All of us have a cross to bear and a desire for deep Christian community. The difference between the experiences of gay and straight Christians is significant but need not overshadow our commonality.
#2 makes me smile :). Thanks for sharing your reflections (and your whiskey).
We just finished interviewing Kristyn Komarnicki (who is straight and doesn't experience gender dysphoria/discordance) on C&S, and she talked about the gift it was for her over the last decade or so to build relationships with queer-identifying Christians because it became a part of her own journey of reflecting on her own sexuality and gender in fruitful ways.
Joel, thanks for sharing some of your thoughts and for going out of your comfort zone to join us at Revoice. I'm thankful for your voice in our conversations and for your openness to consider how theology in this area affects our experiences. In reading your list, I appreciate how you enjoyed talking to others and experienced community at Revoice and how the church could perhaps grow in this area. I would urge you NOT to settle for less than what you got a taste for (end of point 4, though I know your point isn't exclusively about community). We need people in your position to also fight for these things (both beloved community and spaces to talk and process about our different callings). I believe it is possible! One cue I take in my personal life and ministry has been from Tim Keller and what he calls the Alternative City from his article called The Gospel and Sex. Here's a short quote: "Christians will fall prey to the world’s views of sex unless we create a community, an alternative city. In this alternative city, singles enjoy their kingdom mission and practice sexual abstinence joyfully. They live in community with Christian families, who do not make an idol out of family or make singles feel abnormal. One of the reasons it is hard to practice the discipline of sex-free romantic involvement is that we don’t have a sufficiently large community of people creating this alternative city." I have found many in the celibate gay community have thought a lot about this, but not as many straight married people in the church have. We all will benefit when we work together as a community and love and serve one another.
Thanks, Josh! I guess I am talking about "settling" because, it's not just straight couples and families and gay singles that I want to unite, but politically conservative homeschool families who view an "LGBT-affirming" progressive movement as coming for them and their kids, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and gender dysphoric Christians who have been burned by right-wing, moral majority Christianity. At that point, the divide starts to feel pretty big.
As I shared with some before, I feel like the church I currently attend does for more conservative, homeschooling families what Revoice does for gay Christians. But for the same reason, these families view Revoice with a lot of suspicion. And Revoice participants would view them with a lot of suspicion because they think that political conservatism is closely connected to faithful Christianity.
I think that Francis Schaeffer is someone who united these various concerns within himself, but having read several biographies recently, the concern is that his more conservative political activism at the end of his career ended up in some tension with his earlier cultural openness that included L'Abri being a shelter for gay and lesbian Christians. Of course, I think his activism on abortion was also really valuable and important. So, having a Christian posture that unites all these concerns seems difficult to figure out.
But yes, I would like to see churches be welcoming environments for celibate gay Christians and Christian families both, spiritual friendships, intentional communities, and so on. I'll try to do my part!
I've said elsewhere that I think people who see these elements of Schaeffer as "in tension" don't really understand Schaeffer. L'Abri was a community where genuinely curious, seeking people could come and learn from Schaeffer in good faith, in a space that welcomed them but also operated on his moral terms. It was open to the lost and the searching who weren't coming to plant their own flag and set new terms. This isn't remotely in tension with Schaeffer's later recognition that activists who *were* gaining power and intending to set new terms for society, including terms that put vulnerable bodies and impressionable minds at risk, needed to be vigorously opposed.
TJ, thanks for these! It looks like I rushed to hit "publish," especially on the marriage point. I'm going to revise that. It should say something more like, "given that opposite-sex marriage may not be as desirable or optimal, and that the church often has less of a place for the celibate."
I think the other points result from me trying to speak to multiple audiences at once. As you said, for conservative, straight Christians in America, those are the points about Side B that they care about. I wrote the intro more for that audience, since the Side B audience already knows that info and more.
And on the politics, the Christians at my church definitely think that the Republican platform is significantly more reflective of Christian teaching, and I have a part of my admittedly small audience on this Substack that are here for some more right-wing things I have said elsewhere. So my point was that, for a politically conservative Christian, Revoice sends certain signals that give them red flags (a la Bethel McGrew), but they should reframe from the political to the personal/spiritual in understand what Revoice is up to and doing really well.
I hope that makes sense, and I'd love to talk more soon! God bless you as well, Mr. Espinoza!
