Gay Christians, Bishops, Queering the Queer and The Way Back to God - David Bennett

David Bennett, author of 'A War of Loves - The Unexpected Story of a Gay Activist Discovering Jesus' is interviewed by Glen Scrivener about sexuality and the recent Living and Love and Faith Documents from the Church of England bishops.

The Way Back is a series of interviews lighting the path back to faith. Christian author and filmmaker Glen Scrivener is speaking to a range of Christians and non-Christians about the current meaning crisis, and what we have lost in walking away from the Jesus story. In a post-Christian age, is there a way back?

Presented by Glen Scrivener
Music: 'Azlant' by Cody Martin
Produced and edited by Thomas Thorogood

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TIMESTAMPS //

00:00:00 - Trailer
00:01:39 - Intro
00:02:08 - David Bennett's story
00:07:02 - What did you think of Jesus as a teenager?
00:12:30 - The four loves
00:16:29 - We all have a sexuality, but can all of us express it?
00:17:59 - What are the pros and cons of describing yourself as a gay Christian?
00:21:08 - Surely it's unjust that only some of us can get married and have kids?
00:24:23 - What aspects of LGBTQIA+ theology point to the Gospel?
00:31:04 - What's it like to offend people on both sides of this debate?
00:41:44 - We all need help sublimating our desires
00:43:35 - Human flourishing is the cross
00:45:57 - What would you say to someone on the more progressive side?
00:50:11 - Why can't two husbands model for us the holiness of Jesus?
00:53:32 - Were you involved in the early stages of Living in Love and Faith?
00:56:55 - What's your response to the prayers of blessing proposed by the bishops?
01:01:55 - Is there a missional opportunity here?
01:04:47 - Where can people find you online?
01:05:58 - Prayer

[johannaquinones]

This will be an answer to a request I made to God, i first saw David on another video where he explained he accepted Jesus in a gay bar, and wished with all my heart I could listen to his testimony at length. ❤ God is so good

[rodmitchell]

This has made me rethink a lot of things. God bless, this was wonderful.

[samier]

Thank you Glenn and David. Really enjoyed this discussion and hearing your story, David. We really need to keep talking and thinking these things through TOGETHER, not in opposition they so often are. Oh and as a psychoanalytic student, I very much appreciated the Freud references!

[ForeverSeekingChristTV]

Amen brother ✊🏽 as a same sex attracted celibate man who was crucified with the Christ Galatians 2:20, I was so moved by what he said at the end when he’s talking about truly knowing Jesus’s voice when you read scripture versus the anti-Christ, the enemy, or a demon, because I’ve heard them all. Immense truth! And Jesus will not lie. Period.

[Mark_Dyer]

Would you take a testimony from an elderly homosexual Christian man (70) who, last week, agreed to enter a Civil Partnership, with the gentle male atheist (76) with whom he has shared the past forty years? Notwithstanding the efforts of those who practise 'Biblianity', since the early 1970s, I have managed to strengthen and deepen my faith in the God of Israel, embodied in the young male Jew, Jesus of Nazareth; crucified and risen. Only God is Holy: so - with that in mind - I do not afford 'holiness' to our scriptures. They are merely ancient texts and codices, like any other: except that their subject matter is the God of Israel and his relationship with his people. I am just re-reading 'CHRISTIAN BEGINNINGS: FROM NAZARETH TO NICAEA' by the late, great theologian and scriptural scholar, Geza Vermes: and I can honestly say that Professor Vermes has innoculated me against 'scriptural literalism'. Today, I laugh at the way in which 'scriptural literalists' claim that 'human sexuality' [16:30] need not be expressed through the sexual act (there being no specifically homosexual act!). I laugh for two reasons: firstly, I doubt whether the advocates of celibacy for "someone else, but not me" could live down to such an exacting standard they set for others. But secondly, I laugh because - as we age - the wish to give LOVE genital expression decreases with age. Today, our love is expressed through sharing one bed, and sleeping holding one another's hand. One day, before too long, one of us is going to have to slip beneath the duvet, for the first time, without the other's hand being there. As taught by the Stoics, whilst we are not anxious before birth, so I do not know what happens after death: but I trust in the God I see as active in the Lord Jesus. And I am content that - whatever happens after death - it will be about GOD, and His will: not us! My hope is that the love I have been privileged to share (at the cost of living a life outside any church) has not been of an 'akathartic' kind.

[skypaterson]

This is heartbreaking. That a line of thinking and or religious doctrine means that someone feels the need to restrict and impose these rules upon their lives. I feel like it’s part of humanity to search for meaning and purpose in our lives, but I don’t agree that Christianity is the “only way” to find meaning in life. I was brought up as Christian and at the age of 13 started deconstruction when I felt an “absence of god”, and started to form my own ideas and question why I believed what I’ve been told since birth.

I now live so verily happily as an atheist, with my same sex partner. I do not believe my existence is disgusting or wrong or a affliction, it is part of the wonder that is the human spectrum of differences.

Magic and meaningful experience can be found outside of religion, and without a pointing to an invisible deity.

[akeenamateur]

Amen brothers, amen!

Thank you Glen for putting the conversation together.

And a big thank you to David for such a wonderful, universal testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Just great, really great!

May the blessings of our Father be poured out on both of you in the name of Jesus Christ and by His Holy Spirit. Praise be to God.

