery apocalyptic preaching reflected his true views more than his assertions of moderation.

In its self-designated role as arbiter of evangelical identity, CT's editors and contributors filled a leadership vacuum in the flattened, nonhierarchical world created through evangelicalism's voluntary associationalism.Footnote ²⁷ Unlike the editors of the ecumenical Christian Century, who were comfortable with the ambiguities of a complex world, evangelicals committed to theological and propositional truth craved well-defined boundaries. But balancing the competing desire for a big-tent definition of moderate evangelicalism with the imperative of biblical truth was never easy. Rigid boundaries often defeated nuanced reflection as CT asserted an authoritative definition of evangelicalism in the face of various challenges. From its inception, for example, CT's strong Reformed bent kept Pentecostals and Anabaptists at arm's length, and often slighted Wesleyans.Footnote ²⁸ In the 1970s, Harold Lindsell, a founding member of Fuller Seminary, insisted on inerrancy as the litmus test for evangelical orthodoxy.Footnote ²⁹ This view was strenuously opposed by other evangelicals, including Lindsell's colleagues at Fuller, who had questioned this tenet since the late 1950s.Footnote ³⁰ Inerrancy was, as Worthen argues, “a comforting gauze that concealed a great deal of ugliness. It disguised the compromise and confusion that are unavoidable when moderns try to live by an ancient and often obscure text.”Footnote ³¹ Its primary purpose was to protect the Bible's authority and, along with it, settled theological conclusions. Acceptance of inerrancy was not a formal requirement for CT leadership, but it functioned as a boundary marker for evangelical legitimacy; no one could be appointed to a prominent role such as editor without such views. Rejection of same-sex relationships would eventually become another evangelical litmus test, one inextricably tied to assumptions about inerrancy.

Ironically, postwar evangelical views of sexuality were quite recent. While fundamentalist leaders like Billy James Hargis were busy crusading against sex ed, evangelicals were abandoning their earlier culture war against sexual excess and baptizing the American mainstream's unabashedly positive view of human sexuality, embracing pleasure for both men and women as a divinely ordained goal.Footnote ³² They affirmed that “sex is of God, and therefore sex is good.”Footnote ³³ They did not reject the sexual liberation movement, but “made it their own, publishing sex manuals, running sex workshops, and holding counseling sessions to instruct husbands and wives on the best techniques for a sexually satisfied marriage,” as Amy DeRogatis explains.Footnote ³⁴ A major 1968 position paper by two dozen evangelical theologians and physicians endorsed a wide range of birth control methods, clearly separating sexuality from childbearing. But evangelicals steadfastly affirmed that sex should be “expressed and experienced only through the marriage relationship.”Footnote ³⁵ Though unlikely to appear in most churches’ statements of belief, heterosexual desire, grounded in assumptions about sharp, innate gender binaries, became central to evangelicals’ identity. With an inherited proclivity toward culture war and a vested interest in viewing heterosexuality as normative, evangelicals turned gay and lesbian people into their chief enemy. The evangelical “domestication of sex” that celebrated sex within marriage was the “flipside of renouncing homosexuality and extramarital sexuality while remaining culturally relevant in a changing society.”Footnote ³⁶

Evangelicals’ perception of gay people as enemies in the war to defend the family dovetailed with broader fears of communists on Cold War America's home front, as evangelicals echoed mainstream anticommunist rhetoric that linked domestic security risks to various forms of “sexual perversion,” including “homosexuality.”Footnote ³⁷ A 1962 article, one of the few in CT's early years to discuss the issue, included “homosexuality” as one example in a litany of the modern world's forms of bondage. In an issue with a lead article titled “Facing the Communist Menace,” James Daane waxed philosophical about “A Free God for Free Men.” Echoing both Swiss theologian Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics and John F. Kennedy's inaugural address from the previous year, Daane used the Cold War and the burgeoning decolonization movement to contrast political and spiritual subjugation. Paradoxically, at a time when more people were enjoying political freedom than ever before, there were also greater numbers “caught in the grip of powers they cannot control.” Spiritual slaves included criminals, businessmen pressured by unethical corporate demands, workers beholden to their unions, and “everyman” victimized by his subconscious. Also in this category were “the alcoholic and the homosexual,” both “caught in the web of uncontrollable physical or psychological forces.”Footnote ³⁸ Expressing both sympathy and condemnation, Daane claimed that gay people needed to be told of the “sovereign Father” who is “man's only hope against the false sovereignties which tyrannize modern man.” Viewing gay people as inherently godless, he expressed confidence that the God who was, alluding to Barth, “free for man” would presumably liberate sinful gay people from their uncontrollable desires through conversion to Christianity.

