Tim Keller Downplays Side B Threat in the PCA

The PCA, Its Polity, and Why Overtures Matter

Welcome to the Conversation, the StatMatter podcast, my name is John Harris. We're going to talk today about the Presbyterian Church in America, the PCA. We don't often talk about the PCA because it's smaller than the SBC and because I'm more familiar with the SBC, but it is important to talk about the PCA.

They have some of the same battles going on in the PCA that are going on in the Southern Baptist Convention. And they might look a little different, especially because of the polity of the SBC is different than the polity of the PCA.

PCA has overtures that are actually binding on local congregations, whereas the resolutions in the SBC don't bind local autonomous churches. So different beliefs on church government. But that means that overtures in the PCA are more important.

And so keeping our eye on the overtures that are either rejected or accepted is one way to see the trajectory of the PCA. It's not the only way. We can look at other things. We can look at what's being said on social media, what's being sent in emails, and what pastors, prominent pastors are saying and that kind of thing.

But the PCA, it's a little more rigid because local autonomous churches in the SBC, they have a lot of leeway to kind of do what they want. But in the PCA, that's not the case. You can be brought up on charges of being against the state of beliefs of the PCA and that can get you kicked out and you can be tried for heresy and all that kind of thing.

So much more tight in the way that things operate. Now I wanted to start, we're going to launch off of this, if I can here. This is an article by Tim Keller in the By Faith, I guess it's a magazine. It's a magazine, it says, of the Presbyterian Church in America.

So I'm assuming there must be a soft copy or a hard copy of this as well, but it's posted free online and the title of it, this is from March 21st, is What's Happening in the PCA by Tim Keller. Now I've covered Overtures 23 and 37 before.

You can go back to a podcast I did with Pastor Sean McGowan on this topic and I know I've given at least two updates since then. And long story short, without getting back into all the details, if you want to go watch those podcasts or listen to them, you can.

Overtures 23 and 37 were concerned with the character traits, the moral integrity, the standards for someone who is ordained or a pastor in the PCA. And the intent behind Overtures 23 and 37 was to tighten up the language on same-sex attraction, homosexual orientation especially, identifying with those kinds of things, being characterized by those kinds of desires.

Because the PCA has a problem with revoiced theology, sometimes called Side B. And this is what this article is primarily about. Overtures 23 and 37 failed. They were recommended by the General Assembly, but then when they actually went to the presbyteries and had to be approved by two-thirds, they failed that.

And so this has been a cause for contention in the PCA. Is this a sign of liberalism? What does this mean? Is this just because of procedural issues? And there's been debates going on about that, surrounding this.

Here's what Tim Keller has to say, though. I thought this was really interesting, and there's a great piece, by the way. It's just very long. That's the thing. It's very long, and I'm not going to get into all the details of it, but if you really want to know more about this whole issue that I'm about to give you, you can go to warhornmedia .com.

I'm not intimately familiar with Warhorn. I know I've seen other articles by them, but this guy Tim Bailey wrote an interesting piece that I thought responded. If you listen to it, it's an hour and 16 minutes long.

It's like one of my podcasts. It's long. But he goes through in detail. He takes Tim Keller's statements, examines them, shows why they don't actually pass the sniff test. And so what I want to do is not just go over everything he went over.

I might take a little bit from some observations I might use from that, but I have just some more general observations about this, and not just the PCA, but this just pertains to evangelicalism in general, in my opinion.

Why Tim Keller’s Reading of Side B Feels Like a Straw Man

So let's look at what Tim Keller has to say. I think there's a lot of straw men in this. I think there's a perhaps purposeful, but at least an inability, whether it's willfully or not, to deal with the issues that are actually right in front of us.

And we're in a day right now where there's so much misinformation. People are engaging in, I mean, conspiracy theory is the term you hear a lot now, but people are engaging in just, they view reality in a way that just doesn't match reality.

Their understanding of reality is just not in touch with actually what's happening out there. And I'm seeing this more and more everywhere. It doesn't even need a political ideology connected to it. Just people aren't trying to come up with ways to interpret reality.

