Undivided

by Vicky Beeching

  In chapter 11, I read that Peter found himself in hot water, thanks to his new perspective on welcoming Gentiles into the Christian faith. In Jerusalem he was accosted by “certain Jewish believers who followed the Law” (11:2, AMP) who were shocked that he’d preached in the homes of non-Jews and allowed them to be baptized. Tensions were at boiling point. As theologian Jane Williams explains, the New Testament provides “a glimpse of how difficult and bitter the move to include non-Jews was in the early days of Christian mission.”1

  Peter defended his views, explaining all that had happened: the vison of the sheet, the Holy Spirit telling him to go without hesitation to visit Cornelius, the amazement he’d felt when he saw God’s presence show up in the Gentile household. Impassioned, he told them: “When I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as He did on us at the beginning [at Pentecost]” (11:15, AMP).

  His closing argument was this: “If then God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” Thankfully, this helped his critics see things more clearly.

  As a result, “When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life’” (11:17–18).

  Outrage had given way to surprise, then amazement, and finally joy, as they realized former outsiders were now insiders. God had done something so powerful, and all they could do was marvel and try to catch up with his divine plan. His kingdom was bigger, wider, and more welcoming than they’d ever imagined.

  Not everyone was able to accept this new theological shift, though. Concerns bubbled under the surface about exactly how Gentiles should be integrated into the church. Some Jewish Christians decided that if Gentiles were allowed in, the least they could do was keep Jewish traditions: they should eat kosher, the men should be circumcised, and they should observe Sabbath day restrictions. A campaign to enforce these rules among the Gentile Christians was growing in momentum.

  To deal with these heated tensions, Acts 15 says, a council meeting was called in Jerusalem. By now, the apostle Paul was also fully in favor of including Gentiles, having seen in his own missionary work that the Holy Spirit was active in their lives (14:27). At the Jerusalem meeting, Paul defended the freedom of the Gentiles and the way God was at work in their lives. Peter was also present, and he reminded the council about his powerful vision and the way God had declared the Gentiles “clean.” Loading them with responsibilities God had not requested was not appropriate.

  Peter urged them to accept this, saying: “God, who knows the heart, bore witness to [the Gentiles], by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of [these] disciples?” (15:8–10, ESV). The apostle James added a powerful plea: “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God” (15:19, NIV).

  After thought and prayer, the council reached a decision—the Gentiles would not need to keep the law of Moses. They would not have to keep kosher. They would not have to be circumcised. All that was asked of them was that they abstain from food that had been sacrificed to idols or meat that had been killed in a way that Jewish law prohibited, and that they remain faithful in sexual conduct and in marriage—not engaging in lust-driven pleasure where other people are used and abused, but honoring sex within faithful, lifelong monogamy. No other requirements were placed on them that would weigh them down or cause them harm. The Jewish Christians now understood that the Gentiles’ welcome was total: God had said they were clean just as they were.

  From my newfound point of view, believing that a person could be gay and Christian, these chapters in Acts seemed to have multiple layers of meaning. I couldn’t help thinking it had overlap with the place of LGBTQ+ people in the church today.

  Many congregations had struggled to accept LGBTQ+ Christians at all. When some finally did, they argued that anyone identifying as gay or lesbian must take on the additional requirement of staying unmarried and celibate. The buzzword increasingly used in evangelical circles was SSA, which stands for “same-sex attraction.” Traditional churches and various organizations were teaching that you should call yourself “same-sex attracted” rather than “gay” and consider your feelings deeply sinful and never to be acted upon. The only chance you would have for a life partner would be if you could change your orientation by becoming “ex-gay” or “post-gay” and marry someone of the opposite sex. Otherwise, you should never date or marry.

  The term “same-sex attraction” stems from “Same Sex Attraction Disorder” (SSAD), a psychological classification indicating that homosexuality was historically treated as a disorder, although SSAD has been removed from the diagnostic manual now for forty-five years. Whenever the term “SSA” is used today, it echoes back to SSAD and the days when homosexuality was seen as a psychological disorder. “You’re not actually ‘gay,’” traditional Christian leaders now often say, “you’re dealing with SSA and disordered desires; you just need to obey Christ by living a life of celibacy.”

  This approach was gathering momentum among evangelicals, and it seemed like a neat, tidy answer to the “issue” of homosexuality and what to do with LGBTQ+ Christians. “You can be SSA and stay inside our community,” churches said, “but here are the restrictions you need to follow in order for us to let you belong.” Gay and lesbian Christians’ desire for a spouse was seen as dirty, sinful, and broken. This teaching on SSA was even being taught at UK Christian youth camps.

  I’d been around these views all my life. It was given different names: conversion therapy, reparative therapy, or even just prayer ministry for people with SSA. The goal was the same, though; either to change someone’s orientation or to reinforce their need to reject their attractions and stay single for life. I’d undergone my exorcism as a teenager based on that idea. I’d also been part of several churches in the States that publicly offered “healing courses” for anyone gay or bisexual; they blamed it on emotional damage from childhood, like a lack of sufficient bonding with your parents, or someone abusing you, and believed prayer could “heal” a person back to their original “ideal state” of being heterosexual. Back in the UK, more and more organizations were promoting this.

