I shall have more to say later…but I wanted to announce that my new book The Choice: Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living? is now available in paperback and Kindle. It will soon also be available in AI audio.
You can read the first 6 pages of the Introduction on Amazon.com.
More later.
My new book, The Choice: Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living? will be published and available within a week from today!
Here is what my good friend Rubel Shelly said about it:
Ron Highfield has made a significant contribution to the present-day discussion of LGBTQ+ claims by a tight focus on the work of Karen Keen. Highfield’s The Choice is a careful and erudite analysis of Keen’s work that uncovers a species of argument being offered from many quarters. First, he lays bare Keen’s postmodern substitution of feeling and rhetoric for Scripture and sound reasoning. “From the postmodern perspective,” he notes, “autobiography is argument.” In such a case, Scripture can be displaced by personal desire. Second, he skillfully explains the implications of such an approach to an orthodox view of the Bible. If only those historic demands of Scripture that pass muster with one’s self-defined notions of kindness, justice, love, secular psychology, and minimal human suffering (i.e., inconvenience, restraint of desire) are obligatory to Christians, we are back to the ancient times in Israel when every individual is a law to her/himself. Contrary to Keen’s claim to show how evangelicals can defend an “affirming” case for same-sex marriage, Dr. Highfield demonstrates that her case abandons an orthodox view of God-breathed Scripture in order to read into the Bible what our postmodern culture otherwise could only wish it had said.
Rubel Shelly
professor, writer, minister, and author of Male and Female God Made Them: A Biblical Review of LGBTQ+ Claims (Joplin, MO: College Press, 2023).
If you are a church leader, teacher, or an individual believer who is seeking help with answering the question voiced in my subtitle, Should the Church Affirm LGBTQ+ Identities and Ways of Living? I wrote this book for you. Soon, if not already, every denomination, every local church, including the congregation where you attend, will be faced with The Choice, the choice I address in this book. Are you ready?
Today I want to recommend two books devoted to a topic that has increasingly occupied my mind of late:
Rubel Shelly, Male & Female God Created Them: A Biblical Review of LGBTQ+ Claims. Joplin, MO: College Press, 2023. PP. 426.
Rubel Shelly, The INK is DRY: God’s Distinctive Word on Marriage, Family, and Sexual Responsibility. Joplin, MO: College Press, 2023. PP. 182.
The Revolution
Before 2010, I thought most authors advocating the Christian legitimacy of LGBTQ+ identities and ways of living were liberals or progressives located in such mainline denominations as the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Disciples of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. After 2014, however, a chorus of authors claiming to be evangelical have written an avalanche of works urging churches to affirm gay and lesbian relationships as morally equal to traditional marriage. And they say they know this is right because the Bible tells them so. This new development demands a new response from authors holding to the traditional/biblical view of sex and marriage. Does the Bible really support affirmation of LGBTQ+ identities and gay and lesbian marriages? If so, how did the ancient people of God and the church get it wrong all these years? Does the Bible define marriage exclusively in terms of “covenant fidelity” and not also in terms of sexual complementarity?
The Author
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of books are published every year. I can read only a few of them. But when Rubel Shelly asked me to read pre-publication forms of these two new books, I agreed immediately. I knew that these books would be high quality, and I was not disappointed. I’ve known Shelly for over 50 years. He is a man of remarkable intelligence, learning, experience, courage, and integrity. He has served the church in roles of preaching minister, college professor, and college president. At present, he is Teaching Minister at the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Brentwood Tennessee. The first book, Male & Female, is longer and more scholarly than the second, though not out of reach for any serious reader. It will be very useful as a college text or as a resource for ministers and elders. The second book, The INK is DRY, is written for popular audiences and would serve well for a church group study. Below are the two endorsements I wrote for these books.
For Male and Female God Created Them:
I wish I could put a copy of Male and Female God Created Them in the hands of every Christian pastor, minister, teacher, and counselor! As many Christian leaders have come to realize, the LGBTQ+ challenge is the question of our age. We must meet this challenge! And Male and Female God Created Them is the book for just such a time as this. Brilliant! Penetrating! Courageous! Yet… fair, measured, and compassionate. Shelly’s analysis and critique of the “affirming” position blows away the rhetorical dust and smoke generated by biblical revisionists and gets to the heart of the matter. His positive explanation and defense of the “traditional” (that is, biblical) view of marriage and sex is the best I’ve read in a long time. If you have time to read only one book on this subject, read this one! Then read it again!
For The INK is DRY:
Are we autonomous animals whose sole end is pleasure or created images of God whose end is to become like God in true love and holiness? The Scriptures clearly affirm the latter. Some contemporary interpreters treat the Bible as if it were written in erasable ink or even in pencil. For Rubel Shelly, however, The Ink Is Dry. Shelly guides us in a study of the most significant texts in the Old and New Testaments that deal with same-sex sexual behavior. He sets these passages in their historical contexts and deals with the clever, and often deceptive, maneuvers of interpreters who dispute their commonsense meanings. I especially appreciate the way Shelly places these passages in the context of God’s beautiful creational design for marriage between man and woman. I highly recommend The Ink is Dry to preachers, elders, college students, youth leaders, teachers, counselors, and anyone else concerned about the moral challenges facing the church today. Readers will find it useful for group and individual study.
