Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 59:2 (Jun 2016)
Article: Washed And Still Waiting: An Evangelical Approach To Homosexuality
Author: Wesley Hill

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JETS 59:2 (June 2016) p. 323

Washed And Still Waiting:
An Evangelical Approach To Homosexuality

Wesley Hill*

* Wesley Hill is assistant professor of NT at Trinity School for Ministry, 311 Eleventh St., Ambridge, PA 15003.

Abstract: Many same-sex attracted Christians will find themselves pursuing lives of faithful celibacy in the absence of any diminishment of their attractions. In order to help them flourish under these conditions, evangelical churches should pursue at least three avenues of assistance. First, churches should offer robust biblical affirmation of the celibate vocation, encouraging committed single believers to understand their celibacy as a calling. Second, churches should offer concrete, practical guidance on how to live the celibate life. And finally, churches should promote practices of spiritual friendship and kinship, in which single same-sex attracted Christians can be reminded that romantic partnerships are not the only place to give and receive genuine love.

Key Words: Homosexuality, same-sex attraction, celibacy, singleness, friendship.

In 2010, I published a book titled Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality.1 The book contained elements of theology and biblical exposition, but it also belonged in the genre of memoir—“theological memoir,” as my publisher called it—insofar as it aimed to reflect on the meaning of my life as a single, sexually abstinent, same-sex-attracted Christian believer.

At the time I began writing the manuscript for that book, I intended to try to fill a gap in existing literature on the topic. I was conscious of how my personal narrative put me out of step with many of my fellow Christians. On the one hand, I was not able to locate myself in what the Princeton Seminary theologian William Stacy Johnson calls the “celebration,” “liberation,” or “consecration” paradigms, according to which committed same-sex sexual unions should be affirmed as good, presented as paradigms of social justice in the struggle against inequality, and fully blessed and sanctified in the churches.2 As I wrote,

My story is very different from other stories told by people wearing the same designation—“homosexual Christian”—that I wear. Many in the church—more so in the mainline denominations than the evangelical ones, though that could soon change—tell stories of “homosexual holiness.” The authors of these narratives profess a deep faith in Christ and claim a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit precisely in and through their homosexual practice. According to these Christians, t...

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