And some are saying peace, peace when there is no peace. And I don't know what all the motivations are. I think some of this has to do with stability, wanting a sense of stability. Things aren't really changing as fast as we think, as they actually are.

Others are thinking that they're just blowing things out of proportion. We're all going to die, chicken little. And so what I've attempted to do to the best of my ability is to avoid needless speculation and go on what we can verify as much as I possibly can.

And there's going to be some assumptions we have to make here and there, and hopefully they're reasonable assumptions. But what I see in this narrative that Tim Keller projects that I'm about to read for you is a peace, peace when there is no peace.

It's not as bad as it seems. This isn't a big deal. The problem is those who are actually reading the situation correctly are the ones in the wrong because they're exaggerating things. They're bringing in categories from politics and viewing this as bigger than it really is, this issue of revoiced theology and side B.

And I think it's perhaps a maneuver to pacify. That's what it could be, at least, because it doesn't make any sense to me. Someone as smart as Tim Keller could misread things this badly. So let's go through it.

This is what Tim Keller has to say. The failure of overtures 23 and 37 to receive approval of two thirds of our presbyteries has given rise to many interpretations of what this means about the state of the PCA.

I want to question one of the main ways of reading the results of the vote. The narrative goes something like this. A majority of the presbyteries of the PCA are conservative. They don't side with side B approaches to homosexuality, but there is a significant minority of presbyteries that do.

This is an extremely dangerous situation because side B always slides into side A. In the end of Orthodox Christianity, we see where those side B leaning presbyteries are, and we know where the liberalism will begin developing if it hasn't already.

Most of the PCA is sound, though. Okay, so I want us to stop right there. This is Tim Keller representing the argument that the narrative that he believes is prominent right now, and that is that side B, which we'll get into momentarily, but this theology that many are concerned with, this revoiced theology, really, that this is going to slide into side A.

So side B is this affirmation of a homosexual identity of some kind, cultural elements to it. We'll give more definition to it as we go. Side A is this idea that Christians—so side B, Christians can engage in that.

They can have that kind of an identity and engage in certain cultural elements, perhaps, but not in what Scripture specifically prohibits, which is sexual activity. That, I should say, if you have kids in the car, just, you might be forewarned.

I don't know how to navigate all of this without using some words that give more description, but without having actual sex, right? So actual engagement in same-sex relationships, physical relationships, that's wrong, but everything else, pretty much, just about elements.

You could talk with a lisp, and you can perhaps dress in a certain way. You can have these friendships that are supposed to be almost substitutes for a marriage, but they're just these strong friendships.

You can have all that kind of thing. But side A, Christianity, or those who believe in some kind of an appropriate and acceptable homosexual lifestyle within Christianity, if they believe in the side A approach, they think that, yes, having sexual intercourse would be fine in a homosexual relationship.

So side B can't do that. Side A can do that, but side B opens up a lot of other possibilities, right? So Tim Keller's whole, the way he sets up this straw man, in my opinion, which is, I think, what this ends up being, is that it's a slippery slope argument.

People in the PCA are concerned because they're just afraid of homosexual, physical, intimate relationships. They don't want to endorse that, and they think if you endorse the side B perspective, that's what you're doing.

Now, I don't think that's what's going on, and I don't know of anyone else who thinks that's what's going on. In fact, we had MD Perkins on maybe two or three months ago to talk about this whole issue, and he produced a document for Focus on the Family on this very topic, a very well put together document.

And the concern, I mean, I suppose you could say that there's this concern that if you soften orthodox belief on sexuality, you can wind up in various places that are wrong, and that would include side A.

But the actual issue with side B is that it actually endorses behaviors and feelings and temptations and desires that are sinful in and of themselves. That's the contention. It's not that, well, side B is okay, but hey, well, watch out, it's going to slide into something wrong.