Jun 22, 2023·edited Jun 22, 2023Liked by Joel Carini
Hey there Joel. Just popping in briefly here to say that I haven't voted Republican in years. :-) I don't believe a Republican versus Democrat frame, specifically, is necessarily going to be helpful or fruitful in breaking down the valid concerns with how politically leftist thinking intertwines with the thinking of Revoice leadership. (Though I do like some specific policy choices by, e.g., Ron DeSantis, and I do think that it can be a helpful bellwether to look at what sorts of policy are championed or demonized by Revoice leadership when it comes to the gender dysphoric, in particular. I will be candid and say I think someone like Eve Tushnet is enabling very evil policy here in the way she frames the issue.) To give another specific example I've raised before, a heavy leftist bias is going to color the accuracy of presentations like Grant Hartley's queer theory workshops, where he gave a history of gay activism that was quite honestly very misleading (presenting Harvey Milk in a heroic light, for one thing). There are secular gay social commentators who would have presented that history more honestly. But it was very understandable, given his political bias. Also, more generally, an identity politics framing has typified the conference from the beginning in ways that I actually think both conservatives and some liberals would correctly identify as corrosive, and definitely not conducive to Christian unity. Lots of specific examples could be and have been given here.
I also think it's interesting to note that an aggressively vocal trans lobby was able to successfully petition the conference against letting Preston Sprinkle speak, because he entertains views that fall to the right of complete trans acceptance. Meanwhile, they've seemed fine with hosting voices that will shame churches as "vicious" and hateful for not using preferred pronouns, etc. So this may be a clue to the conference's future trajectory. (At least, so the trans lobby claims---they could be deceptively posturing, but this is what they put out there publicly.)
Anyway, that got long. But back to your initial comment on politics, my preference is focus off parties, focus on substance. Simple as.
Bethel, thanks for jumping in here. I am interested to write something about how political or ideological perspectives develop and lead us to perceive things differently. You are right that the Republican/Democrat frame isn't ultra-helpful. I think you and I are probably both thinking in ways that are more inflected by the Jordan Peterson phenomenon, which sees transgender issues as the tip of wokeness, with its institutional grip. Their Democrats, Republicans, and independents all of whom share this concern. So that might be more helpful to frame things.
Those of us who have participated in that discourse (or for whom that is our YouTube algorithm) view the types of things you're mentioning as emblematic of wokeness, and potentially quite dangerous to people, as gender transition hormones and surgeries are.
But more generally, those on the right would see some of the signals Revoice is giving as reflective of an acceptance of the same ideology that enables gender transition, views the Christian ethic as oppressive, and so on.
But for many of those attending Revoice, I think something like the rainbow flag indicates the acceptability of people who are homosexual in orientation or who experience gender dysphoria. Given Revoice's commitments to a traditional ethic, the majority of Revoice participants are making just such a division between an "affirming ethic" and an accepting posture to people who are gay or gender dysphoric.
I share your concern about the trans issue at Revoice, and as TJ said above, it is still being worked out at Revoice. I want to be a voice in helping them work that out.
Of course from the Jordan Peterson kind of discourse, it's hard to understand not having the trans issue worked out. But again, people are coming from different places, and I think the full Christian ethic on these matters has to include both sets of concerns.
I'm disappointed to hear that that happened with Preston Sprinkle, because he's definitely to my "left" on, well, pronouns, for example!
More to come...I'm going to go write that piece about ideological perspectives and personal experience. Thanks for commenting!
My own ideas were solidified well before the Peterson phenomenon, and I still think the old liberal holdouts fall short in some significant ways, but I do think it's been interesting to watch some of the realignment, and the convergence of understanding on why identity politics is so toxic. Somebody like Chad Felix Greene or Douglas Murray just is clearer-eyed and more insightful here in some ways, though not all. (I particularly recommend giving Greene a follow, as he's always painfully honest. He would have taken Hartley's workshops apart pretty brutally.)
I think Revoice is a mix of people who are well-intentioned but confused and people with an agenda. Prominent voices (Tushnet, Hartley, others), have either put out work of their own or boosted other work that doesn't seem concerned with making clear distinctions here. Further, I actually do think there's a line to be traced between the approach to gay and the approach to trans. In my corner of things I'm often saying that the "LGB without the T" crowd struggles to make a logical case, even though I commend their willingness to speak against the T. In a way, a figure like Tushnet or Hartley is actually being more logically consistent.
