How Should I Engage with Traditionalist Queer Christians?

An excerpt from my book Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table

Dear friends,

Across the country and around the world, I meet queer Christians at every stage of their journey. Some are just beginning to wonder, “Is it possible to be both queer and Christian?” Others have been out and affirming for years, building bold theologies rooted in justice and joy. And many are navigating the tension of being queer and part of conservative churches that claim to “welcome but not affirm.”

A question I hear often—especially from queer folks in these spaces—is:
“How do I relate to other queer Christians who hold more traditionalist beliefs?”

It’s a deeply personal question. And an important one.

Because, truthfully, not all queer Christians see the Bible or faith the same way. Some want to be fully accepted within the bounds of traditional Christian orthodoxy. Others feel called to interrogate and even reconstruct orthodoxy itself. We don’t have one path, one theology, or one way of being faithful. And that’s the beauty—and the challenge—of this movement.

That’s why I wrote this chapter. In it, I lay out four major theological approaches within queer Christianity today, and I reflect on the broader question of what faithful engagement looks like across difference. This is not just theological theory—this is the real terrain many of us walk every day.

I’m sharing a section of chapter here because I believe it offers language and perspective that can help us better understand each other, navigate our disagreements with compassion, and walk forward in truth and love.

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THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO be queer and Christian. The movement for queer inclusion in the Christian church has a long intellectual and theological history. There have been many different arguments made, from differing theological and philosophical standpoints, that can lead a Christian to the place of full acceptance of queer people in the faith.

In this book, I’ve done my best to present two of the ways that queer people and our allies can reconcile queer identity with Christianity: first, through what has been called the “apologist-affirmative approach,” which seeks to use the traditional tools of historical criticism to argue that when we explore the culture, context, history, and language of Scripture, it becomes clear that the Bible says nothing explicitly about loving, same-sex relationships. I used this approach in the second section as we explored the so-called clobber passages.

The second approach I utilize could be called a “queer hermeneutic,” which reads the Bible through the lens of a queer person’s experience, seeking to find parallels in the characters of Scripture that can help queer people see ourselves in the Bible and reclaim our place in the broader Christian tradition. This is what I did in the third section of the book where we explored the queer saints of Scripture.

There are two other primary strategies used by queer Christians in how we engage the Bible. One is called the “queerly-resistant approach,” which explicitly uses the tools and methods of modern queer theory to intentionally trouble the texts of Scripture, exploring the way power emerges within the Bible and in the creation of the Bible, and encourages active resistance to texts that promote anti-queer perspectives, without much concern for what the tradition has said or what the historical context suggests. This approach is incredibly useful in helping to deconstruct the Bible’s promotion of problematic ethics and ideas. It opens a space for modern Christians to create their own ethical and theological paradigms over and against the traditional Christian theology that can often be morally questionable and toxic. This approach is currently primarily engaged in academia, but is worth looking at if you’re deeply interested in the concept of queer theology. However, I admit this approach can be very jarring for traditional Christians and even some queer Christians, so I did not actively use this approach in this book.

The fourth approach that is quite popular in the modern queer Christian conversation is what I will call the “affirming-traditionalist approach,” one that seeks only to make a case that the Bible does not condemn same-sex relationships using many of the same arguments that are used in the “apologist-affirmative” approach, but at the same time, seeks to uphold a traditional Christian paradigm in all other areas of belief and practice. This means that the “affirming-traditionalist” will argue that it’s not a sin to be gay, for instance, but that gay people must only express their love in the context of a traditional Christian marriage and that all sexual expression outside of that marriage is sinful. This approach is intended to help queer people become accepted in traditional, orthodox Christian churches, and it rejects most other queering or deconstructing of the Bible or Christian faith. This approach seek to promote the message that it’s okay to be queer and Christian and to be accepted in traditional Christian churches. This is where my journey began.

