Theology in the Raw - 691: #691 - A Conversation with Sam Allberry

Episode Date: September 3, 2018

On episode #691 of Theology in the Raw Preston has a conversation with Sam Allberry. Sam Allberry is an editor for The Gospel Coalition, a global speaker for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, and a pastor based in Maidenhead, UK. He is the author of a number of books, including Is God Anti-Gay? (Good Book, 2013). He is a founding editor of Living Out, a ministry for those struggling with same-sex attraction. You can follow him on Twitter. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, Theology Narrow listeners, you are about to hear a fascinating conversation that I had with my friend Sam Alberry. Sam Alberry, as you will find out, is a pastor, a speaker, a writer, and a Christian who is same-sex attracted, and so he's been a very helpful and encouraging and courageous voice in the conversation about faith, sexuality, and gender. You're going to love this conversation. I learned a ton, and most of all, I just learned how much of an amazing heart for Christ and the gospel that Sam has. I'm very excited for you to listen to the show. September 25th, I will be in Los Angeles for a One Day Leaders Forum that is sponsored by Eternity Bible College.

It's putting on the forum. It's going to be at Rocky Peak Church there in the San Fernando Valley. If you want to attend this event, you got to go to centerforfaith.com and go to the events link and sign up for the One Day Forum. It is, I think there's going to be a lot of people there. I've seen a lot of signups that are happening right now. Usually people don't sign up till the last couple of weeks. For this one, don't be that person because you might not get in.

So if you want to attend the One Day Leaders Forum, go to centerforfaith.com and register for that event. And many thanks to my former institution, Eternity Bible College, for putting a ton of work into hosting this event. And so if you don't know Eternity Bible College for putting a ton of work into hosting this event. And so if you don't know, Eternity Bible College is committed to debt-free education. That's right. You can get an amazing Christian theological, biblical education and walk with no debt because they slam the prices down as low as they can possibly go and still pay their faculty and staff. But it's an

incredibly good, solid, in-depth, thoughtful biblical education. It's not indoctrinating. They teach you not what to think, but how to think biblically. And so I can't speak more highly of Eternity Bible College. If you're still wanting to attend a class or two in the fall, it might not, well, it might be too late for the fall, but check them out for the spring. They have a full online program. So no matter where you're living, you can take classes from Antarctica if you wanted to, as long as you have an internet connection. That's eternitybiblecollege.com. I will also be in San Diego on September 27th for a one-day leaders forum. Check it out if you want to spend the day talking about faith, sexuality, and gender,

some of the most pressing ethical questions facing the church today. I don't know of any Christian who shouldn't be thinking about questions surrounding faith, sexuality, and gender. So this is a good way to get acquainted with the conversation, learn what the theological debates are all about, learn how you can be a better neighbor to your LGBTQ friends at work or in your neighborhood, how you can shepherd people who are same-sex attracted in your church, and so on and so forth. That's centerforfaith.com. Go to the events link. You can check it out. If you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. I promise this is the last announcement. I know you're probably itching to listen to Sam as am I. Sam I am as am I. Anyway, if you want to

support the show, patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. Support the show for as little as five bucks a month. If the show has blessed you, encouraged you, challenged you, or even made you mad and you just want to throw money at it, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw support show for as little as five bucks a month and get premium content in return. Okay, folks, enough of me jibber jabbering. Here is the one and only Sam Alpert. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am so excited to talk with my friend, Sam Alberry. Sam is an author, a speaker, a pastor. He currently serves with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, where he's speaking full time. He's also an editor for the Gospel Coalition and an author of several books.

The one maybe you're most known for is the short, really good book, uh, is God anti-gay. But I first heard your name from a student of mine who read your book on the Trinity connected living in light of the Trinity. And I remember this before, um, I mean, it came out in 2013 and I didn't, I didn't know who you were. He just says, man, I just read this recent book on the Trinity. It's so good. I'm like, oh, Sam Albury.

And then you came out with Is God Anti-Gay? And that is just an incredible book. And since then, you've written a bunch of books. But anyway, thank you, Sam Albury, for being on the show. Thank you for having me. It's great to be with you, Preston. So why don't we go back and just tell us a little bit about who you are. And I'm going to assume probably the majority of my audience will know who you are and probably read some of your books.

But you're obviously not from America. You grew up in the UK and were you raised in a Christian home? And how did you feel the call to pastoral ministry? When did you want to really engage Christianity on maybe the level that you're at right now? No, thank you. I didn't grow up going to church or anything. We didn't sort of have any practicing Christianity from that point of view. So I didn't really start engaging the Christian faith for myself until I was 17. I had a couple of Christian friends who were really good friends. They invited me to their church's youth ministry. I ran out of reasons not to go and went along,

heard the gospel, realized immediately that the message of Jesus was different to what I had assumed it was, and that Jesus himself was not the anemic kind of, I sort of imagined him being a cross between Gandhi and one of the Bee Gees, kind of says ethical sounding things. I imagine he had long hair and all the rest of it. And I realized the real Jesus is much more interesting, much more compelling, and much more uncomfortable than the Jesus I had imagined. Just the things he says, they just deeply unsettle you. And you get a sense that he's not speaking from within the same world and framework that the rest of us are.

