It was with real sadness that I discovered that the Accepting Evangelicals fellowship is no more. I suppose it was on the cards that it would not long survive the death of its founder, the Reverend Benny Hazlehurst, who died of cancer in 2018. It was very much his creation and embodied his vision, born of a long journey of faith and much personal struggle. He described it in his five-part confessional series By Their Fruits, one of a number of personal stories that can still be read on the AE website. My story is there too.
There are quite a number of gay-based or gay-friendly Christian bodies online, but AE was unique. It was the only space either online or in real life where gay and straight Conservative Evangelicals could mix and discuss their faith in an atmosphere of mutual respect and acceptance. Many of us felt alienated by the predominantly liberal ethos of groups like Inclusive Church and Changing Attitude. I became a member of Inclusive Church soon after its foundation in the wake of the Jeffrey John scandal, but I never felt truly at home there. When I learned through them of the existence of AE, I knew that I had found what I was looking for.
There was a real sense in which the existence of the other groups changed nothing. They fitted perfectly into the existing narrative in which you could either be a serious Bible-believing Christian and reject any kind of acceptance of gay sex as a valid human activity, or you could be a wishy-washy liberal and pro-gay. There was apparently nothing inbetween, nothing to appeal to those of us who found the liberal version of Christianity vapid and unsatisfactory. It left a lot of people, straight as well as gay, feeling that they had no true spiritual home.
Accepting Evangelicals provided that for us. It allowed us to engage seriously with those passages of Scripture which have traditionally been used as “clobber texts” without any preconceptions as to what those passages might mean. We felt that it was for us to work out what they actually meant through active engagement with them and with the experiences of our gay colleagues. It also allowed gay and trans Evangelicals to develop a healthy pride in the way God had created them without having to compromise their faith. For that reason, a lot of other Evangelical organisations really hated it and did their level best to destroy it. At one point there was even a fake website to direct people away from the real thing!
All too often gay Evangelicals have felt obliged to amputate an essential part of themselves, either their sexuality or their faith, in order to survive. If they seek counselling outside the Church, it is usually their faith that is recommended for the chop. But religious faith, if it is truly integrated into one’s life, is just as much a part of one’s basic identity as sexuality is. Denying it is not the way to fullness of life. AE offered a third way for many.
In later years, I drifted away from the movement as a result of ageing and the day-to-day worries of looking after an increasingly old and frail dog, now sadly gone. Roger was himself a Pride veteran, having marched several times with the Christians At Pride (an umbrella group which normally springs up every year around the time of London Pride and which used to include AE along with other Christian organisations). He was always a great hit with the public as well as with the marchers and I would see all the phones dipping in salute as he trotted by. Alas, Pride eventually became too big and too noisy for us and, as a result, I rather lost touch with Accepting Evangelicals.
And now it is gone, subsumed into the predominantly liberal Christian One Body One Faith. Requiscat in pace!
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