Harold Lindsell became CT editor in 1968 and CT addressed “the homosexual” as a stand-alone topic for the first time. One key feature of neo-evangelicalism's limited openness to secular culture was its shift from prewar fundamentalism's hostility toward any form of psychological therapy toward a more positive attitude by the 1960s.Footnote ³⁹ Given this new-found embrace—and Christianizing—of psychology, it seemed appropriate for Baylor psychology professor J. R. Dolby to address the thorny issue of same-sex desire. He shared the story of “John,” who came to Dolby hoping to be freed of his attraction to men. Dolby assured him that “many persons had been able to resolve their problems to the point where they could live normal, heterosexual lives.” As a fellow sinner and a trained psychologist, Dolby was able to provide both empathy and guidance. As with “most cases of homosexuality,” John's sexual identity was the product of “psychological developmental twists in which a child identifies with the parent of the opposite sex, causing confusion of sexual identity.” After a confrontation with his mother, John finally “felt the umbilical cord was broken.” Although Dolby cautioned that this was only “one step in the tedious therapeutic encounter,” John did eventually change into a married heterosexual husband and father.Footnote ⁴⁰ Dolby's article prompted an anonymous letter the following month from a minister who shared that Jesus had empowered him to control his “problem.” “Still I am a homosexual,” he bluntly announced.Footnote ⁴¹ Like Daane's compassionate condemnation, Dolby's inaugural foray into pastoral support for gay Christians charted a course evangelicalism has tracked since: authoritatively presenting the hope of sexual identity change through anecdotal testimonies while simultaneously offering the contradictory assessment that most gay people never lose their same-sex desire.

Gay Liberation and the Evangelical Response in the 1970s

Homophile groups had been active in various parts of the United States since the early postwar period, providing the “organizing muscle and national networks” that made coordinated protest possible.Footnote ⁴² Evangelicals, like many Americans, became aware of an emerging national gay rights movement largely as a result of increased activism in the late 1960s.Footnote ⁴³ Movement leaders, who framed their activism as an extension of the era's larger civil rights struggle for equal protection of the law under the Constitution, forced evangelicals to address issues related to gay people more systematically than they had previously.Footnote ⁴⁴ Evangelicals, whose lukewarm stance toward the civil rights movement was evident in CT articles and editorials, similarly positioned themselves rhetorically in the middle of the gay rights debate, between permissive mainline liberals on one end and harsh fundamentalists on the other.Footnote ⁴⁵ As with other issues, this ostensible centrism amounted to upholding the fundamentalist view that all gay sexual behavior was sinful and merited damnation, while sympathizing with gay Christians’ struggles to master seemingly intractable desires. But for a brief time, evangelicals’ cautious acceptance of the civil rights movement, spurred by leaders of emerging liberal evangelical activist groups, prompted a surprising openness to calls for civil rights protections for gay men and lesbians.

As many sexual norms came under fire in the 1970s, evangelicals insisted on the biological basis of inherent gender differences and, relatedly, their opposition to same-sex relationships.Footnote ⁴⁶ Despite their recognition that same-sex orientation was deeply rooted and often ineradicable, evangelicals upheld their belief in the volitional nature of same-sex desire and, consequently, its changeability. In a 1973 interview with historian George M. Marsden, prominent German theologian Klaus Bockmuehl directly linked Americans’ mistaken belief in the innateness of same-sex orientation to a “permissive attitude toward homosexuality” and the perception that biblical views were irrelevant to the contemporary issue. Bockmuehl, who was not a physician, asserted that “a thorough study of the medical literature on this subject reveals no evidence that homosexuality has a physical or constitutional origin.” Recognition that gay people chose their condition put to rest the notion that “anyone who has this predisposition cannot be considered morally responsible for his acts or subjected to ethical judgments.” It also made clear, as “many secular psychiatrists affirm,” that same-sex desire could be “cured.” Bockmuehl then clarified that it should not be assumed that these individuals would ever experience “heterosexual excitement or temptations.”Footnote ⁴⁷ This contradictory use of the word cure would characterize evangelical discussion of gay people for decades.

A related ideological challenge to evangelicals in the 1970s came from the women's movement.Footnote ⁴⁸ Feminists’ insistence that gender was a cultural construct rather than a biological reality threatened normative heterosexuality in much the same way that acceptance of gay relationships did. Some evangelicals feared that acceptance of evangelical feminism would lead to the “logical conclusion,” as one reader put it, that a “lifelong commitment between adults of the same sex” is permissible.Footnote ⁴⁹ Though more radical evangelical feminists challenged traditional evangelical hermeneutics, the moderate majority sought to reconcile feminist egalitarianism with inerrancy through a careful re-reading of the New Testament. The male custodians of conservative evangelical orthodoxy were often skeptical of such exegetical moves. In this context, many prominent evangelical feminists initially shored up their movement's gains by distancing it from the gay rights movement. In a 1974 letter, Nancy Hardesty offered the convoluted argument that rejecting male-female equality and defending patriarchy by appealing to innate difference was “precisely the kind of thinking which has always fostered homosexuality among those who sought deep relationships with one who was their equal.”Footnote ⁵⁰ By the mid-1980s some evangelical feminists had come to support same-sex relationships, which created a crisis within the movement. Supporters included Hardesty, who came out in 1995.Footnote ⁵¹

