Human Sexuality - “Changing My Position” with Adam Hamilton
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the hosts, The Weight Podcast, or Oxford University United Methodist Church.
Shownotes:
Over the past several years, the conversation around human sexuality has stirred up deep division and tension within the United Methodist Church. Arguments over policies and rules have left little room for embracing each others’ humanity with compassion and grace. What does it mean for the church to honor the weight of individual experiences and perspectives? How can church leaders and congregants lead in love and humility while navigating complex issues?
Chris and Eddie are joined by Adam Hamilton, pastor of Church of the Resurrection, the largest United Methodist church in the country. Hamilton’s book Making Sense of the Bible explores the most controversial questions Christians ask while interpreting scripture, including issues of sexuality and gender. Hamilton believes context is necessary to understanding the character of God, and he challenges us to consider what is lost in translation. He talks to Eddie and Chris about how to be guided by an ethic of love, how his position on sexuality has changed over the years, and ways we can argue ethically without shutting each other down.
Series Info:
In March 2020, we started this podcast with the intention of introducing a larger conversation about human sexuality, a central area of division and disagreement in our particular denomination. We’ve decided to come back to that conversation, to explore the church’s relationship to the LGBTQ+ community in light of the various perspectives within the body of Christ. Our context places us at an interesting intersection of the conversation: we’re pastors in a college town, with a lot of progressive folks on a whole range of topics, and we’re pastors in Mississippi, a conservative state, with a lot of folks who think of themselves as conservative on a whole range of topics.
In this series, we hope to honor the weight of a wide range of experiences and perspectives. You will hear from church leaders who have vastly different angles on this cultural moment, on the church’s mission, and how the church should think about biblical authority and interpretation. You will also hear from several people within the LGBTQ+ community, those who are deeply committed to the church and those who have felt like the church’s witness often leaves them feeling on the outside.
We invite you to consider the weight of another person’s concerns, maybe someone with whom you deeply disagree, but to do so in a way that honors their humanity, their story, and their convictions. We make no attempt to be exhaustive or comprehensive. Our aim is not to persuade you on which side to take on this issue. Many of you already know what you believe, and nothing said on this podcast will change your mind. What we want to do is help you better understand both your own views and the views of those you may disagree with.
Resources:
Follow Adam Hamilton on the web:
https://www.adamhamilton.com
Follow Adam Hamilton on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/PastorAdamHamilton
https://www.instagram.com/revadamhamilton/
Check out Adam Hamilton’s book Making Sense of the Bible here:
https://www.adamhamilton.com/books/item/9780062234988
Learn more about Church of the Resurrection here:
Full Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 0:00
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 0:01
And I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 0:02
Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester 0:04
When we started this podcast back in 2020, it kind of had a specific direction that we had built toward, that the pandemic really up ended for us very quickly. Our tribe, our denomination, was already beginning to move towards division over over the issue of human sexuality. And so we wanted to have people help us with that conversation, to help people maybe understand what they believe or didn't believe in that conversation.
Chris McAlilly 0:34
Yeah, so since then, we we did a range of different things. If you've been following the podcast, we've talked about mental health. We've talked about racism, and we talked about food and creation care, and how to raise your children, just a whole range of important, weighty topics. But we wanted to circle back around to this one, because I think the church's relationship with the LGBTQ community is one that is a central conversation in how the church navigates this particular cultural moment. And we're pastors in a college town, and in Mississippi, which means that we pastor and we're in relationship with folks who were very progressive, folks who consider themselves very conservative. And so we wanted to... That's just our perspective.
Eddie Rester 1:17
We encounter folks who fall all over the range of understandings and beliefs around the conversation of human sexuality.
Chris McAlilly 1:25
Yeah, and I'll tell you what I get frustrated by. What I get frustrated by, and we talk about this in the intro of the podcast, is the tone.
Eddie Rester 1:32
Right.
Chris McAlilly 1:33
And we encounter folks that have very strong convictions, and that's a good thing. It's good to have strong convictions.
Eddie Rester 1:40
However.
Chris McAlilly 1:41
Yeah, and I think what we're shooting for always on the podcast--not just in this conversation, but in every conversation--is how to honor the weight of a person's concern. And we're listening for a particular, not just a conviction or a position, but a posture, where there's some humility, there's intellectual honesty, and all the rest. I came across an article in this conversation about human sexuality from a guy named Wes Hill, who you'll hear in the series, called "The Tears of Things." And if you want to know about our perspective in the conversation, go read that article.
Eddie Rester 2:15
We make no attempt to be exhaustive or comprehensive in this conversation. That's not what we're trying to do. Our aim is not to persuade you to take one side or the other.
Chris McAlilly 2:25
You already know what you believe.
Eddie Rester 2:25
You already know what you believe. Or maybe you're exploring, and you need to hear people of conviction on both sides, sharing what they believe. So we're gonna hear from folks, progressive, conservative folks, kind of threading the needle between the two. What we want to do is to help you better understand your own views, and the views of those you may disagree with.
Chris McAlilly 2:49
Yeah, so you're going to hear from some church leaders who have perspectives on biblical authority and biblical interpretation. You're going to hear from gay and lesbian people who disagree, and kind of where they fall in, and how they think about their relationship with the church and with the Bible and all the rest. And you're gonna maybe, probably, you're gonna feel uncomfortable, and you'll probably be challenged, because I think this is a challenging conversation.
Eddie Rester 3:19
And to be quite honest, we hope you feel some discomfort, because we felt it as we've talked to these folks. We haven't tried to push, fight, spin it. We've wanted people to be able to present faithfully where they are. And we hope that you hear that. And if you hear something that you're like, "I disagree with that," go to the next podcast that we'll release or wait for what we're gonna release or go back to the one that we just released. We're hoping to offer you a wide range of conversation on this.
