People to be loved - a book review

Steve Burnhope has been a leader of two Vineyard Churches. He is now a theological writer and teacher. He has published several books on the bible including 'Reading the Bible with Its Writers: What They Were Saying, Why They Said It, How They Said It' (Cascade 2025). https://www.steveburnhope.com

This is an extended study review of a book by the influential conservative theologian, Preston Sprinkle. People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue (Nashville: HarperChristian Resources, 2015)

Introduction

Dr Sprinkle’s laudable ambitions for People to Be Loved are clearly set out in his Preface:

The question of homosexuality defies simple answers, so I refuse to give thin answers to thick questions in the pages that follow. If you want quick, easy answers, or you just want me to affirm all of your assumptions—whatever they may be—then this book isn’t for you. There are plenty of books out there that will reaffirm your presuppositions. In this book we’re going to think. We’re going to study. We’re going to listen to the pain and joy of real people who are gay. We’re going to hold our views with a humble heart and an openhand—inviting God to correct us where we have been wrong. We are going to do our best to lay aside our assumptions and genuinely seek to know what the Bible, not our tradition, says about homosexuality.^[1] 

In going about that, the author rightly acknowledges that “We all have biases and presuppositions that we bring to the text.” Indeed, as he says, “There is no such thing as an unbiased reading of the Bible.”^[2] That notwithstanding, Sprinkle assures the reader that he has “devoted countless hours to studying the Scriptures with an open mind … read piles of books and articles … from both sides of the debate … researched the ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman contexts … [and] looked at the ever-evolving conclusions of psychologists, counsellors, and medical researchers.”^[3]

One of the strengths of People to Be Loved is what I take to be a genuine pastoral concern for gay people that runs through the book. Sprinkle freely acknowledges, with great regret, the hurt and pain caused by the abysmal treatment they have received and continue to receive from many Christians and churches.^[4] Chapter 1 begins with stories of appalling behaviour at the hands of conservative Christians.

Having listened to countless testimonies and looking at startling statistics, I am disheartened to say that the Christian church has often played an unintended yet active role in pushing gay people away from Christ. Sometimes away from Christ and into the grave.^[5]   

Elsewhere, Sprinkle has rightly called upon the church to repent over “the sin which has been committed toward homosexuality; that is, toward LGBTQ people. … Gay people have been mocked, shunned, abused (verbally, if not physically), persecuted, dehumanized, unloved, and—like the lepers of Jesus’ day—untouched.”^[6] The way in which the author believes the church should respond toward gay people is hinted at in the Preface: “I stand on truth and I stand on love,”^[7] a statement that few would disagree with. However, it inevitably begs the question: What, exactly, do we mean by “truth” and “love” in this context? How are they defined? What do they look like in practice? The author’s own definitions become clear later in the book and will be an important talking point.      

Equally welcome is Sprinkle’s recognition of the importance of listening: “I have enjoyed countless hours of conversations with gay and lesbian people, some of whom share my Christian faith and others who don’t.” This speaks well to his belief (echoed in the book’s subtitle) that “Homosexuality is not about an issue. It is about people.”^[8] Sprinkle explains, “When I read Leviticus 18, Romans 1, and other passages that talk about same-sex relations, I no longer see words on a page but people with a story—people whom I know and love.”^[9] This is so necessary—listening to gay people’s stories is vitally important.^[10]

However, the truth of the statement draws attention to a significant problem in the book. Although Sprinkle quite rightly says that “The real question Christians are asking … is whether two men or two women can date, fall in love, remain sexually pure before their wedding day, and commit to a life-long, consensual, Christ-centered, self-giving, monogamous union,” none of the personal stories or testimonies in the book are from gay Christians who are in such a union. They are of gay people who are single and celibate or married to an opposite-sex partner. Whatever the reason for their absence, this is a striking omission, and sits awkwardly alongside the stated intention that, “We’re going to listen to the pain and joy of real people who are gay.”^[11]

To hear real-life stories of the Holy Spirit anointing and moving through Christians who are in formally committed, monogamous, consensual same-sex relationships is surely of the utmost significance, at least for the charismatic streams of conservative evangelicalism, such as the Vineyard movement.^[12] After all, it was precisely such an unexpected divine initiative—the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Gentiles—that forced the early Jewish Jesus-followers to reconsider the admission of Gentile Jesus-followers to the people of God on equal terms, without first being required to adopt the lifestyle features of the Jewish covenant.^[13]    

Another very important and positive element in chapter 1 is the section in which Sprinkle recognises the importance of vocabulary and of carefully defining key terms in the same-sex conversation: “Words Matter.”^[14] It is frequently overlooked that the modern terms “homosexuality” and “homosexual” properly refer to sexual orientation, rather than simply same-sex desire or same-sex sexual behaviour. The terms themselves only emerged in the nineteenth century, alongside the developing scientific understanding of sexual orientation; there is no equivalent term for the modern concept in biblical Hebrew or Greek, or in classical Latin. Hence, “homosexuality” and “homosexual” ought not—in good conscience at least—to be used in Bible translations. They too easily lead the modern reader to assume that the original texts were addressing the same phenomenon that the words denote today.^[15] It bears repeating: a basic principle of biblical hermeneutics is that a word, verse or passage cannot mean something “now” that it would not have meant “then.” 

Much of the vocabulary employed in this debate is heavily weighted and capable of bearing markedly different meanings for different speakers and audiences. For example, Christians often speak (disapprovingly) of something called the “gay lifestyle”; but as Sprinkle quite rightly says, “If there is a ‘gay lifestyle,’ then there must also be a ‘straight lifestyle’: a pre-packaged stereotype that accurately describes every heterosexual on the planet.”^[16] Very few of the terms customarily employed in Christian discussion of same-sex relationships are entirely neutral! We almost need to agree on a glossary before beginning a conversation. Words such as “affirming,” “revisionist” and “progressive,” for example, are all loaded terms. Even the position described as “non-affirming” is defining itself by what it’s not—which doesn’t help to signpost the beliefs and attitudes towards gay people that should come with being “non-affirming.”^[17] So too, terms such as “biblical,” “the Bible says,” and “the Bible clearly teaches” are all loaded. Since every evangelical is deeply concerned for those things,^[18] they lend themselves to being weaponised in debate—after all, what faithful evangelical would want to be at risk of being on the wrong side of the Bible?  

The “Standard” Texts

Half or more of the book is devoted to discussion of the standard set of texts (the five verses) that are generally taken to be “what the Bible says” about same-sex matters (pejoratively known as the “clobber texts”).^[19] I propose to say relatively little about these texts for four reasons. First, the exegetical arguments on both sides are already extensively discussed elsewhere. Second, detailed engagement with them would disproportionately dominate this review and divert attention from other features of Sprinkle’s argument that warrant closer examination. Third, People to Be Loved makes no substantially new exegetical contribution to the discussion. Fourth, like any advocate of a particular interpretation, Sprinkle naturally promotes the arguments and readings that he considers most persuasive. This is not a criticism—it’s only to be expected—but it serves little or no purpose here simply to point that out and repeat the already well-known alternative views on those texts. Suffice to say that a great deal of scholarly disagreement surrounds their interpretation and especially their contemporary application. It should be noted that Sprinkle’s presentation of “the other side” is selective.^[20]This becomes problematic only where readers mistake that presentation for an objectively neutral account of the alternatives. There is a reason why theology books that seek to present contrasting views entrust that task to different advocates.

I assume Sprinkle does not intend his words, “This book is written for Christians, those who consider the Bible to be authoritative,”^[21] to be implying that holding to his interpretation of the Bible is synonymous either with Christian identity or a high view of biblical authority. After all, this would hardly be compatible with his admission (made with commendable honesty) that, “You may find it shocking, but most scholars who have written books about homosexuality in the last forty years have concluded that the Bible does not condemn consensual, monogamous, same-sex relations.”^[22] It is somewhat ironic that the next few chapters are devoted to explaining why Sprinkle nevertheless believes the scholarly majority to be mistaken.  

Although I don’t propose to debate the “famous five” verses, some discussion is needed of what traditionalists understand the Genesis creation account to be saying about male-female sexual difference and marriage. This matters for two main reasons. First, conservatives argue that Genesis 1–2 is laying down normative patterns for humanity. More significantly, that then becomes a springboard for interpreting New Testament passages in which Jesus or Paul refer back to Adam and Eve. In other words, the traditionalist interpretation of Genesis is assumed to be identical with what Jesus and Paul themselves had in mind when they cited Adam and Eve. As with the “famous five” verses, Sprinkle is not proposing anything substantially new here, but rehearsing the established traditionalist reading.

