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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyThe Integrity of Gay Evangelicals Who Offer A True Witness To Faith
December 12th, 2006
Yesterday’s revelation of another evangelical pastor resigning after admitting that he had sexual relations with other men has drawn attention to something that is rarely talked about: the gay evangelical.
Today’s New York Times offers an interesting profile on several gay evangelicals and their struggle to reconcile their faith and their sexuality. The encouraging aspect of this is that some succeed, despite the obvious hurdles:
Justin Lee believes that the Virgin birth was real, that there is a heaven and a hell, that salvation comes through Christ alone and that he, the 29-year-old son of Southern Baptists, is an evangelical Christian.
Just as he is certain about the tenets of his faith, Mr. Lee also knows he is gay, that he did not choose it and cannot change it.
To many people, Mr. Lee is a walking contradiction, and most evangelicals and gay people alike consider Christians like him horribly deluded about their faith. “I’ve gotten hate mail from both sides,” said Mr. Lee, who runs gaychristian.net, a Web site with 4,700 registered users that mostly attracts gay evangelicals.
The article notes that there are very few paths for gay evangelicals. Usually those paths involve having to choose between their faith and their sexuality in the belief that they can’t have both. But more and more are refusing to settle for that false choice.
Clyde Zuber, 49, and Martin Fowler, 55, remember sitting on the curb outside Lakeview Baptist Church in Grand Prairie, Tex., almost 20 years ago, Sunday after Sunday, reading the Bible together, after the pastor told them they were not welcome inside. The men met at a Dallas church and have been together 23 years. In Durham, N.C., they attend an Episcopal church and hold a Bible study for gay evangelicals every Friday night at their home.
Faith is a very mysterious thing, and there is no greater testament for the power of faith than when it’s challenged at every turn but refuses to break. Their faith is challenged on all fronts. They aren’t well accepted by fellow evangelical Christians, and they aren’t understood by the gay community either:
“A lot of people are freaked out because their only exposure to evangelicalism was a bad one, and a lot ask, ‘Why would you want to be part of a group that doesn’t like you very much?’ ” Mr. Lee said. “But it’s not about membership in groups. It’s about what I believe. Just because some people who believe the same things I do aren’t very loving doesn’t mean I stop believing what I do.”
Rev. Paul Barnes of Denver-area Grace Chapel has come forward with his struggle. Others have met the challenges of their struggles head-on and survived with their integrity and their faith intact.
Integrity comes from the Latin integritas, meaning soundness, of being whole or complete. Integrity does not require us choose between faith and sexuality, as though these were two halves of yourself that are strangers to each other. To be at war with yourself is the opposite of integrity. Recognizing the false choice between faith and sexuality is not just the first step to wholeness, it is the most powerful witness to faith itself.
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