Recommendation
Ministers, church leaders, ordinary members, and most of all, the younger generations of believers are bombarded by the secular culture—and increasingly by many in the church—with messages challenging and even ridiculing the biblical/traditional views of sex and marriage. If you want help pushing back against this wave of criticism, misinformation, and temptation, read and study Shelly’s books. But Shelly not only pushes back against its distortions, he also lifts up the beautiful ideal of loving, faithful, life-long marriage between one man and one woman. And that rare combination makes these books “must reads.”
There are some topics I had rather not discuss in public. At the top of the list is the ethics of same-sex relationships. Does my hesitancy arise from discretion or cowardice? Do I think I am incompetent to take on the subject or am I afraid of being cancelled? Is the time not yet right to engage in this battle or is it already too late? I confess that I have many faults, and I am probably not aware of most of them. But I am aware that I like being liked and that sometimes I allow this desire to keep me from speaking a word I ought to speak.
For many reasons, I believe that I ought to speak now about the (Christian) ethics of same-sex relationships. The contemporary church woke up on June 26, 2015 to find that the Supreme Court of the United States had struck down all laws that limited marriage to man and woman (Obergefell v Hodges). The culture had been moving steadily in this direction for some time—since the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Mainline churches (Lutherans, Episcopal, and Methodists) have been mired in controversy and division over non-celibate gay clergy and gay marriage since the 1990s. Why not speak earlier?
With regard to politics and the courts, I did not think it was my calling to get involved in a culture war, that is, a political battle over who controls the culture, conservatives or progressives or radicals. With regard to the controversies within the mainline churches, I am not a member of a mainline church and have no standing to enter into their deliberations. Besides, mainline churches have long been dominated by a liberal theology soft on the cardinal Christian doctrines and coy or dismissive of biblical and apostolic authority. It is in their DNA to attempt to keep up with progressive culture. Hence I was not surprised by their openness to same-sex relationships. So, what has changed?
I began my eleven-part series reviewing Karen Keen’s book Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships with this explanation of what has changed (September 10, 2021)*:
However, within the past five years a significant number of pastors, professors, authors, and church members who claim to be evangelical, bible-believing, and orthodox have spoken out in favor of the church accepting same-sex relationships on the same or a similar basis as that on which it accepts traditional marriage. I am not speaking here only of something far away and limited to books by authors I do not know. I am speaking also about pastors, professors, and church members I know personally. I do not see how any church or parachurch institution can avoid this internal discussion for much longer. We are past the point of “the calm before the storm.” The storm is upon us. And it will not end until it exhausts its energy.
Keen and others like her argue that you can remain true to evangelical theology, hold to biblical authority and inspiration, faithfully practice biblical morality AND affirm committed same-sex relationships as legitimately Christian. I do not believe this can be done, and I wrote my review to refute her case. In that review I followed her argument in description, analysis, and critique but did not develop my own approach. In the present series I want to show why in order to affirm same-sex relationships you must revise the meaning of biblical authority, undermine the coherence of biblical morality, and accept revisionist biblical interpretation and progressive morality, which places all moral authority in individual experience. As I see it, such an approach is either naive, self-deceptive, or disingenuous. In any case I am convinced that it will lead those involved to accept the marriage of liberal theology and progressive morality that dominates mainline denominations. And the movement will not stop there. Once you accept the progressive understanding of morality, the pressure from the left flank will only grow stronger. You will feel pressure to drop even liberal Christian theology to become secular and, then, ever more radical. The fateful decision was made long ago when, for progressive culture, individual feeling replaced traditional wisdom as the surest revelation of the right and the good. This poison may be slow acting but it is relentless nonetheless.
__________________
*Many of the thoughts I will develop in the next few essays I touched on briefly in this series. For anyone serious about this topic I suggest you read these eleven essays, which began on September 10 and ended on November 8, 2021.
**From Galadriel’s Prologue to the Lord of the Rings:
“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is now lost, for none live who remember it.”
In this essay I will finish my chapter-by-chapter summary, analysis, and critique of Karen Keen’s book, Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships. In this series I followed Keen’s outline, used her vocabulary, and let her frame the issues. However after today’s essay, with Keen’s argument and my analysis still fresh on our minds, I plan to reflect on the issue of same-sex relationships a bit more independently.
In chapter 8, “Imagining a New Response to the Gay and Lesbian Community,” Keen makes her final appeal for changes in the way evangelical believers relate to gay and lesbian Christians. She opens the chapter by summarizing her foregoing conclusions and urging readers to allow the following principles to inform the debate:
“Scripture interpretation requires recognizing the overarching intent of biblical mandates, namely, a good and just world.”
“Scripture itself teaches us that biblical mandates, including creation ordinances, cannot be applied without a deliberative process.”