Sprinkle rightly begins with the observation that “It doesn’t logically follow that since the first human marriage was between man and woman that therefore all other marriages of all time must be between a man and a woman.”^[23] Throughout chapter 2, the word “marriage” is given significant weight, whereas what we should really be talking about is not the word but a formally committed, monogamous and mutually entered-into union between two persons. To invest the way the word was used in biblical times with all the meanings and features of marriage as we recognise it today is anachronistic—a “reading-in.” For example, marriages in the ancient world were commonly arranged, often with little meaningful choice on the part of the woman (who might herself be very young); and expectations of sexual exclusivity were markedly different for men and women. Our romanticised modern Western ideal of marriage, in which two autonomous individuals exercise free personal choice on the basis of mutual love, is far removed from the social world of the texts. We should use a word like “biblical” (implying something normative from God’s perspective) only with very considerable care.  The Old Testament offers little explicit critique of practices such as polygamy and concubinage, or of practices that we would now recognise as involving sexual slavery. (Those also receive scant attention in conservative evangelical writings on the subject). Sprinkle rightly says, “Every good interpreter knows that it’s dangerous to squeeze too much out of one word,”^[24] but then proceeds to do precisely that, over many pages, with respect to the word “marriage.”^[25]

I am not without some sympathy for those who would like the word marriage to be reserved for heterosexual relationships, but “winning” on that would not help in terms of civil partnerships. The substance is what matters, not the word. I would argue that the reason God is “for” marriage is not the word or institution in itself, but what marriage at its best reflects: covenant and covenant faithfulness, foundational themes that run throughout the biblical story. Covenant faithfulness reflects God’s own character and the way in which he relates to his people. Indeed, one of the central ways in which the New Testament interprets the death of Christ is as the sacrifice that seals and gives effect to the new covenant.^[26] God loves marriage because, at its best, it embodies covenantal commitment and faithfulness. It is not the word “marriage” that matters, not least because many of the forms marriage took in biblical times fell far short of the covenantal values we would now want it to express. What matters is the substance: the covenant faithfulness that marriage is intended to embody.           

In the traditionalist reading followed by Sprinkle, the Genesis account is understood not merely as describing male-female partnering as the human norm, but establishing it as normative in a way that necessarily precludes same-sex marriage. Yet there is no reason to suppose that the writers of Genesis were addressing the possibility of same-sex marriage at all; nothing in the text suggests that this was a question they were seeking to answer. Genesis describes what, for its original audience, would have been the assumed norm of human partnering and societal organisation. Even today—and notwithstanding that marriage as an institution is less frequently practiced—opposite-sex partnering reflects a self-evident norm for the majority of the population that is heterosexual by nature. What Genesis does not address is the situation of the minority whom we now understand to be same-sex oriented, for whom conformity to that majority pattern would itself require entering a relationship contrary to their sexual orientation.

To be clear: there is an important difference between the Bible presenting something as normative—what should or must be timelessly true of all—and describing something as the norm: what is usual, customary or true of the majority. There is therefore nothing necessarily wrong with Sprinkle’s statement that “We’re talking about God’s basic design for marriage,” if by “design” we mean the pattern that ordinarily characterises human partnering.^[27] But what we’re talking about is how to treat people who fall outside that norm. In any event, since the chapter concludes with the admission that “None of the texts we’ve looked at were written to refute same-sex relationships,”^[28] that serves to end this particular discussion (along with interpretations of New Testament passages that presuppose they were).    

In relation to Ephesians 5:21–32, where “Paul maps the roles of husband and wife onto Christ’s relationship with the church,” Sprinkle says, “The analogy requires a fundamental difference … and it appears that Paul has sexual differences in mind.” It is difficult to see how this conclusion follows. Paul certainly presupposes differentiated marital roles, rooted in the ancient cultural assumption of male headship; but that is not the same thing as making sexual difference itself integral to the metaphor. Indeed, the differentiated roles within the metaphor already provide the “fundamental difference” for which Sprinkle is looking; it does not follow that sexuality is any part of the analogy. Paul is using a metaphor, and metaphors cannot be mined for multiple features, each carrying independent theological significance.^[29]           

A similar problem arises in Sprinkle’s appeal to 1 Corinthians 11:2–16: “The equal-yet-different relationship between God the Father and God the Son parallels in some way the equal-yet-different relationship between men and women.”^[30] However, “equal-yet-different” is a modern theological formulation, not Paul’s language here. The passage itself reflects the hierarchical assumptions about male-female relations characteristic of its ancient social setting: “the head of the woman is man” (v.3).^[31] To describe this relationship as “equal-yet-different” therefore risks importing a contemporary complementarian formulation into the passage rather than drawing it from the passage itself.

More problematic still is the claim that “Sexual difference seems to be an essential ingredient in showcasing the unity and diversity of the Triune God in marriage.” It is difficult to see what theological basis there is for mapping human sexual difference onto the distinctions within the Trinity in this way.^[32] Classic trinitarian theology begins with the unity of God confessed in the Shema—“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4)—while accounting for the real distinctions of Father, Son and Spirit within that divine unity.^[33] The problem is not with speaking of distinction within the Godhead, but with treating human sexual difference as though it somehow corresponds to those trinitarian distinctions. Nothing in the 1 Corinthians 11 passage establishes such a correspondence. The theological focus is on the oneness of the Godhead, not on something called “diversity” within it, especially when it’s presented in terms of sexual difference (by which, presumably, Sprinkle means “gender difference”). 

However, we need say no more on this, given that Sprinkle rightly accepts that Paul is “not directly addressing same-sex relations” in either Ephesians 5 or 1 Corinthians 11.^[34] Quite so; neither passage is addressing same-sex relationships, and neither makes sexual difference a necessary condition of covenantal relationship unless we first import that as a presupposition for how we read the texts.

Old Testament Commandments Today

Sprinkle’s discussion of the continuing applicability of the Levitical texts raises a significant hermeneutical question. It is not decisive for the wider argument either way, since Romans 1:26–27, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 must still be considered on their own terms. Nonetheless, the methodology by which he determines which provisions of Torah remain binding on Christians warrants closer examination.

He asks the question, are Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 speaking only of “certain types of exploitative sex”?^[35]His conclusion is that they are not, on the grounds that “the commands in these two verses don’t come with any qualifications, comments, or specifications that could limit the commands to a particular type of same-sex behaviour.”^[36] Finding no such limitation expressly in the text provides the basis for Sprinkle to then claim, “The commands appear to include same-sex acts that are mutual and consensual.”^[37] But that conclusion does not follow at all. The absence of an express limitation is being treated as evidence; it’s “an argument from silence.”  

Accepting for the moment Sprinkle’s claim that “Leviticus 18–20 is one literary unit,” which “contain(s) one unit of thought and should be interpreted as such,”^[38] the context which introduces and hence appears to frame the interpretation of that “unit of thought” is already expressly stated in Leviticus 18:1-3:

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Speak to the Israelites and say to them: “I am the Lord your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. 

This immediately draws the attention of the reader (or more likely, hearer) to “what they do in Egypt” and “what they do in Canaan.” This makes the historical context directly relevant: what practices would the original audience have associated with Egypt and Canaan?—in the light of which what the passage then condemns should be understood. Sprinkle is expecting the texts to be saying something that the original audience did not need them to say and finding meaning through its absence.^[39]

The absence of any textual “qualifications, comments, or specifications that could limit the commands to a particular type of same-sex behaviour” cannot determine their interpretation. The ancient Israelite audience would presumably have thought they knew very well what “they do in Egypt” and “they do in Canaan” meant: in the case of the Egyptians, from recent lived experience; in the case of the Canaanites, perhaps more from reputation and camp-fire stories circulating about them.

Biblical archaeologists would need to tell us in more detail “what they did in Egypt” and “what they did in Canaan,” but even then, ultimately the question to ask is does how people were perceived to behave in Egypt and Canaan reflect the same-sex Christian couples that we know? It’s similar to the question we need to ask of Romans 1: Is this a description of the same-sex couples that we know (assuming, of course, that we know any)?   

Sprinkle makes a further argument for the commandments in Leviticus 18–20 being binding on Christians today: “Clearly, there’s no verse in the New Testament that reverses the same-sex commands of Leviticus as it does with the dietary laws.”^[40] This turns on its head the usual evangelical hermeneutical starting point—articulated, for example, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart: commands belonging to the old covenant are not presumed to remain binding upon Gentile Christians unless they are expressly reaffirmed within the new covenant. Sprinkle appears instead to presume the very opposite: continuing applicability unless a command is expressly revoked. And even then, it’s selective.   

The author does accept that some of the laws in Leviticus 18–20 “were probably bound to the specific culture in which Israel lived and are therefore not binding on Christians.”^[41] The ones that do still apply, he argues, fall into two categories: one, those that “contain a core principle that’s still relevant for us today”^[42]and two, “all of these sex laws.”^[43] But both of these supposed categories require considerably more justification than Sprinkle provides. What determines which Old Testament laws contain “a core principle that’s still relevant for us today,” and by what criteria is that principle identified? Even more so, on what basis are “all of these sex laws” singled out as a distinct category that continues to apply? Sprinkle appears to mean those within Leviticus 18–20,^[44] but Torah contains other laws regulating sexual behaviour. Consider, for example, Deuteronomy 22:28–29:

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

Is that not also a “sex law”? If not, why not? And does it contain a “core principle” that remains relevant for us today? The difficulty is that neither of those terms offers any self-evident hermeneutical criterion; Sprinkle needs first to explain how the category is defined and by what method its continuing applicability is established. Otherwise, his categories risk simply reflecting conclusions already reached about which Old Testament laws should continue to apply.