As American sexual mores changed, evangelicals expressed conflicting views about the relationship between same-sex behavior and the law. Many anguished over the “absence of a standard for moral behavior” as states moved to decriminalize various forms of nonmarried sex among consenting adults, including “sodomy,” as urged by a federal task force appointed by the National Institute of Mental Health.Footnote ⁵² One CT editorial lamented the decline of Christian morality and the dissolution of “stringent laws against homosexual conduct” that “sprang from the Hebrew-Christian tradition.”Footnote ⁵³ Other evangelicals grudgingly accepted the decriminalization of gay sexual activity, however immoral they found it. The July 1969 CT issue, otherwise devoted to rhapsodizing about the theological implications of the recent moon landing, still found space for a 2,500-word article on “Homosexuality in the Bible and the Law.” Smith confirmed that the Bible condemned all forms of gay sexual activity, which was both one sin among many and a “particularly conspicuous symptom of sinful man's abnormality.” Still, he concluded with an approving citation of German theologian Helmut Thielicke that “homosexuality is primarily an ethical question” and thus “not the concern of criminal law.”Footnote ⁵⁴

If personal ethics and law could be separated, perhaps evangelicals should go beyond support for decriminalization toward protection of gay civil rights. Mainline churches began to reach out to the gay community and some clergy actively support gay liberation, explicitly linking their stance with their support for civil rights.Footnote ⁵⁵ In December 1970, CT's Robert L. Cleath breathlessly reported that a recent Washington, D.C., conference on “theology and homosexuality” was filled with speakers who “made no concessions to the view that God's plan for human sexual fulfillment is found only in a heterosexual relationship.” One Seventh-Day Adventist “saw no conflict between her lesbian life and biblical teachings”; her views were all the more tragic to Cleath as she was a “pretty, 21-year-old.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Progressive evangelical groups founded in the 1970s to address social justice issues like poverty and racism helped to make the case for gay civil rights. Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, and Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, were both signatories to the 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. They advocated civil rights for gay men and lesbians, while continuing to clearly oppose gay sexual behavior. Though this mixed stance kept them at odds with liberal secular activists and most religious conservatives alike, it nevertheless prompted some evangelicals to be cautious about simplistic solutions.Footnote ⁵⁷ A 1975 CT article made de rigueur pronouncements about the sinfulness of gay behavior before advocating an end to criminal codes against gay sexual acts and support for equal rights legislation in employment, housing, and accommodations. Guy Charles, founder of the early ex-gay movement Liberation, backed civil rights for gay people at an Indiana University talk in 1976 co-sponsored by evangelical campus groups. After an affirmation that gay people needed to eventually accept Jesus as Savior and abandon their sinful lifestyle, his equal adamancy about the need for civil rights safeguards seemed to win over the audience.Footnote ⁵⁸ This careful distinction between condemnation of sinful personal behavior and support for legal civil rights protections reflected an evangelical moderation that contrasted with many fundamentalist ministers such as Jerry Falwell, who actively opposed legal protections for gays and lesbians because they viewed same-sex activity as “unspeakably evil.”Footnote ⁵⁹

A handful of evangelicals were ready to press further theologically, reconciling their biblical theology with openness toward same-sex relationships. One efforted involved the Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), a loose national association of gay-friendly evangelical churches pastored by former Baptists and Evangelical Reformed ministers, formed in 1968.Footnote ⁶⁰ A CT visitor to one church service, after indulging in homophobic stereotyping, recognized that attendees came in the hope that God would “make his love known to them.”Footnote ⁶¹ Evangelicals honestly acknowledged that the church's appeal reflected the clear evidence that many practicing gay men and lesbians came from Christian backgrounds, while leaders often had seminary or Bible school training.Footnote ⁶²

Another effort involved The Other Side. Fred Alexander started the magazine, originally Freedom Now, in 1968 to help white evangelicals come to terms with American racism, but the magazine branched out into other social issues. In 1978, the magazine devoted an entire issue to gay people, expressing unity on the issue of welcoming them into church communities and respectful disagreement regarding the issue of committed, monogamous same-sex relationships. Co-editor John Alexander, Fred's son, tended to believe that the Bible barred all forms of same-sex activity, but admitted enough ambiguity to allow for honest disagreement among Christians. Co-editor Mark Olson confessed that the magazine's staff differed on the question of “permanent, faithful homosexual relationships for people who feel they have no other viable sexual alternative.” But the magazine issue provided testimonies from six gay and lesbian Christians and a lengthy interview with Evangelicals Concerned founder Ralph Blair, a psychotherapist who formed the organization in 1975 to assist gay Christians in integrating their faith and sexual orientation. By 1984, The Other Side's leadership fully embraced same-sex relationships.Footnote ⁶³ The magazine's cautious openness to dialogue prompted outrage from the evangelical establishment over its perceived abandonment of biblical orthodoxy.Footnote ⁶⁴ As with the MCC, it was one thing to treat gay people humanely and protect their rights, but questioning the sinfulness of “homosexuality” was beyond the pale.