Preston is to my left as well, which makes it pretty eyebrow-raising that he was nudged out thanks to an even farther-left lobby. I don't think the center can hold. The very fact that there's confusion and unclarity here is already a very bad sign.
That makes sense, and I share your concerns. However, I think Revoice is more essential as an entity that is offering a way forward for gay Christians in particular. I have to say, "Still Time to Care" is really persuasive. Greg Johnson points out that the ex-gay script was, to quote, "Accompanying these erotic and emotional changes is a change in self-perception in which the individual no longer identifies him or herself as homosexual." Side X, in light of these details, turned out to be primarily about identity, just like Side Y. You identified yourself as a non-homosexual, even if your attractions remained the same.
For that reason, I think Side B is essential and is the way forward, even if they're tempted to apply it directly to gender dysphoric individuals. (They really are "trans," they just shouldn't act on it...but to what degree? Can they dress gender ambiguously? Hormones, but not surgery? Etc.)
I think your concerns should be raised within the Side B discourse, rather than merely using those concerns to say that Side B is dangerous and headed in the wrong direction. I'll try!
I read Still Time to Care several times, actually. :-) I have a number of significant issues with it and with Johnson's role in the PCA. Thought about doing a multi-part review but never found the time. Maybe at some point. I began unpacking some of that in an older piece here:
Again, I think it's very important not to co-identify "Side B" with "not-Side-X," and I'm afraid Johnson's work generates more heat than light there, shutting out quite a few other voices. At this point, we've had a very long time to observe Side B's trajectory and watch how it takes (or doesn't take) criticism. None of the signs have been encouraging. I understand how at one point it might have been understood as a plausible "third way." I think signs of trouble were always there, but it's revealed itself even more clearly in the years since that point.
An exvangelical trans Twitter user made this claim in a thread. He could have been lying or misinformed, but he claimed both that people were pressuring Revoice about Sprinkle and that they'd been successful.
Also, I've spent quite a bit of time analyzing what Revoice offers in the personal/spiritual departments and also found that material very problematic. So I wouldn't say I have tunnel vision. Perhaps we simply disagree. :-)
#2 makes me smile :). Thanks for sharing your reflections (and your whiskey).
We just finished interviewing Kristyn Komarnicki (who is straight and doesn't experience gender dysphoria/discordance) on C&S, and she talked about the gift it was for her over the last decade or so to build relationships with queer-identifying Christians because it became a part of her own journey of reflecting on her own sexuality and gender in fruitful ways.
Joel, thanks for sharing some of your thoughts and for going out of your comfort zone to join us at Revoice. I'm thankful for your voice in our conversations and for your openness to consider how theology in this area affects our experiences. In reading your list, I appreciate how you enjoyed talking to others and experienced community at Revoice and how the church could perhaps grow in this area. I would urge you NOT to settle for less than what you got a taste for (end of point 4, though I know your point isn't exclusively about community). We need people in your position to also fight for these things (both beloved community and spaces to talk and process about our different callings). I believe it is possible! One cue I take in my personal life and ministry has been from Tim Keller and what he calls the Alternative City from his article called The Gospel and Sex. Here's a short quote: "Christians will fall prey to the world’s views of sex unless we create a community, an alternative city. In this alternative city, singles enjoy their kingdom mission and practice sexual abstinence joyfully. They live in community with Christian families, who do not make an idol out of family or make singles feel abnormal. One of the reasons it is hard to practice the discipline of sex-free romantic involvement is that we don’t have a sufficiently large community of people creating this alternative city." I have found many in the celibate gay community have thought a lot about this, but not as many straight married people in the church have. We all will benefit when we work together as a community and love and serve one another.
Thanks, Josh! I guess I am talking about "settling" because, it's not just straight couples and families and gay singles that I want to unite, but politically conservative homeschool families who view an "LGBT-affirming" progressive movement as coming for them and their kids, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and gender dysphoric Christians who have been burned by right-wing, moral majority Christianity. At that point, the divide starts to feel pretty big.
As I shared with some before, I feel like the church I currently attend does for more conservative, homeschooling families what Revoice does for gay Christians. But for the same reason, these families view Revoice with a lot of suspicion. And Revoice participants would view them with a lot of suspicion because they think that political conservatism is closely connected to faithful Christianity.