Moving Beyond the Texts—the Crucial Place of Orientation

By a third of the way into the book, Sprinkle’s position is unmistakable, notwithstanding the book’s recurring invitation to accompany him on a journey of discovery in which conclusions are to be withheld until all of the evidence has been considered.

     That measured tone slips somewhat, though, in some remarks that seem needlessly dismissive (if not cynical) in a discussion of this seriousness. For example:

We need to ask the question: Does the New Testament say that same-sex intercourse is now okay since Jesus has arrived?^[45]

[Affirming writers] would have to create a rather un-Jewish, pasty-white Norwegian, Western Jesus before they recruit him to support same-sex relations.^[46]

There’s no clear reason why these laws should not be obeyed simply because they are in Leviticus. Still, we should be open to the New Testament possibly making a surprise move and doing away with the same-sex commands in Leviticus.^[47]

The short section headed “Same-Sex Orientation” (pp.58–61) is, in my view, one of the places where Sprinkle most significantly overreaches the available evidence. Orientation—more specifically, modern awareness of orientation—is crucial in the discussion. Sprinkle cites numerous scholars, both affirming and non-affirming, all of whom agree that ancient writers did not possess our modern concept of innate same-sex orientation (what we might call, “born that way”). Given that broad agreement, Sprinkle’s argument necessarily depends upon identifying evidence for something sufficiently analogous in antiquity to undermine the claim that the modern category was unknown. The evidence is remarkably thin—far too thin to support the conclusion he draws from it. Two passages from People to Be Loved illustrate the problem. Note the highly qualified language, which I have italicised:

There is some truth to these claims: our modern conception of same-sex orientation didn’t exist back then. As we’ll see, however, some Greco-Roman writers did believe in some form of inborn same-sex desires. Their understanding isn’t exactly the same as what we call same-sex orientation, but it is a relevant parallel.^[48]    

The point seems clear: an ancient version of same-sex orientation existed^[49] when the New Testament was written. I’m not saying that everyone was aware of this or that Paul and other New Testament authors necessarily held the same perspective. I’m not even saying that Greco-Roman writers understood same-sex orientation in the same way we do today. What I am saying is that it is historically inaccurate to say: “the notion of sexual orientation was absent” in Paul’s day and then use this to reinterpret Paul.^[50]      

The conclusion Sprinkle draws from these heavily qualified claims is astonishing: “The evidence shows that the notion of inborn, biologically driven, same-sex desires existed in Paul’s day.”^[51] The evidence presented does not support a claim anywhere near that strong. The possibility of some ancient writers recognising some form of innate same-sex desire is not evidence for a recognised category of biologically grounded same-sex orientation. Sprinkle himself has already acknowledged that the ancient understanding “isn’t exactly the same,” but his categorical conclusion then collapses the distinction. If the conservative intention is to negate or diminish orientation, it must be on far, far better grounds.          

Why does this question of orientation matter so much? Why is it so important to the conservative argument to establish that “some form” of awareness existed, amongst “some writers”? The reason is simple. If the Bible was not speaking of people understood within the modern category of same-sex orientation, but rather within an ancient framework which assumed male-female sexual relations to be normative, then the biblical texts which condemned same-sex desire and behaviour were not addressing the people we know today.^[52] Within that worldview, male same-sex behaviour would be understood as a failure to govern desires that ought properly to have been directed towards women. The expected response was therefore restraint and conformity to the assumed male-female sexual norm; there was no conceptual category of an exclusively same-sex-oriented person for whom such conformity would itself be contrary to their orientation.

An absence of awareness of orientation for the biblical writers means that the Bible is silent in relation to same-sex-oriented people as we understand them today. It will be making neither affirming statements nor non-affirming statements concerning them.^[53] We will therefore search in vain for biblical texts explicitly “affirming” same-sex relationships (as conservatives often demand), for the same reason that we will search in vain for texts explicitly rejecting them: the question, framed in those terms, was not one the biblical writers were addressing. Requiring an “affirming text” therefore sets an evidential test that the historically-situated nature of Scripture would never be able to satisfy.

A basic principle of biblical interpretation (that conservatives themselves would generally acknowledge) is that no text can mean something now that it did not mean then. It cannot be saying something now that it was not saying then. Still less can we say it is speaking of something that lay outside the conceptual world of its writers.^[54]   

Given this silence in Scripture, how then do we approach what “the Bible says” to find relevant guidance concerning same-sex-oriented people, and how they should live? The answer is not to force the Bible to be answering a question its writers were never asking. We do what we do with all other questions on which the Bible is silent.^[55] We look to Scripture more widely, to analogous questions the biblical writers did address, to the wider biblical story, and the nature and character of God revealed in Jesus. And we apply good hermeneutics rather than simply reaching for the closest apparent “proof-text” from a word search.   

We may still see the “famous five” verses as relevant to that task, but hermeneutical precision requires us to start from the fact that they were not talking about the people we are talking about. We are asking a question that arises only in the light of modern awareness: what does Christian faithfulness look like for an exclusively same-sex-oriented person? Logically our pastoral expectations should be consistent.  

Before we finish on orientation, I should add that Sprinkle repeatedly undermines its biological basis. “Even if all the medical research showed that same-sex desires were biological (which it doesn’t), this still wouldn’t mean that it’s okay to act on those desires.” (p.131). “The one lesson I’ve learned is that the claim ‘I was born gay, and therefore it’s okay’ is not only theologically wrong; it is scientifically naïve.” (p.130) It’s “… a distorted and naïve view of science …” (p.151).

The point he’s making may not be entirely clear in these quotations. It’s not that some people are gay by nature, whereas some are gay by nurture.^[56] His point is that no gay person is gay solely due to nature. “Nature and nurture play a role in forming one’s same-sex desires, and it’s unlikely that one’s desires are produced solely by any one biological or societal factor.”^[57] Once that claim is made, the obvious next question is whether the “nurture” component can be identified and undone. Nature never has to be accepted as decisive until every attempt to reverse what nurture has supposedly contributed has failed. This opens the door, of course, to precisely the kind of attempts to change or diminish same-sex attraction that Sprinkle later discusses under the heading of “reparative therapy”—colloquially known as “praying the gay away.”

To be clear about what Sprinkle has in mind by “nurture,” he frames it in the following terms: “Others say,^[58] that we are all born heterosexual, but nurture (like circumstances, family upbringing) sometimes cultivates gay desires: sexual abuse, an absent father, a domineering mother, or too many sisters that treated little Bobby like a doll growing up.”^[59] The reader will need to take their own view on the credibility of such a sentence. These examples are striking because they closely resemble explanations for homosexuality historically associated with now-discredited theories of the causes of homosexuality: sexual abuse, deficient fathering, an overbearing mother and gender-atypical childhood socialisation. Particularly troubling in this context is the prominence given earlier in the book to an extreme case of childhood abuse:

… people like Maddie, whose dad chained her to a toilet in the basement for three months when she was nine. He gave her scraps of food to keep her alive and then raped her repeatedly for the next four years. Now Maddie chooses to have relationships only with other women. ‘I’m not attracted to girls, but no man will ever touch me again,’ she says.^[60]            

Clearly this is a totally heart-breaking story. The question for Sprinkle’s argument is what paradigmatic significance the reader is expected to take from it. Its placement within a book concerned with homosexuality inevitably raises the possibility he is hinting at a causal link between childhood abuse and subsequent same-sex attraction—particularly when he lists sexual abuse among the possible “nurture” factors cultivating same-sex desires. Such an association requires persuasive evidence. Maddie’s individual experience, however tragic, does not provide it.  

Finally, we need briefly to deal with one further related point.

Some scholars argue that there was no such thing as loving same-sex relations in Paul’s day and therefore he could not have been addressing them in his writings. After all, Paul can’t condemn something that didn’t exist.^[61]

Pederasty was the most common form of same-sex relations in the Greco-Roman world,^[62] but it wasn’t the only kind. There is at least some evidence for consensual “peer” same-sex relations as well. That is, there were men and women who engaged in same-sex relations that were mutual, consensual, interdependent, loving, and committed. These were the minority, but they certainly existed.^[63]

Some of these would be similar to the types of relations that affirming Christians are arguing for today.^[64]

All of this misses the central point. No one needs to deny that loving, committed same-sex relationships may have existed in antiquity; but that is not the issue. The issue is how such relationships would have been understood. We have said repeatedly that the ancient world knew about same-sex desire and same-sex sexual behaviour; what it did not possess was our modern understanding of sexual orientation. Paul might therefore have encountered two men who loved one another, were committed to one another and had sex with one another (there is no evidence that he did), but that would be telling us nothing about whether he understood them as two men whose enduring sexual orientation was towards their own sex. He almost certainly did not.