Evangelical support for decriminalization of same-sex acts became more widespread, but support for gay civil rights remained a tougher sell. Conservative evangelicals, fearful of the seeming dissolution of all sexual norms, began to police the boundaries of evangelicalism with greater fervor. A 1977 article, assertively entitled “Confronting the Homosexual Issue,” was largely devoted to describing Anita Bryant's effort to repeal a Miami gay-rights ordinance of precisely the kind espoused by Guy Charles. The piece portrayed Bryant sympathetically and quoted her gleeful response to news of the successful vote to “repeal an obnoxious assault on our moral values.” The article concluded with a list of five warning signs that same-sex sexual activity, which for the author included pedophilia, was a rising tide threatening to overwhelm society. Where other authors had talked sensitively about gay people's struggles, this author reported derisively on a recent pro-gay campaign to educate Americans “about the alleged plight of the nation's ‘millions’ of homosexuals.”Footnote ⁶⁵ This harsher tone was regularly reflected in readers’ views as well. One, for example, likened gay sexual activity to a “contagion” “in the atmosphere of moral compromise and acceptance which would be inevitable and all-pervasive.”Footnote ⁶⁶

Evangelical Opposition during the Reign of the Religious Right

The Religious Right emerged with conservatism's resurgence in the 1970s.Footnote ⁶⁷ Evangelicals’ growing wealth and education levels enabled the proliferation of books, radio and television programs, and megachurches.Footnote ⁶⁸ The movement aimed to convert decades-old commitments to anticommunism, laissez-faire economic philosophy, and anxiety about changing cultural norms, particularly regarding sexual mores, into policy.Footnote ⁶⁹ The growth of easy divorce, casual sex, and pornography over the previous two decades made sexual morality a key evangelical battleground.Footnote ⁷⁰ Late in the decade, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, gained prominence as a member of Ronald Reagan's Mese Commission pornography task force.Footnote ⁷¹ In the era of family values, “homosexuality,” long a moral concern, became a frequent target of the Religious Right as fundamentalists and many evangelicals sought to bolster a normative heterosexual understanding of “biblical” sexuality through the force of law. Though political lobbying in the Reagan years became more aggressive, evangelicals largely reiterated the previous decade's narrative about gay people, consolidating it into a consistent fivefold message.

The first order of business always was to establish definitively that gay sexual desire was a result of the Fall and that all forms of gay sexual activity were sinful; those who practiced such behavior were under God's judgment. In a postwar evangelical culture fundamentally committed to the “healthy sexuality” of marriage—which could only thrive when traditional gender divisions were honored—same-sex desire was self-evidently unnatural.Footnote ⁷² Kenneth Kantzer, a Harvard PhD who had served as president of ETS and professor of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, became CT editor in 1977. A staunch defender of inerrancy like his predecessor, he invited respected British theologian John Stott to provide a detailed biblical argument against gay marriage, while Southern Baptist theologian Timothy George made clear that “it is not a mark of compassion, but rather a sign of complicity and apostasy, to sanction as normative what Almighty God in his truth-telling Word has declared immoral and wicked.”Footnote ⁷³ Counterarguments fell on deaf ears. Ralph Blair and his colleague Timothy Phillips wrote several letters to the editor during the 1980s challenging the view that all same-sex activity was sinful, but CT contributors and readers refused to recognize them as fellow evangelicals, though their organization affirmed “the fundamental tenets of evangelical faith.”Footnote ⁷⁴

Second, once the sinfulness of gay sexuality had been definitively conveyed, evangelicals could extend compassion. Kantzer illustrated this cautious compassion in 1980: “Churches must without hesitation stand behind the teachings of Scripture, but at the same time strive to understand the personal struggles of homosexuals.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Compassion extended to discussion of the AIDS crisis, in which CT articles regularly pointed out that gay men were not the only people who contracted the disease and that Christians were called to demonstrate compassionate care for all, regardless of how they acquired AIDS.Footnote ⁷⁶ Contributors and readers routinely criticized hateful rhetoric from fundamentalist preachers, inflated claims of sexual orientation change, stereotypes of gay promiscuity, and libelous charges of pedophilia, arguing that these views stirred up antigay sentiment.Footnote ⁷⁷ Where earlier religious conservatives had rejected the accuracy of Kinsey's data about Americans’ sexual behavior and identities, evangelical leaders in the 1980s accepted the statistics available to them, conceding that gay people might make up four to ten percent of a congregation's men and three to four percent of its women. Churches were urged to be more welcoming. If church was not a place of refuge for gay people, they would go elsewhere for answers. “And those answers will not be biblical.”Footnote ⁷⁸

Third, after evangelicals’ definitive pronouncement of gay sexuality's sinfulness and their expression of compassion, the next question was always about practical implications. This is where the unsatisfying nature of evangelical counsel always appeared. The notion that, in some inscrutable way, gay people chose their identity and that it was therefore changeable was an essential deduction derived from accepted biblical interpretation and inerrancy ideology.Footnote ⁷⁹ Evangelicals therefore routinely advocated sexual orientation change. Wheaton's Stanton Jones, whose inerrantism committed him to the view that Scripture never made erroneous claims about human behavior, asserted that scientific evidence could not be used to “rule out some human accountability for our problematic sexual orientations.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Articles discussing ministry toward gay people suffering from AIDS also highlighted the evangelistic opportunity this provided to invite victims to renounce their sinful lifestyle and embrace Jesus.Footnote ⁸¹ If same-sex desire was bondage, gay people could be set free by accepting Christ. One reader bluntly asserted that “homosexuality is sin in its ugliest form,” so God was certainly able to “overcome such a thing.”Footnote ⁸² A 1984 article melodramatically profiled a number of courageous individuals like Doug Houck who were committed to “rescuing” gay people from “the lifestyle.”Footnote ⁸³ The failures of these heroes garnered less attention; CT was silent when Houck stepped down from his ministry six years later, after revelations surfaced that he had had several gay relationships.Footnote ⁸⁴