It's that no, side B in and of itself is wrong. So Tim Keller sets it up, I think in my opinion, wrong from the beginning and misses what this is about. In fact, those overtures, if you just read Overtures 23 and 37, you can figure out pretty quickly what it's about.

It's about a lifestyle of identifying yourself according to sinful desires or sinful lifestyles, manifesting traits of that, etc. So this view divides the PCA into a majority of conservative people in presbyteries, but also a minority of side B -leaning social justice-emphasizing progressives.

There are considerable problems with this view. So he's saying that you have a division here. That's what conservatives really are saying. And let's just face it, this is the narrative coming from conservatives.

He doesn't say, he doesn't attribute it to them. The narrative just comes out of nowhere, somewhere, it's just the narrative. No, I mean, this narrative is coming from conservative people in the PCA. This is his audience.

This is who he's trying to address. It's obvious from the beginning. It's people who would have this view, and those are going to be the conservative types. The progressives aren't going to be taking this kind of a narrative as serious.

They think that they're orthodox, and that's always been the case. The heretics always think they're orthodox. Since when is that not the case? So the people who are concerned about a slide and losing orthodoxy in some way, these are the conservatives, and they are, and this is a strawman of the way they feel about things, and they see a line being formed, and there's one people, there's a group of people on one side of the line against Overtures 23 and 37.

There's a group of people on the other side of the line for them, which is how they feel about it. And Tim Keller is saying, no, no, no, no, no, hold on, hold on. You know, this is too simplistic. This is, there's not, that line isn't really there.

There's just problems with thinking through things that way. So as far as I know, there is not one PCA court, not one session, presbytery, or agency that has ever endorsed Side B Christianity. Now, of course, the article in Warhorn Media by Tim Bailey rips this one to shreds.

I'm not going to do that. He's got all the receipts on that if you want to know why this is wrong. This is the observation I have about this, though. Who cares? Why is that significant? You have the Revoice conference hosted at a PCA church, and there has not been significant actions taken.

There's been reports and things, but you haven't actually reprimanded Greg Johnson. And so, the issue to me in all this is, you have an ideology, this Side B interpretation that is gaining ascendance.

It's on the rise, and you don't have to look at these metrics to know whether or not that's true. You can just simply look at the fact that there was a church that did this, and the power to actually discipline Johnson wasn't there, and the willpower to pass these overtures wasn't there.

You don't need much more than that. That's my contention here. And I know you could put a list here. Warhorn Media has a whole list of where you find this kind of thing, but you don't even need that. All you need is what's even presented.

Honestly, in this article, you can figure out, wait a minute, there's a problem somewhere. There is a disagreement. There is a schism of some kind. Second, the PCA's Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality considered this Side B view and clearly rejected it.

So, Warhorn Media took this one on and gave specifics, but I just wanted to open up the document and look through, okay, where does it say Side B? Nowhere. Nowhere is Side B mentioned. Okay, so they denounced something they didn't even mention, apparently, according to Keller.

What about revoice theology? I typed that in. Revoice does come up, but you don't find the strong denunciations that Keller's referring to when you type in revoice. There's references to reports, things like that, but there's no denunciation of revoice here.

So, I'm like, what is he talking about in this? Third, he says, in light of points one and two, we can conclude further that the reasons for the no votes by presbyters on the BCO amendments must have been based on matters other than an insipid liberalism.

Again, the reasons for votes against the overtures were extremely diverse. Yet, after hearing many, many of them, I think the common uniting concern was that the overtures could do more harm than good.

Some thought they would exclude some people unfairly. Well, what he's painting a picture of here is that, look, the reason that these overtures failed was because of reasons other than people in the PCA who wanted to support side B theology.

And so, look, the side B thinking here, the revoice theology, he doesn't call it that, but the revoice theology, it doesn't necessarily—people are concerned that it's going to slide into side A, right?

So, he strawmans it. And then the second thing is that no one endorses this in the PCA, not on an official level. And then the third is that we've already actually denounced the side B view. And then fourth is that the people who voted against it weren't even necessarily supporting side B.