This is not a minor point; it’s the heart of the argument. Sprinkle repeatedly points to evidence that the ancient world knew about same-sex desire, behaviour and relationships, as though that answers the question of whether it knew about same-sex orientation. It does not—those are different questions. Evidence for one is not evidence for the other. To say that some ancient relationships looked rather like modern same-sex relationships from the outside is beside the point if the people involved, and the society observing them, understood what was happening in fundamentally different terms.

Modern awareness of orientation is the Achilles heel of the conservative position. If its scientific validity is conceded, and its hermeneutical significance for the biblical writers’ understanding is applied, the conservative case (in Scripture^[65]) then reduces to establishing that the “clobber texts” or Adam and Eve nevertheless provide a unique, timeless paradigm that determines the shape of all human sexual relationships.

With that distinction in mind, the problem with statements such as the following becomes much clearer:

It is true that Jews most often condemned pederasty. But this does not mean that the same writer would have been fine with two adult males getting married and having sex.^[66]

Of course, he wouldn’t. But that is precisely because an ancient world Jewish writer would have understood those two men within an ancient world Jewish framing of sex and sexuality, not within our modern category of same-sex orientation. The fact that he would have condemned their sexual relationship tells us what he thought about marriage and sex within his conceptual world; it does not by itself tell us how he would have responded had he possessed information and categories unavailable to him.

Every Jew who wrote on the subject five hundred years before and five hundred years after Christ agreed on one thing: same-sex relations were against the will of God.^[67]

Of course, they did. And Jesus would have agreed with them.^[68]

     The question is not whether first-century Jews regarded same-sex sexual behaviour as contrary to God’s will; unquestionably, they did. The question is what they understood that behaviour to represent. Their moral judgement was formed within a world in which opposite-sex attraction and partnering were assumed to be the natural human norm, and all else was deviant; their judgements were made without awareness of our modern category of enduring same-sex orientation. Simply reproducing their first-century judgements as what “the Bible says” or “the Bible clearly teaches” answers our modern question only by anachronistically importing twenty-first-century scientific awareness of orientation into the rationale for those judgements; that is not historical interpretation. 

     The incarnate Jesus knew nothing of modern science, any more than anyone else in his era did. If we wish to speculate what he would have thought of today’s question in the light of modern scientific knowledge, that’s something else entirely. I don’t believe he would simply quote the “famous five” as proof-texts, or present Adam and Eve as the timeless paradigm for all sexual relationships, or cite two thousand years plus of unbroken tradition.

The “Problem” as Sprinkle Sees It

This brings us to the nature of “the problem” and its appropriate “solution,” as Sprinkle sees them. His conclusions are likely to be taken by many readers as a blueprint for a conservative evangelical approach to gay people—especially readers who are enamoured by his often compassionate pastoral tone—so it is important to be clear about how the book defines them.

The first feature of Sprinkle’s diagnosis concerns why gay people leave the church.  

… most people who are attracted to the same sex don’t end up leaving the church because they were told that same-sex behavior is wrong. They leave because they were dehumanized, ridiculed, and treated like an “other.”^[69]

… most LGBT people I know didn’t leave the church because their behavior wasn’t affirmed … It was because their humanity wasn’t affirmed.^[70]

There is an obvious analogy here with a political party suffering repeated defeats while continuing to insist that the problem lies not with its message but only with how that message has been communicated. Sprinkle may well be right that dehumanisation, ridicule and othering have driven many LGBT people from churches. But his distinction too easily separates the manner in which gay people have been treated from the theological message they have been given. The two cannot be so neatly separated: being treated with kindness while being told that your only morally legitimate options are celibacy, a mixed-orientation marriage or attempting to change your sexuality does not mean that the problem was simply the way the message was delivered.

A second feature is his repeated language of gay Christians “wrestling with their faith and sexuality.”^[71] But why does that wrestling arise in the first place? It is not simply the result of being both gay and Christian. It arises, at least in significant part, because gay Christians have been told that their sexuality presents a particular problem for discipleship because of “what the Bible says.” If they don’t “wrestle” with it, or don’t come to the required conclusions as a result of that wrestling, then in many conservative churches the clock starts ticking on their welcome and continued participation—with the potential loss of their church community, ministry, friendships and much else besides. In that context, the “wrestling” cannot simply be presented as an intrinsic feature of being both gay and Christian; it is, at least in significant part, produced by the theology within which gay Christians are being required to understand themselves.

A third—and by now unsurprising—feature concerns the consequences Sprinkle attaches to same-sex sexual relationships. At the end of chapter 7 he asks explicitly, “So, are all gay people going to hell? No. I’ll explain why in chapter 10.”^[72]  Curiously, however, chapter 10 never seems to provide the promised explanation. What does become clear is the distinction on which the “No” apparently depends: same-sex attraction is not itself sinful, whereas engaging in same-sex sexual activity is a “morally culpable sin”—a “concrete act of disobedience that people need to repent from.”^[73]

The implication appears hard to miss. Sprinkle’s answer to “are all gay people going to hell?” is no because simply being gay is not sinful; the position of someone in a same-sex sexual relationship is another matter. Having explicitly raised the question of “going to hell,” Sprinkle never expressly tells us what follows for a gay Christian who persists in a same-sex sexual relationship. However, in an extended discussion of 1 Corinthians 5 (pp.153-55), Sprinkle includes same-sex relations among the persistent, unrepented-of sins that, subject to the conditions he specifies, warrant putting the person concerned “out of your fellowship”—albeit, as he puts it, “in the context of love and tears and truth.”

Chapter 10 subsequently outlines three possibilities for a gay Christian: (1) “reparative therapy,” aimed at changing or diminishing same-sex attraction;^[74] (2) entering a mixed-orientation marriage with someone of the opposite sex; or (3) remaining single and celibate. If those are the only permissible options, it is hardly surprising that a gay Christian might “wrestle with their faith and sexuality.”

So, these are three very significant assumptions about the nature of the problem, which then inform his view on the nature of the solution.

The “Solution” as Sprinkle Sees It

Step one is to befriend—to “love”—the gay person. This begins with confronting bigotry and homophobia within our churches, listening to gay people’s stories, taking them out for coffee, and becoming “life-giving agents to brothers and sisters who are hungry for love.” Sprinkle describes this as “affirming their humanity,” although, as we shall see, that affirmation has clearly defined limits.

All of this is admirable in itself. The difficulty is that Sprinkle repeatedly presents such love and acceptance not simply as good in themselves, but as instruments to repentance: “If we desire for people to live holy lives, then we need to begin with love.”^[75] Elsewhere, “People will never have the power to change unless they first experience genuine acceptance.” But “genuine acceptance” is being defined in a time-limited, clock-ticking way, pending appropriate “change.”^[76] The direction of travel is clear: love leads to acceptance; acceptance is with a view to change; and the required change has been predetermined as repentance from same-sex sexual relationships.

It is, in that sense, a “purpose-driven friendship”: kindness and acceptance have a specific objective that Sprinkle makes explicit. With a nod to Romans 2:4, “Non-affirming Christians should flood LGBT people with kindness, and such kindness will lead to repentance.”^[77]   

What happens to that friendship and acceptance if the anticipated repentance never comes (or doesn’t come quickly enough) is less clear—although Sprinkle’s extended discussion of 1 Corinthians 5 indicates where the process can ultimately lead:

Let me be clear: If God’s Word is inspired and authoritative, and if greed, reviling, drunkenness and sexual immorality (including same-sex relations) are sin, and if someone is engaging in those behaviors and doesn’t have desire to repent, and if your church agrees with all these things (it’s not just one person’s opinion but is shared by the leaders of the church), then yes, in the context of love and tears and truth: the perpetually unrepentant, greedy, revilers, drunks, and sexually immoral who claim to be a Jesus-follower should be “put out of your fellowship” (1 Cor 5:2).^[78]

The repeated “ifs” signify appropriate procedural conditions, but the conclusion is patently clear. Where a church agrees that same-sex relations are sinful, and a gay Christian persists in such a relationship without repenting of it, Sprinkle’s stated conclusion is that they should be put out of fellowship. The qualifications concern only the manner, not the outcome. Other forms of persistent, unrepentant sin must be treated in the same way; exclusion should take place “in the context of love and tears and truth.”

Step two concerns what a successful outcome of this process would look like. Sprinkle offers three alternative options: reparative therapy, a mixed-orientation marriage, or lifelong singleness and celibacy.^[79]Each requires separate consideration, but some general observations are appropriate to begin.

