When Heavyweights Change their Minds: Richard B. Hays and Human Sexuality
Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash
Details about an upcoming book from Dr. Richard B. Hays and his son, Dr. Christopher Hays, titled The Widening of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story recently appeared on the Yale University Press website. The book isn't out until September. I've yet to read any reviews by anyone who has read it, but the press blurb says the book "begins with the authors’ personal experiences of controversies over sexuality and closes with Richard Hays’s epilogue reflecting on his own change of heart and mind."
When I first saw the news, I was plunged into a now all-too-familiar cycle of emotions: fear, disappointment, betrayal, and hope. Over the past decade, various credible Protestant theologians have revealed that they've adopted a revisionist sexual ethic that God fully blesses same-sex marriages. Each time, gay Christians like me who are stewarding our sexualities according to historic sexual ethics are thrown for a loop. Many would consider us to be paying the greatest cost for continuing to believe in God's wisdom—namely, permanently giving up the prospect of romance or marriage or sex with the people to whom we’re most attracted. Making sense of the news that another theological heavyweight has changed his mind only adds to our burden.
Fear
When someone smarter and wiser and likely more faithful than me switches sides away from my convictions, I immediately worry that I'm a fool. A sense of instability, disorientation, and insecurity sets in. I find myself future-tripping about some moment a decade from now when I also change my mind. I wonder whether my future self would feel like I wasted those in-between years—years I could have spent experiencing the romance that I've spent a lifetime resisting.
Thankfully, I've brought these feelings to my therapist before, and her advice grounds me. Despite the fact that my therapist personally holds a revisionist sexual ethic, she's challenged me not to waste my present by worrying about wasting my future. When I've shared my future-switching fears with her, she's helped me remember that none of us is following God perfectly. A year spent earnestly following God is never a waste. Even if I later change my mind (which I expect I won't), it's unlikely I will come to believe that romance or sex is necessary for a full life. What would that mean, for example, for the countless straight people and LGBT+ people convinced of revisionist sexual ethics who don't experience romance or sex for other reasons? I hope I'd never come to believe that their lives are somehow incomplete or to be pitied.
Disappointment
Once I get past fears of foolishness, I begin dealing with the actual arguments. At least in the past, this has led to repeated discovery that the newest book about moving to revisionist sexual ethics has little new to say. I experience disappointment, because, to be honest, some part of me was hoping I'd read something more convincing than the dozen books that came before. Based on the press blurb, The Widening of God's Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story will likely rest on the trajectory argument that Matthew Vines, Colby Martin, David P. Gushee, Julie Rodgers, Justin Lee, Sally Gary, and others have made in their own mind-changing volumes.
Again, I have not read Hays's new book, but the description suggests he'll argue that the core message of the Scriptures is a narrative of greater inclusion and liberty. According to the trajectory argument, we can set aside the compelling evidence from passages that seem to directly address the immorality of same-sex sexual activity and the words of Jesus positively defining lifetime marriage between a man and a woman because the larger trajectory of the Bible suggests that God's ultimate ethic may be something different. Such arguments either imply or state outright that contemporary secular humanism has helped us discover what God's opinion really ought to be about gay marriage.
However, William Webb's Slaves, Women & Homosexuals has thoroughly addressed this question. I would not be surprised if Hays dedicates a section, if not an entire chapter, to responding to Webb's arguments. When the full text is available, I'll leave it to smarter women and men than me to pick up the back-and-forth. In Slaves, Women & Homosexuals, Webb explains that God knew that the first audience for the Scriptures weren't ready to hear His ultimate ethic on various topics. Instead of calling people to immediate perfection, God sometimes accommodates His people by calling them to something more good that is in reach or within the bounds of their understanding. Webb points out that across the narrative of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, the way God talks about slavery and women changes over time—suggesting a trajectory toward an ultimate good.