Rather than denounce all psychological and scientific evidence, evangelicals used it selectively, drawing attention to findings that supported the plausibility of orientation change whenever they could. Early in the 1980s, “Homosexuals Can Change,” a 4,500-word article, provided an effusive report of an American Journal of Psychiatry study that ostensibly demonstrated that immature Christians learned “how to be heterosexual as they developed Christian maturity.”Footnote ⁸⁵ As Ralph Blair pointed out in a letter to the editor, the article severely downplayed researchers’ cautions regarding the rarity of sexual orientation change.Footnote ⁸⁶ Jones offered his professional opinion that, while gay sexuality was not pathological in the same way as schizophrenia or phobias, it was certainly not a mere lifestyle variation.Footnote ⁸⁷ In the late 1990s, he and his frequent research partner Mark Yarhouse, a Wheaton-trained psychologist, gleefully reported on the diminishing evidence of a genetic basis for same-sex attraction.Footnote ⁸⁸ The evangelical claim that all gay sexual activity was sin could thus be preserved. Evangelical hope for the possibility of orientation change was rooted in the assumption that same-sex attraction came from confusion about gender roles. Mirroring conservative marriage counselors who promised “marital perfection through a revival of traditional gender roles,” evangelicals often encouraged gay Christians to embrace stereotypical gender norms as the path toward liberation.Footnote ⁸⁹

Fourth, after affirming the real possibility of sexual orientation change, evangelicals candidly acknowledged the precise opposite: successful orientation change was exceedingly rare.Footnote ⁹⁰ In 1980, Kantzer made quite clear that sexual orientation change was extremely difficult—as challenging as “renouncing one's right-handedness”—and that readers should not expect that God would change this condition.Footnote ⁹¹ Returning to the subject a few years later, he invited gay people to turn from their orientation, but immediately conceded that “the evidence is clear that such a turn is often not very successful.” He reconciled this blatant contradiction by piously reminding readers that all things were possible with God.Footnote ⁹² News editor Randy Frame shared the story of “Mary,” a college-educated woman who held orthodox evangelical views and insisted that she did not want to be gay. But she found that prayer, counseling, and exorcism had all failed to change her and she had returned to a gay lifestyle because “I don't know what else to do.” Like Stanley Jones's depiction of Todd, Frame was honest about Mary's situation and sympathetic toward her. And like Jones, Frame offered little hope for an escape from her situation.Footnote ⁹³ Many evangelicals avoided clear acknowledgement of the contradiction between simultaneously affirming and denying the possibility of orientation change by following Klaus Bockmuehl's lead and equivocating on the meaning of “cure.” They warned that change did not mean “a life free from homosexual temptation” and that “God doesn't always respond on cue,” without explaining how such a situation constituted change.Footnote ⁹⁴ Occasionally, readers skeptically noted this equivocation, but more often they enthusiastically endorsed the notion of orientation change.Footnote ⁹⁵ Despite the bleak assessment that the overwhelming majority of individuals who desperately wanted to change would be unable to do so, evangelical leaders insisted that the fact that change was possible for some should be reassuring to “the majority of evangelicals who are being shaken by propaganda from the progay side.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Such an appraisal suggests that a desire to reassure heterosexuals was often a greater concern than providing meaningful guidance to gay Christians.

Finally, after gay Christians failed in their strenuous efforts to “turn around your sexual orientation,” it became clear to them that celibacy was God's plan for their lives.Footnote ⁹⁷ Many gay Christians found the prospect of lifelong singleness bleak, particularly in a subculture that celebrated sexual pleasure and the nuclear family, but were reassured that God never gave people a greater burden than they could handle. Heterosexual evangelicals tried to empathize. One reader asserted that heterosexuals faced temptations equal to—if not greater than—those of gay people, while another counseled prayer for deliverance.Footnote ⁹⁸ Not all evangelicals dodged the implications of their views. Progressive evangelical theologian Tony Campolo proposed that sexual identity was largely innate and, recognizing the burden of lifelong celibacy, advocated platonic, same-sex friendships as a solution for lonely gay Christians. Both points earned him scathing critiques from leaders of ex-gay organizations, which prompted him to conclude, “I think I understand a little better why homosexuals remain concealed and suffer in silence.”Footnote ⁹⁹

The ex-gay movement became a key component of evangelicals’ fivefold view near the end of the Reagan era, duct taping the contradictory features of the definitive-but-unsatisfying stance together. In 1973, after an extensive “push from outside and in” by laypeople and professionals, as Lillian Faderman puts it, “homosexuality” was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the following decade, gay affirmative therapies became more popular.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Some ex-gay organizations, like Love in Action and Exodus International, began in the mid-1970s, partly in response to these developments in the therapeutic world. The early “ex-gay” movement was rooted in the self-help movement of the 1970s and took its cues from the recovery movement in the 1980s and 1990s, eventually becoming dependent on Alcoholics Anonymous's twelve-step model. In this framework, same-sex desire was often presented as “sexual brokenness,” both a sin and an addictive pathology.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Evangelicals were seasoned enough about the difficulty of change to be wary about the overzealous claims of Exodus's spokesmen in its first years. Through the 1990s, CT continued to give modest though generally positive attention to Exodus. By the new millennium, however, evangelicals’ desire for proof of orientation change as a solution to their theological impasse won out over wariness about ministry leaders’ overblown claims. They fully embraced Exodus, now a thriving ministry.Footnote ¹⁰² Between 2000 and 2012, CT published over thirty articles on the ex-gay movement, overwhelmingly devoted to Exodus. The movement thrived on sharing upbeat testimonies of orientation change in the spirit of evangelical conversion narratives. But leaders were evasive about the number of individuals who experienced significant change.Footnote ¹⁰³