First, we should not underestimate the pressure experienced by gay Christians within churches where continued participation is conditional upon accepting one of these paths, particularly lifelong celibacy. Conservative evangelical churches can certainly point to gay Christians who have embraced that option, and present such examples as evidence of the pastoral “success” of the non-affirming position; Sprinkle himself does so repeatedly. But it is legitimate to ask how freely such choices are made when the alternatives are likely to include the loss of church community, ministry, friendships and, in some cases, family relationships.

Second, for gay people outside the church, presenting these three options as part of the “good news” of the gospel creates an evangelistic problem of extraordinary proportions. The message is, in effect: come to Christ, but understand that faithfulness will require you either to attempt to change your sexual orientation, marry someone to whom you are not sexually attracted, or accept lifelong celibacy. It is difficult to see how that can plausibly be heard as good news. Calling it good news does not make it good news.   

The equivalent in Jesus’ ministry that Sprinkle sees as a good model for how we approach gay people today is that of tax collectors: Start with love and welcome, as Jesus did, and that will pretty soon lead them to see the error of their ways and repent.^[80] 

They [tax collectors] found something so compelling about Jesus that they drew near to hear him. And it wasn’t because he was some postmodern poet who thinks that love means letting everyone do what feels right to them.^[81] That’s the pasty-white, blond-haired, modern Jesus, not the Jewish rabbi of the New Testament. Jesus was able to preach hard-hitting, biblically saturated, ethically demanding sermons. And yet sinners and tax collectors were drawn to the presence of Christ. It wasn’t because their behavior was affirmed. It was because their humanity was affirmed.^[82]

The idea that “hard-hitting, biblically saturated, ethically demanding sermons” directed at gay people will persuade them of the virtue and necessity of Sprinkle’s three options—simply because we have first flooded them with strategic love, kindness and acceptance before dropping those sermons on them—strikes me as wholly unrealistic.     

Thirdly, we should not assume that heterosexual people within our churches find these three options morally or pastorally persuasive simply because they continue to participate in churches that teach them. Some will, of course. Others may regard the traditional position as an inherited part of their church’s theology which they are prepared to live with, without ever being particularly persuaded by it. Such passive acquiescence should not be mistaken for conviction—and may prove increasingly difficult to sustain when personal circumstances (or pressure from clergy) require people to confront the implications of the church’s position more directly.          

And fourthly, for heterosexual people outside the church, these three options present a formidable barrier to taking the traditional Christian position seriously. The more we insist that we are simply standing up for “what the Bible clearly teaches,” and that it really is good news for gay people, the more we transfer the moral problem from ourselves to the Bible and ultimately to God. If this is what God requires of gay people, then it is God who increasingly looks unreasonable, and the Bible that looks morally indefensible and increasingly irrelevant to modern life.

Sprinkle’s first option, reparative or “conversion” therapy, raises questions that go well beyond the acknowledged abuses of particular ministries.^[83]  The underlying issue is not whether abuse should be permitted in any supposed “ministry” guise; clearly it should not. Nor is the issue whether gay people who are struggling with their sexuality should have access to pastoral care, prayer, or psychological support; of course they should. The question is whether changing or diminishing their same-sex orientation is an appropriate therapeutic or pastoral objective. Sprinkle believes that, at least in some circumstances, it can be.

It is interesting that Sprinkle appeals to the American Psychological Association for support in his discussion of nature and nurture. The APA does indeed say that there is no scientific consensus about precisely why an individual develops a particular sexual orientation, and that nature and nurture may both play complex roles. But by the time People to Be Loved was published, the same organisation had conducted an extensive review of the evidence concerning attempts to change sexual orientation and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support it.^[84] There is an obvious selectivity in appealing to the authority of mainstream psychological science when its findings appear helpful to one argument (the complex roles of nature/nurture), while disclaiming the findings of that same scientific authority concerning whether sexual orientation can be changed by therapeutic interventions. Uncertainty about what, exactly, causes orientation offers no evidence whatsoever for a therapist being able to alter it. 

It is always tempting to tell stories of people we know—or stories we’ve been told by others—suggesting or implying them to be paradigmatic, either expressly or by implication. We see this all the time from pulpits and at conferences and it’s something we see regularly in the book. Sprinkle says, “Throughout my study, I’ve become friends with many Christians who experience same-sex attraction and also embrace a nonaffirming view” and, “The stories of Nick, Matt, Nate, Amy, Brian, Lesli, Sam, Lindsay, Wes, Sarah, and others—all of whom are attracted to the same sex but believe that it is wrong to act on their attractions.” (both p.157)

The story of a secular friend who is a licensed psychologist working for a practice “that helps gay men change their orientation” is a further example of this. Based on his friend’s experiences, conversion therapy apparently works very well provided that you go about it the right way.

I asked him about the success rate of his practice. And he said that approximately 50 percent of the gay men that come to him experience full, ongoing change in their sexual orientation, and another 25 percent experience a significant degree of change, while 25 percent experience little or no change.^[85]        

There is an obvious problem with presenting this as evidence. Sprinkle is reporting what an unnamed psychologist friend told him about the results of his own practice, so by the time it reaches us the claim is third-hand. We are given no sample size, methodology, definition of “full, ongoing change,” length of follow-up, or independent evidence that the claimed changes lasted. A claimed 50 per cent rate of complete change in sexual orientation is pretty remarkable, and surely requires more by way of evidence than this anecdotal testimony; and not least when more substantial academic research paints a very different picture.

For example, a 2021 UK Government assessment of the evidence on conversion therapy reviewed 46 studies, 41 of them concerning sexual orientation, including two systematic reviews of international evidence. It concluded that “there is no robust evidence that conversion therapy can change sexual orientation.”^[86] A separate 2021 study by researchers at Coventry University for the Government Equalities Office reached the same conclusion: “There is no robust evidence to support claims that conversion therapy is effective at changing sexual orientation or gender identity.” It also noted that studies reporting higher levels of success have “serious limitations or fatal flaws in study designs.”^[87]

None of this proves that Sprinkle’s unnamed psychologist friend did not observe what he says he did. But it does mean that his anecdotal claims bear no resemblance to the findings of these far more substantial studies.

Sprinkle’s second option, a “mixed-orientation marriage,” continues to foreground orientation and therapy for change. If exclusive same-sex orientation is an enduring feature, then recommending marriage to someone of the opposite sex as a “solution” is clearly fraught with difficulties.  It becomes feasible only to the extent that same-sex attraction is regarded as potentially changeable, with therapeutic treatment or prayer ministry contributing to that “healing” process. Alternatively, it assumes that a gay person can remain same-sex oriented but still have a fulfilling marriage, including a sexual relationship, with someone of the opposite sex.

To my mind, the reasoning in this short section (pages 162–63) is very shallow. Perhaps the brevity and lack of depth indicate that Sprinkle is not particularly enthusiastic about it, but since it remains one of the options he offers gay Christians, it needs at least to be addressed. Given the very limited treatment Sprinkle gives it, a lengthy response here is not warranted, though of course one could be made. Half of the section comprises stories (unsurprisingly, positive stories, with happy endings). If mixed-orientation marriage is seriously to be proposed as one of only three legitimate options for gay Christians, then a much fuller case needs to be made.

The final option for gay people, in the conservative view that Sprinkle espouses, is by his own admission “the most difficult”^[88]—singleness and lifelong celibacy. Probably for that reason, he devotes the rest of the chapter to it, twelve out of eighteen pages.

After explaining why affirming Christians think “forced celibacy” is harsh, unkind and cruel, Sprinkle begins the case for the defence with personal testimonies of his celibate gay friends. Personal testimonies have an important place, but selected testimonies do not establish something as paradigmatic. Inevitably, the examples put forward in support of a position are those that support it! Sprinkle’s celibate gay friends’ testimonies may be evidence that some gay Christians embrace celibacy and find it life-giving; they do not establish that this is sustainable and desirable for gay Christians generally.    

Sprinkle builds his case for why enforced celibacy is no bad thing on several additional grounds (including, once again, personal testimonies that are supportive of it). Not all of his arguments are persuasive, to say the least:

1.     Gay people should not be concerned about not being allowed to marry, because marriage is not the solution to loneliness and depression: “I know many married people who are incredibly lonely and depressed. Just look at the number of people who get divorced, have an affair …, or become addicted to porn after they get married. Some of the loneliest people I know are married.”^[89] This sounds more like an argument against any marriage. 

2.    Gay people need to see “the beautiful freedom that singleness may bring.”^[90] That may be so (Paul certainly thought so), but ought it not to be for the person concerned to decide that for themselves, rather than making it mandatory for gay Christian discipleship?

3.    Love is not the same as sex: “Jesus told us to love our neighbors, but this doesn’t mean we need to have sex with them.”^[91] Sprinkle’s celibate gay friends “all disagree with the way that affirming Christians equate celibacy with loneliness and lack of relational intimacy.”^[92] Their personal experience is, of course, perfectly valid. But once again, these are necessarily selective testimonies from Sprinkle’s own circle of gay friends, about whom we know nothing beyond what he tells us—and, as we have noted before, that circle does not appear to include any same-sex couples. A collection of positive testimonies from celibate gay Christians who support the theological position being advocated can hardly establish that lifelong celibacy is therefore a good—or even sustainable—requirement for gay Christians generally.