The Old Testament seems to allow, if not encourage, the people of Israel to practice slavery, as long as they aren’t enslaving Israelites. In contrast, Jesus heals slaves, and Paul goes as far as to urge Philemon to see his slave as a beloved brother in Christ, not as a slave. The Old Testament seems to treat women as a kind of property, but in the New Testament many women are among the followers of Jesus and in positions of leadership in the early Church. Ultimately, the Bible points toward what we believe about slavery and gender equality today.
However, that same trajectory is not found in how the Bible talks about same-sex sexual activity. The Bible consistently condemns sexual activity between people of the same sex. God doesn’t seem to be accommodating here; there isn’t a trajectory toward a different, better good. Rather, it is a flat line pointing toward the same conclusion throughout time for all people.
In short, a trajectory argument can be made for some questions (like racial justice and egalitarianism), but there's no such trajectory for gay sex. To abandon the Bible's wisdom about same-sex sexual activity, a person would need to declare more broadly that the Scriptures are no longer binding or authoritative for modern Christians.
I'm saddened but ultimately unshaken by Hays's transition. Many mind-changers have come before him, and plenty will follow. Unfortunately, I don't see the long-term trajectory of abandoning historic sexual ethics working out for denominations or my gay Christian friends who have personally made that shift. This theology has too often taken my friends further than they bargained. Too often, my gay Christian friends who left a historic sexual ethic five years ago can no longer make an unqualified confession of a historic understanding of the Nicene Creed and denounce mutually exclusive claims.
Betrayal
Once I realize the arguments being made aren't anything new or any more convincing than the last book about changing theologies, I feel betrayal. It begins to look like another case of churches and leaders serving straight people at the expense of gay people.
For decades (centuries), gay people have wanted to obey God and draw near to His presence. We didn’t ask the Church to abandon God’s teachings. We just asked the Church to help us, to provide us with caring support as we reached out to God and tried our best to be faithful, to notice our feeble hearts and minds—broken by the wounds of the closet—and carry us a little closer to God.
But for generations, the Church refused because its leaders were afraid to make straight people uncomfortable. Instead, they coddled the homophobia of the masses. Fast forward to the present: homophobia has waned and been replaced by straight embarrassment with God’s wisdom. And many churches have once again responded by serving straight people at the expense of gay people. They ignored the painful cries of generations of gay people who just wanted help following God’s wisdom. Yet when straight people start sharing mild discomfort from having to defend God's wisdom at dinner parties, churches are willing abruptly to abandon that wisdom.
And here's the worst part: this approach is only going to hurt gay people more. The normalization of destructive theology will tempt some gay Christians to abandon God's wisdom, leading to unnecessary pain. Other gay Christians hoping to follow Jesus and His wisdom will only be outcast further. Even more so than before, we will be pariahs. Not only will churches continue failing to help us follow God's wisdom, but then they will call us self-hating, narrow-minded barbarians while blessing the consummation of our temptations before our very eyes.
That's the tragedy of announcements like this one from Hays. I have no doubt that he has the best intentions for his efforts. Because his 1996 Moral Vision of the New Testament was used by many to shore up church teachings at the height of the pray-the-gay-away movement, he has likely felt some responsibility for the outcomes. Perhaps to his horror, he's seen how ex-gay efforts have led millions to leave the faith or lose their lives. He's been acutely aware that whatever our churches have been doing, it hasn't been working. Too often, churches that claimed to teach what's true about LGBT+ topics failed to lead to the good or beautiful in the lives of LGBT+ people.
I understand the deep desire for something better among gay Christians struggling to follow Jesus. I understand the deep desire of straight parents and siblings of LGBT+ people who are dissatisfied with the bad and ugly they see. But abandoning historic sexual ethics for revisionist sexual ethics isn't the solution.
What could work?
Hope
While our churches have struggled to bring the good and beautiful within reach for the average gay Christian, there’s been a small minority of gay Christians committed to historic sexual ethics who’ve been guided by the Holy Spirit to find a path forward. And it’s been working.
