What a rhetorical coup. By saying it that way the speaker reminded us that we are in a story. We are in a wider context. Black lives have been devalued and thus we need course correction. It isn’t about demeaning other lives. 

Similarly, Christians are in a story in which we’ve often ignored the teaching of Jesus. As the towering theologian Karl Barth put it (echoing German reformer Melanchthon), Christians prefer the benefits of Christ to Christ himself (The Humanity of God, 24). The burden of Bible scholar NT Wright’s book How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels is how Christians distill the person of Jesus into a doctrine and ignore the Jesus found in the gospels. 

A movement founded by activist Shane Claiborne and professor Tony Campolo addresses this problem with its provocative title, “Red Letter Christians.” Red Letter Christians (RLC) is an organization that “mobilizes individuals into a movement of believers who live out Jesus’ counter-cultural teachings.” They do this by paying special attention to the words of Jesus, words that in some Bibles, are in red. 

Joel Looper (Ph.D, Aberdeen), a respected acquaintance, invited me to respond to his article entitled The logical —and theological—problem with Red Letter Christians. (His article is just the latest in a number of anti-RLC articles such as this one by the Gospel Coalition and this one in Christianity Today.) Looper’s primary concern is that RLC ignores the rest of the Bible and thus lacks the necessary context to understand the words of Jesus. He writes that when we don’t understand the words of Jesus, we re-make Jesus into our own image.

In response to Looper, I must admit that my analogy with BLM isn’t perfect. “Black Lives Matter,” while provocative, doesn’t logically exclude the possibility that other lives might matter too. “Red Letter Christians,” however, seems to at least marginalize, if not completely exclude, the rest of scripture. From this, two questions emerge. First, is it legitimate to prioritize the words of Jesus over the other words of scripture? Secondly, do Red Letter Christians simply prioritize the words of Jesus, or do they ignore the rest of scripture altogether?

To answer the first question, I answer a hearty “Yes!” It is important to see all of scripture through the lens of Jesus and to prioritize Jesus’ words and witness. I grew up in a context in which all scripture was seen as “flat” or as equally inspired. Theoretically at least, a verse from Leviticus had as much weight as a command from Jesus. This kind of Bible reading has dangerous consequences. I think of the Jabez prayer rage that happened years ago in Christian circles. Jabez prays a short prayer in 1 Chronicles 4:10 that God bless him and enlarge his territory. A book, The Prayer of Jabez, promoted the prayer and sold nine million copies.  

If we continue reading in 1 Chronicles 4, we learn that the Israelites find good pasture land and exterminate its inhabitants so that they can enlarge their territory. Apparently, the prayer has been answered, and reading it in context seems to indicate that the sacrifice of others was God-ordained.

It is easy to imagine Christian colonialists using such a passage to justify the extermination of native peoples. The necessary guard against this is to interpret all of scripture through Jesus and his words “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matt 7:12). 

READ: New Name, Same Mission

In an article written by Campolo that Looper quotes, Why Christians Don’t Like Jesus, Campolo explains that Christians often want retribution, a God who will bless their wars, a God that only requires 10% of us, a God who ensures our superiority. In the span and sprawl of the Bible narrative, Christians can find verses to justify almost anything. This is why Christians need to interpret everything through the demanding, merciful, and loving words of Jesus. Ironically, Campolo has the same worry as Looper—that we will remake God into our own image. Only, Campolo believes that this happens when we don’t see all of scripture through Christ.  

This begins to answer the second question: do Red Letter Christians simply see Jesus’ words as more important, or do they see them as the only authoritative words in scripture? Looper, careful writer that he is, begins by making the modest claim that RLC “rank the words of Jesus . . . as more important than the rest of scripture . . .” Later, however, Looper suggests that RLC don’t just see Jesus’ words as more important, but that RLC “ignore” and “tacitly reject” the rest of scripture. Is this the case?

It isn’t what Campolo and Claiborne claim to be doing. It is worth quoting at length from the book, Red Letter Revolution, which they co-authored:

Not only do we say that the red letters are superior to the black letters of the Bible, but Jesus said they were! Jesus, over and over again in the Sermon on the Mount, declared that some of the things that Moses taught about such things as divorce, adultery, killing getting even with those who hurt you, and the use of money had to be transcended by a higher morality.