Chris McAlilly 3:50
So we're gonna do a slightly different format here. We're gonna do, over the next three weeks, a Monday and Thursday release. And it'll be almost like a bit of a mini-series. And so we hope that that you enjoy it. It's not exhaustive. So we're gonna leave people out. We're gonna leave perspectives out. We can't do do everything in this series. But we'll come back to this conversation. So if there's somebody else we need to talk to that you think is important, let us know. Send us an email, you know, send us a direct message on social media. Let us let us know. Comment. Share it with folks who you think would would be interested in this particular way of having the conversation,
Eddie Rester 4:26
We are thankful that you're in the journey and in the conversation with us. So thank you for being with us each and every week.
Chris McAlilly 4:32
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 4:39
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 4:42
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 4:49
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition, in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 5:02
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 5:17
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 5:20
We're here today with Adam Hamilton. Adam, thanks so much for being with us.
Adam Hamilton 5:25
Chris, I'm so glad to be there. Eddie, good to be with you guys. Always appreciate the conversations.
Chris McAlilly 5:29
How are you? How are you guys holding up in in Kansas City these days?
Adam Hamilton 5:34
You know, we're doing okay. We're doing pretty well as a congregation, you know. Things are going great. But at the same time--and by great I mean, you know, it's a great time to be in ministry with people who are looking for hope and looking for encouragement. We're struggling in terms of, you know, we had a plan to really launch into getting everybody back in the fall. And we knew we wouldn't get everybody back. We'd get a number of people back in person, but then the Delta variant shows up and we're, you know, we've had several deaths, multiple deaths in the last couple of weeks. Not people who were necessarily active. Some of them were active, some of them were not, most of them were family members of others. But, you know, it's led us to slow down just a little bit and to really re-emphasize wear your masks for those who hadn't been vaccinated. We had a huge emphasis on vaccination. For those who hadn't been, you know, to say, "Hey, really, we're gonna strongly encourage you to do this." But again, I think in times of crisis, and in times where the world is in a period of upheaval, the church is often its best. And we have a chance to be the incarnation of Christ in the world. And I think we've been trying to do that.
Chris McAlilly 6:46
Well, we, you know, the last time we we spoke with you on the podcast, we were talking about that ongoing, specifically, yeah, today, we want to kind of come back to a conversation that you've really been on, kind of the epicenter of within our particular denomination, but it expands way beyond just one tribe or one church, to how the church particularly in North America, attempts to evangelize and to be in ministry with folks in our culture, I wonder if you would just, maybe, you know, talk a little bit as we begin this conversation on human sexuality, about how you understand the cultural moment that that we're in and the response that the church needs to have right now.
Adam Hamilton 7:34
I think we're kind of confused as a culture right now. Partly, partly, we have conversations happening when it comes to gay and lesbian people, transgender people, and the church is, you know, the church is in this huge debate, not just United Methodist, but across denominations as to how will we look at how we look at people who are gay and lesbian. How do we look at God's children who are gay and lesbian? How do we think about human sexuality? And so there's that central conversation that started with gay and lesbian people, then it moved to transgender, which is a little more confusing for people. And then we have a whole array of sexualities and orientations and gender questions that most of us weren't thinking about a few years ago.
Adam Hamilton 8:25
They're not all the same conversation. And I think it leaves us scratching our heads. It leaves us a bit confused. When it comes to gay and lesbian people, I think what's interesting is I have conversations with pastors of more conservative churches. And, you know, some of them say things like, "Adam, thank you for the questions you're raising. thank you for the things you're saying, because I can't say that in my church, or I would lose my ordination, or I would lose my job, but I feel the same things that you're saying. And, you know, I care about people. And I know this is not as simple as 'God said it. I believe it. That settles it.'"
Adam Hamilton 9:01
And so, I was talking with a group of, I won't name the denomination, but a more conservative denomination, recently some of their some in their denomination and they're like, you know, "We're just 10 years behind you as Methodists with the conversations. We're having the conversations. We're gonna be where you are in 10 years." And, you know, "We're preparing ourselves for that and trying to figure out what does this look like." And you know, the Episcopalians were 10 or 15 years before the United Methodists were. So there's that--the fact that it is a conversation in every church at some level. And then there are the other conversations about how do we understand transgender and then what do we think of, you know, how we define gender. [CLEARS THROAT] Excuse me. And then we're thinking about things like polyamory and then, so it really, there are pieces of it where I feel like we're afraid... You know, we're, well, I'm going to stop there.
Eddie Rester 10:02
I know a lot of times--we're gonna get into the mission of the church and your position and how you have moved towards that over the years--but I know a lot of times when you're talking about the cultural moment, you talk about the data that's coming from Barna or the Pew Research Group or Gallup, when you introduce the conversation or as you're having the conversation. Why is that important to you? Why is that helpful for you?
Adam Hamilton 10:31
Sure. I think, first of all, it's good to know, where are the people that you're trying to reach, and where are the people in your pews. And we don't do ethics in the church based on polls. So our ethics are based on theological reasoning based upon what we find in the biblical text. And so, you know, it's not like, well, let's take a poll and vote on how many people like this particular ethical perspective or that one. But it is important to know, the people that you're trying to reach, this is how they think. This is how they're seeing the world.
Adam Hamilton 11:05
And there are times where, you know, people say, "Well, as you become more inclusive, you're just capitulating to the culture." Well, sometimes the culture leads the church. And we saw that in Civil Rights, where while there were church people who were involved in the on the forefront of civil rights, there were a whole lot of other people who weren't necessarily committed church people. But who were people who said, "This is not right. Racism is not right. And we've got to do something about it." And I find, oftentimes, it's younger generations who are also looking at what's happening in the world, and seeing injustice and seeing unfairness to their friends or their family members, and saying this cannot be consistent with Jesus and what he taught us about loving our neighbor, and how we're meant to live our lives. And so there are times where people who are outside the church actually have a fresh perspective on what's happening.