So, it's all downplaying this, that the side B view, the revoice theology, is a big deal, that it's a threat. It's really not a threat. And then he does this interesting thing, the old narrative. It says, well, then what is going on?

Tim Keller says, I have a view. So, what explains? If it's not a disagreement in the PCA over revoice theology and homosexual orientation, same-sex attraction, making that compatible with Christianity, if that's not the disagreement, then what is the disagreement?

This is the view Tim Keller has. I have a view that it is possibly wrong, but is my best guess right now. What is going on now is, with one significant difference, what has been going on in our denomination almost from the beginning.

All right. So, for a conservative, that's going to be like, oh, whew, you know, good. This isn't anything new. But that makes no sense. It just, like, try to make that jive with reality. This has been going...

We've always had debates over this kind of thing? Of course not. But how does he frame it? He says, the PCA has been divided between a minority of ministers who interpret the Westminster standards in stricter ways, and a majority who interpret them in broader ways.

An example is the regular principle of worship. So, this whole Side B controversy is no different than debating the regular principle? Really? That's the kind of thing you're going to compare it to? I mean, Side B stuff is pretty fundamental.

How about this? Any effort to give names to these groups makes one side look better than the other. Is one group confessional and the other evangelical? Is one doctrinalist and the other side missional?

I use these terms just to help readers get the gist of what I'm talking about, and I'll not use them again because I do not want the labels to rob anyone of proper respect or brand them uncharitably. So, the second thing he's saying, okay, we've had this from the beginning.

We've always been arguing over things like the regular principle based on more strict interpretations. And then he goes on to basically argue against people who would use labels and call one side evangelical or one side doctrinalist, and we shouldn't be doing that.

These are just terms of identification because a division does exist, and if you can identify what's causing the division and try to categorize what people who exist on one side of the line and people that exist on the other side of the line and what they're thinking and what they're advocating, it's inevitable that you're going to have some way in a shorthand of describing that.

And Tim Keller's trying to say, no, no, no, no, we shouldn't even describe it according to labels, and it's just this old argument that's been happening for a while. And it's this grievous division, let's see here, and we should assume the best about each other.

Paul's statement that love thinks no evil does not mean we should be naive about the reality of sin, but it must mean at the very least that believers should give each other the benefit of the doubt. Okay, we'll talk about this in a minute, benefit of the doubt.

Cultural Polarization and the PCA’s Place in the Sexual Revolution

Polarization of the PCA mirrors polarization of the culture, and here's where he kind of lands. Listen to this one. During the last five to six years, the entire nation has become more polarized politically and culturally.

No matter your position, the alternative viewpoint to yours have become louder and stronger and more extreme in society. Now, that's not universally the case, by the way. That is, the left has won so many battles and has pushed so far that you have people on the right now who, like PragerU and The Blaze TV and Megyn Kelly, all advocating for homosexual parents adopting through surrogate mothers.

I mean, those are conservative supposedly now. That just shows you how far, they haven't gotten more extreme on that particular position, but the left has gotten so extreme that the populist right that are being squeezed are putting up defenses, and they're getting more brash in some ways.

They're getting more vocal, brazen, all that kind of thing. So I'll give you that, but no, it's not like alternative viewpoints are just becoming louder, stronger, and more extreme, especially the more extreme part.

It's that you have a socialist revolution, and one side is becoming so extreme on that end of things, and you have a reaction from the other side, but it's not like they're running in the opposite direction.

They're trying to maintain, I think Trump was trying to maintain 1995. Anyway, I just get frustrated with that when people paint it as both sides are moving far away from each other. No, they're not. One side's moving really far, and the other one's just not moving as fast to catch up with it.

Some are seeking to re-read the strict and broad groups as being the same as, and as connected to, the conservatives and progressives that are battling in the culture wars on the national stage. For example, many now want to name the broader PCA group progressives and tie them to the activism of the secular left.

If a PCA church emphasizes helping the poor or disadvantaged, it may be said they are into critical race theory. If they voted against Overture's 23 and 37, it may be said they are sympathetic to gay ideology.