I think that Francis Schaeffer is someone who united these various concerns within himself, but having read several biographies recently, the concern is that his more conservative political activism at the end of his career ended up in some tension with his earlier cultural openness that included L'Abri being a shelter for gay and lesbian Christians. Of course, I think his activism on abortion was also really valuable and important. So, having a Christian posture that unites all these concerns seems difficult to figure out.
But yes, I would like to see churches be welcoming environments for celibate gay Christians and Christian families both, spiritual friendships, intentional communities, and so on. I'll try to do my part!
I've said elsewhere that I think people who see these elements of Schaeffer as "in tension" don't really understand Schaeffer. L'Abri was a community where genuinely curious, seeking people could come and learn from Schaeffer in good faith, in a space that welcomed them but also operated on his moral terms. It was open to the lost and the searching who weren't coming to plant their own flag and set new terms. This isn't remotely in tension with Schaeffer's later recognition that activists who *were* gaining power and intending to set new terms for society, including terms that put vulnerable bodies and impressionable minds at risk, needed to be vigorously opposed.
TJ, thanks for these! It looks like I rushed to hit "publish," especially on the marriage point. I'm going to revise that. It should say something more like, "given that opposite-sex marriage may not be as desirable or optimal, and that the church often has less of a place for the celibate."
I think the other points result from me trying to speak to multiple audiences at once. As you said, for conservative, straight Christians in America, those are the points about Side B that they care about. I wrote the intro more for that audience, since the Side B audience already knows that info and more.
And on the politics, the Christians at my church definitely think that the Republican platform is significantly more reflective of Christian teaching, and I have a part of my admittedly small audience on this Substack that are here for some more right-wing things I have said elsewhere. So my point was that, for a politically conservative Christian, Revoice sends certain signals that give them red flags (a la Bethel McGrew), but they should reframe from the political to the personal/spiritual in understand what Revoice is up to and doing really well.
I hope that makes sense, and I'd love to talk more soon! God bless you as well, Mr. Espinoza!
Hey there Joel. Just popping in briefly here to say that I haven't voted Republican in years. :-) I don't believe a Republican versus Democrat frame, specifically, is necessarily going to be helpful or fruitful in breaking down the valid concerns with how politically leftist thinking intertwines with the thinking of Revoice leadership. (Though I do like some specific policy choices by, e.g., Ron DeSantis, and I do think that it can be a helpful bellwether to look at what sorts of policy are championed or demonized by Revoice leadership when it comes to the gender dysphoric, in particular. I will be candid and say I think someone like Eve Tushnet is enabling very evil policy here in the way she frames the issue.) To give another specific example I've raised before, a heavy leftist bias is going to color the accuracy of presentations like Grant Hartley's queer theory workshops, where he gave a history of gay activism that was quite honestly very misleading (presenting Harvey Milk in a heroic light, for one thing). There are secular gay social commentators who would have presented that history more honestly. But it was very understandable, given his political bias. Also, more generally, an identity politics framing has typified the conference from the beginning in ways that I actually think both conservatives and some liberals would correctly identify as corrosive, and definitely not conducive to Christian unity. Lots of specific examples could be and have been given here.
I also think it's interesting to note that an aggressively vocal trans lobby was able to successfully petition the conference against letting Preston Sprinkle speak, because he entertains views that fall to the right of complete trans acceptance. Meanwhile, they've seemed fine with hosting voices that will shame churches as "vicious" and hateful for not using preferred pronouns, etc. So this may be a clue to the conference's future trajectory. (At least, so the trans lobby claims---they could be deceptively posturing, but this is what they put out there publicly.)
Anyway, that got long. But back to your initial comment on politics, my preference is focus off parties, focus on substance. Simple as.
Bethel, thanks for jumping in here. I am interested to write something about how political or ideological perspectives develop and lead us to perceive things differently. You are right that the Republican/Democrat frame isn't ultra-helpful. I think you and I are probably both thinking in ways that are more inflected by the Jordan Peterson phenomenon, which sees transgender issues as the tip of wokeness, with its institutional grip. Their Democrats, Republicans, and independents all of whom share this concern. So that might be more helpful to frame things.