“Evidence indicates that life-long celibacy is not achievable for every person.”
“Evidence shows that same-sex attraction is not moral fallenness; it could be understood as natural fallenness or human variation.”
On the basis of these four assertions, which are the conclusions to which the previous chapters have come, Keen argues that there are three ways evangelicals can embrace same-sex relationships without abandoning their evangelical faith:
First, the “traditionalist exception” view enables even those who believe that same-sex relationships are wrong to accept them as accommodations to human weakness because covenanted, loving relationships are better than promiscuity. Second, the “traditionalist case-law” view accepts the principle that we must take into account the “overarching intent” of biblical mandates. Given that many gay and lesbian people cannot remain celibate and that their determination to live good lives would be greatly strengthen by remaining within the Christian community, traditionalists could view the relationship as morally acceptable.
Third, the “affirming” view accepts gay and lesbian relationships on the same basis as those between other-sex couples. The affirming view sees the biblical prohibitions as “prescientific” in the same way as the biblical cosmology is prescientific. The affirming view bases its acceptance of same-sex relationships not on the letter but the intent of biblical sexual regulations. For the Bible’s rules for sex are designed to prevent harm and facilitate “a good and just world.” “Same-sex relationships are not harmful by virtue of their same-sex nature,” Keen adds. They become harmful in the same way other-sex relationships become harmful, that is, when they are poisoned by betrayal, violence, coercion, deception, manipulation, and other unloving attitudes and acts.
In the last section of the book, Keen recounts her journey from her introduction as an infant to “a small-town conservative Baptist church” to the frightening—in some ways shattering—experience in her late teens of “falling in love” with her best female friend. Keen continues her story by recounting some of the stages in her twenty-year spiritual and intellectual quest to understand herself as gay and an evangelical Christian. I will not attempt to summarize in detail Keen’s story. I could not possibly do justice to the confusion, pathos, feelings of isolation and loneliness, and suffering that at times shows through her rather straightforward account. Her book is the fruit of her intellectual journey…so far.
From the beginning I’ve been struck with way Keen combines her intellectual arguments from biblical exegesis/interpretation and science with her pragmatic goals. In this last chapter we see highlighted her practical, pastoral side. Clearly Keen would prefer that evangelicals accept her exegetical/hermeneutical case for accepting loving, covenanted, same-sex relationships on the same basis as other-sex loving, covenanted relationships. But she is willing to tolerate the “traditionalist exception” and “traditionalist case-law” views—though they are far from ideal—as ways to achieve her practical goal of having evangelical churches allow same-sex couples to participate in the life of the church without having to deny their identities or struggle unhappily and unsuccessfully to remain celibate. Keen will not allow fanatical desire for ideological purity to stand in the way of achieving her practical aim. I am only speculating here, but perhaps she hopes that once churches allow gay relationships, even on a less than ideal basis, they may be persuaded to move on to the “accepting” view by coming to understand gay people on a personal level.
It is foolish as well as arrogant and uncaring to argue with someone’s telling of their story or to diminish the significance of their self-reported experiences. People feel what they feel and experience what they experience, and no one knows this better than they do. The quickest way to alienate a contemporary audience is to appear unsympathetic to anyone society has designated a victim of oppression. Hence it is almost impossible for members of officially recognized oppressed groups to resist using their stories of struggle and oppression as proof that they are on the right side of history, justice, and goodness; anyone not sympathetic with them is by that very fact on the wrong side. I appreciate very much that Karen Keen resists this temptation. Along with everyone else she knows that feeling that something is good or right or true does not make it good or right or true. Things are good or true or right independently of our private experience. To assume otherwise would destroy the very idea of morality. Nor can telling one’s story serve as proof for anything other than the subjective experience of the story teller. A listener has no rational or moral obligation to accept a story full of pathos and suffering as proof of anything other than the emotional state of the story teller. Such stories rightly evoke compassion but cannot legitimately command agreement.
It would take a hard heart indeed not to be moved by Karen Keen’s story and stories like hers. And I do not have a hard heart, and I never have. Her first church experience was not unlike my own, of a small, very traditional, and Bible-centered congregation. She wanted to become a missionary, and I wanted to preach the gospel in the church. I too made a journey through graduate study of the Bible and theology, confronting all the critical questions modern historians, biblical scholars, philosophers, and theologians raise about our faith. I am also passionate about healthy teaching in the church and the care of the little lambs in Jesus’s flock. We both published books with Eerdmans Publishing Company. I do not, however, have her experience of being a woman or of having same-sex attraction. I do not consider myself better than her on this account. I know that I am worthy only to pray the tax collector’s prayer, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” This is also my prayer and hope for everyone, including Karen Keen.
Since I read Keen’s book the first time and looked at her website, I’ve felt a great love for her. I find her story compelling in many ways. And yet, I find myself unmoved by her argument that accepting same-sex relationships is consistent with a Bible-based evangelical faith for all the reasons I’ve laid out in this eleven-part review.
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