So I immediately realized that there was far more to him than i'd previously thought and it wasn't long before i i realized that he came came for people like me to bring us back to god and i remember very very consciously one some sunny afternoon august 1993 realizing jesus died for me not just for sinners for me and I realized this was someone that that that had to be everything or nothing and I realized that if if he has done that for me then I can trust him with my life and I remember thinking I want to follow this man I have no idea what that will look like where that will take me or what that will involve I just knew that I can trust him wherever it is it will be right so I had that overwhelming conviction right from now on I'm following Jesus so that was

late teenage years you're saying I was just turning 18 okay and interestingly six months after that i was being interviewed in church by my pastor just to kind of explain how to become a christian and he came up to me afterwards and said you're going to be a preacher um i had that thought had just not remotely occurred to me before then. I actually grew up with quite a fear of public speaking. But I just knew from the moment my pastor said that, that that was going to be the case. And from that time onwards, my biggest burden in ministry has been to help believers grow in their understanding of the richness of what we have in Christ. And so that then led into pastoral ministry. I've been involved in local church work in an Anglican context back in the UK for the last 15 years.

And to be honest, the stuff I'm doing now is I, I still think of that as a function of being a pastor. Um, that's all I'm trying to do and just doing it in a slightly different context. So you were a, you were a lead pastor, full-time pastor, priest, or what was your title for? Oh, I was, uh, on a team. So there were four of us who were full-time clergy at this particular church. I wasn't the lead pastor. I was one of the associates.

But I looked after one of the congregations. Okay, okay. I think it was the best of both worlds because you get to have a whole congregation to pastor and to look after, but you've also got the safety net of yeah yeah if someone above you that you know when the baby starts screaming you can hand it over to someone so yeah we didn't use the language of we don't use the language of priests in my in my church but i was one of the pastors there was it kind of a low church anglican church is that yeah okay liturgical without being ritualistic okay but pretty informal and low church in our style of how we lead the services and that kind of thing okay okay how did you get

involved with uh Ravi Zacharias ministries as a speaker was that you've been doing that for a while or I've been with them for just about two and a half years now. Oh, that's it. Okay. Just through a wonderful, the way God has just operated things. I was working full time for a church. When I wrote the book, Is God Anti-Gay? I naively thought, maybe every now and then, I thought maybe every now and then a church will need me to come and do some teaching on this. So I'll probably every few months do something. I hadn't realized people would actually read the book and that it would have the impact that it

seems to have had. And I hadn't realized, a, how comfortable I would be speaking about this issue and be what needs and opportunities there were. I mean, it just such a desperate need and there still is for, for biblical compassionate gospel centered teaching on this issue everywhere. Yeah, yeah. So I began to realize that the depth of the need, the uniqueness of the opportunity I seem to have as someone with both a personal narrative, with experience of pastoral ministry,

ministry um and i couldn't do that and full-time local church work at the same time it was beyond my emotional capacity i just spent i just spent all my time feeling guilty because if i was away from my church doing wider ministry there was ministry at church that wasn't being done right i was saying no to other opportunities outside the church i was thinking but who else really is there doing this stuff yeah not many of us who were who were able to to teach on this in that kind of way so um a friend from brother zacharias's ministry basically said we would love to to have you be part of the team um they were aware that this is from an apologetics point of view an unavoidable issue and that we need people who are equipped to speak on this as we do on all the other issues that come up these days so

they've been a wonderful wonderful home home. And they've, they've allowed me to, to have a slightly more diverse ministry so that I'm not just speaking on this one topic all the time, but they're happy for me to write and think and speak on other things and to be doing more general preaching and Bible teaching as well. So I thank God for that ministry. If somebody contacts Ravi Zacharias Ministries and say, all right, we need, we're having an LGBT discussion. We need, you know,

we need you to send somebody our way. Are you the kind of, are you the one that they go to first? There are others within the ministry who speak on this really well as well, but I'm often someone who gets wheeled out for these things. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. I had, I had David wheeled out for these things. Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. I had David Bennett on a few months ago.

So, and he's probably another. And others in the team too. Even if it's not been part of their personal narrative, just speak to the issue. Yeah. Yeah. So in case people don't know, I mean, you are a same-sex attracted Christian. in case people don't know, I mean, you're, you are a same, same sex attracted Christian. Um, I I'm curious when you're giving your testimony, uh, were you, um,

where were you at with your sexuality when you got saved and did that? Was, was that another hurdle you had to kind of jump over or think through? Like, what does it mean to be same sex attracted? And now I'm following Jesus. How's this going to work work or what was that like in the the way it works with the lord's timing is that it was i was 17 when i first realized i remember very vividly standing at a bus stop and saying to myself i think i'm gay and i remember the moment those words entered my mind I thought well obviously I might have romantic sexual feelings for other guys that don't have those feelings for girls at all and it took me a long time to realize that so I'd already kind of

come to terms with that and acknowledge that and I was at that point beginning to think maybe when I go to university I can explore explore this. You know, in those days, universities had LGB societies. And I remember thinking, maybe I'll just join one of those groups and explore this and see where it goes. And then I became a Christian before I went to university. So before I really had any opportunity to act on this or properly explore it, I came to faith. And I'm so grateful for the Lord's timing on that because it means I didn't get into a whole bunch of stuff that I would then be grieving as a Christian. But it did mean that when I did come to Christ, one of the most pressing issues for me was then, well, what does he think about this? And I had no idea. So, but I, again,