Anecdotal accounts were occasionally buttressed with research that seemed to support gay reparative therapy claims. CT enthusiastically reported the 2001 conclusion of Columbia University psychiatry professor Robert L. Spitzer that sexual orientation therapy could work. Exodus cited this study in its promotional literature for years.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Six years later, CT senior writer Tim Stafford enthusiastically announced “The Best Research Yet”: Christian researchers Stanton and Yarhouse's study supporting the conclusion that gay behavior could be changed in some circumstances.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Contradicting the claims that sexual orientation change was possible, other authors continued to caution about the “uncertainty and difficulty of change.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Meanwhile, Exodus president Davies followed the familiar pattern of defining orientation change ambiguously: “I know many men who are totally transformed compared to 20 years ago, but that doesn't mean that they never have a thought or a memory or a temptation or a struggle. It means that the struggle has diminished significantly. That doesn't mean they haven't changed; it just means that for all of us, redemption is still incomplete.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ His replacement at Exodus, Alan Chambers, likewise warned that therapy did not eradicate gay sexual temptation.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Despite routinely highlighting his own marriage as evidence of success, he insisted at another time that freedom from gay sexual desire did not necessarily mean heterosexual marriage.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ It would soon become clear that Chambers knew just how difficult it was to deny one's sexual identity.

Holding Evangelicalism Together?

Around 2010, the ostensible evangelical consensus regarding gay people began to weaken. On the surface, this seemed mostly a result of unprecedented attention to discussions about LGBTQ rights in American culture and major legal defeats in the evangelical culture war. Conservatives’ victory in the Supreme Court's 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, which permitted the denial of some services to same-sex couples based on free speech and free exercise of religion, was modest. The Court ruled on narrow grounds that Colorado's state civil rights commission had not applied regulations neutrally.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Several other decisions, however, were unambiguous defeats for conservative Christians. In 2012, California outlawed reparative therapy, beginning a trend followed by nineteen other states by 2020. The Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) that same-sex marriage was a Fourteenth Amendment right.Footnote ¹¹¹ And in a surprise 2020 decision, the Court outlawed workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.Footnote ¹¹²

Even before these cases, evangelical groups had been fighting a rearguard action on college campuses. Christian organizations like Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) and InterVarsity, which had purged their ranks of employees who supported LGBTQ relationships, fought for restored access to secular campuses after being derecognized for their opposition to same-sex relationships.Footnote ¹¹³ Christian colleges, caught between nondiscrimination laws and their donors’ opposition to same-sex relationships, offered confusing, sometimes contradictory guidelines for student conduct.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Wheaton sought to foster dialogue by allowing LGBTQ students to meet on campus while maintaining its proscription against same-sex relationships, but the administration underestimated the strength of students’ pro-LGBTQ sentiments.Footnote ¹¹⁵ At Fuller Seminary, two students, each married to a same-sex partner, sued for discrimination when they were expelled for violating the school's tenets.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Though a district court blocked the suit, faculty and administration at Fuller and other institutions will continue to wrestle with this issue.Footnote ¹¹⁷

As the college debates illustrated, the growing turmoil within evangelicalism regarding the appropriate stance toward gay Christians was as crucial as the various legal defeats. Repudiation of earlier research results demonstrated how precarious such evidence was as a basis for immutable theological claims. In 2011, Michael Bussee, a counselor at Melodyland Christian Center, disavowed the American Journal of Psychiatry study conducted there that had been foundational for the ex-gay movement.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Spitzer retracted his conclusions in 2012 and apologized to the gay community. In a lengthy footnote, a 2009 American Psychological Association white paper on sexual orientation change explicitly named Stanton and Yarhouse's study as an example of research with significant methodological problems that made their conclusions unconvincing.Footnote ¹¹⁹ CT failed to note Bussee's and Spitzer's retractions or the flaws in Stanton and Yarhouse's study, despite having trumpeted the original results in all three cases. Ironically, Stanton and Yarhouse had earlier complained, “Follow-up research that refutes earlier findings seldom receives the same level of coverage.”Footnote ¹²⁰

Personal announcements from ex-gay leaders were much harder to ignore. Jeremy Marks, leader of a British Exodus affiliate for fourteen years, was a harbinger of many high-profile ex-gay leaders who would repudiate the movement. In 2001, he had bluntly concluded, “None of the people we've counseled have converted no matter how much effort and prayer they've put into it.” He included himself in that assessment, despite being married for nine years.Footnote ¹²¹ The most dramatic development came from Exodus International president Alan Chambers, who mused in a 2012 CT interview, “I doubt there will ever be human resolution to the debates surrounding . . . whether or not someone can be actively gay and a believer,” prompting outrage from evangelical leaders and readers.Footnote ¹²² The following year, he disavowed his ministry and apologized to the many gay people it had worked with for “years of undue suffering and judgment at the hands of the organization and the Church as a whole.” He proclaimed that God was calling ministry leaders “to welcome everyone, to love unhindered.” Exodus shut down and local affiliates would henceforth operate under their own auspices.Footnote ¹²³