This effort to tie the old, strict, broad division in the PCA to the culture wars of the country has not been without any effect. So he's saying this is arbitrary. You're taking a division that's been there forever, whether or not one is a strict interpreter of the Westminster or not, and you're then placing that debate that's centuries old into the, or at least since the inception of the PCA.

I can't remember if he said from the beginning of Presbyterianism or the PCA, but at least since the inception of the PCA. You're taking that, decades and decades of that division, and then you're just arbitrarily impressing upon it the interpretation of a political sort, and you're saying that one side lines up with conservatives, one side lines up with progressives, politically speaking.

And that's what's really driving this. And here's the thing, this is the obvious thing to all of us. This kind of a discussion over revoiced theology would not even be happening if there wasn't a sexual revolution.

It wouldn't even be a thought. No one, even two decades ago, this wouldn't have even been a thought in most people's minds in the PCA, that this would ever be even a debate. Many of you listening are probably wondering, what in the world is Side B?

I mean, it's so new. So this is the thing. This is totally a result of the direction of our society. And the sexual revolution has much to do with that. People seeing themselves as, on a fundamental level, as different than the way that God actually created them.

The created order is not what's, well, or some will take the created order and impose upon it values from the outside. So there's two ways of approaching that, really. But either a downgrading, a dismissal of the created order, and I have my own identity, or the created order includes this same-sex orientation that I have.

And so therefore, it's legitimate in some ways, even though I can't act on it. And that wouldn't have even been a thought 20 years ago in a PCA. It just wouldn't have been. There might have been a few people on the fringe that probably didn't say it out loud.

Like, so this, so Tim Keller's whole, this is a piece-piece when there is no piece. That's the whole construction of this. And then he ends with, anyway, I might even go into his conclusion. It's a rehashing of a lot of this.

Greg Johnson, Nate Collins, and the Revoice Network Respond

So how are we going to, how do we approach this? I mean, I've given you my thoughts on it, but I want to just show you some stuff from, mostly, I think, from Twitter here. We're going to talk about Side B a bit, and I want to show you the reaction to this from those who would be more on the, well, first, I want to show you this.

I forgot about this. Greg Johnson, who's at Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. They hosted the Revoice Conference. He clearly showing here, and there's many I could have shown you, but helpful caution about Overture 23 from Tim Keller.

Really, there was this idea, this is in 2021. Hey, Tim Keller's kind of on our side on this. Tim Keller's, he's against these overtures. And so you have Greg Johnson right there, making common cause, to put it mildly, with Tim Keller.

And so this was, I think, the general feeling, is that Keller's not on the side of these overtures necessarily, or at least he's more welcoming to the Greg Johnsons of the world. That's just been kind of an impression that I've gotten, at least, from people I know in the PCA.

Now, Nate Collins, who organizes Revoice, or at least did, I don't know if he still does, he had a whole response to the article I just read you from Tim Keller. And let me just read his Twitter thread here.

He says, well, at least it's explicit now. Tim Keller now says that the PCA sexuality report was intended to reject side B Christianity. I don't know of a single side B gay Christian who has ever used the phrase side B Christianity.

This makes me wonder if the use of the phrase side B Christianity by straight Christian leaders is a form of othering of those of us who use LGBT terminology to cast us as different, but more importantly, wrong Christians.

As a gay man who believes in Jesus and is living by faith according to a biblical sexual ethic that prohibits all forms of sexual intimacy between members of the same sex, I reject the idea that my Christianity is fundamentally different from that of my straight siblings.

You can tell why these overtures would have really affected people like Nate Collins. I mean, as a gay man who believes in Jesus, I mean, right there, he would have been in trouble by identifying himself according to something that's sinful.

It's worth noting that neither this article by Keller nor the PCA report actually engages with anything written by someone who would claim to represent the side B perspective. Side B is a fairly broad tent, but this lack of engagement is intellectually dishonest and lazy, so he's mad at Keller.

