A heterosexual woman’s response to the Revoice controversy

Revoice is a conference for same sex-attracted individuals who hold a traditional view of marriage as defined between a man and a woman. Those affiliated with Revoice are either in marriages with a member of the opposite sex who they found attraction to by the grace of the God, or they are celibate. The original intention of the conference was to give encouragement to Christians who deal with same-sex attraction.

As the Revoice Conference garnered national attention (in the Christian subculture) with people writing blogs with their takes on the group’s theological positions, I have noticed a trend about the authors. Most of the blogs and articles are either written by 1. Ex-gays 2. People who themselves are affiliated with Revoice and are defending their position or 3. Heterosexual male pastors - some of whom were probably married by the age of 25- speaking out against the theological positions given by the leaders of the conference.

So what seems to be missing- for the most part- are the voices of heterosexual women and their takes about the Revoice controversies. There are some female voices that are out there, but I haven’t seen many. By large, we have heterosexual men speaking from their lenses on how they view sexuality and this does not cover even half the experience of human sexuality.

Before I bring forth my perspective, I would like to get some disclaimers out of the way:

• Despite the title, I do not assume that I speak for all Christian women. My prediction is that many will track with what I have to say. We’ll see.

There is one main criticism that I want to address here. The Revoice critics claim that if someone is same-sex attracted, those feelings will give way to temptation and that person will either lust after the same sex or act out on their attraction. These critics base their position on an arbitrary description in the Bible found in James 1:13-15. The logical conclusion to their argument is that just BEING gay is a sin. Therefore, once someone becomes a Christian, they are no longer gay; they just think that they still are. Or, if they are gay, they must have never truly become Christians.

I am going to be talking a lot about myself here. This is deliberate and hopefully you will see why. I promise that it does connect back with Revoice eventually.

When I was 14 years-old, I started noticing that some of the older teens at my PCA youth group had a deep walk with Jesus. Jesus was their whole life and not just part of it. It was through their influence that I decided to make Jesus the Lord and center of my life. One of those teens was a male who would become the first guy that I ever experienced having significant romantic “feelings” for. My “crush” on him would last for 3 years. I went on to attend one of the most conservative Christian colleges in the nation. It was there that I would have a guy friend who would introduce me to The Journal of Jim Elliot. This branched into me reading works by Elisabeth, and I loved reading about their courtship in Passion and Purity. The lives of Jim and Elisabeth Elliott had a huge impact on my life- an impact that continues to this day. I also had a crush on this guy friend that would last another 3 years. This was in part because- at least in the beginning- my guy friend didn’t want to date anyone during his early college years. We also had a conversation about “liking” people- he claimed to not “like” anyone.

“Why bother liking anyone if I’m not going to go anywhere with it?” he asked rhetorically.

This was in the year 1999, and the I Kissed Dating Goodbye movement was very present on campus. There were parts of the purity movement that I disagreed with- namely I believed that “Guard your heart” meant to guard your heart against sin- not against having feelings. But other parts, such as not lusting, I fully embraced.

I remain grateful that I got to know these two young males - they had a significant impact on my walk with Jesus. After college, I had a situationship with a guy that I would spend a good portion of my 20s “getting over” my romantic feelings for. The common thread with all three of these guys is that I deeply admired their walks with the Lord. Primarily, I dreamt of having a marriage where my husband and I would serve the Lord together.

In the aftermath of my high school crush, believe me when I say that I vowed that I wouldn’t have another 3 year, unrequited crush on someone. With all three of them, I prayed many times that God would take away my romantic feelings for them. I felt embarrassed at times that I couldn’t move on while other people did. And eventually, God did take those feelings away, but it certainly wasn’t on my timetable. The interesting thing is that the struggles I had from the ages of 14 to 28 never interfered with my relationship with God during those years. In fact, I’d say that I grew tremendously because of those struggles and how they caused me to look to God for answers.

When I “fell,” I always fell hard. But here’s the thing. In all those years, I never lusted after any of them. Given that I had so much respect for their walks with the Lord, I respected their purity and my own.

So now comes one of my very first points!

If I OF ALL PEOPLE can have feelings without lusting after someone, it should not be taken as a given that just because someone has homosexual attraction that they are going around lusting after the same sex all the time.

If that were the case, heterosexual Chistians would be lusting after a whole bunch of people.

And really, it doesn’t have to be that hard to avoid. I wasn’t going out on dates with these crushes. I was extremely introverted when I was in high school and I barely talked to boys- especially the guy at my youth group who I had a crush on. The later two were my friends.