Spurred by Chambers's example, other former leaders of the ex-gay movement joined in, rejecting the contradictory definition of orientation change that characterized the movement. John Paulk chimed in with his own confession covered in the national press. Having left the ex-gay movement in 2003, he now revealed that his orientation had never changed and that he was leaving his wife of twenty years. He rejected the notion that therapy could change sexual orientation and expressed deep contrition over leading a ministry that caused “anger, depression, guilt and hopelessness.” He offered his “most sincere and heartfelt apology to men, women and especially children and teens who felt unlovable, unworthy, shamed or thrown away by God or the church.”Footnote ¹²⁴ The following year, John Smid, who had resigned as Love in Action director several years earlier and divorced his wife, married a man.Footnote ¹²⁵ In early 2015, Randy Thomas, who had been executive vice president of Exodus until its closure, confessed to being gay in an emotional blogpost. Several months later, he signed an online letter endorsing the Obergefell decision.Footnote ¹²⁶

Mainstream evangelicals panicked as they witnessed the removal of the linchpin holding together their decades-long contradictory stance toward gay sexuality. Some leaders rewrote the history of their support for Exodus, claiming that they had always had a complicated relationship with the organization and blaming Exodus's accountability structure for allowing its leaders to “backslide” into gay sexual activity.Footnote ¹²⁷ They also doubled down on their stance, as illustrated by Jones's “definitive but unsatisfying” piece that opened this article: They became even more candid about the unlikelihood of sexual orientation change, while simultaneously continuing to hold open that pathway as a viable option.

The failure of the ex-gay movement—coupled with its rhetoric of compassion—encouraged some straight evangelicals to rethink their views. Routine exposure to the testimonies of gay Christians had gradually normalized the once controversial notion that believers could continue to struggle with same-sex desire. Routine confrontation with the reality that many gay people were inside the fold—and genuinely struggled unsuccessfully to change an orientation they clearly never chose—made it more difficult for evangelicals to frame the debate as simply a secular attack in the culture war. These friends, neighbors, and family members failed to fit the tale of emotional or psychological “brokenness” that the ex-gay movement had carefully crafted. As in American culture at large, straight Christians have gradually shifted from viewing gay people as outlaws to seeing them as in-laws.Footnote ¹²⁸ Some evangelicals who reflected on the experiences of their metaphorical in-laws concluded that acceptance of same-sex relationship better reflected Christian compassion than did the condemnation that a theology grounded in biblical inerrancy seemed to require.

This experiential evidence prompted some evangelicals to question conservatives’ appeal to a few biblical passages—and the larger principle of inerrancy—as the definitive answer to a complex issue. Thoughtful books by academics and nonspecialists candidly demonstrated the indefensibility of inerrancy.Footnote ¹²⁹ Key evangelical leaders began to announce their support for same-sex relationships. Brian McLaren, a progressive evangelical and contributor to CT for several years in the early 2000s, argued for accepting same-sex relationships in a 2010 book and presided over his son's marriage to a man two years later.Footnote ¹³⁰ Sojourners leader Jim Wallis told the Huffington Post in 2013 that it was time for Christians to figure out “how to include same-sex couples in that deeper understanding of marriage.”Footnote ¹³¹ Two years later, Tony Campolo followed suit.Footnote ¹³² The conversion of these progressive evangelicals was not surprising, but conservative evangelicals were caught off guard when those they saw as in their camp changed their view. Backlash quickly followed. CT editor Mark Galli was “saddened” and his readers “alarmed” that their own former editor David Neff praised Campolo's decision on Facebook.Footnote ¹³³ When popular blogger and speaker Jen Hatmaker announced in 2016 that she had “wrestled with and through Scripture, not around it” before coming to affirm same-sex relationships, evangelicals were appalled.Footnote ¹³⁴ LifeWay Christian Stores, a national Southern Baptist chain, quickly removed her books from their shelves.Footnote ¹³⁵ The following year, Eugene Peterson, a former pastor and author best known for his Message Bible translation that had sold millions of copies, confessed to journalist Jonathan Merritt that he would perform same-sex weddings if he were still a practicing pastor. (Merritt, the son of a former Southern Baptist Convention president, had initially shared evangelical opposition to same-sex relationships until a male blogger outed him regarding a shared sexual encounter. He eventually began writing articles supporting LGBTQ rights.)Footnote ¹³⁶ LifeWay repeated the threat made to Hatmaker, while other evangelicals castigated Peterson, who quickly backtracked and affirmed a “biblical view of everything.”Footnote ¹³⁷ It later became clear that his literary agent largely orchestrated the retraction for Peterson, who may have been experiencing dementia by the time of the controversy. His son Eric attested that Peterson had for several years privately accepted the legitimacy of same-sex relationships.Footnote ¹³⁸