I already knew whatever he said I could trust. So I was, I was completely convinced that Jesus was Lord, that I could trust him. And therefore I knew whatever he did say, I was going to be fine with. So I never, from that point of view, I never wrestled with his teaching on, on sex and marriage and the teaching of wider scripture as well, because I already knew the person who was teaching it. Did you ever explore affirming christian arguments i mean in this day and age i mean this is i guess a while back for you so it wasn't as many books or whatever but

not from within the broadly evangelical fold there weren't right i i didn't really start to look into that until i until a few years later, actually. I think it was when I began to realize I was feeling called to, to write and start to speak on this issue. That's when I thought I really need to look at all the arguments as, as well as I can and read far more widely on the issue. Yeah. Were you at all convinced or almost convinced or like oh wow this is this is

really tough or what was that journey like as you wrestled with all the arguments honest i was never close to being exegetically convinced but i do see the emotional power of the argument yeah yeah because often the way it's framed is beginning with a starting point of some of the argument yeah yeah because often the way it's framed is beginning with a starting point of some of the deep pain on lgbt friends have been through and um it often gets you to the point where you're then emotionally desperate for the bible to say something that will be affirming but i've just never found the exegesis i've got to say even remotely compelling i mean people can argue all over the place about what kind of gay people did paul know and you know stuff you can go around in circles on that but to me the issue has always been

it's always been a what the bible teaches on this issue has always for me been a an outworking of what it teaches on marriage right and it seems to me that you cannot begin to argue against the kind of gender complementarity being the foundation for biblical marriage that the mingling male and female is such a special and sacred union um so that for me that's always made the issue very very clear and therefore that being the case all deviations from that creation pattern are right what you said is so basic and simple and yet it's fascinating how few people think through this question from that, from that question, the question of what is marriage? I mean, it's, it's, it's bewildering how many affirming books I've read that never once, never once even raise a question, let alone answer the question. What is marriage?

question, let alone answer the question, what is marriage? They assume that marriage is a union between two consensual adults and that sex difference has nothing to do with what marriage is, even though, even though for two millennia and all of our scripture and all of our, every monotheistic religion, like, like the basic idea that marriage is the coming together two sexually different people um that that question's never even raised or at least it's never even like addressed in in a book that will write a whole book saying why the bible affirms same-sex marriage and they never once raised a question what is marriage it's fat it's fascinating to me do you know anybody the closest i've come is um robert song in his book i've heard that he goes into well he says marriage marriage is between two sexually different people because marriage is

for procreation but then he argued so he gets it right but then he argues that consensual same-sex unions are within the purview of scripture so he doesn't argue for same-sex marriage because he says marriage by definition isn't same, but he argues for affirming consensual relationships, which he never raises a question or answers. Okay. But now you've just argued for a sexual relationship outside of marriage.

How do you do that? You know? Um, but yeah, at least, but he's the only one I know, maybe James Brownson kind of did, but even he, looking back, he didn't really make a great case that sex difference is irrelevant for marriage.

He just kind of played on the one flesh thing. Have you read any affirming books that actually drill down deep into what is marriage and offer you a good defense for their view that sex difference doesn't have anything to do with marriage? I haven't, honestly, no. That's fascinating. I mean, you've read more doesn't have anything to do with marriage i haven't honestly no it's fascinating than i have on this but i i i honestly haven't and i always find in in the sort of more popular books arguing for an affirming position that that's the aspect they always kind of skip over yeah yeah um whereas for me, that's, that's the, the foundational. Yeah. You did great in your book. I mean, short and sweet. And your book's so short, but there's so, there's so much in it.

I don't know how you were able to say so much so concisely. I mean, that, did it start as like a really long book and you just kept whittling it down? How did you get 80 pages? In a very particular format by the publisher, because it's part of a series of books looking at different issues. it down how did you get 80 pages in a very particular format by the publisher because it's part of a series of books looking at different issues okay and the structure is they're all faqs and had to be under 15 000 words i think it was all around 15 okay yeah i think i wrote a i think i basically wrote a 40 000 word book and then had to keep reducing it and reducing it and reducing it.

That's painful. Oh, it is. Is it right? It does then. Yeah, you then learn not to waste words. Yeah. Well, that I mean, that because there is no book out there that I'm aware of that is so concise, 15,000 words and yet covers most of the major kind of exegetical and theological questions. I mean, obviously you can't go into in-depth,

you know, giving all the evidence and research for why you believe, you know, so you have just the nature of the book doesn't allow for that. But yeah. No, I hope it will be the bottom rung of, you know, the ladder and people will then read the more detailed books and arguments on it. But it will, it's, it's deliberately a book that isn't meant to threaten anyone. Yeah. Now, now shifting gears just a little bit, you've been, um, I think fairly vocal or in the public, uh, speaking in the public sphere in the UK.