Adam Hamilton 12:00
And so I think it's important for us to know, you know, what are the people in the pews saying, what are the people in the country saying, you know, where are their perspectives on things? And there we find a huge shift when it comes to same gender marriage over the years. We all know this, but, you know, a majority of Americans today favor the right for gay and lesbian people to be married. Obviously, that right has been extended, thanks to the ruling of the Supreme Court. So how people look at this--and that's only going to continue. I don't see that going backwards. And I think what that also means is that when you're doing evangelism... So this is not about evangelism. This is about what's right and wrong, and what's ethical or not ethical and what God's love looks like.
Adam Hamilton 12:41
But when we are thinking about being the church for our culture and our community, the church ideally would be leading the way, not following, in asking, "What does love look like?" And I think the church, to the degree that we're talking about love and justice, you know, which is one way of framing the conversation and the world around us, looks and says, "Wait, I thought y'all were supposed to stand for this stuff? And instead, your position is actually harming people who I care about." I think it'll be harder and harder for people to do evangelism, for people to reach out to their community to be salt and light, when it doesn't look like the light is very bright in the church.
Adam Hamilton 12:46
And this is just one area. And again, it depends on if you're in communities where largely people hold much more conservative and traditional views, you might be in sync with your community and doing evangelism might, you know, they might prefer to come to a church that holds their current values. But yeah, so that's where I think we're at and why the numbers I think matter, just helping understand where are people. It's not how we do ethics. So it's based on on a poll.
Chris McAlilly 13:56
I see. You know, one of the things I think that you've drawn out over time when looking at this data is, you've said some pretty strong things about this in terms of young people. I mean, I think, I can't remember which book it was where you reference, I think something like a 2007 Barna study, where 91% of young people view Christianity as anti-homosexual. And you mentioned the ways in which you feel like that's going to lead young adults away from the church. One place, and again, I can't remember where I drew this quote, but this this is a quotation from your writing over a decade ago, "Churches that are unwilling to see this issue with greater compassion and love will lose an entire generation of young people whose views on homosexuality look very different from that of their parents." I wonder if you just expand upon that. I mean, that's a strong, that's a strong statement, but one you're clearly quite committed to and believe very strongly. Could you just expand upon it?
Adam Hamilton 14:55
Sure. And I think that was in "Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White," a book that I wrote in 2008, I think, something like that. So, we have seen this to be the case. We see younger generations not as engaged in church. You know, we're all concerned about that. And I don't think it's just about same gender marriage and homosexuality. It's about a whole host of other things, including a postmodern way of thinking about the world. But what I find is that for many young people, the issue is settled already. They have--and even if they're people who grew up in the church, maybe they have some value of the Bible and have some faith--they look at this and say, "Okay, whatever the Bible says, it can't mean how it's often interpreted, what it's often interpreted to say, because I know this person, and I know their heart, and I know who they are. And I can't imagine God rejecting my friend or wishing that that people would put them to death," which is, you know, when we go to the holiness code and Leviticus.
Adam Hamilton 16:01
And so I think we have a generation of young people who are like, "If that's what the church stands for..." and unfortunately, that's what it seems like the church stands for today, because that is the conversation that that just soaks up all the oxygen in the room, major debates in congregations, positions being put out, "we're going to tell you who we will marry and who we won't marry," and "this is what we believe about marriage." And so now, something that never showed up in any Creeds has become an essential of the faith for many churches. And that is that we have to be able to say that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. For a lot of young people, that simply stands outside of their way of thinking about people and about Christ and about the church. And I think an increasing number of them are going to say, "That is not the church I want to be a part of."
Adam Hamilton 16:56
And what we find at Resurrection is, you know, we have been clear that our welcome is wide for everyone. And almost everywhere I go, I have, you know, I'll be in a restaurant, I'll be, you know, wherever I'm at, somebody will come up to me and say, "I want you to know how grateful I am for the stance you've taken, for the way that you speak up, because my daughter, my son, my friend, my partner..." And so it doesn't necessarily mean that people are going to come to church if you're more inclusive. It does mean, I think, that if you're vocally saying, holding to a position that says that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, there will be an increasing number of people who will just say, 'Yeah, that's not a church that I'm interested in."
Eddie Rester 17:41
So help us understand a little bit about your position on the inclusion of LGBTQ+ community. A lot of people would say, "well, Adam, that's not scriptural. That's not, that doesn't line up with church history." So just kind of sketch a little bit for us about your position, you know, what you believe in. Why is it that you believe that? What guides you in that belief?
Adam Hamilton 18:11
Yep. Well, so scripture, let's start with scripture. And I wrote a book several years ago called "Making Sense of the Bible" as a way of just helping prime the pump for people to have conversations about this. And it wasn't, you know, there's only one chapter on homosexuality. The rest of the chapters are just about, you know, what is the Bible? How did it come to us? What what do we mean when we say inspired? Why many of us do not look at the Bible is inerrant and infallible, that those are terms that have been imposed on the Bible by later generations. And you know, how we value and and love scripture, and at the same time, ask questions of it.
Adam Hamilton 18:46
Right now, I'm preaching--So I'm going to talk a little bit about scripture, then come back to your question--Right now, I'm preaching through the book of Romans, which is such an awesome book and a book that many pastors don't want to preach through. We'll preach from our favorite texts from it, but we don't preach, you know, all the way through it. And I've asked--and in 31 years, the first time I preached all the way through it, although I preached from it many times--and I asked our entire congregation to read it. So we're reading it together, verse by verse, every day. We're memorizing a verse a week from the book of Romans. And when you get in there, part of what you find is it's complex. And part of what you see is, you know, Paul's dictating the book to Tertius, who's writing it down. And these are complex theological arguments Paul's making, and you wonder what's lost in the translation?
Adam Hamilton 19:30
You wonder, you know, there are moments where you just want to say, "Wait, Paul, do you really mean that?" An example would be that our friends, some of your listeners may be people who hold to the doctrine of predestination or even double predestination or determinism or hyper-Calvinism, it gos by number of names and they base that on the book of Romans in part, in key verses in there. And, you know, it's interesting John Wesley read that, and I think it was Bishop Jones who told me this, we were talking about this one time and he said, "You know, Wesley's way of looking at those passages that deal with predestination is, you know, 'well, whatever they mean, they can't mean that.'"