When Jesus said he was giving us new commandments, I [Campolo is writing here] believe they really were new commandments. They certainly went beyond the morality prescribed in the black letters that we read in the Pentateuch. Furthermore, we don’t think you can really understand what the black letters in the Bible are telling you until you first come to know the Jesus revealed in the red letters. This in no way diminishes the importance of those black letters; we believe that the Holy Spirit directed the writers of Scripture so that all of Scripture was inspired by God. (Red Letter Revolution, p. 5). 

Looper devotes much of his article to the danger of disregarding eyewitness testimony and the other writers of scripture. He rightly notes that the eyewitnesses/New Testament writers had the best understanding of the language Jesus was speaking, knew the context, and had access to words from Jesus that we don’t have.

It doesn’t follow, however, that those who especially treasure the words of Jesus disregard the testimony of the eyewitnesses and the New Testament writers. Red Letter Christians should know that they are dependent on the first eyewitnesses for the words of Jesus. In order to best understand the red letters, Red Letter Christians need to pay attention to the context in which the eyewitness place Jesus’ words, the early Christians’ commentary on Jesus’ words, and the acts of Jesus in which the words are embedded. Red Letter Christians should be the biggest fans of the early writers and eyewitnesses.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t the occasional literalist in progressive circles— who, in a new Marcionite enthusiasm—would take the shears to all but Jesus’ words. But that isn’t what Campolo and Claiborne are doing, in my opinion. Pick up any of their books and their respect for all of scripture is evident. And, while I’m not familiar with all of them, I suspect this is true for those in the RLC “leaders’ network.” 

Why does RLC prompt this concern in Looper and others? Certainly, the name is provocative, and for anyone concerned with scriptural authority, it is understandable that it might prompt questions. Beyond that however, Looper writes that he is uneasy the RLC will “downplay, ignore, or even oppose” the evangelical and Catholic church teachings on the issues of abortion and gay marriage. 

There are two important responses to this: a) focusing the words of Jesus doesn’t mean that a person will necessarily “oppose” the evangelical and Catholics stances on these issues, and b) he is right that an RLC person might “downplay” or “ignore” them—and that is a good thing.  

First, it isn’t true that an emphasis on the red letters decisively tilts people toward gay marriage and legalized abortions. In the case of abortion, there is no Bible verse which specifically prohibits abortion. Indeed, some of the most powerful arguments against abortion come from Jesus’ words about his care for children and “little ones.” Beyond that, both Campolo and Claiborne are “womb to tomb” pro-lifers. That is, they are anti-abortion, but they also care about all the other forces that rob life such as poor health care, wars, gun violence, and capital punishment.

As for gay marriage, conservative veterans of the marriage wars will attest that their best argument is not the few Bible passages which seem to condemn gay sex. After all, most commentators agree that in the context of Biblical times, such sex was usually exploitative. Rather, the central conservative argument is that Jesus reaffirms a “creation ethic” of heterosexual marriage when he affirms in Mark 10:6-8b, “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.”

To be fair to Looper, Campolo has become affirming on gay marriage (as am I). Claiborne, while speaking against the ways the church has hurt LGBT+ people, has never come out as affirming, and has received strong criticism from the guardians of progressive dogma for not doing so.

To return to the question, why might it be wise to downplay or even ignore these evangelical and Catholic stances on abortion and gay marriage? As the words of Jesus attest, his primary concern was not to be a morality coach for the wider society. 

Instead, Jesus called the people of God to live out an ethic of love so costly, compelling, and winsome, that people would be drawn into God’s love-conspiracy. By advocating this, I’m not arguing for an easier, softer Jesus. I’m arguing for the Jesus of the New Testament, a Jesus who was tough on the people of God (demanding that they live out God’s sacrificial love) and welcoming to outsiders.

I’m asking that we judge the church by the example of Jesus, and not project on to Jesus the later preoccupations of the church. During Jesus’ time, gay sex and abortion were all well-known practices, and yet Jesus never says an explicit word about them. Jesus did however call out the religious leaders for their hypocrisy and self-righteousness. 

What if the church were known for the humble confession of its misdeeds, and its self-sacrificing love? Wouldn’t that be a better stance than being known for being “anti?” 

What if all of us, both conservative and liberal Christians, paid special attention to Jesus’ words, words which call us to sacrificial love? 

