RNS: Let’s get practical. Give me one thing”“only one”“that you think churches should do to promote and nurture your kind of friendship?
WH: I wish more churches would recognize that certain friends are, for gay Christians, our “significant others.” Right now, if you’re gay and celibate in a lot of conservative churches, you’re probably going to feel under suspicion”“or worse. If you sit with your best friend in church, if you go on vacation with your friend, or if you spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with her and her family, you may get raised eyebrows or else just blinking incomprehension. I’d like that to change.
I’d like to see close, committed, promise-sealed friendships become normalized in churches that continue to teach the historic, traditional Christian sexual ethic. What if we treated it as important, honorable, and godly for a celibate gay Christian to commit to a close friend precisely as a way of growing in Christian love? That would make a big difference in how we currently think about homosexuality.
One of the greatest casualties of the sexual revolution is, it seems, that almost any relationship (m-f, f-f, m-m, adult-child) is seen as potentially sexual and subject to speculation. In this construct, every single person regardless of age, gender etc. is seen as a potential sexual partner, and so, the possibility of a friendship or relationship based on non-sexual affection/attraction is seen as the exception rather than the norm as in times past. Wesley Hill is right, and our sex obsessed culture is wrong. The long term effects are many but one especially devastating loss is of the possibility of deep friendships that are not driven by sexuality. In a culture where loneliness tops the list of concerns, this is a profound loss.
I guess my question is . . . if you’re a celibate heterosexual does Wesley Hill think that our “close, committed, promise-sealed friendships” should “become normalized in churches.”
I think that’s a bit . . . odd. Why not just have “close committed friendships”? I certainly do, among both sexes, male and female.
I so agree with comments 1 & 2 and was planning on writing similar thoughts, but now I don’t have to! 🙂