Adam Hamilton 20:07
And so it wasn't that he had necessarily a great way of unpacking all of those. I mean, he did, he talked about all of them. But it was like, but we know that because of a broader scriptural principle, they cannot mean that God has predestined people to go to hell before they were even born. That cannot be right. And this is a, you know, a key part of Wesleyanism is this Armenian spirit of you know freewill. And people are, you know, by the grace of God are given the chance to make a choice and not pre-determined to be tortured for all eternity in hell. Well, but you know, the people who hold that view are rooted and grounded in Scripture. And so we look at a broader scriptural principle, I think, when it comes to the Bible.
Adam Hamilton 20:45
Of course, there are lots of things we could talk about, but over 700 times the word "slavery" is used in scripture. It's typically translated as "servant" in the English translations, because it's softened a bit.
Eddie Rester 20:57
Softer.
Adam Hamilton 20:57
But over 700 times, it was just a part of, you know, the world in which people lived. And so even though throughout history, this was an acceptable practice, there came a point where people said, "Wait a minute, even though that's accepted in the Bible, and people can beat their slaves with rods, and as long as they didn't die within, you know, two days, it was okay, because the site was our property. We see a bigger principle at play here. And that bigger principle has to do with love and justice, and mercy and compassion." And so when I think about this, you know, my own changing on, changed views... I mean, I came to faith in a little Pentecostal church. We had a man who was gay, who lived across the street. He played an organ. You could hear him playing his organ, and we would all we'd all tease, the kids and youth group, you know, we would go out and we would--his name was Merle--and we called him "Merle the Squirrel." And we teased about how he played his organ. And I mean, just terrible things.
Adam Hamilton 21:49
We sat in the parking lot, as we were so proud of ourselves as being deeply committed followers of Jesus, while we were tearing somebody down. And as a pastor, you know, for 31 years, you deal with people, and you listen to their stories. You care about them. And it affects your way of understanding and reading the text when you're actually talking about real people that you love and care about. And you hear their stories. And so, for me, when I look at scripture, I'm gonna ask, so what did Jesus say was the most important commandments and that he said summarized everything else? And it had to do with loving God and loving your neighbor. Agape is selfless love. And, you know, John tells us that God is love.
Adam Hamilton 22:29
And then we find one of the defining characteristics, attributes of God, and certainly holiness is one of those. But compassion, mercy, love, grace, all of these things. And the question I asked, you know, along the way, because I think I felt a great compassion for gay and lesbian people when we started the church. I remember, early on, I had a young man who moved to Kansas City from Alabama, because he was afraid of living in his own town, because he was gay, a young African American guy, and he came to me, he said, "I just want to know, is this a safe place for me to come? You don't have to agree with the fact that I'm gay, but I just want to know, like, will I be hurt here?"
Adam Hamilton 23:11
And at the time, my view was probably, well, definitely, was more of a traditionalist view. And I'm like, "No, you won't be hurt here. I want you to know I love you. And God loves you. And I'm so grateful that you're here and you want to be part of this congregation." And over and over again, you know, in a church, the size of mine, I've had hundreds of conversations with gay and lesbian people and parents of gay and lesbian kids. And I've got a dozen people in our congregation whose children took their own lives. Not while they were a part of Resurrection. They ended up here because this had happened when they were part of another congregation, or maybe not a part of a church at all. But, you know, kids who are gay and lesbian, took their own lives and were picked on and teased. Like, I don't think that God wants people to be hurt, in the name of their religion, in the name of Christ. And I think that's happened an awful lot.
Adam Hamilton 23:58
And so anyway, all of those things together have led me to say let's focus on what we know and what's crystal clear. And of course, we should be asking, "so what is God's will for our sexuality?" And I think even that has to do with agape. So I'll pause there. I'm sorry, I'm doing too much talking.
Chris McAlilly 24:15
No, sir. It's all good.
Eddie Rester 24:16
Why don't you push a little bit more with where you just landed, about, you know, what do we need to understand, what does God desire for our sexuality? Because I think that's part of the question that folks, whether they're on the left side of the ledger, or the right side of ledger, conservative, progressive or kind of in the middle and muddled right now, I think that's part of the conversation as well. What is godly or what does God desire from human sexuality?
Adam Hamilton 24:47
I think this is a really important question, Eddie, and it's one that I have been pushing people, especially on the progressive side. I think that on the conservative side, it's easy to draw boundaries and lines and I think sometimes those lines are drawn too narrowly. Sometimes on the progressive side, there are no lines, or they're so broad that that anything can fit within them. And I do think when it comes to this, you know, part of what we have to recognize is scripture is a mixed bag itself. So I had a conversation with a leading traditionalist several years ago, a guy I really love an older gentleman in the United Methodist Church, and he said, "Well, Adam, if we're accepting same sex marriage now then is it going to be polyamory in the future? And polygamy?" And I'm like, "Well, at least on polygamy, you've got a biblical basis for it." And I don't agree with polygamy, I don't think polyamory captures the highest and best ideals. But I think part of what we've got to be able to do, you know, the ethic of love is what needs to guide us. So the ethic of love goes a long way in helping us when it comes to children being sexually assaulted. Well, the ethic of love says, that's just not, that's not okay. That is harming another human being, whether you realize it or not, you're harming another human being. That is inconsistent with the ethic of love.
Adam Hamilton 26:09
I think a case could be made that polyamory very seldom works as a way of expressing selfless love. And that somebody ends up being secondary and having a secondary status. And it's very hard to maintain justice and love in that. I don't think what we can do is point to a verse in the Bible and say, "See there? That's why this is going to be wrong," but instead to argue, ethically from the perspective of what does agape, the central Christian ethic, look like? And what does justice look like in these relationships? So when it comes to... You know, and I think everybody would agree, I mean, I don't know anybody who wouldn't agree who was a Christian, that sexually abusing children in any way would be acceptable. We're all going to say that's really wrong. And we're going to say that's wrong, because it's harming people and it's inconsistent with agape. I think we can make the same case on on other types of sexual expression.
