Side B Resources

This page hosts my resource collection for LGBTQ Christian topics.

Here are the books I recommend:

• Wesley Hill, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality, Updated and Expanded edition, 2016. The updated and expanded edition has small changes in the main text, but more importantly a new follow-up epilogue titled “Washed and Still Waiting” that is a must-read.
• Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian, 2015.
• Preston Sprinkle, People to be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just as Issue, 2015.
• William Loader, Sexuality in the New Testament: Understanding the Key Texts, 2010. (Comes from an affirming perspective).
• Preston Sprinkle, ed., Two Views on Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church, 2016. Includes essays by William Loader, Megan DeFranza, Wesley Hill, and Stephen Holmes, and replies from each of them to one another.
• Mark Yarhouse, Costly Obedience: What We Can Learn from the Celibate Gay Christian Community, 2019.
• Sam Allberry, Seven Myths About Singleness, 2019.
• Christina S. Hitchcock, The Significance of Singleness, 2018.
• Alan Downs, The Velvet Rage, Second edition, 2012. Strongly recommended for gay men themselves and for pastors of gay men. (Comes from an affirming perspective).

Some podcasts:

• Life on Side B is a podcast dedicated to this topic. The most helpful episodes (that I have listened to so far) are S2E5, S2E8, S1E10, and S2E9, though the whole show is lovely.
• Vox with Mike Erre has hosted a few great conversations. Check out episodes 168 with Tyler and 191 with Johanna.

Essays and blogs:

• Wesley Hill’s essay “Revoice and a Vocation of Yes,” his reflection on the first Revoice conference, sets up everything.
• Eve Tushnet’s blog post “Beyond Sexual Identity: Not Whether But How” addresses the social construction angle.
• Jeremy Erickson’s blog posts “A Response to Rosaria Butterfield” and “How to Evade the Real Issues” reply to the criticism of Rosaria Butterfield and others. Please read and digest these before sending me RB sermons and asking for my thoughts.
• Also from Jeremy Erickson, a very quick rebuttal to the argument that ‘because your primary identity is in Christ, you are not really gay’ or whatever.

Lectures:

• Matthew Lee Anderson speaking at Revoice 2018 ranks among the best talks on sexuality I have ever heard.
• Johanna Finegan speaking about Luther’s theologians of the cross/glory at Revoice 2019 is also among the best talks on sexuality I have ever heard.
• Kevin Slusher applying some ideas from Barth to the debate is exactly the kind of generative theological work we need.
• Grant Hartley on missiology and contextualization to gay culture.

My posts:

• “Of Me, as Ross” served as my coming out essay in March of 2019.
• “Triage on Faith and Homosexuality” addresses questions of first- second- and third-order issues, and surveys the landscape of the debate.
• “New Thoughts on Romans 1” presents a few exegetical ideas about that passage.
• “Myth, Legend, Dust” recounts some of what happened when I came out last year.
• “Gay for the world” talks about James Davison Hunter’s idea of faithful presence within the world, and applies that to being gay.
• I tag my gay posts with “Gay? Yeah, gay.” to keep them accessible from the side margin. Go to that tag to read more.

Photo by Andy Holmes on Unsplash