Um, I remember watching a video of you in some sort of almost like maybe it was an Anglican forum or something where you Yeah, the Church of England General Synod, which is the kind of governing body of the Church of England. That's pretty scary. I saw you up there. I was like, dang, man, that that. Wow. That takes a lot of courage. And I imagine you probably got a lot of pushback or whatever. I mean, what's been your experience like as you've been very public with your views in the church of england yeah it's been i've been an ordained anglican for 15 years or thereabouts and i've been on the general synod for the last two to three years oh wow okay just as an elected member of the house of clergy um the synod is a is a microcosm of the whole church

of england so you've got every viewpoint really under the sun within the synod itself so when we had that particular debate um the way these debates work is you you don't know if you're going to be called upon and you don't know until you're in the room how long each speaker's going to get. Really? Well, I figured it won't be more than four minutes just because this is too big an issue. Everyone's going to want to say something. And it probably won't be less than two. So I thought I'll prepare something that's about three minutes and I can, I'll have a slightly longer version in my head and a slightly shorter version in my head and just see what happens.

And I think we were given three minutes in the end or something like that so it was turned out to be fine um but the thing with that was i had i knew that the debates were were live streamed for for whatever sad people like looking at anglican similar debate um obviously with a debate on that issue there's going to be a bit more attention but it never occurred to me that someone would actually post my speech online and it was hard enough trying to work out what to say to the people in the room let alone anyone else who might have been then been watching it so I had to choose every single sentence very very carefully based on some of the discussions we had already had during that synod. So when it sort of took on a life of its own,

I was actually mildly horrified to start with, because I think, oh, no, those comments were not prepared for the wider Christian scene. They were prepared for this group at this point in a particular discussion but that it seemed to encourage others was encouraging to me um i've done a bit of public stuff in the uk not a huge amount um i around that time i did a couple of interviews with the bbc and you get the sort of pushback you'd imagine there's both both reasonable and unreasonable um so right you can't say anything on this issue from any perspective without someone being

extremely cross with you how is the church of england on this question is it super volatile is it divided or is it just kind of like yeah this is the the way the Anglican church is and always will be on this question? Or, I mean, is it coming to a head on some level or? I think it is. It's hugely divided. Okay. That in itself is not unusual for the Church of England. But on this issue, because this is for so many of us, it is a gospel issue. It's not a just, well, let's just agree to differ issue.

And therefore, I think it has been an issue of dismay for some of the more liberal or middle of the road Anglicans who had just assumed that the evangelicals will agree to differ and we can come up with a compromise and we'll all somehow journey forwards together i think they're realizing that we can't reconcile this okay with other issues there's been sort of ways of doing that with women bishops there's accommodations made there's two official there's two integrities there's mutual flourishing but with this issue so many of us who are evangelical in the church of England believe to the core of our being that actually we can't journey together on this. It wouldn't be appropriate to. And so the Church of England has had an impasse. I think that the leadership is now recognizing we can't reconcile this. Which side is going to win out?

I don't love framing it that way. I have no idea, to be honest. I don't know which way it will go really is it 50 50 split roughly i mean it's not like uh 70 30 or might be something like that on the synod certainly there are very strong views on both sides there aren't many people now who are on the fence i think most people have at some point had to get off the fence on one side or the other. I honestly don't know. There are times when I'm optimistic for the church being there

and I think, you know what, I think this is going to be okay. I think we're going to pull through this and remain confessionally faithful. And other times I'm thinking, no, no, no, this whole denomination is about to drive off a cliff. And I'm not a prophet, so I've got no idea. But I do know the gospel will win. Whether it will win through the Church of England

or in spite of it, I don't know. And I would love for the Church of England to continue to be a vehicle for the gospel because it has such a wonderful heritage of being that. In my experience in speaking in the UK, I was there a couple of years ago, spoke at 18 different churches on this topic. And so it got a decent feel, I mean, a small feel for kind of the pulse of everything. feel for kind of the pulse of everything. Am I right to assume that most of the growing, vibrant, thriving churches

would be on the traditional side of this question? Like I spoke at Soul Survivor. It's one of the bigger churches, I think. And it's kind of Anglican, very low church. But man, it's a thriving church. And they would be traditional on this question. And spoke at like Andrew Wilson's church and just the whole New Frontiers. New Frontiers? That whole movement is really doing great things.

And or even up in Scotland, like again, the churches that actually have people showing up on Sunday. I mean, that's that are growing and discipling and reaching out. They are traditional on this question. Would that be a good idea? Or are there some huge, booming, thriving churches that are fully affirming? I'm sure there are some, but it seems like the majority would still be traditional. Yeah, I think what you said is generally true. And this is good for your American listenership to hear. I think often Americans assume the church in England

has all but been extinguished. We're either a completely secular state or a Muslim state. The fact is the evangelical church is stronger than I've ever known it to be. It's flourishing. It's culturally much broader than it used to be. There's gospel penetration into parts of society and the country and communities that there hasn't been historically. So I think that all the needles are in the right direction. And what I've noticed on this issue in the UK and speaking on this issue, one of the great privileges is that you speak in a wide range of denominational churches, as you would have just experienced. But I see across the broad evangelical spectrum, churches standing together on this issue. that actually the so-called evangelical progressives really are nowhere near the mainstream within evangelicalism. Yeah, I feel like the same is in America.