Of course love is not the same as sex, but this is catchphrase logic. How many heterosexual married Christians would say that sexual intimacy is not important for them? The basic argument in virtually all Christian marriage books is the precise opposite: how important sex is for human beings in a loving relationship. It’s why we encourage young singles to get married. It’s why Paul encouraged them to get married (1 Cor. 7:9). It’s why Christian marriage books are big on sex (sex sells, even in Christian contexts!).

This is about consistency in how we recognise the place of sexuality and sexual desire in how a human being is made. If same-sex orientation is an enduring and unchosen part of some people’s humanity, just as opposite-sex orientation is for the majority, then the only question is the appropriate outworking of it. Our answer should be consistent. Sex can’t, in fairness, be really important for heterosexual people, but really unimportant for gay people.      

It’s right to say that marriage is “not all about sex” but that is not the same as saying it’s “not at all about sex.” And yet, sex is assumed to be at the centre of the Christian “problem” of gay people entering into same-sex marriage or civil partnership—even though we have not the first idea of what happens behind closed doors, good or bad, in the heterosexual relationships of people in our churches. Nor, ordinarily, would we expect to enquire about the intimate details of their sexual activity. Nonetheless, the church’s posture towards gay couples appears to assume they are “at it” all the time. Sprinkle notes, in a slightly different though related context, that a week consists of 10,080 minutes.^[93] How many of those minutes, in a typical week, are actually spent having sex by any couple? And yet the whole relationship of a same-sex couple is morally judged on the basis of assumptions about these few minutes. 

So with what, precisely, does God have a problem, which needs to be reflected in our policy towards same-sex couples? Is dating enough to constitute a sinful relationship? Is it getting married that triggers God’s displeasure? Is kissing okay (or does it have to be “a holy kiss”—per four Pauline commands in the New Testament)? Are long, lingering, caressing hugs okay? Is cuddling on the same bed okay? What about expressions of sexual intimacy that do not involve anal sex? Is there a material difference in how we answer any of these questions if we’re talking about a female-female relationship rather than a male-male one? What does the female-female list involve? And on what basis do we say that some of those things are okay and others are not? I am not being facetious. If lifelong celibacy is to be required of gay Christians because these things are sinful, surely they are entitled to know with some precision what “these things” are, and why. We cannot hide behind umbrella terms such as porneia (usually translated “sexual immorality”)—not least because the New Testament does not provide a definition.   

And, in the interests of consistency, should we not be equally clear about what counts as “unnatural” or “against nature” sexual activity for heterosexual married couples? If Paul’s para physin (contrary to nature) tells us what kinds of sexual behaviour are wrong for all time, what exactly does it rule out? Many early Christian writers regarded non-procreative sexual activity, including within marriage, as contrary to nature. If we no longer follow their understanding of what was “natural” and “unnatural” for heterosexual couples, we need to explain why their assumptions about same-sex activity should still dictate our understanding today.^[94]                  

Moving on from uncomfortable questions about sex—we are British, after all—Sprinkle quite rightly identifies a major problem, not just with insisting on enforced singleness for gay people, but for single people more widely (something I suspect all pastors are aware of):

The church doesn’t know what to do with singles. Until the church can develop a better theology of singleness, it won’t know what to do with celibate gay people in their midst. And this is a real crisis. Most Christians view singleness as an interim stage, a period of life that you have to get through like standing in line for a ride at Disneyland.^[95]  

Clearly, this goes beyond a discussion about gay people. But there is an irony here. Churches champion the importance of families and children; their social fabric is largely built around couples and the nuclear family; and preachers constantly draw examples and metaphors from marriage and family life. Yet none of this is allowed any relevance when considering what the same-sex-oriented Christian might legitimately desire for themselves (still less how all of this focus will make them feel).

Are we really comfortable saying that single gay Christians can and should expect to find in the church all the love, companionship, intimacy and sense of family that they might otherwise have found in a partner and family of their own? Most people gravitate towards churches where they find people like themselves and form close-knit friendship groups with them.  

Are we really comfortable saying that gay Christians should go home every Sunday to an empty house, with no family photos on the mantelpiece, and no children or grandchildren to look forward to spending Christmas with? Is the typical church really going to provide all of that for the 60-, 70- or 80-something gay Christian who has been told that he must remain single for life because that is what God requires of him?

Some may say, “Why not? Why shouldn’t the church fulfil that for them?” But is that real life, or simply aspirational—what we would like the church to be? It is easy to say that “the church” will provide the lifelong intimacy, companionship and sense of family that gay Christians are being required to forgo. Asking a few families if they wouldn’t mind having a single gay person from the church round for coffee once a month out of pity is something rather different.        

Sprinkle is quite right to say, “Singleness should never be seen as a stage to get through, but a unique gift intended to be used for God’s glory.” The problem is that singleness is not unique if it applies to everyone. It’s no longer a gift if every gay person has to have it.

In the familiar conservative juxtaposition of “truth” and “grace” (two qualities that John 1:14 tells us Jesus was equally “full of”), insisting on lifelong singleness and celibacy for gay Christians is often presented as the “truth” part. But it is difficult not to see the “full of grace” part being effectively ignored. A particular view of “truth” has determined the outcome, while “grace” has been reduced to the manner in which that non-negotiable decision is communicated.            

I do not belittle the real pain that accompanies the life of celibate gay Christians who desire a husband or wife of the same sex, who might never experience the exhilarating pleasure of having sex with another person. But I do want to put their struggles in the context of other broken people …^[96]  

We are all, to greater and lesser extents, broken people living in a broken world. But in this case, we have to ask ourselves: are we the ones breaking people here? Is it the Word of God, or our interpretations and traditions? Might we, in fact, be the ones causing the “real pain” that Sprinkle speaks of? And to what end?

Whatever pastoral conclusions we reach concerning gay people, surely one vital question is whether they are deeply pleasing to the heart of God. The harsher the consequences of a doctrine for people, the more certain we must be that it reflects something of absolutely critical importance to God (and to know why). That seems especially important here, where the consequences for gay Christians may include lifelong singleness and celibacy, or exclusion from church fellowship. Are we really so certain that God requires these things of gay people to justify imposing such a cost upon them? How comfortably does that sit with Jesus’ own description of his mission as bringing people life “in all its fullness” (John 10:10)?

For those of us who believe the Bible to be authoritative, that takes us back to a fundamental question: what is the Bible for? Tom Wright argues that the Bible does not possess a self-contained, stand-alone authority of its own. Its authority derives from and mediates the authority of God, ultimately revealed in the risen Jesus—the one who actually says that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). As Wright pointedly observes, Jesus did not say that “all authority will be given to the books you’re going to write.” The question, then, is how we hear the authoritative voice of God through Scripture.^[97]  

The Bible is not a rule book. It is not God’s instruction manual. Biblical faithfulness cannot simply be reduced to deciding which commands still apply and which do not. Nor is biblical truth established simply by identifying the most likely meaning of two Greek words and whether they appear in the Septuagint. These are mechanistic, modernist ways of thinking about the Bible. They leave little room for a relational understanding of Scripture, or for the thoroughly Pauline insistence that Christian faithfulness cannot be reduced to obedience to a written code. There is something strangely legalistic about making biblical faithfulness ultimately depend upon identifying and enforcing the right laws.

Closing Thoughts

Unlike many other Christians writing and talking on same-sex matters, Sprinkle works hard to avoid coming across as harsh, unkind or judgmental. This alone will give the book traction amongst non-affirming Christians: it is warm and friendly in tone, easy to read, and comes to “the right” conclusions—once the initial faux suspense as to which side of the debate Sprinkle will eventually land on is over, of course. It would be easy to think: give this book to people, and they will be persuaded.

To his credit, Sprinkle emphatically condemns the way that Christians and churches have treated gay people. He calls for an end to bigotry, harsh rhetoric and homophobia, and rightly so—although his definition of “homophobia” is clearly narrower than that of many readers, since it does not include theological opposition to same-sex relationships themselves. Given that, for many gay people—and, for that matter, many non-gay people—such attitudes are what the church at large is best known for concerning same-sex relationships, his critique is welcome.   

I don’t doubt for one moment that the author is sincere in this. But surely being loving and kind in approach, and condemning bigotry, harsh rhetoric and homophobia, should always have been givens. Isn’t that simply where we should all have begun the debate in the first place—the Christ-like manner in which Christians should always have approached it? Surely this is not part of “the answer”; it is correcting a shameful problem in how Christians and churches have treated gay people.   

Framing the traditional conservative position under an umbrella of being really loving and kind towards gay people, as Sprinkle does, may also reassure Christians who have lingering doubts about that position: perhaps the traditional conclusion can still be insisted upon, provided that we explain it nicely, in a “context of love and tears.” But, as I have argued, improving the manner in which the message is delivered does not resolve the problems with the message itself.