Adam Hamilton 27:01
And then I think we have to ask, when we think about sex, are there ways in which we devalue or demean or profane something that was meant to be sacred and beautiful? And I think there are ways that we do that. I also think there's practices that might be, two people might consent to them, but paint a picture or fosters a sense of injustice or a failure to practice agape. And I think that's true when it comes to some forms of bondage and these kind of things, where they are giving expression to things that if we brought them out in the open, we would say, it's not appropriate for one human being to be in bondage to another human being. And so that might be play for you. But it may be the kind of play where we're playing with something that is an unethical thing to be playing with, or it's something we don't take light of. So I think there's ways for us to argue ethically from our scriptures. But I don't think it's enough to point to a scripture and verse. I think we have to ask, and I asked this when it came to Romans 1.26 as we kicked off the Roman series, because I knew all of our members are going to be reading this, where Paul speaks about, you know, people giving up their, you know, their ordinary. I'm missing the language right now. I have to look it up. But we're trading...
Eddie Rester 28:29
Ordinary passions, I think.
Adam Hamilton 28:30
Yeah, we're gonna have passion, but it wasn't ordinary. It was... I'll pull it up here. But when Paul's speaking about this in Romans 1.26, I said, You know, I read this, and for the longest time I read it, and I just took it literally, that God was speaking, that Romans was speaking, you know, Paul was giving accurately how God looked at gay and lesbian people. And then I began to, and then the more I read it, and the more I got to know people, I thought, the people that I know who are gay and lesbian in my church don't look like those who are having--unnatural is the term I was looking for--but exchanging natural sexual relations for unnatural, the people that burned with lust for each other. I wasn't seeing people were burning with lust for each other. I wasn't seeing people who were seeking to degrade their own bodies or that were worshipping and serving the creation instead of the Creator. I mean, all this is in the context of idol worship.
Adam Hamilton 29:19
And I said, so as a pastor, I'll just tell you, you know, I just shared with my congregation, I had this text, and I'd always read it one way, then I knew people who are gay and lesbian, they didn't look like this. And so then I had to ask the question, what was Paul writing about? What was happening in the first century that he was addressing? And is that the same thing as we're talking about today? And what did Paul know or not know about what we think of as homosexuality today? And then that took me back to you know, as many people have done, you look in here, and this is all about idolatry. And so as you're looking at idolatry--and he's using this as an illustration, it's not even teaching doctrine, although you could argue it's all teaching doctrine--but he's giving an illustration as to the fundamental problem with all of us as human beings, and as we're broken and sin, as a problem.
Adam Hamilton 30:06
And so I said, you know, when I started looking into that we start looking at that he's describing idolatry and worship in the temples. You know, I've been to Corinth where there were 1,000 temple prostitutes, according to some, 1,000 temple prostitutes on the Acropolis in Corinth, you know, so this was, he's writing Romans from Corinth. In Rome, the practices, there were certain places where there were temple prostitutes who were male and female. And, you know, this goes all the way back, you go back to scripture, and you find in the 900s BC, you know, that there were temple prostitutes in Jerusalem, male temple prostitutes in Jerusalem.
Adam Hamilton 30:41
And so, this is combining of spirituality and sexuality and forms of sexuality that weren't typically allowed or practiced. I mean, all of this points to maybe something different than what we're talking about today. And so I think when we're reading scripture, that's part of what we're asking is what did people know? Leviticus, if it was written in the late Bronze Age, what did people know and not know? What was happening that the writer Leviticus was responding to? And I take that all the way through to Paul in New Testament. And, again, I think the way we define everything else is through the ethic of love. And so...
Chris McAlilly 31:20
yeah, I don't... No, sorry to interrupt. I think, you know, if you want a deeper dive, I mean, we're not gonna be able to do every passage today and kind of do... You know, this isn't New Testament, Old Testament 101. But if you want a deeper sense of how Adam thinks about these things, you can kind of go back to some of the writing. I was going back and trying to figure out where you've publicly written kind of on these questions. And am I right in saying that 2001, it "Continuing the Controversies," was that the first time that you kind of addressed?
Adam Hamilton 31:56
"Confronting the Controversies" was my first book, and that was, it came out in 2001. And it's since been revised, because I changed that chapter a bit, actually, as my own thinking was changing over time. In 2001, I would have said, I was a traditionalist, but with a deep heart of compassion for gay and lesbian people. And I think that's true, where most thoughtful Christians who are more conservative are is I think they feel the tension between, "I love the Bible, and I'm a person of this book, and this matters to me. And at the same time, there are these people, and I love them, and I care about them." And so, you know, I talk to people all the time who are like, "Yeah, you know, I'm more conservative on this, but, you know, like, I have these good friends. I go on vacation with them every year, and they're gay."
Adam Hamilton 32:38
And so you have this, and, you know, even one pastor I know of a large church who's more conservative on this who has a child who's gay. I mean, thoughtful Christians who are more conservative are going to say, "Look, I feel it, you know. I, I care deeply about people who are gay and lesbian. I want them in the church, and I love them. And I don't think this is God's will for their lives. But I'm not going to beat up on them or pick on them." And that was my position in 2001, is we have to see the humanity of people. And we're called to love more than anything else. And at the same time, our sacred text says--and this is how I would have interpreted at that time, and I think it's a pretty plain reading of the text--that same gender relationships are inconsistent with God's will, are incompatible with Christian teaching, or at least incompatible with the scripture as we have understood it. And so that's where I was in 2001.