The churches that go affirming, they get a lot of press. But in almost every case, when a standard Bible-believing evangelical church changes its view, case when a standard Bible-believing evangelical church changes its view, man, it shrinks in size like crazy, like huge multi-campus mega churches have gone down to like a fraction of their attendance. And I think there's a couple of reasons for that. One is, this is my best guess work i'm not pretending this is this is solid um i think to me it's one of the ways one of the evidences of this being a gospel issue is that i've not seen a church or a ministry or a leader who has gone affirming on this issue and retained orthodox evangelical positions on the rest of theology um they may be out there and i've missed them but it seems to me that by the time you become theologically affirming of gay relationships you it's very hard to do that and to retain the clear authority of scripture the sufficiency of scripture even the views of the atonements

everything else seems to just unravel a bit and it i remember tim keller once saying that the christian theology is like an ecosystem you you mess around with one part and it affects everything yeah i've seen that with affirming churches that they they don't just change on this issue but remain thoroughly evangelical and everything else yeah everything else unravels yeah and i think the other the other thought i've got in my head is that there was a nick hornby novel how to be good 10 or 15 years ago the main character was a medical doctor who who had just divorced her husband and that gave her an existential crisis because she always thought, I'm a doctor, therefore I'm good. And yet I've now walked out on my husband.

And in one part of the book, she goes to her local Church of England church thinking maybe I can get some spiritual otherness and direction and challenge and stretching. And yet she finds that the minister there, the vicar, just says basically what culture says and the character says to him listen if i wanted to hear what's already inside my own head i would have stayed at home yeah that's my memory i may have misquoted that but that's the gist of it and i just find that very telling that actually you take the saltiness out of the salt and you don't need it anymore.

You know, what's funny is I've talked to several friends who are pastoring churches and urban centers, liberal centers, very non-Christian unchurched areas of big cities. And most of those centers have a large LGBTQ population. And it's fascinating that in 2018, you still have very clearly traditional churches that are very vibrant, very missional. And they still have a lot of LGBT people showing up more and more, even when there's lots of affirming churches around. And so I've got a gay friend who used to be a Christian, left the church eight years ago. And every now and then he'll, he'll go, he'll visit a church. He kind of misses it. You know, he doesn't believe in Jesus at all, but he's like, yeah, sometimes I kind of, I want to go to church. I, I, I'm in need of kind of some, you know, a spiritual kick in the pants,

whatever. And I, and I said, oh, so do you go to like an affirming church? He's like, well, no, like, I'm like, why not? He's like, because if I actually go to church, I don't want to be told that I'm fine. I'm going to church because I know I'm not fine. Like, I want to, I want to hear the Bible. I want to hear the gospel. I want to hear repentance. Like, and I've heard that from several people who aren't even like, who are gay and not even Christian or, or, um, or on the fence or something.

And, and it, and it's, that's fascinating that from my non-Christian gay friend, he even kind of chuckled and says, you want to reach gay people, you know, preach the word. He's like that, that's people. What if they're there? They want to hear, they want to hear, I know I'm broken. How do I get fixed? Not, not like fix my sexuality, but I don't want to just be patted on the back i get that from everywhere else and i know i'm not okay fascinating that's really interesting the limited experience i've had with some secular lgbt campus groups is there's a massive openness for spiritual truth yeah yeah as you've as you've talked about this in in in the uk and in america what what are some similarities and differences as you've

because i imagine when you give a talk you probably have a q a time or you probably are interacting publicly with people a lot are there differences with the community the types of people you interact with in america versus uk on this question it's very similar okay so the kinds of questions that come up tend to be very similar especially amongst under 25s under 30s university students that kind of thing yeah um i think there's a little more, I think, huge generalization. I think the English are always a little bit more moderate than the Americans, both in terms of what they believe, but also how they express it. So it's often a little more feisty in the US. Not that feistiness is absent in the U.K., but yeah.

I would completely agree with that in my experience, yeah. I think England's too small a country that we kind of – I'm sure that affects the national psyche, that it's crowded, and therefore if you don't have moderation, you're going to end up – you just can't do this otherwise in a confined island so and you have a state church like we just have tons of denominations so it it reinforces kind of tribalism and you can kind of attack that person aggressively because they're not of your tribe whereas i imagine that the fact that there is a church of england not that it belongs to it, but that just culturally has got to add a different dynamic. We have the same dynamic.

It's just we have the tribes within the denomination, rather than between the denominations. So I think in the mainline Protestant denominations, there have been evangelical tribes, non-evangelical tribes. denominations there have been evangelical tribes, non-evangelical tribes. And I think what we're seeing is a realignment where actually our evangelicalness matters more to us than our denominational background and affiliation, which is true. Most of my friends over here are not Anglicans,

and yet I have far more affinity with a non-Anglican evangelical than I do with an Anglican liberal. Oh, yeah. That's interesting. I noticed that when I was in Scotland, that denominations were so distant, secondary. What united churches across all kinds of denominations, charismatic, non-reform, Wesleyan, was we believe in the gospel, we believe in the Bible. And I love the camaraderie. It's just a beautiful thing. And going back to your original point, I think there is a bit of a,