Keller's article also neglects to address the insipid homophobia and legalism that animates a significant portion of the PCA. While not receiving the necessary two-thirds majority to amend, overtures 23 and 37 did pass by a clear majority of the denominational leadership.

The tolerance, so it's not enough that these failed. The fact that it was recommended at the last General Assembly is enough to say that there's all this homophobia. The tolerance of homophobia and legalism towards gay people in the PCA is pastoral malpractice and enables the systemic spiritual abuse of sexual minorities.

With this article, Keller joins the ranks of moderates whose effort at peacekeeping are doing more spiritual harm. As a thought experiment, imagine that the far right wing of the PCA is the drunk dad.

Inebriated on legalism while the PCA moderates are the mom who keeps hiding the liquor bottles and pleading with the gay kids to not make daddy mad. My advice to the PCA moderates, for the sake of your own safety and the safety of your gay children, either confront your spouse and demand change or leave.

Now listen, this is telling. This is a shift on how is Tim Keller viewed. Who is Tim Keller? Tim Keller, he's not down with the struggle enough. He's now moderate. Tim Keller, moderate. The PCA, by the standards of some.

Because he is, you know, he may have this, he's the mother, he loves the gay children, but he just, he's trying to appease the bigots. That's the interpretation of Nate Collins. That's very interesting to me.

Because there's fractures in the progressive side of things. There's those who are going to full steam ahead and then there's those who want to, you know, and Tim Keller, I don't know for what his motive was.

I have, like I said, my suspicion here. I think it probably, he's addressing people that have a certain view, more conservative, as evidenced by his article in the beginning of it. And he's trying to pacify them.

That's at least the effect of his article. That's what it does. That's what he's, that's what he argues for. And so I think that's what's happening here, is that that's the motive Tim Keller has. What he actually believes, I'm not 100 sure.

I think he's, at least people did think he was more accommodating to the revoiced stuff. Now, where is he? And so he's not able to satisfy those. In so pacifying, in trying to pacify the people who are conservatives, he's now offending the people who are, and I'm just going to use the terms that Keller doesn't want me to use because they're accurate, the more progressives.

That's who they are. Here's what he says the next day. Things I would have never imagined seeing Tim Keller providing cover for legalism. Then you have Sarah Collins. Now, this was in a response to a tweet by Greg Johnson, where Greg Johnson was essentially, as far as I remember, lamenting what Keller had said, but the tweet's now gone.

And I can't seem to get it back. So I'm just going to go with the response here. This is from Sarah Collins, which I believe that would be the wife of Nate Collins. And she says, claiming no session supportive side B, as he does, when the gospel's hospitality to revoice has meant a storm of denominational controversy.

And I think she says MPC's gospel hospitality. That must be Memorial Presbyterian Church. That's the church in question. That's the church Greg Johnson is a pastor at. So she's saying that the... Keller's wrong.

That Memorial Presbyterian Church had gospel hospitality for revoice, and it's meant a storm of denominational controversy, including multiple investigations. And it's just shocking to her that Tim Keller would come out there and say, hey, no session support side B.

When she's like, what are you talking about? That's just not in touch with reality. Not to mention ignoring your book and Georgia Talks. And I think she's talking... She's responding here to Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson's talk and talks. Or whatsoever those things are called when you walk up to a mic at Georgia. So here's what I think is interesting. The progressives are calling Tim Keller's bluff and they're saying, hold on, you're not representing this fairly.

And I'm not saying they're progressive in the sense that they go as far as... They're not like... They might be Democrats, who knows. But I'm not saying they're secular Democrats. What I'm saying is within the boundaries of the PCA, within that group of people, they are more on the left.

And the evidence... All you need to know is that they believe in the revoice stuff. To know that. That's a direct result of a soft peddling of homosexuality. Grant Hartley. Grant Hartley. I think we've talked about Grant Hartley before.

He used to work for Crew. He's actually, I think, Roman Catholic now. But he was... I think he did some poetry for Crew. It was an interesting homosexual poetry thing. I played it on the podcast. It was a while ago.

