Preacher at Inaugural National Prayer Service Evolving on Gay Issues
Reverend Adam Hamilton, pastor of a United Methodist mega-church in Leawood, Kansas, has been chosen to deliver the sermon at the Inaugural National Prayer Service. Reverend Hamilton is the author of Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, and his views on full LGBT inclusion in the church also currently fall into a gray area.
In August 2011, Reverend Hamilton wrote a Huffington Post article criticizing LGBT supporters who protested Willow Creek Community Church’s Leadership Summit. In that article, however, he acknowledged that “most thoughtful evangelical pastors struggle with the tension between their desire to welcome and love all people and their desire to be faithful to the scriptures regarding sexuality as they understand them.”
Rev. Hamilton’s struggle with the pull to evolve on LGBT issues was further evidenced in his September 2012 sermon, “Wrestling with the Bible.” In this sermon, Hamilton demonstrates that he is fully aware homosexuality is a divisive issue throughout the U.S. and in his own church. He is careful with his language throughout in an attempt not to alienate his more conservative members.
The question of Christianity’s response to homosexuality, for Rev. Hamilton, comes down to whether the “eight verses in the Bible that relate specifically to same-sex activity” are the “timeless will of God, or the time-bound reflections of people in a time and place.” He admits that he has “made a case on both sides….Over time, I’ve begun to see that it might fall into this category when I used to think that it fell into this category.”
In his sermon, Rev. Hamilton gives examples of gay and lesbian congregants who have “the Holy Spirit working in their lives.” He confesses to his congregation of his embarrassment for having a gay couple baptize their son after church because he feared his congregants would react negatively. He goes on to ask himself, if his daughter were a lesbian, could he tell her: “I’m sorry but you have to live without a loving relationship, like your mom and I have”?
His hesitancy is clear. Rev. Hamilton checks his rhetoric from becoming too progressive for his congregation by answering his own question with: “I’m not so certain about that.”
Rev. Hamilton’s “Wrestling with the Bible” sermon makes apparent that he, like many Americans, is still conflicted about homosexuality, and his wrestling remains incomplete. His views may have evolved from the Pentecostalism of his youth, but he is not yet ready to take a fully progressive stance: “What I’m telling you is there’s room for Christians to see this issue differently….After about 30 years of wrestling with it, that’s about the best I have.”