the British personality. I remember my PhD program, you know, I'd give a paper or something and somebody would raise their hand and say, you know, I'm not quite convinced that, and that means they're totally full of crap. you know, whereas in America, they'll just say you're full of crap, you know, they'll yell it at you. Or, you know, I remember, uh, by, by a supervisor, I think the, the one positive thing I heard about my dissertation was, you know, um, yeah, I think we can salvage, you know, some of this, you know, this chapter, everything's just so subtle. I was like, it took me about a year to kind of understand like what these these phrases actually meant yeah that's funny so going back you said

what's that as i said that there are guides online so what what an english person says and what they actually mean by that this is what you you hear from it. So I don't agree with everything you've just said means I don't agree with anything. So good. Unless I ever think about that means I'm never going to think about that. Yeah, that's so funny. I miss – the first year is hard because I feel like I stumbled over myself. But then it became like this game to kind of interpret things and what did he really mean, you know.

Yeah, it's so funny. You said that people under 25, when you're talking about LGBT questions, a lot of times there's a lot of similarities. What are some of the things that people under 25, what are the top few things that they always kind of raise or question or push back on? Well, that has changed even in the last five years so when i first started speaking on this issue the first question i would typically get is what's wrong with a faithful monogamous gay partnership or some variant of that yeah that was the kind of standard pushback interestingly now there seems to be more and more people saying why does it have to be monogamous oh yeah that's interesting why should that qualify it you know what that's excluding other forms of relationship why should why should it be faithful so it's interesting once you take out the gender complementarity element the others are then up for grabs and i i see this with i think some of the the speakers in

the reformation project now are sort of saying why does it have to be two people really are they i i could assume that's i mean polyamory is a growing thing and people aren't aware of it i mean it's they're not aware that it's a much bigger thing that people realize but for the reformation project are they exploring that as well or i I think some of the speakers are, I don't know what the official line of the organization is, but it's interesting that I think once you start down that trajectory, where do you apply the breaks?

If you don't apply them at the male, female, right now, as you think, why, why should you apply them? Why two people? Why does that have to be long-term?

Why does that have to be faithful? Why can't it be an open polyamorous you know so but i think that the question i i get most frequently now that i think is the most serious question is what about the psychological harm you're doing to young gay teenagers how do you respond to that i'm curious how you respond because i get that all the time too well it's um it is i mean it is an extremely serious issue and no one can deny the prevalence of serious mental health issues amongst people who would be LGBT+. So I want to take it, the question deserves gravity.

It's not a soundbite type question. One of the things I do want to discuss, I think there are various elements to how we respond. One is to own the fact that there are times when Christians undoubtedly have caused psychological harm, and we need to be honest about that and not pretend that's not been the case. I think I do want to raise the issue at some point in the response

that we are not the ones making sexual fulfillment the be-all and end-all. that we are not the ones making sexual fulfillment the be-all and end-all. And actually, an entailment of saying to someone that this is who you are is that if this area of life is not going well, then your life is not going well. You are not going well. And it strikes me that there are only a few short and tragic steps from someone hearing this is who you are, to thinking a life without sexual fulfillment isn't worth living. So I think the fact that our secular culture has raised the stakes of sexual fulfillment so very, very high plays into this issue hugely.

very high plays into this issue hugely because actually part of our message isn't just we think this kind of sexual behavior is ethically right and this kind is ethically wrong we don't think it's the center right actually it doesn't matter to to your deeper sense of who you are and for that is not where you're meant to look for wholeness so i i do want to point some of the question back to our own culture and say what do you expect when you say to people that this is the key to who they are because if like if they're feeling that that part of life is not going right actually the implication is they're missing out on the best that life has to offer they're missing out on the one thing that gives them a shot of being there the authentic real fulfilled self-actualized person that they are so it's the centralization of sex or even marriage as essential to human flourishing.

Yeah. That the church kind of adopts. Now they say, wait until you're married, but the narrative is still kind of the same. Oh, absolutely. And I think that's something that I hope parts of the evangelical church are waking up to. And I think some are, is that you can't say to people, you can't say to people you can't

say to someone right you've got to be sexually inactive if those are your sexual feelings but meanwhile we're going to structure the whole of our church life around marriage yeah yeah i read the best oh wait you have a book coming out in 2019 on singleness right is it touch on some of this? So it is because, again, I think this is actually an apologetics issue. The church thinking unhealthily about singleness has apologetics implications. Oh, yeah. Yes, it's called Seven Myths About Singleness. Yeah, I saw that.

So I'm hoping that will help. I mean, what I would love is to see a culture change in the world on this issue. And there are parts where there are some wonderful changes that have happened. The way we think about family, the way we think about community, intimacy, friendship, hospitality, all of these things affect the credibility of the gospel message. Wow. So if we demean singleness and treat marriage as if it's the goal of the Christian life, that is going to severely hinder our witness. in life, that is going to severely hinder our witness.