Yet for many queer Christians, as they continue their journey of faith, they will find themselves asking even deeper questions than “Does the Bible condemn homosexuality?” and this will lead them to rightly begin reexamining other aspects of traditional Christian doctrine. Does the Bible actually condemn sex outside of marriage? Why do we accept the paradigm of “Christian marriage” when the Scriptures are not at all clear about what exactly that is and if it’s even good? Why do we put such authority in the Bible when the prevailing scholarship shows that the evangelical idea of inerrancy is false? Why do we put stock in ideas of doctrinal orthodoxy, when the men who defined traditional standards of orthodoxy did so by using their power to silence hundreds of alternative versions of Christian faith? And the questions continue, leading many through a complete deconstruction of their faith. Often, many queer Christians will find themselves journeying into progressive Christian spaces, where such questions are eagerly welcomed, where a broad diversity of theology—liberationist, womanist, queer, open theistic, etc.—is explored and integrated into our faith, and a generative space is created for a revisioning of their entire faith from a progressive, inclusive paradigm.

Yet many affirming-traditionalist Christians look on at progressive queer Christians with horror, fearing that we are playing straight into the hands of non-affirming Christians who have long argued that affirming queer people is a slippery slope toward walking away from the “true” faith. This fear of progressive approaches has led to a whole new movement of heresy-hunting and protecting of traditional orthodoxy among affirming-traditionalists, who see books like this one or progressive, inclusive churches as damaging to the queer Christian movement and are quick to reject and separate from queer Christians who embrace queer theology. That is their prerogative, and there is space in the Body of Christ for a multitude of perspectives on just about every issue. Still, in anticipation of the critiques that will inevitably come to this book and to those who adopt the approaches I use in it, I want to offer a response for our consideration.

The Real Problem

I firmly believe and have stated in this book that the problem for queer Christians and our allies is not the misinterpretation of the six clobber passages but the entire paradigm of traditional or orthodox Christianity. Despite what traditionalists claim, the orthodoxy that has become mainstream in many branches of Christianity today is not reflective of the actual teachings of Christ or the beliefs of the authors of the Bible. You’d be hard-pressed to find any New Testament scholar or historian who would claim that Jesus, Paul, or Peter would be in full agreement with the creeds, catechisms, and dogmas of traditional Christianity—these doctrines did not develop until hundreds and in some cases thousands of years after the authors of Scripture lived and represent an evolution in Christian thought over those long swaths of time.

There have been tomes written throughout history about how Christian orthodoxy developed and the movement to silence all dissenting voices by the early proponents of that orthodoxy. While many claim that these creeds faithfully represent what the Apostles taught, we have a lot of reason to be skeptical about any creed that emerges from the very empire that persecuted Christians (and many, many others) for hundreds of years prior. The reason I bring up the creeds (which, by the way, say nothing about sexuality or gender) is to demonstrate the kind of skepticism that naturally emerges for many people when they realize how poorly the Bible has been translated and interpreted on the issues of sexuality and gender.

Why would we assume that a group of fallible humans, called together by the Roman emperor, under threat of being declared heretics and thus being expelled from the church (and society) and even prosecuted, created a faithful and reliable set of beliefs that define what all Christians must believe for the rest of time? Why wouldn’t that be worth questioning? Why would any aspect of our faith not be worth reexamining in light of greater truth or different experiences?

And this is the precise point of departure for many queer Christians from traditionalist-affirming Christians. Once we begin reexamining the ways Scripture has been misused and abused to condemn queer people, we are empowered to examine the ways Scripture and tradition might have been used to promote other ideas that are untrue and harmful.

The Goal of (Queer) Christianity

This is not to say that queer Christians or progressive Christians must reject orthodox Christianity—many don’t! But it is to say that engaging in a critical reexamination of the faith from the ground up is a logical next step for many queer Christians and is something that should be encouraged rather than demonized, because anti-queer Christians don’t base their rejection of queer people on just six verses of the Bible but on an entire paradigm of Christianity that is infused with things like patriarchy, misogyny, imperial politics, and non-scientific understandings of humans and the world we live in.

Faith is based more on living and loving like Jesus than believing like orthodox Christians, and there is a big difference.

At the end of the day, our journey of faith should be one of “faith seeking understanding,” in the words of Anselm of Canterbury—a relentless pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness wherever it may lead us.

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Let’s Continue the Conversation

I know this chapter may push some boundaries. That’s the point. But I hope it also opens space for grace.

Where do you find yourself in these approaches?
What’s helped you reconcile your faith and identity—or challenged you to rethink long-held beliefs?

Let’s share honestly in the comments.

If this resonated with you, I invite you to pre-order Queer & Christian or share this post with someone navigating these questions. We’re not alone. And we’re not done transforming the Church.

With love and liberation,

—Brandan