Queering Christianity

‘Jesus is a drama King, and we are the drama queens…’

David Bennett: quote from Revoice ’24, author of upcoming Queering the Queer.

Becky identified as ‘queer’ in high school; she felt excluded from the binary ‘box’, especially by most male peers, and liked smart females as defiant as she was. Queer felt free; it didn’t limit her desires to one sex and gave space for male or female identifications. In college, after a string of exhausting relationships, she longed for more and found Jesus through a cool evangelical fellowship near campus.

There she discovered a pastor who also identified as queer but celibate. He introduced her to a group that followed Revoice, a rainbow Christian network. All good, until she noticed that her peers were starting to hook up with each other. Alarmed, she sought help from another elder: ‘Jesus led me out of this drama…’

Faithful Christian elders should know better than to queer faith but don’t. Maybe it’s pastoral exhaustion over another round of ‘gay’ division. Maybe it’s a generation so steeped in rainbow inclusion they can’t see beyond it—‘right side of history’ stuff.

Regardless, ‘creative’ orthodoxy is finding an easier way: baptize ‘sexual diversity’ by celebrating queer-dom while insisting on no ‘gay’ sex, marriage, etc. As long as possible. How one expects chastity from youth congregating around their best queer selves is beyond me.

Confused? Ask key thinkers, including Preston Sprinkle (evangelical) and David Bennett (Anglican), both UK-educated theologians who unite in defining queer ‘proclivities’ and identifications as morally neutral—whether born that way or just can’t help it. While Sprinkle draws the line at ‘gay’ lust, Bennett makes a case for same-sex eros (it’s complicated.)

Both urge the rainbow set to adopt an ill-defined celibacy, not chastity, while Bennett goes off the rails by declaring a rainbow prophetism: ‘Live the LGBTQ+ call—it’s time we released the rainbow [in the Church] that comes from the diamond’ (Revoice ’24). Just don’t do the dirty deed…

The uneasy melding of queer-dom and behavioral orthodoxy has become the way forward for many—Sprinkle’s books are everywhere, Bennett is now in residence at Reality San Francisco and Church of the City New York, and flagship Vineyard Columbus hosted Revoice ’24 last July. Not just Protestant liberties––Catholics take note, Spirited Steubenville University now hosts a group for ‘queer’-identified celibates led by a former student.    

My main concerns: ‘Queer’ catch all language invites confusion. The catechism speaks of how we become ‘fragmented into multiplicity’ (#2340) by sins against chastity; I interpret this to include rainbow identification. Queer culture has no center: its members cannot coalesce into a meaningful whole. For all Bennett’s rap on integration, his ‘queer-speak’ sounds like he’s unravelling and urging others to do the same.

Further, ‘queering’ limits Cross and Kingdom. Jesus always invites us down to the end of ourselves, including a painful examination and surrender of sources of queer inclination. Sprinkle asserts that we cannot ask that level of repentance from same-sex strugglers. Sorry Preston, Jesus asks for truth in the innermost parts (Ps. 51:6), including sexuality, of all His friends. I speak from experience. My deepest reception of mercy and truth occurs there, over and over, as does His profound confirmation of reality in my depths.

Becky deserves better than the broad way of Sprinkle, Bennett and the like. She didn’t become a Christian to be blessed as a person divided between being and action. She follows Jesus to become like Him, body, soul, and spirit––a united front.

Church, let’s not broaden the path. Love better by revealing the One who won’t bless our conforming Him to our image. Let’s allow Him to reconcile us to His original design. 

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