Tony Campolo Comes Out As “Gay Affirming”

“Are you gay affirming?” I was asked not long ago.

The question caught me off guard.  It was in regards to the Bread & Wine group I run in Hong Kong and the inquirer wanted to know whether it would be a place he could recommend for gay Christians. Most folk who have known me in a ministry capacity know me as a “grace” guy and slow to judge…but honestly,  I hadn’t been asked this question before.

Like many pastors from a evangelical / charismatic church background, I had been wrestling with this issue for years.

Likewise Dr. Tony Campolo, Christian speaker, writer, and activist, has been asked this same question too…and a LOT more frequently than I have. Although firmly evangelical he has often drawn the wrath of his more conservative brethren because of his progressive positions on social justice issues.  However he has also been guarded in his affirmation of same-sex relations being accepted in the church and so has received rebuke from gay Christians who have wanted some of his social justice positions to extend to them as well.

Well, Tony has finally come out.

In an official press release he says:

 I have done my best to preach the Gospel, care for the poor and oppressed, and earnestly motivate others to do the same. Because of my open concern for social justice, in recent years I have been asked the same question over and over again: Are you ready to fully accept into the Church those gay Christian couples who have made a lifetime commitment to one another?

While I have always tried to communicate grace and understanding to people on both sides of the issue, my answer to that question has always been somewhat ambiguous. One reason for that ambiguity was that I felt I could do more good for my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters by serving as a bridge person, encouraging the rest of the Church to reach out in love and truly get to know them. The other reason was that, like so many other Christians, I was deeply uncertain about what was right.

It has taken countless hours of prayer, study, conversation and emotional turmoil to bring me to the place where I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church.

Tony’s journey in many ways mirrored my own.  I had the good fortune to have my evolution on the issue much less visible and much less public.  But it’s been pretty much the same.

Tony Campolo

It pains me to see people who want to pursue their faith and journey with Christ obstructed by churches and faith communities who either verbally, or with spiritual body language, communicate the message “Your kind are not welcome here unless you change.”

I trust that as people draw closer and deeper into the Way Jesus taught us many things in our lives will just fall away.  Gay, Straight, rich, poor, white, black, Democrat, Republican, male & female…

…but lets let the Holy Spirit deal with what those things are.

Christ said his followers would not be known by how jealously they defended the faith, but instead for the compassion they treated each other with.

So when out of the blue I was asked the question. “Are you gay affirming?”  I am happy to say my knee jerk, off the cuff answer was yes!