Olya Zaporozhets and Mark Yarhouse are research psychologists. Their work followed gay celibate Christians who have accepted the fact that their sexual orientation isn't going to change, yet continue to be convinced of the Bible’s wisdom and are trying to make sense of their faith and sexuality, often in public. Their research found that these gay celibate Christians scored in the normal range of mental health compared to the average American, and scored higher than average in overall life satisfaction.
In contrast to the bad and ugly that both a revisionist sexual ethic and pray-the-gay-away theology lead to, these gay Christians are experiencing spiritual and psychological health by stewarding their sexualities according to historic sexual ethics. Thanks to the Holy Spirit, some have seemingly miraculously carved out a path of good and beautiful lives.
What if our churches learned from the thriving of these gay celibate Christians and, for the first time in the history of the Church, embodied God's wisdom for LGBT+ people in ways that lead to the good and beautiful? We've only seen the fruit of pray-the-gay-away theology and revisionist sexual ethics. Perhaps for the first time, Christians have all of the ingredients we need to compassionately embody historic sexual ethics. We could try and see what happens. We could discover how gloriously good and beautiful a Church filled with LGBT+ Christians thriving according to God's wisdom can actually be.
We might realize a Church where kids grow up hearing and seeing the testimonies of Christians publicly navigating same-sex attractions, committed to historic sexual ethics, and experiencing just as much connection and community as their opposite-sex attracted brothers and sisters in Christ. We might see believers of various sexual orientations linking arms, spurring one another on toward love and good deeds, and the whole body of Christ flourishing according to God's wisdom. We might see some believers living out vocational singleness and others living out marriage with someone of the opposite sex, but all would find deep belonging as they daily depend on the Holy Spirit to resist lesser loves. And we might delight in a Church where kids, having noticed how God’s wisdom has led to the good and beautiful in the lives of LGBT+ people, are sad but not scared if they notice broken sexuality in their own lives, because they're confident they can share with their parents and find lifelong support from their local churches to thrive according to God's wisdom.
Let's try.
In the Meantime
In the meantime, before we see undeniably good and beautiful evidence that makes obvious God’s truth, whose interpretation should you trust?
Well for starters, don't trust mine, or that of Dr. Richard B. Hays. Please, don't believe in historic sexual ethics because of the opinions of any one person. Certainly, don't believe because you find anything I have to say intellectually satisfying or emotionally compelling. That's not why I'm convinced of God's wisdom. I don't believe in historic sexual ethics because my life looks good or beautiful (or doesn't). And I'm going to disappoint you. I'm a sinner in desperate need of a savior.
I encourage you not to plant the roots of your convictions in your own reasoning or the reasoning of one particular human's interpretation, but instead plant them in the sturdy foundation of the significant consensus of the Apostles, the Early Church, the Church throughout history, the global consensus of Christians today, and the convictions of the three oldest denominations that represent 70% of modern Christians (Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and Anglicans). Each of those heavyweights affirm a historic sexual ethic that God's best for Christians is either a lifetime vocation of abstinent singleness for the sake of kingdom work with undivided attention (vocational singleness) or a lifetime vocation of marriage between one Christian woman and one Christian man with an openness to raising children for the sake of the kingdom (Christian marriage). What's the likelihood that all of those Christians are wrong and instead 2024 Richard Hays is right?
Unlikely.
Pieter Valk is a speaker/author on vocational singleness and LGBT+ topics according to historic Christian sexual ethics, the Executive Director of Equip (a Christian ministry that trains/coaches pastors and parents around LGBT+ topics), a cofounder of the Nashville Family of Brothers (an ecumenically Christian modern monastery), a teacher/aspiring deacon in the ACNA, and a Licensed Professional Counselor. He helps churches love gay people and celibate Christians find family. Follow him on socials @pieterLvalk and learn more at pieterLvalk.com.