I’ve just been looking at Nicky Gumbel, Searching Issues (revised edition, 2004), a short book written by one of the most currently influential Evangelical Anglicans. Gumbel is the founder of the Alpha course, widely used as an introduction to Christianity, and also prominent at Holy Trinity Brompton, one of the biggest Evangelical churches in the Church of England. The book is intended to answer the seven most common questions raised on the Alpha course and includes a chapter on homosexuality. Although the book’s brief and doesn’t go into theological depth on any of the issues covered, it strikes me as a good guide to the kind of Evangelical apologetics that goes on in sermons, discussion groups etc. (It has a lot of similarities to stuff that I was hearing/reading as an Evangelical Anglican student in the 1980s). So I wanted to use this as a way into looking how the current Evangelical wing of the Church of England treats homosexuality.

Gumbel starts from the principles that the only permissible sexual activity is within marriage and that the Bible condemns homosexual activity. He therefore argues that all homosexual activity is sinful, though he’s keen to stress that a homosexual orientation in itself isn’t sinful. In a discussion of the causes of homosexual orientation, he accepts that: ‘Whether the basis is biological or social, in most cases homosexually orientated people are the product of forces over which they have little or no control, certainly in the early stages.’ However ‘Even if there is a scientific basis, it does not mean that it is God’s will. Genetic conditioning produces good things, such as the wonderful diversity o human beings, but also bad things like congenital disease.’ He sees changes in orientation as unusual, but possible: otherwise, gay people are called to a life of celibacy.

Gumbel doesn’t come across as homophobic (although some of his comments can undoubtedly be seen as offensive). What I find more interesting, in many ways, is what isn’t in this chapter, particularly in comparison to an earlier chapter on ‘Sex before marriage’. Gumbel discusses harmful effects of promiscuity (psychological problems, AIDS etc) there; there’s no suggestion that a ‘gay lifestyle’ is itself harmful, formerly a common allegation. He also makes no use of ‘arguments by design’, the supposed un-naturalness of sexual acts that do not involves a penis and vagina. I suspect this comes from a realisation that ‘straight sex’ is no longer just about this. And in the sex before marriage chapter, Gumbel carefully avoids condemning non-procreative sex.

What has gone, therefore, in Gumbel’s approach is the non-Scriptural, ‘rational’ reasons for condemning homosexual acts. You can’t have gay sex because God disapproves, and there is no other reason. Even his one half-hearted attempt at a rational explanation (a passing comparison to congenital disease) falls down. For just one example, take coeliac disease, as a genetically influenced disorder that people would agree in seeing as a ‘bad thing’. If people with coeliac disease cannot tolerate gluten and therefore cannot eat bread, is it morally wrong for them to find a form of bread that they can eat? (Most people would think it just as hard to get through life without loving relationships as without bread).
Gumbel’s solution to the problem is also unrealistic: even though you can’t help what your feelings are, you mustn’t act on them, ever. Because he’s honest enough to admit that changes in orientation are rare, he can’t offer real hope for gays, just a lifetime of struggle. (It’s also a struggle that heterosexuals are no longer prepared to share: lifelong celibate heterosexuals are now extremely hard to find). There’s a noticeable contrast also to the end of his chapter on premarital sex, which ends with the story of how a Chinese woman who had been a heroin addict and a prostitute for sixty years is finally healed. ‘The former prostitute was able to walk down the aisle in white, cleansed and forgiven by Jesus Christ.’

All this raises serious problems for Gumbel’s aims as an evangelist. If he wants to persuade people to become Christian, how does he persuade people to accept a doctrine that a) has no rational basis and b) seems unjust to a particular group of people? Twenty years ago, it was probably easier to persuade people that this aspect of Christianity was relatively unimportant. In a modern world in which most people will know some gays or a gay couple, it is increasingly hard to see such irrational discrimination against them as tolerable.

If Evangelical Anglicans hold to this view of homosexuality, they risk becoming unable to convert an increasingly large number of British people. That makes me suspect that they will find one of two possible ways around the problem in the next generation or so. One is what might be called the evangelical jump-cut, skipping over the key texts. This is already effectively done on issues about the subordination of wives, and even more noticeably on remarriage. The New Testament condemns divorce and Jesus specifically calls remarriage as adultery. Evangelical preachers today speak out strongly against adultery, and condemn divorce, but implicitly most remarriage is filed under marriage and not adultery and quietly accepted. The alternative, that of telling remarried people that they can only be forgiven if they abandon their current marriage and either remain celibate or return to their original spouse, is rightly seen as unrealistic. In the same way, evangelicals might decide that they will condemn homosexual pre-marital/extra-marital acts, but once someone is in a civil partnership, they will implicitly be treated as if they were married and such relationships will not be condemned.

I suspect, however, that it will be hard to carry out such deliberate ignoring tactics, and that therefore Evangelical Anglicans are going to have to change their Biblical interpretation. This isn’t intrinsically impossible: after all, they have already done the same on the subject of slavery, and (for the most part) on the issue of women priests. The outlines of this re-interpretation are already visible. You start with the overall message of Jesus as being the equality of humanity: in Christ there is neither slave nor free, male or female etc. You accept that Leviticus doesn’t have to be followed on homosexuality anymore than on the rape of engaged women. You interpret the story of Sodom as punishing homosexual rape. You end by arguing that Paul’s letters were condemning homosexual prostitution and heterosexuals indulging in homosexual experimentation. Based on this and further scientific evidence of sexual orientation as innate, you conclude that permanent monogamous gay relationships are acceptable.

Such a re-interpretation isn’t going to be universally accepted, but it’s not intrinsically ridiculous. It’s the kind of argument that groups like Accepting Evangelicals are already coming up with. I don’t know whether Nicky Gumbel (or his successors in twenty years time) are going to be making that kind of answer to Alpha groups in twenty years’ time. But I think if they don’t, they’re going to find their evangelism becoming substantially harder.