Have you read the book? It just came out by Cutter Calloway, Breaking the Marriage Idol. No, but you're about the fourth person who's mentioned in the last week. So I clearly need to get a hold of it. You, by far, on everything we talked about the last five minutes, by far the absolute best book. He's a professor at Fuller. He's a professor of Fuller. Uh, he's a professor of like culture and theology. And he, he looks at narratives through Disney movies. Then he looks at

like popular music with, uh, like Taylor Swift. And, and then he, so he does this whole cultural analysis in chapter one saying that the very clear pervasive message is you cannot be fulfilled as a human unless you have a flourishing sex life. And then the next chapter is all about the church and how it basically adopts the entire narrative, except it just says, wait, and if, and if you're pure until marriage, the reward, the blessing is all this fulfillment. But he says, if you step back and look at the narratives, the same is you cannot flourish as a human, unless you're having lots and lots of great sex which most married people are going to say um guess what you know i think the number one uh addicts of porn are married men so obviously married christian men maybe even i forget what

it was but it's like yeah that marriage is not going to deliver it's not going to deliver all of these blessings that the narrative says it will and i I think you're dead on to say that that, that is going back to your original question of the psychological harm that I think there is this unquestioned belief in sexual, sexual fulfillment as a necessity for human flourishing. That's. Which is why just the, the life of Jesus irrespective of his teaching is such a, it's so counter-cultural both to our secular culture and to our church culture.

Cause this is a man who wasn't married. He wasn't sexually active. He wasn't romantically involved despite Dan Brown novels. Um, and yet was the most fully human person who ever lived oh but he was God that's the pushback I get from that he has that little advantage over the rest of us

we've got to keep coming back to that because he is showing us he is the image, he is the model of humanity and we mustn't then flip that the other way and go that marriage is unspiritual and singleness is far more spiritual or anything like that but it just shows us that whatever else marriage is in terms of being a wonderful gift and a an amazing picture of christ in the church it's not meant to be something that is fundamental to human fulfillment and existence. If Christ was fully human without it.

Right. That's so good. And you're speaking as a single celibate person who has same-sex attraction. So, um, so Sam, I mean, are you completely lonely and desperate and have a miserable life as a single person? How, uh, I'm miserable for other reasons do you get that a lot though like oh you've just been brainwashed by religious you know uh what it's very interesting so interaction i've had with with people who are more progressive in their theology.

It's a heads-eye, wind-tails-you-lose dynamic. So if a secular gay person has mental health issues, that's because of people like me. If someone like me has mental health issues, that's because of my theology. So either way, it's my fault. But I think, I mean mean going back to your earlier question i mean the lord has been very generous in the friendships he's given me and there are there are families that i i feel incredibly close so i've got a little pot back home of three or four house keys that are keys to houses that are not mine.

Wow. Where I know I'm welcome anytime I can just let myself in. So that has been a wonderful gift. And, you know, the more I reflect on friendship in the scriptures, the more I see that it's meant to be an incredibly deep form of intimacy. It's different structurally and architecturally to marriage, although marriage should include it. But I got very frustrated with one theologically liberal Anglican pastor who said, oh, you're making people live a life without love. And I said, listen, if you have to be married in your church to receive love,

then your church really stinks. Oh, wow. That's the implication of what they're saying. Yeah. And again, I want to turn that around and say, you talk about psychological harm, but what do you think a comment like that does to people in my church who are single involuntarily for a whole host of reasons that you keep telling them they live a life without love that you they live a life of doomed singleness and i'm you know i fear that some of them are actually going to believe you

if you say that wow so the harm thing cuts both ways um yeah but if i if we're doing church in the way the new testament calls us to do church then then no one should be able to say i don't have family here and i don't have intimacy here but that means we've got to stop treating family as a kind of self-contained, self-sufficient. You get your spouse and 2.3 children and then pull up the drawbridge and that's it. And the New Testament vision is far more radical. Have you seen Rosaria Butterfield's new book on hospitality? I've seen it.

Haven't read it yet. I heard it's outstanding. Oh, it's phenomenal. It's there are It's phenomenal. There are ways in which she is an unusual example of it. But what she's an unusual example of is something that we should all be about. And I think it's a book that could, yeah, it is going to have a revolutionary impact if you take the message to heart.

Well, that's, I mean, I keep, uh, this has been a growing part of, I guess my work in ministry is, is saying that the huge missing link in the whole sexuality conversation is an ecclesiology of spiritual kinship. Like we can't call people to just say no to marriage or sex or whatever, without giving them something to say yes to. And it's without a doubt, biblically, yes. As you just said, I mean, love and intimacy is can't be reduced to a marriage relationship. But if we just have a disconnected group of families and singles in a church,

that's, that's not creating the Mark 10, 28, 29 passage where if we give up everything to follow Jesus, you know, P you know, Peter says, you know, we've given up everything to follow you. And Jesus is like, don't you think you've got the short end of the stick? You've gained brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and fields and all, you know, a bucket of house keys that aren't your own in your, you know, in your jar at home. Like, but the problem is, is that reward that Jesus holds out to those who give up everything to follow him is, is not being enacted in, in many, in many churches.

I mean, it's really, it's really unique that you have the situation that you do. That's nine out of 10 celibate gay people. I know do not typically don't say that. And the ones that do say, oh yeah, I've got a wonderful family, spiritual family at my church. I mean, they're they're the ones that are thriving. The ones that don't have that are like, yeah, this is really hard. It's an issue that transcends sexuality as well.