  Some of the Christians teaching about SSA were people I’d known for years, people I care about today. They said they simply wanted to honor God and be faithful to what they believed the Bible said. They argued that “the church has always done it this way” or “the Bible clearly says . . .” I understood their desire to honor God, and knew many of them had good intentions, but with the help of my new perspective, I could see that the mantras “we’ve always done it this way” and “the Bible clearly says” were both reminiscent of the arguments about slavery and women’s rights, and I recalled how painfully wrong the church had been before.

  Of course, I respected anyone’s right to choose celibacy or singleness for themselves, regardless of their orientation; it’s an individual decision, and plenty of straight people have chosen celibacy throughout church history and were happy, whole, and thoroughly fulfilled. The problem was when this choice was rooted in the belief that same-sex relationships were sinful and when this view was enforced on others, teaching that the only option for gay people is celibacy or opposite-sex marriage. That’s when I had seen it become extremely damaging to myself and many others.

  In Acts 15, when the early church tried to load Gentiles with extra requirements, Paul and Peter told them this was not God’s way. In this, I saw a possible precedent for LGBTQ+ Christians. We could be accepted as we were—equal—and without extra legalism that would prevent us from having the blessings enjoyed by straight Christians: loving and serving a spouse, creating a home, and raising children together. Yes, staying away from the worship of “idols” was required of all Christ’s followers, a
s was a commitment to sexual faithfulness. These were the same standards set for all, without discrimination.

  In all of this, I sensed God speaking to me again. If he said my sexual orientation was “clean,” then I needed to accept that and believe that having a same-sex spouse someday was not only possible, but something God would bless. Being forced to remain single, simply because I was gay, would be the equivalent of the red tape loaded on the early Gentiles—above and beyond what God required and leading to loneliness and isolation rather than abundant life.

  In that moment, it felt like a huge weight fell off my shoulders. I had clarity, and I felt peace for the first time in ages. Instead of feeling broken under the shame of having same-sex attraction, a teaching that had almost driven me to suicide, now I knew I was loved and affirmed right to the core of my being. I was free to reflect God’s love in the way I would love and serve a future female spouse.

  As with the Gentile and Jewish Christians, I was on an equal footing with straight people in the church; I was not a second-class citizen, barred from some of the sacraments. Healing flooded into me as I accepted that my future could be one filled with love and warmth rather than isolation and shame. I was not disordered; I was whole.

  St. Paul’s cathedral towered around me as I sat in a pew, taking all of this in. It was inspiring to have read about what the apostle Paul himself had said and done, while sitting in this vast cathedral named after him. Wiping tears from my face, I packed up my Bible. I walked through the majestic nave, past the statues of the seven-foot-tall angels with their swords, with a huge sense of peace and God’s protection filling my heart.

  As I went to leave, someone called my name. “Vicky Beeching?” I heard a voice say. I turned and met a family who were visiting from overseas and had come to the cathedral as tourists. “We thought it was you,” the mother said with a smile. “We sing your songs in our church in Australia; we’ve all benefited so much from the ‘good fruit’ of your life. The Holy Spirit is on display in your music and your songwriting. Thank you for all you do.”

  I was touched by her words of encouragement. We all hugged and took a quick photo together, and they headed off to see the rest of the cathedral. As I left, the woman’s words echoed in my mind: “good fruit.” These words referred to one of Jesus’s teachings. He’d said that Christians were like trees and that their actions were like fruit. His argument was that a good tree would produce good fruit, and a bad tree would produce bad fruit. Jesus used this teaching to specifically warn against “false prophets” (a title thrown at me by traditionalists since my coming out). Christ said that false prophets could be identified by the “bad fruit” their life would naturally produce. The point was that people’s faith was seen to be true or false based on what their lives produced; that evidence was what proved whether they were true followers of Jesus or not.

  Christians from around the world had told me for years that my music and songs were helping them connect with God—that they were good fruit. I’d done all my music ministry as a gay person. Sure, I wasn’t in relationships, but I was still wired the same way. How could I have produced this good fruit if being gay was so sinful? Surely that would make me a “bad tree” and I should’ve been producing bad fruit. It reminded me of what Peter and Paul had said to the council in Acts: Look at these Gentile Christians—God is powerfully alive in their lives. How can anyone deny that the Holy Spirit is with them? They are genuine followers of Christ and on equal footing with everyone else in the church.

  It also made me think about SSA and the kind of fruit I’d seen in the lives of many people who embraced the idea that their gay orientation was sinful and disordered. Many were isolated, depressed, fearful, and even engaging in self-harm because of their feelings of shame and loneliness. People contacted me regularly through my website telling me this was what they were dealing with, many of them Christian teenagers.