Adam Hamilton 33:27
And over time, you know, I just found just the more people I knew, the more stories that I knew, and then the more I knew about the Bible... So, you know, I graduated from seminary and had a pretty good grounding in Perkins School of Theology for studying scripture, but you preach every week, and you spend, you know, I've spent, I'm gonna say conservatively 20,000 hours studying the Bible. And the more you study it, the more you find there are challenging passages, and not just about this issue. For me, one of the bigger issues was violence in the Bible. And so you have to go, "Okay, how do I make sense of these things that seem inconsistent with what Jesus has said about loving your enemy or about the character of God is merciful and compassionate?" And as you do that, you find yourself saying, "okay, I have to recognize the Bible wasn't dictated by God."
Adam Hamilton 34:18
There are some Christians who think that, but that's not generally how thoughtful Christians, even conservative and evangelical Christians, think about it. We recognize human beings wrote this book, and they wrote in a particular time and place and the Spirit prompted them. The Spirit was at work in them and worked through them. And the Spirit works through them today when we read these words, but they were also people. And they lived in a particular time and place and so we're not expecting the author of Genesis in chapters one, two, and three, to understand modern cosmology when it comes to the universe. And we're going to give a pass there. We're gonna say, this is more, you know, it's poetic and it does capture how people understood creation at the time, and it's making the main point, not how but the fact that, you know, the who created what's possible. That's true in a lot of other areas, and we've already done that with a lot of things where we've said, Yeah, you know, Paul says this about women being silent in the church, and he doesn't let a woman teach a man. But, you know, that was the culture and time. And so we see that differently today. There are many who struggle to do that when it comes to the six verses, the six passages in the Bible that refers specifically to same gender relationships.
Chris McAlilly 35:25
Yeah, I think I mean, the trajectory of your public writing on these questions tends to, in the background there I see two things that you're doing. One is to say, you know, the conversation typically is about Biblical authority, and what I want to do is have a conversation about about Biblical interpretation,
Adam Hamilton 35:44
Right.
Chris McAlilly 35:44
on the one hand. And then the other thing I see you doing kind of through the trajectory is to say, what the conversation is about now, are we going to, as a church, bless monogamous, lifelong, loving, covenantal, same sex relationships. And when I look at scripture, what I'm seeing that's being condemned tends to be something other than that. Am I reading you correctly? Would that be kind of an accurate and charitable reading of what you're trying to do?
Adam Hamilton 36:18
Now, Chris, I think that's exactly right. I think, over time, that you're right, that has been the trajectory. And in a number of my books I've written about this also, on my blog posts, people could go and read it at core.org or excuse me, not core.org, adamhamilton.com, you can go to my blog posts and just research LGBTQ or homosexuality or same gender marriage, and there's probably 10 essays that will come up there. But you know, in each of the books, in a number of the books, probably five of my books, there has been an attempt to address that. "When Christians Get it Wrong" is another one. Again, the second version of "Confronting the Controversies."
Adam Hamilton 36:57
"Making Sense of the Bible" was probably the most comprehensive in terms of how you get to the point you can have that conversation. But I do think when we look at, you know, when I look, so we've got a pretty good sized congregation and if 5% of the pop, let's just say 3% of the population are gay and lesbian, then I have, you know, out of, you know, 25,000 members or whatever we have, I've got 750 gay and lesbian people in our congregation. But when I asked the church one time, I said, "how many of you have family members who are gay and lesbian?" And there's, like, half of them. It might be a child or a cousin, her niece or nephew. "How many of you have friends?" And then, more go up. By the time I was done, like, almost everybody had somebody they cared about who was gay or lesbian.
Adam Hamilton 37:43
And part of what we're recognizing is, like in our church, we've got gay and lesbian couples who have been together for 30 years or more, raise children together as a family, who are faithful. They're just faithful in their walk with Christ, in what they're striving to do, how they live. And their marriages will, at times, look far healthier than many of the heterosexual couples that I have known. And so I'm not comparing them. I'm not saying it's better or worse. I'm just saying, I've seen pictures of healthy, loving Christian couples who have been married in a monogamous relationship, raising families, and who are in a same gender relationship. And so I do think part of the question is, what does the church do with that? Are we gonna tell them to get divorced after they've been, because we're reading scripture a particular way?
Adam Hamilton 38:36
Are we going to recognize that there are 3 to 5% of the population who are wired differently, or their life experience had shaped their psyche and their orientation? And are we going to call them to live lives of holiness that looks like loving selflessly and sacrificially in sickness and in health, to love and cherish until we were parted by death? And I think there's, at least in my thinking, that is where the church can and should be.
Eddie Rester 39:10
I know that you have received a fair amount of criticism through the years, and that's probably putting it pretty, pretty lightly. I was actually at the 2019 General Conference in St. Louis. And I know that just even on the stage, as you and others spoke, there were a lot of, you know, it's just a hard conversation to have, particularly when you take a stand as you have. How have you dealt with that criticism? How have you hoped to respond to that criticism over the course of the years?
Adam Hamilton 39:47
Yeah. Well, so I remember in 1990.. No, I'm sorry, 2004. I preached a sermon that was really unsettling for a lot of people here at Resurrection in which I just came out and said, You know, I thought I knew where I stood on this. And my mind has changed. And my thinking has changed. And that's not crystal clear to me. But what is crystal clear is that the driving ethic of the Christian faith is love, and we're going to love and welcome people here, gay or straight. And, you know, if you read the manuscript, it's in my book, "Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White," you wouldn't think it was that dramatic today, but we lost, like, 800 families, or not 800 families, but 800 people in the year after that, from the church who left, and that was terribly painful.
Adam Hamilton 40:36
You know, at that point I was in my... How old was I? I was in my 30s. And, you know, I realized, okay, if I actually preach this, the Church of the Resurrection will never grow to the size I thought it was gonna grow to. It was never about numbers. But you know, you've done projections, and I thought, we were seeing so many people come into the church, and, you know, we're in a pretty conservative community and I realized, okay, that won't ever happen. And so there was a grief in that. There was more of a grief of just seeing people who would leave the church, who you'd baptized them, brought them into faith. And, you know, "I don't trust you to teach my children the Bible anymore." I'm like, wow, okay.