You know, there are plenty of people who are left out of that. You know, plenty of people who are long-term single for other reasons, plenty of people who are married actually who are craving community outside of the nuclear family. And actually it's, it doesn't help any of us when we kind of make marriage something that is meant to be meeting all of your emotional and friendship needs that's so good so one of the things i one of the things i'm most burdened to do and try to prioritize is to to speak to pastors and churches about about these things because having a

orthodox theology of marriage and sexual ethics is essential and necessary, but it's not sufficient if you're not actually promoting the right kind of ecclesiology alongside it. Otherwise, you're calling people to live in a way that they're not designed to. And I think of Jesus warning the religious leaders that they were putting a burden on people's backs that they couldn't bear. And I fear some of our churches have been doing that around this issue. So I often use the Mark 10 passage and say to a church that actually if someone came to your church from an LGBT background, had to leave their prior patterns of intimacy behind,

they should be able to say as a result of coming to your church, I now have more family in my life than I had before. And I have more intimacy in my life than I had before. And the question for any of our churches is, could we realistically imagine someone saying that? And if the answer is no, we're calling Jesus a liar. That's a hard thing for me that in the mark 10 passage is he doesn't say i want the church to be this he says it is like you left this behind but you did gain this in this life and he makes a distinction yes of course we have infinite blessings on the other side but in this life you've got all these. And I know a lot of people are like, I'm not really experiencing this.

And I don't, that's, that's a really tough thing. I mean, when you, when you preach this message to pastors, is the response really positive or do some people say, oh yeah, we have that. Or are they like, man, I need to really change the culture. A lot of pastors will actually think, goodness me, we need to really think about this. Because as you say, Jesus is not offering it as a possibility. He's promising it.

So we do have mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters through Christ. And my message to the wider churches, are you being that? Do you realize that you are someone's spiritual father or brother or son or mother or sister or daughter? And are you withholding that? Are you withholding from someone what Jesus has promised to give them through

you? So good. Yeah. I'm glad that they're receptive. I know a lot of pastors are like, man, I don't, where do I start? You know, especially if it's a bigger church and, and I, you know, the typical response can be, well, we have, we have lots of small groups. I'm like, ah, the existence of small groups might be a good first step,

but it needs to go far beyond just creating another program or structure. A program might do this because it's about shared life, and a program can't do that. It might be one step along the way, but it's... When they say, where do we start? I'll often say say get rosario's book to start with because it's all about opening our home life and family life to others yeah i think for me too the the ecclesiology especially with a lot of big churches in

america it's so sunday morning service centered like that is even, even people that say, no, you know, it's part of what we do. Not all what we do at the end of the day, how much of your church budget, time, planning, personnel goes into the service on Sunday. And not, and usually when I say this, people say, you know, you're knocking the Sunday service. I'm not, I'm not knocking it all. I'm just saying it's an insufficient for creating authentic discipleship. It's, it's one can be one very helpful, necessary contribution to that process. But if that's not part of that much organic whole, it's not sufficient.

It's got to be where Sunday, the Sunday gathering has to be where all the other things are launched. So it has to be the catalyst for the, then the rest of the week, fellowship, life sharing, walking together that that should be flowing out of what happens on a Sunday. It should be inevitable outworking of it. Yeah. I noticed when I was in the UK community in church came a lot easier. Part of it's just the geography. Like when I lived in the UK, community in church came a lot easier. Part of it's just the geography. Like when I lived in Aberdeen, Aberdeen is a pretty big city, but we hardly drove anywhere.

We walked everywhere and everything was just so kind of close. And America is so spread out. Everything's commuter culture. Churches have people driving in from an hour away. And I just, people just seem to have had more time in the UK. It's easy to get together with people. Whereas in America, especially California, it's just people are so busy. I'm in Cedarville, Ohio right now, which is a university stuck on the side of a village.

So everyone I know is within a five, 10 minute walk. Yeah. Which would not be the case if I lived in a typical city, either in the States or in the UK. I have friends in London who, to go to church, to visit anyone, it always involves a 30-minute ride on the tube. Yeah, yeah. And so, again, the dynamics will be slightly different. But, yeah, I think proximity can make a difference.

If you're a 40 40 minute drive away that's going to be hard to really do yeah shared life in a meaningful way yeah sam we are out of time i can't thank you enough for being on the show i i could i man i could keep talking there's so many things i want to ask you about but uh maybe i'll have you back on sometime soon i'd be happy to come back it's been a joy to see you any plans of coming to boise anytime soon well probably not i might you know all right we'll keep that in mind summer more than winter might be a better time though right winter unless you like to snow ski or snowboard um yeah yeah but yeah generally i'm from california so winters here are pretty brutal but when i'm'm on the mountain, it's not too bad. I'm not generally fond of breaking my bones.

So I'm like, okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Sam, thanks so much for being on the show. God bless your ministry. Again, uh, if you guys just Google Sam Alberry, you can find out what he's, what he's doing. But if you go to his Amazon page, just type in Sam Alberry, you'll get a whole number of books that he's written. And again, the one we've talked most about is the short, easy to read, very informative book, Is God Anti-Gay?

Questions Christians Ask. It's a great, great introduction to sexuality questions. So thank you so much for your ministry, Sam, and many blessings on it. Thank you very much.