Changing course on same-sex marriage

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/02/2025 (265 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Since the mid-1990s, opposition to same-sex relationships in most North American evangelical churches, and many other Protestant denominations, has been informed by the work of theologian and scholar Richard B. Hays.

Hays, the former dean of Duke Divinity School, was author of the widely influential 1996 book The Moral Vision of the New Testament. In it, he argued that same-sex relationships were “one among many tragic signs that we are a broken people, alienated from God’s loving purpose.”

His well-respected scholarly work was used by many church leaders as justification for seeing same-sex relationships as sinful and to oppose affirmation of LGBTTQ+ Christians.

So it was like an earthquake went off in many congregations across the U.S. and Canada when Hays publicly changed his mind on this topic in late 2024.

Hays, who died on Jan. 3 of cancer at the age of 76, made his case for welcoming LGBTTQ+ people into the family of God in his newest and last book, titled The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story.

Co-authored with his son, Christopher Hays, an Old Testament scholar, the book recounts how he reconsidered his beliefs about same-sex relationships and offered a biblical rationale for that change.

As it is for many Christians who change their minds about this topic, Hays’s journey began when he actually met LGBTTQ+ Christians and saw them in leadership positions in churches — experiences that caused him to re-think his position.

That included his own congregation, where he told the New York Times he saw LGBTTQ+ people who “were exercising roles of gracious and meaningful leadership.”

His new book, he said, was an act of repentance for how his earlier work had been used to harm LGBTTQ+ people, and to “offer contrition and to set the record straight on where I now stand.”

The basic idea behind the new book is that the Bible shows a dynamic and gracious God who consistently broadens the idea of grace to include more and more people. Those who were once seen as outsiders find themselves embraced within the people of God, while those who sought to enforce exclusive boundaries are challenged to rethink their understanding of God’s ways.

This God, Hays and his son write, is more merciful than some Christians have assumed in the past, a God who continues “to surprise us with his mercy.” For the authors, God’s mercy is “one of the persistent themes of the Bible,” showing up in unexpected ways.

A secondary theme in the book is how the Bible should be read as a larger story, not just selecting verses to support arguments.

“We all know that when you start the business of picking out verses, you can open the page, put your finger down, then find the passage in Deuteronomy that says, ‘If you have a disobedient son, take him before the city authorities and have him stoned to death,’” Hays said, adding Christians and Jews today don’t read a text like that as a literal command that is binding for all time.

“If I did that first, I never would’ve had a son to write this book,” he said.

The larger narrative of Scripture shows “a clearer picture of the identity of God” and God’s mercy for all people, Hays said, adding “it’s really striking when you start tracing that language through Scripture and you see God in Exodus revealing himself to Moses and saying, ‘I’m a God merciful and gracious, longsuffering, showing compassion to many.’”

When the book was published, some conservative Christians saw it as a betrayal. Others went so far as to call it heretical. In an interview, Hays said he knew that would happen, but he was at peace with it.

“So there’s a sense in which I’m eating some of my own words, and I’m concerned that it will perhaps burn some bridges and break some relationships that I’ve cherished,” he said. “But as I age, I wanted my final word on the subject to be out there. And so there it is.”

LGBTTQ+ Christians have welcomed the book, although a queer Christian friend suggested the title should rather have been “the widening of Richard Hays’ understanding of God’s mercy.”

For my friend, God has always been merciful to everyone; it’s only some Christians over the centuries who have decided to put a limit on God’s mercy and welcome by excluding certain groups of people.

As for Hays, who had been dealing with cancer since 2015, writing the book was also about how he would be remembered after his death.

“I don’t want the first paragraph of my obituary to say ‘New Testament scholar Richard Hays who wrote against the acceptance of gay and lesbian people has died,’” he said, adding he hoped it might also mention his willingness “to rethink, to repent, to receive new information, to have the humility to be able to say I was wrong.”

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