Adam Hamilton 41:14
And I went through a period of depression, probably six or eight months, where I was just so stinking depressed thinking, "have I...?" And I would pray every day. I would go take these prayer walks, you know, "God, have I disappointed you? Have I failed you? Did I missed the mark? I'm so sorry if I did." I mean, "my driving aim is to speak, you know, is to honor you in what I do." And it took about eight months to get past that. That was, again, back in my 30s. And, you know, we ended up having 800 people leave, and there were 1,000 people who joined, who said, "This is the kind of church I was looking for. This is a church that takes the Bible seriously and calls people to follow Christ and is evangelical in its approach and calling people to serious faith, AND recognizes that scripture is complex, and that people come before rules and that's gonna welcome my child."
Adam Hamilton 42:08
So anyway, so I would say that was then. Today, you know, there are parts of it that can be difficult sometimes, but I'm 57. And I'm, like, you know, what I... I feel like I have a place to. I feel compelled that I do want to speak up and need to speak up and I can afford to speak up. I'm probably not going to be terminated from the Church of the Resurrection, having been here 31 years. If I was, that would be okay, too.
Adam Hamilton 42:39
I've said, you know, if, for some reason, the church felt like I wasn't the right pastor because of this, I even tell my congregation that. We did. Some of our members were saying, you know, "Pastor, you don't realize the silent majority is not with you on this." Like, okay. So we had an all church gathering, and we had, I think we had, I could be wrong, there was 1400 people show up, and other people were online. And I walked through the categories we've talked about in the Methodist Church of, you know, traditional compatibles, progressive compatibles, traditional, incompatibles, progressive, incompatibles. So I kind of walk through those. And I said, you know, "some have said that maybe I don't understand where y'all are at." And I said, "so I want to give you a chance to identify where are you?" And we used a Menti poll, just people use their phones, and we did it.
Adam Hamilton 43:29
And I was like, I'm standing there thinking, depending on what--and this was just like three years ago--depending on what--and it was right after 2019 General Conference--I thought, depending on what they say, I might have to leave. I mean, I didn't tell them this, but I'm like, "if they if they said that they were really traditional incompatibles, or even if the majority of them were traditional compatibles, I, I just don't think... I may not be the right fit anymore for this congregation." Which is hard when you started it.
Eddie Rester 44:01
Yeah.
Adam Hamilton 44:02
You've been there for almost 30 years at that time. And you know, the numbers were, the vast majority of our people were progressive compatibles on this issue. And then there was a chunk that were traditional compatibles. So what they were saying was 97% of them said, "we can be in a church with people who disagree. And this is where I stand, but I understand why somebody stands in another place." And the vast majority of those were people who said, "We want to welcome everybody and we believe it's okay for them to be married." So I was really relieved when I saw that, but yes, there have been... I have lost friends. There's been churches that won't read my books anymore. You know, the pastors have said, "You can't use Adam Hamilton books in your Sunday School class anymore."
Adam Hamilton 44:42
And you know, I'm disappointed in that but I feel like okay, if the pastor of the largest church the denomination can't speak up, then who can? And if the church let me go, I would write books and travel and speak and that'd be okay, but doesn't look like they want to do that right now, so I'm kind of glad .I kind of like my job.
Eddie Rester 45:04
As we move towards the end of our time, what's at stake here? What's at stake in this conversation between the church and LGBTQ community? In your mind, your heart, what is the thing that we need to be paying attention to?
Adam Hamilton 45:20
That's a really great question. And I think, and I think it I would maybe say it in what's at stake in the conversation that church is having with itself. And I believe, what's at stake... I don't want to state this too harshly, because, you know, I know so many of the traditional incompatibles who are such great pastors and leaders, and they're doing great work in their churches. They're working for justice and kindness and compassion, and they have a particular way of reading this text, and they're trying to be biblically faithful and faithful to Christ. And I really value that because I'm trying to do the same thing. But I think at stake for the church is if we continue to have a Book of Discipline, and I've got mine sitting right here in front of me, if we continue to have a Book of Discipline that says the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, and then we have penalties that are set up for people who are trying to do ministry with gay and lesbian people who read the text more broadly and more inclusively, I think our soul's at stake in that.
Adam Hamilton 46:24
As a as a church or as the church, as the Body of Christ in United States, I think 20 years from now things will be even more... I think it'll be even clearer that we have got, that reading the text in a more inclusive way in the light of justice, love, and mercy and welcoming families who are not traditional families, that's got to be where we're going. And I think there are places where they won't. There'll be parts of the church that won't. But I don't... So I think about that, in the United Methodist Church, and I know you have a broader reader or listenership than this, but there's a part of the church that's going to be breaking away to form a new denomination, and I wish them well. And again, I know and love many of the people who are there. And so I want to bless them as they go.
Adam Hamilton 47:18
I think it would be hard. I wouldn't want to be trying to lead that movement. I think it works okay, now. But if you look at seminary students, for instance, and you look to see where are your pastors coming from. I met with young clergy and seminary students at a number of our seminaries over the last four or five years. I met with young clergy in 40 different annual conferences over the last 10 years. And I had a hard time finding people who were traditional incompatibilists. Almost all of them said, "I understand," you know, "even if I'm more conservative, I understand why somebody comes out in another place. And they could be right." And so I'm thinking if you're looking for a young clergy, where are they going to come from?
Adam Hamilton 47:58
I think if you're looking at the future of the church and evangelism in communities, that's going to be harder over time, because I think our world will have settled the issue that we're gonna welcome and embrace different kinds of families and gay and lesbian people. And so I think this conversation is about the future of the church. And I don't think it's necessary for everyone in the church to be in the same place. That won't happen. At Church of the Resurrection, we're not all in the same place. And so we've got to figure out how do we make room for people who have differing views but can say, "We can agree to disagree, and we're all faithful Christians, and we're reading the Bible in slightly different ways. And we're going to love people." But I think if you're going to say, "I'm sorry, but there's only one way to read the Bible, and it's my way to read the Bible. And that way says that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching," I think it's a much harder row to hoe going forward in the future.