Years ago now, I think. Anyway, he was... I believe he's one of the revoice speakers. But he weighed in on this. And he said, Reading Tim Keller's Center Church was a large reason why I began to think of the LGBT community as a distinct cultural group.

Whoa. So this is, again, it's the feeling that Tim Keller was with us. Which is the foundation of much of my work. Especially... Listen to this. Especially at the first two revoice conferences and a significant theme of my life.

And now I'm remembering. Actually, I did watch. He did do... I think that was the first revoice thing I watched. He had this whole talk on redeeming queer culture. Something like that. His discussion of contextualization and missiology, perhaps surprisingly, one of the biggest reasons why I call myself gay.

Why I can begin to consider my sexuality to be an aspect of my identity. Why I feel such a strong connection to LGBTQ people, culture, and history. Now, by the way, LGBTQ people, cultural history. What does being gay have to do with being transgender?

What holds these things together? LGBTQ. The only thing that can hold them together is that they're not the created design. They're stepping outside of that. Otherwise, what do they have to do with each other?

Right? But they are one community? Wouldn't there be the lesbian community? The transgender community? Why are they all together in one community? Because they stand in opposition to traditional marriage.

Biblical marriage. Created design. And those orientations. Which I don't even like using that word because it's just orientation itself. It's we are created for the purposes our creator has given us. We are designed in a specific way to function a specific way.

We are who we were designed to be. Not who we feel we should be. That's the root issue in all this. So what kind of a culture do LGBTQ people produce? Is it even a culture? Culture is what you cultivate.

So what do they cultivate? They can't have children. Um, history? I mean, like what? This is a deception right here. But he's saying that Tim Keller is the one that convinced him to identify with this.

Very interesting. Not great for Keller. But he's saying, hey, it's Tim Keller that inspired me to identify with the LGBTQ quote unquote community. I quoted him extensively throughout those breakout sessions at the first two Revoice conferences and his work has irrevocably shaped me.

He's so so it is especially painful, he says, to seek him publicly, see him publicly, harshly distance himself from the Side B community because his work has been the catalyst for so much Side B thought and cultural formation over the past several years.

This is telling. This is so telling that Tim Keller is one of the guys that these people thought he's on our side. And then when he tries to pacify the conservatives, they feel rejected. Why are you going and talking to them?

I thought you were with us. They're hurt. They feel rejected. They're not accepting it. So what is Side B Christianity? Here's Nate Collins. He tweeted out, enjoying being interviewed for this thoughtful and helpful article about the complexities and the lights of the Side B gay Christian community.

So again, they don't really say Side B Christianity like Tim Keller did, but there is this Side B gay Christian community. And this is the article he references. And I'm just going to read you from it here.

And it's quoting Grant Hartley as well. It's the same kind of people in all of these. The same group. At first, Side B was mostly offering a theological pathway for Christians to both accept LGBTQ as a God-given identity and uphold traditional stance on sex and marriage.

Now Hartley said, the group has taken on a cultural weight. Over time, Side B has felt less like a theological position and more like a distinct subculture. Really? How so? Many Side B Christians feel called to celibacy and a select few are in celibate same-sex partnerships or mixed orientation marriages where one party is straight and the other is not.

These experiences have led Side B Christians to develop alternate models of belonging that honor single celibate lifestyles. One such model, he'll says, is spiritual friendship, a deeply committed relationship that's more spiritual vocation than casual Facebook acquaintance.

He'll says these sorts of intentional celibate friendships deserve public recognition and support. Side B folks also find community by creating chosen families, mutual support systems made up of non-related members, or in the case of Eve Tushnet, through communal acts of service.

I don't have to read any more. This is what it is. Side B Christians engaging in celibate same-sex partnerships, we can do everything but have sex. Everything else is permissible. We can act like the people and the habits that were produced by people that were having illicit sex with each other or sex outside of the bounds of matrimony that's a man and woman, biblical marriage.