I agree with Looper that context matters. But this insight goes deeper than he seems to acknowledge. We live in a historical context that has pushed the life and teachings of Jesus to the side. We live in the current context of an unfaithful church that uses the black letters of the Bible to neuter and tame Jesus. We must resist this by interpreting everything through Jesus. Jesus’ own teachings are the best access we have God’s will and wisdom. It is the red letters that hold our feet to the fire of God’s costly love. It is the red letters that matter most. That is why I’m glad to be a Red Letter Christian.

In my own life for instance, for Lent I’ve fasted on Fridays (a diet in spiritual disguise), given up social media (an attempt to calm my monkey-on-meth mind), and tried to avoid negative talk (a psychological strategy to be happier). While none of these disciplines are bad, they lean more toward self-improvement projects than a repentance that will heal the church.

Lent was originally called the Quadragesima which means “the fortieth.” It recalls Israel’s forty years in the desert. God’s purpose was to purify, instruct, and form a people who would be a light to the world. 

The gospel of Matthew recounts how Jesus spent forty days in the desert re-enacting in his own person Israel’s “Lent.” It wasn’t because Jesus had botched his New Year’s resolutions. The purpose was to model for Israel what it would mean to resist the temptations of provisions (bread), power (commanding God’s angels), and prestige (rule over the nations) in favor of trust in God. 

Then, although Jesus didn’t get out the stone tablet visual aids, he climbed a hill to re-enact Moses’ forty days on Mt. Sinai receiving the law. Jesus gave the “Sermon on the Mount,” his own “fulfill the law” instruction meant to reform a divided, shallow, not-known-for-its-love Israel.

Why, in these “Lenten” 40 day/year events, were God and Jesus so focused on creating a holy group? Why didn’t they give up and settle for some righteous individuals? 

It’s because the gospel isn’t an escape hatch for the individual when all Armageddon breaks out. Although the New Testament holds out the promise of eternal life and a new heaven and earth, Jesus’ central message was that “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” Jesus’ desire was for a group of people (Israel) to live his Lordship in all areas of life—social, economic, political, and spiritual. As Jesus describes it in the Sermon on the Mount, a group of people living as a city would give light and bless the world (Matt 5:14). As the scriptural story unfolds, Gentiles are also invited to join in on that adventure through a community called “church.” 

As kids, some of us learned to sing, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine!” Which was fun. We’d wave our pretend finger candles and then blow them out with as much wind and spit as we could muster. But the song misses Jesus’ point. Jesus wasn’t trying to just create privately pious individuals, but rather a city of light—a community. And, if we go into the desert of Lent alone, we miss the purpose of Lent. 

To stress the importance of this, I’m going to reach a bit. If we just give up chocolate for Lent, we open the door to Hitler. I know, I know. Reductio ad Hitlerum ad Nazism. But stick with me and see what you think. 

In 1900, the German theologian Adolf von Harnack published What is Christianity? (Das Wesen des Christentums) in which he writes about Christianity, “It is not a matter of angels and devils, nor of principalities and powers, but of God and the soul, of the soul and its God.” 

Harnack made Christianity radically individual and interior. “The point on which everything turns,” he writes, is “to know God as One’s Father, to possess a God of grace, to find comfort in His grace and providence, to believe in the forgiveness of sins.” While other elements of his theology acknowledged the social nature of Christianity, he contributed to the idea that the Kingdom of God is made real in the interior heart rather than the exterior world. 

READ: Lent Is a Season of Stubborn Hope

Because of this teaching by theologians like Adolf von Harnack, when another Adolf came along, Christians offered sparse and pathetic resistance. Their churches had not taught them how to resist the devilish principalities and powers of their time. They saw Christianity as personal, not political. They had not been formed as a people into the political, economic, social, and spiritual ethics of God’s kingdom. 

As a result, they pledged allegiance to the Third Reich over God’s kingdom, killed millions of enemies, and slaughtered their chosen-people-of-God immigrant population: the Jews. And all the while they were presumably convinced of God’s grace, comfort, providence, and forgiveness. 

Okay . . . so maybe it was an over-reach. Go ahead and give up the chocolate if you want to (or think of it this way, I’m giving you a reason to not give up chocolate!). My point is that Christians who see faith in radically individual terms rarely oppose the oppressive powers-that-be such as nationalism, bloated military budgets, and anti-immigrant sentiment. We need ways to help Christians see the formational importance of the church—of being a moral community. And that is where Lent, if well-practiced, can help. 

Before I get into what that might look like, however, I should note that there is also a danger on the other side. Those of us who tend toward social activism sometimes think that Jesus’ social, political, and economic teaching is directed at the nation-state. This can lead to the focus being all about getting the right people elected and the right policies enacted. But, if those of us who confess Jesus as Lord don’t act like Jesus is Lord (through acts of love of and service), why do we think that people who don’t acknowledge Christ will be willing to act as if he is Lord? We need a group of people who are doing God’s will before we have a prophetic witness to the world. 

For both Christian pietists and Christian social activists—as Nathan Hatch points out so well in his excellent article The Political Captivity of the Faithful—we need the church to be a place of moral formation in the space between the individual and the nation-state. He cites the wisdom of Richard Niebuhr, “The question of the church . . . is not how it can measure up to the expectations of society nor what it must do to become a savior of civilization, but rather how it can be true to itself: that is, to its Head.” Hatch goes on to quote Niebuhr’s prescription that the church should “undergo silence, humility, repentance, and the naming of idols.”

It would be hard to think of a better ideal for Lent. How might we practice such a Lent? Here are some suggestions:

Practice Lent with others. Ideally, people from your church. The beginning of Lent—Ash Wednesday—comes relatively early this year: February 26th. If possible, find one or two or five or ten other people and observe Lent together. If these can be people from your church, or from a church-based small group, all the better. Is there something like prayer, simplicity, or service, that you are all passionate about? Find one way to practice that passion together. 

Some concrete ideas might include:  Agree together that you won’t talk badly about others. Throw a party in which you invite people outside your usual social circle. Develop a practice of conversation with Christians of different political perspectives than yourselves. Support an immigrant together. 

Study the Sermon on the Mount together over Lent. While it is a good thing to give up certain things for Lent, we also need a positive vision for the good practices we should take up. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ imaginative and extravagant vision of what it means to be a holy community. What would it mean to take up a modern practice equivalent to walking an extra mile, leaving one’s sacrifice to reconcile, or lending to anyone who asks? Many excellent books interact with the sermon such as theologian and communitarian Clarence Jordan’s Sermon on the Mount, or African-American preacher and theologian Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited.

I’ve developed a Lenten curriculum called Love for Lent which takes participants through the Sermon on the Mount and suggests weekly corporate practices. If you want to check it out, you can find it here. 

Finally, make the most of the opportunity that is Lent. One pastor observed that Christians live in the land of “Repent-a-Lot.” One of the most attractive things Christians can do is to admit our own faults and to find Kingdom ways to love and bless the world. It is worth giving our energy, creativity, and imagination to such a project. Rather than just doing something like giving up sugar for Lent, let’s see Lent as an opportunity.  It is a chance, in the words of Hebrews 12:1 to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,” and run together toward all the good that’s intended for the church and the world.  

This week, InterVarsity’s publishing house just released a book by a gay, celibate, evangelical worship leader. Gregory Coles, the 26 year old, tall, blond, blue-eyed author of Single, Gay, Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity, models InterVarsity’s vision of how a gay Christian should think and act.

Yet the book — winsome, literate, funny, vulnerable, and wholesome — ultimately undermines InterVarsity’s sectarian wall-building. “Chastity,” writes G.K. Chesterton, “does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.” Girded with a chastity belt and wielding the sword of scripture against affirming theologies, Coles serves InterVarsity’s agenda by torching leftist caricatures that a celibate life is necessarily repressed, self-hating, and unhealthy. But in a flash of fabulous humility at the end of the book, he also sets a match to the dogmatic certitude that fuels InterVarsity’s divisive edict. Throughout history, saints have been aberrant, unpredictable, and reconciling. Greg Coles is the saint we all need now.

Coles would probably object to the title “saint.” He writes, “I’m not larger than life . . . I’m just a human being.” Yet the New Testament uses the word “saints” (holy ones) to describe ordinary Christians who give themselves wholly to God. Contrary to the popular stereotype, a saint isn’t sinless. “A saint,” writes Christian contemplative Thomas Merton, “is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.” In encountering and writing about the goodness of God, Coles excels.