Adam Hamilton 49:00
And it's, again, not about to go back to where we started. It's not about what does the survey say that people are saying? It really for me is about what does the heart of God say about gay and lesbian people, and what the church's ministry should look like with them? And when I think about Jesus, I think there's a good case that can be made that he would understand why, what makes somebody gay or lesbian and what makes them straight, and that he would want people to be... He would recognize the Genesis says it's not good for someone to be alone, and that there would be provision for people to be married, and in healthy, beautiful relationships, who are gay and lesbian in the church.
Adam Hamilton 49:42
But I also want to say, I had a conversation with a United Methodist pastor this last week, and he said, "I just don't know if the United Methodist Church is there going to be a room for evangelicals like me in the future United Methodist Church." I said, "Well, first of all, when it comes to evangelicals, there better be," because now Methodism is the inheritor of the 18th century evangelical revival, and we all ought to be evangelical. But when it comes to conservative or traditionalist on same gender marriage, I would fight for our church to be a church that still makes room for pastors to have their own understanding of how they read the scriptures and their own conscience, provided they're welcoming everybody.
Adam Hamilton 50:19
So I don't want to be a part of a church that's telling traditional compatibles there's no place for you here. There is a place for you here. You are valued and loved. Provided that we're able to say, "and I understand could be wrong, and you might be right. But this is how I see the scripture as at this point." And for you guys, I don't know where you're at, but in my life, I didn't always believe what I believe today. And that took a long time and a lot of theological thinking about scripture, and pastoral ministry with people that led my views to change. And so I want to make room for people who may not be maybe where I was 25 years ago, or else if we'd had, you know, or else I might not have been a United Methodist 25 years ago, if there wasn't room for people like me then.
Chris McAlilly 51:02
What about for folks who've given up on the church kind of all together? What's a word for maybe someone who is kind of listening in to a conversation about the church and the soul of the church and all the rest, but they've kind of, you know, are suspicious that the whole conversation, may just be on the outside looking in? What would be your word for them today?
Adam Hamilton 51:25
Yeah, well, I would say a couple things. First of all, I think we were made for community. And when it comes to religion, if you have faith, if you believe in God, and you want to follow Jesus, or you're at least spiritually curious, there are a lot of great churches out there where you can do that. And there are a lot of churches, an increasing number of churches out there, who are saying, "our views are changing on how we look at LGBTQ persons. And we want to welcome everybody, and we're learning and growing." And there are other churches who have already said, "You know what, we are a place where everyone is valued and loved, including God's children who are gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer." And so I would just say, there's a lot of amazing choices out there.
Adam Hamilton 52:12
There's something important about being in community with people as you're doing faith together. We need the church, and the church was Jesus' idea. He had this idea of building the church and a community of people, of his people. And so I think about Resurrection, all of the ways our people are seeking to serve God and the community together. And I'm proud of it, and I'm excited about it, and I know that we're doing more together than any of us would be doing alone. That includes caring for each other in the midst.
Adam Hamilton 52:41
Just a few minutes ago, you know, with praying for and caring for somebody who's about to lose her dad, or, you know, thinking about people who are going through grief support or depression or, you know, all those kind of things that we do together in community. I think about the ways that we serve low-income people in Kansas City and our church's role in caring for schoolchildren, and starting preschools and caring for immigrants and, you know, ministry in the prisons, and all these things we do together. And then I think what happens when you gather for worship, and you sing, and you pray, and somewhere you hear a message that's from scripture, and it touches your heart. I find that being in community, being in worship, reading scripture, practicing the spiritual disciplines together with other people, helps me become more the person God wants me to be, to grow in my faith. And I find greater, I'm a better husband, a better father, a better employee, a better employer, a better human being, when I'm in community, doing life together. And that's what the church is all about.
Adam Hamilton 53:42
So I just say, don't give up on the church. It's easy to understand. And you know, you started quoting, mentioning the unchristian book that Barna put out some years ago, David kinnaman. And it's easy to look and say, Well, you know, churches are filled with hypocritical people, and they're anti-gay, and you know, all they want is your money and all that, and you go to church, and it almost seems like that is the way it is. But really, when you look a little deeper, you find that isn't really the way it is. Most people that come to church are people who are yearning to become what God wants them to be. Every week, I hope that I send people out with a deep desire and inspired to be more the person God wanted them to be when they left than when they came in.
Adam Hamilton 54:19
And I would say this is also a time where, because of COVID, there are a lot of churches that are online. And when you're on, you can check out church and almost, sort of be a part of the community before you ever step foot in the door. If you have anybody listening and they're looking for church, you guys might tell them where you're at. And you know, we're at Church of the Resurrection c-o-r dot o-r-g [cor.org], and our services are online every weekend and we have people from across the country and around the world who listen in and find their lives changed by worship and growing and connecting with Christ.
Eddie Rester 54:51
And ours is ouumc.org if you want to check us out. Adam, I want to thank you for your time. You're always generous with your time, and I want to share, I want to encourage you, as you go, I was talking with a friend this morning about, you know, we were doing this podcast today. And this is someone who sees this issue very differently than you. And he told me, he said, "You know, I see it differently, but I'm always thankful for his generosity of spirit." Always thankful for the ways that you keep the door open to conversations and just as you've done several times throughout the podcast, just how can we be the church, even if we differ. So I just thank you for that perspective, and your time with us today.
Adam Hamilton 55:39
Well, I appreciate you guys and I appreciate the thoughtful conversations that you that you foster, and I'm really honored that you've invited me to be on your program today. Thank you.
Eddie Rester 55:48
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 55:51
If you like what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 56:02
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info @theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO}