Almost three decades ago, Richard Hays, a United Methodist minister and the soon-to-be dean of Duke Divinity School, wrote what quickly became the go-to traditionalist Christian argument against same-sex marriage.
Now, Hays says he’s changed his mind.
In a seismic reversal, one of the most prominent and influential New Testament scholars of the last century is apologizing for his previous position — writing in a new book, “The Widening of God’s Mercy,” that he is “deeply sorry” for the pain caused to LGBTQ individuals who have been excluded from Christian churches.
“I want to repent of what I wrote before,” Richard Hays told me in an interview alongside his son and co-author, Christopher Hays. “Where I now stand on the question is that Scripture, read as narrative, offers a vision of a God who is dynamic and personal, and can constantly surprise us by reshaping what we thought we knew as settled matters.”
“It was, I thought, what needed to be said in order to put myself right with God and with my brothers and sisters in the church,” Hays said about his change of mind. “The whole story of the Bible, I think, regularly summons us all to the practice of repentance.”
For almost three decades, Hays’ landmark analysis on homosexuality in his 1996 book, “The Moral Vision of the New Testament,” has been referenced in evangelical seminaries and traditionalist studies across the country. And, as a gay Christian myself, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read his chapter on homosexuality — or been pointed to it by pastors and church officials — in the 12 years since I came out.
Now, Hays says he regrets how he says some Christians used his work to marginalize and exclude LGBTQ individuals from the Christian church. “That position has been, I would say, weaponized — I don’t think that’s too strong a word — by people on the conservative side of the evangelical churches who use it as ammunition to act in what I guess are rightly described as oppressive ways towards gay and lesbian people.”
As a pastor’s kid from suburban Grand Rapids, Michigan, church was like a second home for me growing up. I played the piano in worship services, acted out characters during Vacation Bible School in the summers, and changed the frozen letters on the church sign in the snowy Michigan winters.
But I slowly came to discover that I was gay — a scary, earth-shattering realization that I believed threatened to topple my entire world.
My faith and church mattered to me. I graduated from a denomination-owned university. I launched my journalism career at our church magazine. I was immersed in God’s story of creation, fall and redemption for all people and for the world. God’s love and grace toward me was, and still is, fundamental to how I view who I am. But being gay seemed to throw all of that into jeopardy.
Unlike other progressive arguments that work to untangle the six best-known Bible passages that appear to condemn same-sex intimacy, Hays and his son take a very different approach.
“We need to read the Bible as narrative, and to take its stories as formative of our character and our role as readers and interpreters of the text,” Richard Hays told me. “We need to back off a step and say, why is this particular prohibition taken to be normative, but other passages, including passages that describe what is necessary to do when holding slaves, are disregarded?”
“My exegesis of those half dozen passages, it hasn’t changed. I think the Bible says what it says, and disapproves of gay sex, full stop,” Hays told me. “But there’s a very arbitrary selectivity about picking out those two verses in Leviticus as the foundation for an opinion on this subject.”
Hays said several things led him to reconsider his views on same-sex marriage. One key factor was a vision of a dynamic God who is willing to change God’s mind and broaden God’s grace to include more and more people. He said this was supported by his own real-life experiences with LGBTQ people of faith who demonstrated the fruits of the spirit.
Christopher Hays, Richard’s son and co-author who is an Old Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, agreed.
“We have this very strong thread in the Bible, like in Isaiah 43, where God says, look, ‘I’m doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?’ And so there’s this constant question of, can people actually keep up with new things that God is doing?” he said. “You continue to read the Bible and you say, actually, this is not the story that I see of who God is and what God wants.”
Christopher also said he believes the Bible’sauthors didn’t have today’s same-sex relationships in mind when they wrote scripture. “We don’t think that that’s the same thing as what Paul meant or what the authors of the Torah meant in the laws,” he said.
“I’m proud of my father,” Christopher added. “I feel like his heart has always been kinder and softer and more gracious than how that chapter has been taken. So, I’m just proud of him for having modeled for people out there how they can change their own minds with grace.”