In spite of Coles’ undeniable pain — he confesses that “loneliness never stops bleeding” — he delights in God and seems to know Jesus in the biblical sense. The poet John Donne tells God that he will never be chaste “except you ravish me.” Coles writes as a man razed, overthrown, grinning shyly, and smoking a cigarette. Delivering on his promise to write the story of someone “in love with Jesus,” he recounts his love affair with Jesus in all its arguments, joy, and passion. “I’ve known love . . . in the moments of silence and long solitary walks as the presence of God surrounds me like a vapor, filling my lungs, racing through my veins, throbbing in my heart.”

With God as his heartthrob, Coles’ celibacy is a variety of queer love. Queer enough to make both liberals and conservatives squirm.

Christians who find themselves bi, trans, or even pan-ideological will enjoy the way Coles queers liberal orthodoxy. He makes a classically liberal move as he critiques the way capitalism teaches us to understand bodies. But his critique also challenges the liberal presuppositions underwriting sexual permissiveness. His body, he reports, is not a bundle of needs that must consume scarce goods, services, and sex in order to be sated. Rather, his ongoing intercourse with the Trinity supplies him with an abundance that he can pass on to others.

For any cis-liberal, Coles’ view that gay sex is sin will be hard to take. In support of his perspective, he doesn’t resort to any fancy theological abstractions about the teleology of bodies or their nuptial meaning. Rather, he poses the question saints often ask: If love doesn’t cost anything, what is it worth? In the midst of Western entitlement and affluence, he reminds us that Christian love requires picking up a cross. He wonders — given the plainest sense of scripture — why his gay love of the divine and others wouldn’t cost the difficulty of celibacy.

Before conservatives can crown him with a saintly halo, however, Coles bores holes into the wall of evangelical certitude with his final chapter. Having turned onto the sexuality highway and faced into the daunting headlights of most everyone going the other way, Coles remains unflinchingly humble about how much any of us can truly know.

Though Coles perceives that the Spirit of God is asking him (a white man of privilege who came from a family rich in love) to give up sex in order to love widely, he acknowledges that others may be hearing the Spirit say different things to their hearts. When one of Coles’ friends asks him if he ever worries about being wrong, Coles replies, “Of course. I’m human. I could be wrong about everything.” Then Coles tells his friend to test his beliefs and weigh them against the Bible.

It’s not that Coles is a relativist. Rather, like any good saint, he reminds us of which truths are important, when they need to be remembered, and how they need to be acted upon. When his friend goes on to ask, “What if I get married to another guy?” Coles responds, “Then I’ll still love you. And I hope you’ll still love me too. And I’ll pray that both of us fall more desperately in love with Jesus, that we keep becoming more willing to give up everything for the sake of the cross.” Rather than pressing a single “truth” that will cause fracture and alienation, Coles chooses to embrace a greater truth — that Christians are called to love one another in spite of disagreements (per John 15:12-14).

Coles’s generosity in following this more difficult path of persevering love is a stark counterpoint to InterVarsity’s decision to separate in the face of disagreement. In InterVarsity’s statement about the drama, vice president Greg Jao says that InterVarsity’s stance stems from “beliefs about Scripture” and its interpretation. Yet Coles’ posture more closely mirrors the commandment of Jesus to “love one another” (John 15:17).

To paraphrase novelist Kurt Vonnegut, beliefs are like badges; we wear them to show to whom we belong. InterVarsity is wearing the “gay sex is bad” badge to mark itself as part of the tribe that regards scripture as authoritative and truthful.

Scripture, however, is not an ancient moral Wikipedia in which one types in a topic and gets the right answer. Rather, scripture is the unfolding story of God’s surprising and good work in the world. Most Christians now agree (in spite of verses withstanding) that the deep story of scripture embraces uncircumcised Gentiles, celebrates women as equals, critiques slavery, and reconciles races. Could it be that the biblical story’s deepest logic also welcomes gay people?

Galatians, for instance, Martin Luther’s favorite New Testament book, is much on the mind of Protestants during this 500th anniversary of the Reformation. In Galatians, the Apostle Paul, a former zealot for the law, notices the Spirit’s work among uncircumcised Gentiles and angrily denounces the Christians who impede God’s work by insisting on their circumcision. He does this in spite of that fact that Hebrew scripture predicted that Gentiles would be added to Israel as part of God’s people — but through submitting to circumcision and the law of Moses (Ex 12:48, Isa 2:2-3). Paul exclaims, “I wish [those insisting on circumcision] . . . would castrate themselves!” (Gal 5:12). Since the Spirit is clearly at work in partnered gay people — just as the Spirit was working in Gentiles during Paul’s time — perhaps gay Christians do not need to submit to laws that serve as boundary markers? Perhaps these divisive boundary lines are as obsolete as the practice of forced circumcision for converts?