Conservative evangelicals did their best to ignore rumblings of nonconformity from evangelical scholars as well. Popular evangelical books embracing same-sex relationships that appeared after Exodus's collapse sometimes received respectful if critical reviews in CT, but many were simply ignored.Footnote ¹³⁹ The magazine took this tack with works by evangelical academics. James Brownson, a Princeton PhD and seminary professor in Grand Rapids, the nation's Reformed heartland, wrote an exegetical study exploring the biblical possibility of monogamous same-sex relationships in 2013.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ The following year, Mark Achtemeier's The Bible's Yes to Same-Sex Marriage: An Evangelical's Change of Heart was released.Footnote ¹⁴¹ A thirty-year Presbyterian pastor and Duke University PhD, Achtemeier had been an anti-LGBTQ activist before changing his views. CT ignored both books. David Gushee, a renowned scholar and evangelical theologian of ethics, penned Changing Our Mind in 2014. Although the epitome of an evangelical insider—he contributed to CT for years, was cited in dozens of CT articles, and won a Book of the Year award from CT in 2004—he and his contributions were unceremoniously dropped down the memory hole, never mentioned again in CT's pages.Footnote ¹⁴² Contributing editor Ed Stetzer dismissed these books as the work of a celebrity-seeking minority.Footnote ¹⁴³ Pro-gay evangelicals were functionally fifth columnists whose betrayal could not be countenanced by conservative evangelical leaders who sought to reassure themselves that the consensus view remained intact.

J. R. Daniel Kirk, a promising young Fuller Seminary professor and author of two well-received books on the New Testament, was denied tenure in 2015 largely because of his affirmation of same-sex relationships—despite the fact that Fuller president Mark Labberton had praised Kirk's book on Paul, the source of the tenure controversy.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ The following year, the theologically conservative ETS's annual conference included a panel on different views regarding sexual ethics. Australian pastor and theologian William Loader presented a case for accepting same-sex relationships in the church while other panelists argued for viewing the issue as a matter of “adiaphora”—an issue of secondary importance about which Christians might respectfully disagree.Footnote ¹⁴⁵

Progressive evangelicals’ efforts to relegate questions of sexuality to adiaphora status found no purchase among the conservative custodians of evangelical authority. CT author Jake Meador concluded that such expansive theological views reflected not that “Scripture is silent on these matters (it isn't),” but rather that “it is much easier to default to the cultural posture of affirmation and acceptance.”Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Conservative evangelicals returned to their old playbook, relying on testimonies from gay Christians, often women, who offered narratives of sexual orientation change: African American rap artist Jackie Hill Perry, English professor and feminist Rosaria Butterfield, and Cru leader Rachel Gilson.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Wesley Hill also shared about his struggle with same-sex sexual attraction several times in CT. Hill's testimony, however, involved no orientation change, but rather a commitment to the “monotonous, pedestrian suffering” of a celibate life.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ The lonely struggle of those like Hill was a far more common experience for gay Christians than triumphant tales of orientation change, as CT editors knew well from long experience.

In addition to testimonials, conservatives again acknowledged their past unkindness to gay and lesbian people, while insisting, more to themselves than anyone else, that their prohibition of all same-sex activity was not a continuation of such unkindness. In this vein, they rehearsed a familiar set of definitive but unsatisfying talking points. In a 2021 CT feature article, Baylor theologian Matthew Lee Anderson reflected on the recent marginalization of evangelical views of sexuality in American life, arguing that evangelicals were partly responsible for this state of affairs, as they had “demeaned and disrespected our LGBT neighbors.” The solution he proposed framed an evangelicals-versus-gays narrative that ignored the many gay Christians whose stories had been shared in CT's pages. Anderson called for “an uncompromising fidelity to Scripture” that would make evangelical “commitment to marriage between a man and a woman ring out to the world with a clarity and grace,” inclining those who threaten evangelicals’ liberties to “take heed and listen,” by which he seemed to mean that opponents would recognize the error of their support for LGBT rights.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Readers largely echoed Anderson's compassionate condemnation, one suggesting that evangelicals should continue to “preach love and inclusion” but also “preach against sin.”Footnote ¹⁵⁰

For many evangelicals, the notion that gay identity is chosen and changeable has become increasingly implausible. Advocacy for acceptance of same-sex relationships by some in the evangelical community has surpassed the previous high point in the 1970s.Footnote ¹⁵¹ Ex-ex-gays have learned to wield the weapon of testimony as effectively as their ex-gay opponents, and their testimonies of pain and suffering demand both emotional and moral responses from listeners.Footnote ¹⁵² The conviction that compassion means acceptance—even if this challenges accepted ideas of inerrancy—has become deeply rooted among evangelicals. Currently, roughly thirty percent of white evangelicals support same-sex marriage, a figure that has tripled in fifteen years.Footnote ¹⁵³ But this statistic masks a stark generational divide. Younger evangelicals, who tend to engage in activism on more liberal social issues than a previous generation, are more likely to have friends they know are gay and more accepting of same-sex relationships.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Consequently, while less than a quarter of evangelicals born before 1981 favor same-sex marriage and only one-third think society should accept gay people, those figures are 45 percent and 51 percent, respectively, among evangelicals born between 1981 and 1996.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ Younger evangelicals are even more accepting in their views.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Acceptance of LGBTQ people and same-sex relationships will eventually characterize evangelicalism through attrition. If conservative evangelicals refuse to accept this outcome, which seems likely, any sense of evangelical unity—already tenuous and largely symbolic—will disappear altogether.