  This wasn’t good fruit; this was just heartbreakingly sad. Many put on a brave face, but behind closed doors were honest about the vast toll this shame and crushing legalism took on them and their well-being.

  I could totally imagine a church committee like the council of Acts 15 happening in Christian circles today with regard to LGBTQ+ people. “Yes, maybe these people can belong to the church, but let’s talk about the boundaries, the rules, the paperwork . . .” It’s human nature to put our own limits, or rules, on anything new in order to retain a sense of control. It’s easier to stick to habit. However, as Jesus said in Matthew 9:17, new wine requires new wineskins—sometimes our model has to grow and flex, just as it did when the Gentiles were welcomed into the formerly Jewish-only church.

  It had been a long afternoon of reading and reflection. I finished by spending time in prayer, offering it all to God. I packed up my bag of books and walked out of St. Paul’s Cathedral, staring up at the majestic ceiling as I left.

  What an intense couple of months it’s been, I thought as I headed home. My mind kept running over all the things I’d encountered in my studies, especially in the book of Acts. Finally, I had come to terms with who I was and that God had created me this way. Finally, I’d begun to find some clarity on the complex issues of celibacy and same-sex marriage too.

  My stomach lurched as I thought what all of this would mean for my life. These were not conclusions I’d arrived at willingly—I’d fought them mentally and emotionally all my life, trying to hold on to traditional theology. Accepting I was gay and endorsing same-sex marriage would mean huge things for me; speaking publicly about them would cause my entire life and career to implode.

  I was still on a partial hiatus from touring and recording, but this had only ever been temporary while I had the chemo and regained my health. Anytime now, I was expected back in the States, and the machinery of my Christian music career would whirr back to full speed. Having been through a nervous breakdown and seen the damage that living in the closet had caused, I knew it was not an option to return to that way of life. I needed to step out and be my authentic self, and I needed to do that publicly. But the prospect was terrifying.

  One thing steadied me: I knew God’s voice was the one I must follow. I’d sensed his guidance in all the research, study, and prayer of the past few months. I remembered Peter, and how unsettled he was by the vision of the sheet, and the struggle he went through to help the church become inclusive. I also remembered Galileo, Martin Luther King Jr., Wilberforce, and the suffragettes; they were a good reminder that sometimes you have to take the road less traveled and that love always wins in the end. I needed to trust that God would give me the courage to walk the road ahead.

  22

  As the train rushed through the British countryside, fields, forests, and houses sped past in a beautiful blur. I was on my way to visit Wendy for an important conversation. Finally, I was going to tell someone, other than my therapist, that I was gay. I wanted to tell Wendy my secret, and also about all I’d learned from studying what the Bible actually said about sexuality. Wendy was the safest person I knew to go to with this; she’d showed me such care and support throughout my drug treatment.

  Wendy, Simon, and their two daughters live on the south coast in a peaceful beach town, so I made the journey down from London. She had no idea that I wanted to talk about something so serious, but I hoped there’d be an opportunity during the day.

  A big sign saying “Welcome to the Sunshine Coast” hung over the railway station as I arrived. We jumped into her car and drove along the road beside the sea, with a Coldplay CD playing at full volume. It was great to be well again, healthy and energized.

  The Eastbourne Pier stood, white and ornamental, stretching out into the water. It looked so beautiful that day, sparkling in the summer weather, so we decided to park the car and walk along it. The pier was full of tourists buying cotton candy, playing arcade games, and eating ice-cream cones. With the sun warming our faces, we walked all the way to the end. The water stretched as far as the eye could see toward the horizon,
which was almost indecipherable as the blue of the waves melted seamlessly into the turquoise of the sky.

  Leaning against the railing, I found the courage to clear my throat and bring up the topic. Somehow, stumbling over my words, I managed to tell Wendy that I was gay—and about all that had happened during my study at the Brompton Oratory and St. Paul’s. I told her I believed the Bible didn’t condemn same-sex relationships, and that I was going to find the courage to come out and hopefully try and make a difference in the church.

  It helped that I’d spoken to Chris, my therapist, about it, but telling a friend felt very different. I didn’t know what words to use, and I was trembling with nerves. At the end of my rambling sentences, Wendy was tearful. She could sense the pain I’d been in and how hard it was to finally get it off my chest.

  “I’m really honored that you’re trusting me with something so private,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry you’ve had to carry this on your own for so many years.” She handed me a tissue, adding, “I still think you’re just as brilliant as I always have, and this changes nothing in our friendship. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here for you. So will all of my family, as you journey forward with it all.”

  Relief washed over me. I exhaled a long breath as my nervousness was replaced by gratitude that our friendship would remain strong. I knew not all Christians would have had the same response.

  Why did I wait all these years? was my next thought, aware that I had made it past the age of thirty before telling any of my friends about my sexuality. It was a lot to process—the relief, the sudden regrets about the past, the happiness of being accepted unconditionally. My brain felt overloaded by this sudden wave of emotions, and I burst into tears. Leaning against the railings, with my head in my hands, I sobbed it all out.