Although People to Be Loved contains no fundamentally new arguments, traditionalist conservatives may well see the book as comprehensively trouncing the affirming view, having presented and engaged with “what the Bible says” in an even-handed and objective manner. Sprinkle even acknowledges at times that some affirming arguments have merit, or that particular non-affirming arguments are poorly founded; what more could one ask?^[98] The problem is that People to Be Loved assumes throughout a very particular way of reading “what the Bible says”—one that many readers may not even recognise as interpretation rather than a self-evident plain reading. In particular:

1.     It repeatedly flattens the distance between the world of the biblical writers and our own, making ancient texts answer modern questions they were not addressing.

2.    It treats some traditional interpretations—not least of the creation narratives—as though they were simply what the texts themselves say, while applying quite different hermeneutical approaches elsewhere.

3.    Most importantly, it fails to allow our modern understanding of enduring, unchosen same-sex orientation to make the difference to our interpretation and application of the biblical texts that I believe it must.

4.    The Bible does not directly answer the question we are asking. The “famous five” clobber texts were not addressing same-sex-oriented people in faithful, loving, covenantal relationships, because that was not a question the writers were asking. Nor is the story of Adam and Eve a doctrinal prohibition against same-sex-oriented people entering into faithful, committed relationships.

Recognising thisis not taking the Bible less seriously; it is taking seriously what those texts were—and were not—actually saying.

Sprinkle is absolutely right about one thing in his title: gay people are indeed people to be loved. The question his book ultimately leaves the reader asking is what that love should look like in practice—what it requires from Christians. The subtitle is Why homosexuality is not just an issue. For traditionalists, for whatever reasons, it very much is an issue. The question is whether it should be such an issue in the scheme of things—and, most importantly of all, whether it is such an issue from God’s perspective, since that determination should drive our own response.      

*This review is a substantially rewritten and updated version of an earlier paper from 2021.  

^[1] People to Be Loved, p.10.

^[2] People to Be Loved, pp.10, 19. This is an important acknowledgement, since bringing assumptions and presuppositions to the text is unavoidable in biblical interpretation.

^[3] People to Be Loved, p.19. It is not entirely clear what evidential weight the reader is supposed to place on this statement. Comparable scholarly engagement has led other researchers to very different conclusions—including, as Sprinkle himself acknowledges, the majority of scholars who have published on the subject. 

^[4] He succeeds in this to a point of being criticised by conservatives in some book reviews for being “too nice.” 

^[5] People to Be Loved, p.14.

^[6] ‘The Sin “of” Homosexuality?’, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theologyintheraw/2015/04/the-sin-of-homosexuality/ (accessed 17 August, 2026). Italics original.

^[7] People to Be Loved, p.9; hinting at John’s description of Jesus: “full of grace and truth,” John 1:14.

^[8] People to Be Loved, p.19. To be slightly “picky,” the book’s subtitle is actually “Why homosexuality is not just an issue.” It becomes clear in the latter part of the book that it very much is “an issue.”

^[9] People to Be Loved, p.19.

^[10] Echoing what is said in relation to discussions about disability, “Nothing about us without us.”

^[11] People to Be Loved, p.10.

^[12] Although it is off-piste in the context of this book review, the anointing of the Spirit on and through Lonnie Frisbee is an enduring question (mystery?) within the Vineyard movement. 

^[13] Acts 10:44–47; Galatians 3:2–5.

^[14] People to Be Loved, p.21.

^[15] Perhaps the most notorious example of that is the 1984 NIV rendering of 1 Corinthians 6:9, using the phrase “homosexual offenders.” This was not corrected until 2011. If nothing else, it reminds us that the act of translation is itself an act of interpretation and that, as Sprinkle says, “We all have biases and presuppositions that we bring to the text.”     

^[16] People to Be Loved, p.23.

^[17] One could say that conservatives use the term “non-affirming” incorrectly, since it implies a neutral stance (of “not” affirming), when their actual position is “anti-affirming.”

^[18] It is, after all, one of the four classic hallmarks of evangelicalism according to the widely accepted definition of David Bebbington: biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism (the so-called Bebbington quadrilateral).

^[19] Namely, Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26–27, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. We may dismiss Genesis 19 since, as Sprinkle himself concedes, the passage is irrelevant to this discussion (so too, by inference, Judges 19). 

^[20] Only a very poor presenter would present the interpretations that they disagree with in a way that comes across more persuasively! Every presenter presents “the other side” in a way that makes it less persuasive! 

^[21] People to Be Loved, p.10.

^[22] People to Be Loved, p.17.

^[23] People to Be Loved, p.27.

^[24] People to Be Loved, p.32.

^[25] And of course, he’s reading-in a very Modern understanding of that word “marriage.”

^[26] Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25.

^[27] Again, I would take issue with the repeated use of the word “marriage” throughout this chapter, not least its anachronistic use. An example is on p.39: “Does the Bible demand that marriage is only between a man and a woman?” Clearly that’s asking the wrong question of the text, framed in the wrong way, slanted toward an obvious answer.

^[28] People to Be Loved, p.40.

^[29] The point about any metaphor is that it only works to a point! When we start to take a metaphor literally—or press it too far—it stops being true. When the Bible says that Jesus is the Lamb of God, seated at the right hand of the Father, it’s not trying to tell us that the second person of the Trinity is a young sheep sitting on a chair in Heaven.  

^[30] People to Be Loved, p.38.

^[31] Notwithstanding what proved in hindsight to be “prophetic hints” towards something better, particularly in Galatians 3:28, and his recognition of female apostles (despite some Bible translators’ ham-fisted attempts to excise them from the text).

^[32] People to Be Loved, p.39.

^[33] Which out of interest is immediately followed (in verse 5) by: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

^[34] People to Be Loved, p.39.

^[35] People to Be Loved, p.45.

^[36] People to Be Loved, p.45. The footnote here (along with several others) references Robert Gagnon, whose writing on this subject is, in my experience, by some distance the most vitriolic among scholars in this debate.

^[37] People to Be Loved, p.45.

^[38] People to Be Loved, p.45.

^[39] The same is true with Sprinkle’s expectations of Paul, in Romans 1. “The honest interpreter should recognise how general Paul’s language is. He doesn’t describe homosexual prostitution, men having sex with boys, or reckless orgies. Nor does he bemoan the ‘passive partner’ in male-male sexual encounters as many of his Greco-Roman contemporaries did. Paul doesn’t draw attention to violating the social pecking order of the Roman class system as other authors did. And contrary to the opinion of modern scholars, Paul does not showcase a low view of women here.” (p.101) But this again assumes that what Paul does not explicitly specify cannot be part of the assumed context shared by the writer and his audience. Historical interpretation ordinarily requires precisely the opposite: reconstructing, as far as possible, what an ancient writer could reasonably assume without needing to state it. Indeed, Sprinkle himself appears to recognise this immediately beforehand when he writes that “Paul is describing same-sex acts that fit the historical context of Corinth (where he was writing from) and Rome (where his audience lives)” (p.101). Precisely the same hermeneutical consideration applies to Leviticus.           

^[40] People to Be Loved, p.49. Strictly speaking, Peter’s vision in Acts 10 did not include shellfish … so there go prawn cocktail starters.

^[41] People to Be Loved, p.50. The difficulty, of course, lies in establishing a non-circular basis for identifying which principles remain binding.

^[42] See Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, who argue that Christians’ starting point should be that old-covenant laws are not directly binding unless reaffirmed within the new covenant. See also Stephen Burnhope, How to Read the Bible Well: What It Is, What It Isn’t and How to Love It (Again) (Eugene: Cascade/Wipf & Stock, 2021), pp.109–121.        

^[43] People to Be Loved, p.51. In order to bolster the claim that “all of these sex laws” still apply, Sprinkle also argues that it is not “okay for a husband to have sex with his wife while she’s menstruating.” More troubling than the conclusion itself is the patriarchal assumption embedded in the way the question is framed. Sprinkle asks whether husbands should “go ahead and make love to their wives while they’re menstruating.” But why is that presented as the husband’s decision to make—to “go ahead” or otherwise? Sexual intercourse is surely something mutually chosen by both partners, not something a husband decides whether to do to or with his wife.    

^[44] Presumably because the passage contains the two homosexual “clobber texts”. 

^[45] People to Be Loved, p.49.

^[46] People to Be Loved, p.70. This appears in a section headed “Jesus’ challenge to the affirming crowd,” where Sprinkle contrasts Jesus’ Jewishness with what he describes as a “pasty-white Norwegian, Western Jesus.” The rhetorical contrast risks cheapening the argument: the relevant question is not whether Jesus was Jewish—self-evidently he was—but whether his Jewishness self-evidently leads to the conclusions concerning same-sex relationships that Sprinkle attributes to him (and correspondingly leads “pasty white Norwegians” to be affirming).   