Around 2011, I started being introduced to Christians who are same-sex attracted. I assumed that they struggled with these attractions, found that the attraction wasn’t going away, and so had vowed to remain celebate. I viewed them as being just as dedicated as I had been to sexual purity (or tried to be).

Revoice Founder Nate Collins, in an interview with Christianity Today, seems to echo this. “Most of us, when we realized we weren’t straight, we prayed every single night, “God, make me straight. Help me wake up tomorrow and be different.’”

Before everyone thinks I’m claiming sainthood, or that I’m asexual, I assure you that there is a twist here. A couple of years into my thirties (about 2013) I did, in fact, really struggle with lust. It’s no coincidence that I was also consistently dating at that point and physical temptation was actually being presented to me. Although I did wonder at the time, “Why am I struggling so much with this NOW? Aren’t I supposed to be growing in sanctification and not going backwards?”

If we were to go back to our health textbooks, they would tell us that males have their peak sex drives during adolescence while females have their peak sex drives later in life. So doesn’t it make sense that we would struggle the most with lust when we are at our peak sex drives?

And this gets back to my problem with the criticism surrounding Revoice. Chances are, when heterosexual males experience their first significant attraction towards females, they might be accompanied with thoughts of lust. At least this is my guess. And so the attraction and lust could often be conflated by their perspectives.

The whole truth is bigger than that conflation. Long theological essays mean nothing if they aren’t applicable to real life. Even with our health textbooks, there are going to be people who vary. Take my college guy friend for example who didn’t even “like” anyone for a whole two years. Meanwhile, I knew women at my college who confessed to struggling with lust. I acknowledge that there are those who have different experiences apart from the generalizations.

If I were to compare my struggles in my 20s to my struggles in my 30s, I would say that my 20s were harder. It’s one thing to just not have lustful thoughts. But when it comes to having feelings, I always found it harder to just extract my romantic feelings from myself.

If those who are same-sex attracted are celibate, they aren’t going on same sex dates. Thus they are eliminating situations that cause temptation. And even if they have a crush on someone of the same sex, I find it doubtful that they are trying to think too much about it. As my college guy friend said, “Why bother liking anyone if I’m not going to go anywhere with it?”

I share my story to emphasize that those who are affiliated with Revoice aren’t that different from heterosexual Christians and their struggles. It’s not easy to share the things that I have shared here, but I do so because this is a playing field that needs to be leveled. One thing that I find deeply disturbing is how these critics of Revoice share so little of their own struggles with sexual sin(s). They risk no vulnerability all the while pointing out where others are “wrong.”

I have one more thing to add from my perspective as a woman. The first Revoice conference had about 400 people in attendance at one church in St. Louis, MO. Critics from all over the country tweeted, blogged and podcasted about it night and day for over 2 months. As a woman, I would find it creepy to have people from 5 states away tweeting and blogging about my every move. It makes me feel uncomfortable as a mother of daughters. The attention towards Revoice is creepy, and that’s saying something coming from me. I hold the PCA dearly for the part it played in my testimony, and it just makes me sad to see the level of nitpicking.

This concludes the testimonial part of my response. I’m now going to move on to grammar.

Putting on my journalist hat

The other matter that I want to address deals with the terms “Gay Christian” and/or “same sex attracted Christian.”

Greg Johnson has said point blank in his Christianity Today article: “My sexual orientation doesn’t define me. It’s not the most important or most interesting thing about me. It is the backdrop for that, the backdrop for the story of Jesus who rescued me.”

I would love to tell you that my husband is the only man that I have ever been attracted to, but that clearly isn’t the case. So I think it’s fair to say that I’m a heterosexual woman. My husband had a previous wife before we met. So I think it is fair to say that he is attracted to women, plural. He is a heterosexual man.

I’m a Christian woman.

I am a heterosexual Christian.

When someone says that they are a “Gay Christian,” the word “Gay” is a MODIFIER. The word “Christian” is the identifier. “Christian” is their identity, and “gay” is a descriptor that they are using in a relevant moment. If someone isn’t “allowed” to use the word “gay Christian,” then I shouldn’t be able to call myself a “heterosexual Christian,” because we sin. I hope it doesn’t come to that. Whatever I choose to call myself, I alone know what it means to me. If I SAY that I mean that “Christian” is my identity and that “heterosexual” is a descriptor of me, then other people should not confuse me as making my heterosexuality to be my identity. And people should also believe Greg Johnson in what he said in Christianity Today.