"Can a homosexual be a Christian?" theological musings by William Stringfellow | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

The Good Shepherd

Can a Homosexual be a Christian. One might as well ask, can an insurance man be a Christian? Can a lawyer be a Christian? Can an ecclesiastical bureaucrat be a Christian? Can a rich man be a Christian? Can an infant be a Christian? Or one who is sick, or insane, or indolent or one possessed of power or status or respectability? Can anybody be a Christian? Can a human being be a Christian? All such questions are theologically absurd. To be a Christian does not have anything essentially to do with conduct or station or repute. To be a Christian does not have anything to do with the common pietisms of ritual, dogma or morals in and of themselves. To be a Christian has, rather, to do with that peculiar state of being bestowed upon men by God….

Can a homosexual be a Christian? Yes: if his sexuality is not an idol.

William Stringfellow, cited in Anthony Dancer, An Alien in a Strange Land: Theology in the Life of William Stringfellow (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011), pp. 198-99.

Hat tip http://theconnexion.net/wp/?p=9170

I like this because, as a newer Christian, I naively assumed that a practising gay person could not be a Christian. On the other hand, I did not doubt that, despite the occasional schadenfreude, malice, gossip, and sheer untruthfulness I encountered in my church, those who said they were Christians were Christians.

Perhaps that is the safest assumption: to assume that those who say they are Christians are Christians, and to leave the sorting out of sheep and goats to Him.