Hays’ stunning change of position has prompted harsh criticism from conservatives. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler called it a “full doctrinal revolt” and “a call for complete theological surrender.” Conservative scholar Robert Gagnon said that Hays had “backslidden into heresy,” dismissing his argument as “nonsense.”
More moderate traditionalist scholars, like Preston Sprinkle, who runs the Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender, wrote: “The fundamental theological and ethical question in this debate is whether sex difference is an essential part of what marriage is. This question is never mentioned, let alone answered, in The Widening of God’s Mercy.”
But Christopher Hays pushes back on the criticism. “I think that they’re right to be concerned about the book if they want to maintain power in the way that they have,” he told me. “It’s not written for Preston Sprinkle and people who are in this fight all the time,” he continued. “This is a much more basic and fundamental book.”
Progressive Christians, like Matthew Vines, who leads a pro-LGBTQ Christian advocacy group called the Reformation Project, welcomed the reversal from Hays.
“I am deeply grateful that Richard Hays has not only changed his mind but has also chosen to write about it publicly despite the backlash he knew it would generate,” he told CNN “I am thrilled that he is now lending his voice to the cause of LGBTQ inclusion in the church.”
As a member of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, a small protestant denomination of a quarter-million members scattered across the United States and Canada, I’m well-aware of my church’s teaching that being attracted to the same sex is not sin, but intimate same-sex relationships are sinful. After I came out as a student at my denomination’s university, I faced periods of depression as I wrestled back-and-forth with that position for several years.
But over time, I also became convinced that God and Scripture embrace same-sex marriage, in short, because I believe God’s redeeming work points the institution of marriage forward toward our identities in Christ in a new way that fulfills, rather than just reiterates, God’s work at creation.
My institutional church, however, has taken a different approach. Our annual assembly recently voted to enshrine our church’s opposition to same-sex marriage as confessional, demanding not only compliance but agreement of conscience from all pastors, elders, deacons and members. My dad, a pastor and member for six decades, walked out of synod in protest.
Fuller Theological Seminary, where Christopher Hays is a professor, also demands agreement with a faith statement that opposes same-sex marriage. A senior official was fired from the school in February after she refused to sign the statement, according to Religion News Service.
“I’m not worried for my job at this time,” Christopher told me. “I wanted to write this book to ensure that there was space for the conversation in the places where I am and in all those places out there in the country where similar conversations are going on.”
Fuller said in a statement that the book represents the views of the author, not the position of the seminary. “Fuller has always embraced difficult topics thoughtfully and faithfully, and we will continue to do so,” said seminary president David Emmanuel Goatley.
Other denominations have gone even farther: The Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church in America have condemned simply identifying with a same-sex orientation – even if one remains single. The PCA ran out celibate gay pastor Greg Johnson and his St. Louis church two years ago. The SBC has also expelled multiple LGBTQ-affirming churches in recent years.
But demographic trends are setting up a collision course with young people in the pews. Even as support for same-sex marriage has plateaued in the last few years, recent surveys from Gallup find that more than one in five Gen Z Americans identify as LGBTQ, and nearly 90% of Americans under 30 years old support same-sex marriage.
Ultimately, I’m deeply grateful that my own fears about getting shunned by my closest friends and family did not come to pass, though I know that others have faced that and worse. I and many of my closest friends, who love both God and LGBTQ people, are trying to navigate that push and pull, even as the most formative Christian institutions of my life hold me at arm’s length.
The reversal from Hays certainly will not settle the debate among Christians when it comes from same-sex marriage. But I hope it makes opponents of same-sex marriage at least pause and wonder — is there a faithful path forward that makes room for people like me?
As for Richard Hays, he says he hopes that Christians who have read his previous book will approach his new work with an open mind.
“I would just hope that people would not leap to premature judgment,” he said. “I hope that people who are dismayed about this book will actually read it.”