^[47] People to Be Loved, p.49.

^[48] People to Be Loved, p.59.

^[49] The word “existed” is significant here. No one is suggesting that same-sex orientation itself came into existence in the modern period; the issue is when it became recognised and conceptualised as a feature of human sexuality. DNA similarly existed long before anyone knew of its existence, as did the biological role of sperm and ovum in conception. The hermeneutical question is not whether same-sex orientation “existed” in Paul’s world, but whether Paul and his contemporaries possessed a conceptual category sufficiently equivalent to ours for biblical texts that address same-sex desire and behaviour to be assumed to be speaking of it. The modern discovery of orientation is the “game-changer” for the views of society at large (they are not just based on some postmodern, “you be you” spirit of the age). So too should that discovery be a game-changer for biblical interpretation. The ancient world—and hence, also, the Bible—spoke of what it knew.     

^[50] People to Be Loved, p.60. This is not about reinterpreting Paul, in the sense of changing what his words originally meant, it’s about correctly interpreting Paul historically. Ancient understandings of sexuality, biology, reproduction and what constituted “natural” and “unnatural” behaviour form part of the context within which his language must first be understood. Only then can the separate and subsequent hermeneutical question of contemporary application be addressed.        

^[51] People to Be Loved, p.61.

^[52] “Desire” and “orientation” must not be treated as “the same thing.” The ancient world plainly knew of same-sex desire. Biblical condemnations of same-sex desire and behaviour cannot simply be assumed to answer the different question we are now asking: what does Christian faithfulness look like for someone whose natural sexual orientation is exclusively towards the same sex? Sprinkle’s commingling of the concept of “desire” with “orientation” is patently obscuring a critical distinction.

^[53] This is why, when Sprinkle says, “It’s the act that Paul condemns” (p.101), he’s correct. But that isn’t the point. If we ask the text the wrong questions we will find wrong answers. 

^[54] This would not be entirely true of prophecy, of course, but prophecy is not the genre of the texts under discussion.

^[55] For example, IVF (“test tube babies”), gene therapy, heart transplants, and mental illness. We look to our biblical theology (see Burnhope, How to Read the Bible Well, pp.210–212).

^[56] Whether that distinction ultimately makes any difference is another matter. I would suggest that pastorally it does not. 

^[57] People to Be Loved, p.128. The italics are his.

^[58] Who are these “others”? Sprinkle does not say. Medical researchers? Psychologists? Conservative Christian writers? People on social media? A claim this sweeping—that “we are all born heterosexual,” with gay desires subsequently cultivated by sexual abuse, an absent father, a domineering mother or too many sisters—surely requires rather more provenance than “others say.”

^[59] People to Be Loved, p.127.

^[60] People to Be Loved, p.20.

^[61] People to Be Loved, p.61. I don’t know which scholars frame a question like that; it sounds to me so poorly phrased that it’s either something affirming bloggers say, or it’s a “straw man” statement framed by the author in order to refute it. 

^[62] I struggle to allow this to be called “relations” in anything remotely approaching the sense of a relationship between equals. Pederasty involved an adult male and an adolescent boy, with an inherent disparity of age and power. In modern terms, it is sexual abuse of a child. More disturbing still is Sprinkle’s later statement: “The entire project of pederasty was not (in its more noble forms) driven by lust but a desire to educate the youth” (p.99). “More noble forms” of pederasty? Whatever ideological justification was offered for the practice within ancient societies—including its supposed educational purpose—that merely states how it was rationalised; it does not make any form of adult sexual involvement with an adolescent boy “noble.” Describing any form of pederasty to a modern readership in those terms, without immediate and emphatic qualification, is surely beyond the pale.

^[63] People to Be Loved, p.62.

^[64] People to Be Loved, p.61.

^[65] An argument based in church tradition remains open to them, of course.

^[66] People to Be Loved, p.61.

^[67] People to Be Loved, p.61. Presumably Sprinkle means writing between those dates.

^[68] Sprinkle’s caricature of the alternative position is particularly unhelpful here: “Some people spin Jesus’ silence into an affirmation. Since he never said anything, Jesus would have endorsed same-sex relations. Or, if he were dragged into the modern debate and asked: ‘Where do you stand, Jesus?’ he would have shrugged his messianic shoulders with indifference and told his debaters to go feed the poor” (p.69). This is laden with both anachronism and cynicism. Similarly: “If he did endorse them, he would have been the only Jewish person in more than a thousand years to do so” (p.71). But this authoritative-sounding statement establishes nothing. Of course Jesus shared the conceptual world of first-century Judaism; that is precisely the point. To the extent that Sprinkle is pushing back against the idea that Jesus secretly affirmed twenty-first-century progressive sexual ethics, I agree with him. But that is not the argument he needs to answer. The question is whether first-century Jewish judgements about same-sex behaviour can simply be carried across to a modern phenomenon reflecting scientific knowledge and conceptual categories unavailable to them. Imagining what Jesus “would have” said had he been presented with that knowledge is wholly speculative.

^[69] People to Be Loved, p.14.

^[70] People to Be Loved, p.82.

^[71] People to Be Loved, p.90.

^[72] People to Be Loved, p.120.

^[73] People to Be Loved, p.144.

^[74] “Reparative therapy” is perhaps more commonly known as “conversion therapy.”

^[75] People to Be Loved, p.126.

^[76] People to Be Loved, p.177.

^[77] People to Be Loved, pp.84–85.

^[78] People to Be Loved, p.155.

^[79] As Sprinkle himself accepts, if this is the “good news,” no wonder gay Christians are leaving the church in search of better news. (p.15)

^[80] “Jesus’ encounter (sic) with tax collectors should inform and challenge our approach to gay people.” (p.77) The reader will need to determine for themselves whether what they know of tax collectors in first-century Israel is an appropriate basis of comparison with the gay people they know. Sprinkle speaks of tax collectors as “depraved.” (p.77). The analogy itself is revealing. Tax collectors in the Gospels were not marginalised because of an intrinsic feature of who they were, but condemned for conduct associated with their occupation—not least exploitation and collaboration with imperial power. But that only works if we have already decided that a same-sex relationship is itself the equivalent of the tax collector’s wrongdoing.

^[81] This is a caricature rather than an argument. The inclusive claim under discussion is not that love means “letting everyone do what feels right to them,” but that committed same-sex relationships need not be intrinsically sinful.

^[82] People to Be Loved, pp.78–79. Again, we see the assumption that affirming people’s “humanity” is what’s important and will lead to the desired outcome. But what does “affirming their humanity” actually mean here? Saying that gay people are not less-than-human, after all? It is important not to miss the distinction in Sprinkle’s terminology between affirming a gay person’s humanity and affirming their homosexuality. They may sound rather similar—perhaps conveniently so—but in his argument they reflect very different things. The former means treating gay people with dignity, kindness and personal welcome; the latter would mean accepting same-sex sexual relationships as morally legitimate, which Sprinkle expressly rejects. The repeated resort to the “pasty-white” caricature is also unnecessary to the argument (quite aside from the racial stereotyping of Norwegians).

^[83] For example, but by no means only, the now-notorious Exodus International. See e.g., pp.158–59. 

^[84] ‘Report of the APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation’, available at https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexual-orientation (accessed 17 August, 2026).

^[85] People to Be Loved, p.159.

^[86] ‘An Assessment of the Evidence on Conversion Therapy for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity’ (Government Equalities Office, 2021), available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-assessment-of-the-evidence-on-conversion-therapy-for-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity (accessed 17 August, 2026).

^[87] A. Jowett, G. Brady, S. Goodman, C. Pillinger and L. Bradley, ‘Conversion Therapy: An Evidence Assessment and Qualitative Study’ (Government Equalities Office, 2021), available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/conversion-therapy-an-evidence-assessment-and-qualitative-study (accessed 17 August, 2026).

^[88] People to Be Loved, p.164.

^[89] People to Be Loved, p.166.

^[90] People to Be Loved, p.168.

^[91] People to Be Loved, p.167.

^[92] People to Be Loved, p.166.

^[93] People to Be Loved, p.147.

^[94] Sprinkle argues that “the phrase ‘contrary to nature’ includes all forms of homosexual sex.” (p. 114) So, what forms of heterosexual sex by married couples are “contrary to nature”? How do we ensure that we police those with the same zeal?

^[95] People to Be Loved, p.169.

^[96] People to Be Loved, p.174.

^[97] N. T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today (London: SPCK, 2011), pp.103–104.

^[98] For example, conservative citing of Sodom and Genesis 19. Sprinkle acknowledging its irrelevance in the debate will appear to evidence to the average reader his fairness and even-handedness, even though the reality is that no serious scholar on either side of the debate thinks it has any relevance (nor similarly, Judges 19). It’s notable, however, that none of the affirming arguments that Sprinkle concedes have some merit serve to materially affect any of his conclusions.