Coles’ response to his friend is the badge for Christians that Jesus proposed: “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Non-believers won’t be impressed by a religious group that expels members in order to be “right.” They might be interested, however, in a group of people who vehemently disagree and yet seek to love each other anyway. Coles reminds Christians of the deeper truth that the most enduring badge of Christianity is the cross — which is demonstrated in costly love. For as Jesus taught, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Gregory Coles is God’s good gift to a polarized world that needs people who practice the virtues of unity and peaceableness. May InterVarsity’s leadership accept his example into their hearts and confess with their lips that loving across differences is God’s good and holy work among us.

Tim Otto is a gay pastor and author of Oriented to Faith: Transforming the Conflict Over Gay Relationships. He may be followed at @Tim_Otto.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Recently, Dr. Tony Campolo issued a statement “For the Record” articulating his full support of sexual minorities, affirmation of same-sex unions, and his hopes for full inclusion of LGBT folks in the church. Tony is a deeply-loved and well-respected evangelical leader across the globe, and closer to home, he is a visionary and elder of the Red Letter Christian movement. But we are a diverse community, and for the sake of Tony and others in this movement who disagree with Tony, we want to be clear that Tony was speaking from his personal conviction, with much reliance on prayer, doing his best to listen to the Spirit of God. Others of us in this movement see things differently. But we are committed to disagree well. Perhaps one of our best witnesses to the rest of society is how we disagree with each other, having the humility to admit that we might be wrong. So you will see a series of other voices in the RLC movement in the coming weeks, responding to Tony or simply reflecting from their own hearts in regards to what love, and Jesus, are calling us to when it comes to our lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgendered friends.

 
Tony Campolo announced last month that he supports same-sex relationships. The response was fast and furious. “Chaff being separated from the wheat . . . #TonyCampolo”, tweeted Larry Farlow (more of this sort of thing can be found here). David Robertson, Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, wrote an open letter to Tony accusing him of lying and manipulation. New Testament professor Robert Gagnon charged (June 8) that Campolo had previously withheld his views on gay relationships in order to sell evangelicals more books.

 
While name calling and attacking an opponent’s motivations are never a stellar means of argument, they are particularly counterproductive in this case because they betray the gospel the attackers cherish. Jesus said (John 13:34-35; 17:20-21) that the world would know that the Messiah has come because his followers live in love and unity—which is only a miracle if his followers disagree about some stuff. The attacks are not wrong because Tony is right (although he may be) but because of the spirit in which they are being conducted, and their failure to be truly evangelical.

 
The word “evangelical” comes from the New Testament word “evangelion” meaning “good news.” While evangelicalism has a complex history, it has been a movement seeking to get beyond denominationalism and contentious points of doctrine to a central message that Christians can unite around and proclaim. Many Christians of all stripes—Pentecostals, Anabaptists, Anglicans, black Baptists—identify as “evangelical.” The core message is that personal conversion is possible through belief in Christ’s atoning work and that salvation is by grace alone.

 
Notice the tension in the above sentence. A person needs to both do something (believe) and know that salvation is entirely God’s work (grace). Rightly understood, this means that even our belief is a gift of God. But poorly understood, it can seem as if there is one important work that Christians must do: we must believe the right things to be saved. This is one reason why Protestants are so apt to divide. We end up thinking that in almost everything we believe salvation is at stake. It is estimated that there are currently 33, 000 Protestant denominations. In my own tradition, Anabaptism, it has meant dividing over things like whether Christians can take oaths, church discipline, and whether women can wear bonnets and men suspenders.

 
A generous evangelicalism sees such matters as peripheral (“disputable matters” in the language of Romans 14:1). We can love each other not only across racial, gender, and economic lines, but across lines of ideology as well. As John Alexander writes, “The centrality of peace and reconciliation to evangelism may seem strange, but if you think about it, what is the heart of the world’s predicament? Isn’t it our inability to get along with each other? Isn’t unreconciliation at the heart of racism, divorce, war, and fights with neighbors, friends, and fellow workers? So the world needs us to be reconciled. It needs to see us living together—in peace” (Being Church, 202),

 
The world needs is a people who disagree vehemently on an important issue like gay marriage, and who figure out how to love each other anyway. We can do this because our most fundamental confession is that “Jesus is Lord, ” and our allegiance to him binds us as family to each other. If we can act like a loving family to each other—even while disagreeing— the world might perceive us as having “good news:” a gospel that heals some of the world’s deepest wounds.