With love in Christ Jesus,

James

[jennytr]

There are tears in my eyes - what a wonderful testimony. David, I thank God so much for what he has done for you, and I pray earnestly that he shall extend this mercy to so many other miserable struggling people I know, and to me too. I don't know if you are a prophet, but I can see the similarity to that discomforting, essential voice calling out from the wilderness. Please be encouraged. Thank you to saying yes to God. I love this image of holy queerness. I feel like there is a very ancient tradition to back this up.

[irinakollbrunner]

2.Timothy 4, 3
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

[bhektiivan]

I think to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ also means to acknowledge The Law. This is reflected in Jesus' own words when he said to the woman, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." His act of saving her was at the same time an act of acknowledging The Law, not abandoning/transforming the Law.

[kathleencassel]

I know your heart after reading your book, so I am willing to suspend my ideas of right and wrong for a time in order to better understand the sin and the redemption of same sex attracted people. If all loves can be corrupted by the flesh, then perhaps we can also see some flicker of the light in the remnants of those distorted loves, 38:36 so that fallen people can follow that flicker of light to back to the One who is love, God himself.
As a very young boy, my son once told me that he loved me so much that he wished he could get inside me and cuddle all my bones! Is that perhaps what you meant about the desire for oneness, for unity that is exactly what is so amazing about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Can that be true even in a deep friendship between two men or two women yet without the sexual element? I don’t know.
My problem is that it is not right to see our identity in our sin, but own our identity inJesus Christ. Those things we once were, but not anymore. We continue to feel the tug of the old man, but we choose to declare who we are in Christ even before we see it fully manifested.
Clearly you do have a unique opportunity to minister to the gay community, and Christ truly does know your suffering. He too was left out of the continuation of his own generation, but he counts all of us as family, or as he put it, “Here I am and the children God gave me”.
I pray that you will continue to follow Jesus and delight in all he has called you to.

[Papillon]

As a non Christian, hearing “have you experienced the love of god” would seem to be be an in to convert me. I’d be suspicious, even if they seemed nice. I personally feel that no human can tell me any secrets about the universe like the concept of a God that I can’t come to my own personal interpretation of. I’m also bi and would never follow a religion where I have to be celibate. Sounds miserable.

[zzzaaayyynnn]

But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” —Matthew 19:11–12

[foreignparticle]

Interesting discussion. David has some very astute observations, and I'm really glad to hear some robust theological discussion around this issue that's not simply yielding to progressivism.

I'm not really on board with the identity fixation though. The idea of irrevocable, segmented, essential, marginal identities feels counter to the Christ-prescribed 'losing one's life to find it' ethos. Ultimately I find the insistent segmentation and celebration of people as discrete groups and subgroups (whether biblically legitimate or not) to be somewhat antithetical to the Kingdom of Heaven described in the New Testament. I have grappled with same-sex attraction my whole life, and I don't identify myself as "gay" or "LGBTQ+" for the same reason that I don't identify myself as "a bit overweight" or "product of divorced parents", because, although factual descriptors, they are just granular incidentals that speak to the fallen nature of humanity... and why would I want to bake these into myself, make them sacrosanct, and be defined by them?

I know that my sexual orientation (and weight, and other dysfunctions) is a reality, one that I wish the Church had made more effort to empathise with and understand. But in my aspiration for wholeness and health - and ultimately salvation - I think that characterising myself by these kinds of factors and extoling their incidental virtues (if there are any at all) forges a slippery road toward narcissism; "lovers of [our]selves rather than lovers of God" is a Bible verse that rings louder and louder in my mind these days as our culture increasingly facilitates elevation of the self above all else, even our own bodies.

"Who will save me from this body of death?" is perhaps a more sober way to address the question of our "identity", because the answer to that, regardless of our sexual orientation, marital status, weight, upbringing, class, salary, and every other personal attribute, is "Jesus Christ our Lord". And we know that He is the only answer that will last.

[ShalemAhava]

Love this episode! Davids book is amazing!

[johnmulvey]

Where does that sing song accent come from? the jerky upward inflections? Someone told me ot's 'Fry' but someone else said it isn't 'fry'

[johannaquinones]

I think so too, David!! You have an incredible testimony as a gay man, that God can use to reach others❤❤❤❤

[bethelsozoteam]

Thank you so much for this, so mature and pure in thought and word and deed, Jesus is his King, it is infectious

[Joshlama]

So, I'm mildly familiar with David Bennett's work, but I've only seen him in a Sydney context (a few years after his conversion, he told his testimony for Eternity news, which was featured in different places. Last year in the lead up to the Australian Anglican General Synod, he appeared on The Pastors Heart to discuss the state on the Australian Anglican church on the motions about sexuality, family (and God's Family) and marriage). But this is the most flamboyant I've seen him express himself as he discusses the way that Jesus showed himself in his life and through his studies.

I could go down two paths; I could go down the path that this is just a performance that is done for this series, largely to court LGBTQ+ peoples, and that the other times he's more his everyday self, or (and I think this is more correct), us christian Sydneysiders asking him to suppress this more flamboyant self for the sake of being heard. I don't have answers, I'm just wondering.

[MrSurfingdreamer]

The actual, original Holy Bible scripture does NOT condemn homosexuality.