Those of us who have participated in that discourse (or for whom that is our YouTube algorithm) view the types of things you're mentioning as emblematic of wokeness, and potentially quite dangerous to people, as gender transition hormones and surgeries are.
But more generally, those on the right would see some of the signals Revoice is giving as reflective of an acceptance of the same ideology that enables gender transition, views the Christian ethic as oppressive, and so on.
But for many of those attending Revoice, I think something like the rainbow flag indicates the acceptability of people who are homosexual in orientation or who experience gender dysphoria. Given Revoice's commitments to a traditional ethic, the majority of Revoice participants are making just such a division between an "affirming ethic" and an accepting posture to people who are gay or gender dysphoric.
I share your concern about the trans issue at Revoice, and as TJ said above, it is still being worked out at Revoice. I want to be a voice in helping them work that out.
Of course from the Jordan Peterson kind of discourse, it's hard to understand not having the trans issue worked out. But again, people are coming from different places, and I think the full Christian ethic on these matters has to include both sets of concerns.
I'm disappointed to hear that that happened with Preston Sprinkle, because he's definitely to my "left" on, well, pronouns, for example!
More to come...I'm going to go write that piece about ideological perspectives and personal experience. Thanks for commenting!
My own ideas were solidified well before the Peterson phenomenon, and I still think the old liberal holdouts fall short in some significant ways, but I do think it's been interesting to watch some of the realignment, and the convergence of understanding on why identity politics is so toxic. Somebody like Chad Felix Greene or Douglas Murray just is clearer-eyed and more insightful here in some ways, though not all. (I particularly recommend giving Greene a follow, as he's always painfully honest. He would have taken Hartley's workshops apart pretty brutally.)
I think Revoice is a mix of people who are well-intentioned but confused and people with an agenda. Prominent voices (Tushnet, Hartley, others), have either put out work of their own or boosted other work that doesn't seem concerned with making clear distinctions here. Further, I actually do think there's a line to be traced between the approach to gay and the approach to trans. In my corner of things I'm often saying that the "LGB without the T" crowd struggles to make a logical case, even though I commend their willingness to speak against the T. In a way, a figure like Tushnet or Hartley is actually being more logically consistent.
Preston is to my left as well, which makes it pretty eyebrow-raising that he was nudged out thanks to an even farther-left lobby. I don't think the center can hold. The very fact that there's confusion and unclarity here is already a very bad sign.
That makes sense, and I share your concerns. However, I think Revoice is more essential as an entity that is offering a way forward for gay Christians in particular. I have to say, "Still Time to Care" is really persuasive. Greg Johnson points out that the ex-gay script was, to quote, "Accompanying these erotic and emotional changes is a change in self-perception in which the individual no longer identifies him or herself as homosexual." Side X, in light of these details, turned out to be primarily about identity, just like Side Y. You identified yourself as a non-homosexual, even if your attractions remained the same.
For that reason, I think Side B is essential and is the way forward, even if they're tempted to apply it directly to gender dysphoric individuals. (They really are "trans," they just shouldn't act on it...but to what degree? Can they dress gender ambiguously? Hormones, but not surgery? Etc.)
I think your concerns should be raised within the Side B discourse, rather than merely using those concerns to say that Side B is dangerous and headed in the wrong direction. I'll try!
I read Still Time to Care several times, actually. :-) I have a number of significant issues with it and with Johnson's role in the PCA. Thought about doing a multi-part review but never found the time. Maybe at some point. I began unpacking some of that in an older piece here:
https://cbmw.org/2021/11/21/uncertain-voices-revoice-21-reviewed/
Again, I think it's very important not to co-identify "Side B" with "not-Side-X," and I'm afraid Johnson's work generates more heat than light there, shutting out quite a few other voices. At this point, we've had a very long time to observe Side B's trajectory and watch how it takes (or doesn't take) criticism. None of the signs have been encouraging. I understand how at one point it might have been understood as a plausible "third way." I think signs of trouble were always there, but it's revealed itself even more clearly in the years since that point.
An exvangelical trans Twitter user made this claim in a thread. He could have been lying or misinformed, but he claimed both that people were pressuring Revoice about Sprinkle and that they'd been successful.
Also, I've spent quite a bit of time analyzing what Revoice offers in the personal/spiritual departments and also found that material very problematic. So I wouldn't say I have tunnel vision. Perhaps we simply disagree. :-)