Queer Christians are familiar with being told by religious leaders that they must repent. Recently though, I have been seeing a number of stories of a different kind of repentance: of pastors, theologians and Biblical scholars who are beginning to repent for the error and harm done in their previous preaching against homoerotic love. One British pastor has engaged on an extended walk of repentance. At Salon, Murray Richmond has written of his experience as a US Presbyterian pastor who fuelled prejudice from the pulpit, and of his journey to current repentance.
Richmond 's story has particular interest, as this personal journey neatly illustrates the wider journey of the Presbyterian Church of the USA towards the acceptance of openly gay or lesbian candidates for ordination. As he notes, this is a topic that Presbyterians have been discussing, studying and praying over for years. As they do so, many more are concluding, as he has done, that past teaching and practice was wrong. (The current raw voting figures show that support for opening the doors to LGBT ordination is now 5% stronger than it was just a year ago). The PCUSA process in turn, is indicative of the much broader movement transforming Christian responses to homoerotic love across the entire gamut of Christian denominations. From a position of near universal rejection a few decades ago, some degree of acceptance of openly gay and lesbian candidates for ordination, and same sex couples for church blessing or full weddings, is rapidly becoming the mainstream position.
