Below is the transcript of Bruce’s story delivered to the LGCM annual conference back in April. Janet’s story appeared in the last edition of FFLAG News.

My background for most of my adult life has been a heavy involvement in fundamentalist Christian churches. I became a Christian at 18 and joined a fundamentalist church that believed they were the one true church and that we must observe every command in the Bible, so we kept the Saturday Sabbath, wouldn’t eat pork or sea foods and paid triple tithes etc. I was ordained in their ministry and have pastored many churches over the years.

We brought our five children up to strictly follow the scriptures and it never even occurred to me in my wildest dreams that we could ever have a gay son. We were good Christians weren’t we? It didn’t happen to people like us.

I do think, however, that God was preparing me because over the years, one by one, I began to see that many legalistic beliefs that I had held over the years were wrong. I was becoming more liberal in my outlook by degrees, but this certainly didn’t extend to believing that you could be gay and a Christian in good standing.

But then, one day, I felt God show me that our middle son was gay and that it was okay. I went into a spiritual tailspin. At the time I didn’t tell anyone – feeling it was confidential information. After I had come to terms with this truth, which was some months later, I did speak to my son one day when he seemed troubled and offered to talk with him if he wanted it. I said “I think I know what you are going through and would be happy to talk it over with you.” He didn’t respond at the time but did come to me some months later.

Meanwhile I was going through hell. My initial and paralysingly painful reaction was guilt. (I would have gone into denial except that I was sure that God had spoken.) My understanding at the time about homosexuality was that it was a perversion brought about by wrong family relationships. That is, a remote, uncaring father figure and an oppressive dominant mother figure. Although this didn’t match our profile really, I knew that there had been too many times when I had been off looking after the church and leaving the bringing up of the children to my wife, Janet.

Next I went through a period of mourning. I would like to say this was an unselfish mourning for my son and the difficulties he was going through but the truth is that it was mostly selfish. How would I tell my wife, family and friends? What would the church think and what would become of my ministry?

I began some serious study. The internet was invaluable and we found lots of books that were very helpful. Starting out from a position of being convinced that the Bible obviously condemned homosexuality, to understanding the truth was a rollercoaster ride of hair raising dimensions.

When my son did come to me to tell me that he was gay, by God’s grace, I had come through most of my negative emotions and was able to hug him, tell him I loved him and that everything was going to be fine.

I had come to see that there were three fundamental barriers that stop a person from understanding the truth.

1. Surely the Church can’t be wrong on such a major issue.

2. But it’s so unnatural.

3. Anyway, the Bible clearly condemns it.

Number one was the easiest to answer. The “Church” universally has rarely been agreed on any doctrine, be it a major or minor issue. In fact, historically, the “church” has usually got it wrong, from the early days of Acts through to the days when Christians supported slavery to today when even now the majority of Church denominations still oppress women.

The second barrier was easy enough to hurdle intellectually but much more so emotionally due to my emotions being harder to change than my understanding. A lifetime of indoctrination takes time to be healed of. It didn’t take much study to realise that in the animal kingdom, homosexuality occurs almost universally. And anyway, what is natural? If it’s doing what is in your nature, then gays are behaving quite naturally.

The difficult part was that, for me, homosexual sex seemed disturbingly unpleasant. But then I had to remember how, as a young lad, I was told about the birds and the bees by my older sister. At the time, I told her not to be so dirty. It was obviously a false story made up by children to be disgusting. I had to recognise that my emotional reaction to something was not a sound measure of its “rightness”. But emotions are powerful things and it takes time and conscious effort to resist prejudice.

The final barrier, the Bible’s stance on homosexuality was a complete revelation. What I have come to understand now is that we have fundamentally been interpreting the Scriptures wrongly. We have taken proof texts and used them to support our own ideas and bash others over the head with. We have imagined that the Bible is internally consistent in its theology because it was written as a manual for living, when in fact it is neither. It is God’s word for us but we need to understand in what way. The Bible is a collection of letters, poems, stories etc. all written to specific people at specific times in specific cultures. We are meant to interpret the spirit and intent of what God was saying to those people at that time through those communications and apply the spiritual intent to ourselves in the 21st Century. Understood in this way it is the precious word of God for us. But we must recognise, it contains untruths, undeveloped doctrines and concepts of God and some blatantly wrong ideas such as the support of ethnic cleansing and genocide. We need to interpret both the Old and New Testaments in the light of God’s law of love.

Actually the writers of the Old and New Testaments had no concept of a loving, faithful, stable gay relationship between two men or two women and so never addressed the matter. The biblical condemnations do not apply to such relationships. In fact, applying true principles of biblical interpretation, the church should be leading the way in teaching and encouraging gay and lesbian Christians to live their lives, honourably and pleasing to God, knowing that He is well pleased with them just as they are and delights in them as much as any straight Christians.

There is a tragic lack of leadership from church denominations. We should be leading the society in showing compassion and mature understanding and acceptance of gays as equally treasured children of God. Instead, once again, denominations are resisting enlightened advancement in our society.

I had to resign from pastoring the Assemblies of God church so that I could speak freely. To its credit the Church of England is at least discussing the issues and we are accepted in our local Anglican/Methodist church. But it’s limited. Our church is having a weekend away later in the year with a theme of “finding your role in the body’s ministry.” I asked the vicar if it was okay for me to go along. He said “Fine”. I said, “But I already know what my ministry is, I have joined LGCM and want to support gay Christians.” He said, “Er, let me get back to you on that…” When he did, he said that the leadership felt it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to attend the church weekend away. So we still have some way to go.

I believe this is the big challenge facing the Church in the 21st Century. I am confident that grace and truth will ultimately prevail, but it will be a long journey. It is a real joy to be able to help, even in a small way, parents who are going through the trauma that we went through and encourage them. Being a part of Bristol Families and Friends and FFLAG has been enormously encouraging to Janet and myself because we have met so many caring people who have wisdom that has been borne out of pain.

By: Bruce Kent - Bristol Families & Friends