 
At this point, some evangelicals might be willing to throw their pine cones in the fire and join arms with Tony in singing “Just as I Am.” But others might object that evangelicalism values the authority of scripture, and the need for personal holiness. Isn’t it important to oppose Campolo for these reasons?

 
I’m not saying that it is wrong to disagree with Tony. In fact, I think a robust debate on this topic is important. What is wrong are the personal attacks and the implication that his position on same-sex marriage places Campolo outside of evangelical Christianity. Let me address the points about scriptural authority and personal holiness directly.

 
Thirty years ago, when I first started reading on the topic of homosexuality, I rolled my eyes at the arguments of the affirming side. It seemed like those advocating it just wanted an excuse for gay sex—and were using big Enlightenment ideas like rights and equality to make their case—while falsifying the Biblical witness. But the Biblical case for same-sex relationships has matured. Exhibit A is James Brownson’s masterful book Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships. (Exhibit B might be A Letter to My Congregation by Ken Wilson.)

 
Surprisingly, Brownson critiques the affirming side. He writes that revisionist Christians have done a disservice to Scripture by portraying the Biblical context as so foreign to our modern one that Biblical sexual ethics do not apply to us. He also warns against using big ideas like justice and love as sufficient to validate a Biblical sexual ethic. But then, through an attentive, careful reading of Romans 1 (the passage which most clearly seems to condemn same-sex relationships), he reveals how Paul’s language of lust and desire, purity and impurity, honor and shame, and nature all point to first-century practices of exploitative same-sex relationships. He also shows how the arc of Scripture, in its concern that “it is not good for a man to be alone, ” might allow for gay relationships.

 
Such a reading does not eviscerate the witness of Scripture. In such a view, texts like Romans 1 are an authoritative and important witness against culturally equivalent modern practices such as sex-slavery, prostitution, and prison rape. But texts like Romans 1 don’t speak to a phenomenon that was unknown in the ancient world: same-sex marriage.

 
Given this interpretation, the argument for same-sex marriage as a way of promoting holiness, is an argument that has integrity. In this view, same-sex marriage is not a barrier to personal holiness, but rather a help to those who, in the words of 1 Corinthians 7:9, might otherwise burn with passion and fail at self-control. It is the inclusion of a previously excluded group into the historic, Christian, tough and beautiful ethic of covenantal marriage. Marriage for gay Christians might be seen as a demanding curriculum in selflessness, love, faithfulness–in a word, holiness. Campolo’s position on same-sex marriage does not disqualify him as an evangelical Christian.

 
On a more personal note, while Campolo may be wrong about same-sex marriage, I believe he has embodied the best of evangelicalism in a way that should not be easily dismissed or disrespected. My sister took a class from him and recalls how he lectured late into the night (beyond the end time), passionate that students learn to love the poor and oppressed. By all accounts Campolo has kept a breakneck pace of speaking engagements around the world, inspiring many toward a compassionate, Jesus-centered Christianity that many—especially young people—relate to as “good news.”

 
In my own life, I remember furtively reading Campolo’s chapter on homosexuality in 20 Hot Potatoes Christians are Too Afraid to Touch in the campus bookstore of my Christian college. In it, he advocated that gays live celibate lives, and move into intentional Christian communities as a way to cope with the loneliness of such a life. As a gay student, I heeded his advice, and have now lived in a Christian community for decades. I have lived a celibate life for the last fourteen years and there is much good in it; but I also know the feeling of “burning” and the sharp ache that accompanies it. Because I empathize with the pain of young gay Christians, I’ve become sympathetic to the logic of the affirming side.

 
Still, I respect the traditional side. It has the plainest sense of Scripture on its side, and thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition. But Christians have been wrong on other important issues, so it is fair to raise the question of whether Christianity has been wrong about gay relationships. As we debate that question, we also have an opportunity here to show the world the deepest meaning of the term “evangelical.” What the world needs is the example of a people who can disagree over important matters and yet live in reconciliation and unity because of Jesus. Let’s argue hard, but with a fierce and evangelical love.