"Liberal" Versus "Conservative" Christianity | Brandan Robertson and Eric Huffman
Inside This Episode
How does someone go from being the kid who wears a large wooden cross around his neck, telling his unbelieving friends they’re going to hell – to becoming one of the most outspoken, progressive, pro-LGBTQ pastors in the U.S.? In this interview, “TikTok pastor” Brandan Robertson challenges traditional interpretations of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus, and conservative Christianity’s teachings on marriage and sexuality, and Maybe God Host Eric Huffman responds. Brandan argues that there's no contradiction between being Christian and being queer. His new book, "Queer & Christian" is set to release in May of 2025.
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Transcript
Eric Huffman: How does someone go from being the kid who wears a wooden cross around his neck and then goes to school and tells all of his unbelieving friends they're going to hell, to becoming one of the most outspoken, progressive, pro-LGBTQ pastors in America?
Brandan Robertson: I opened up to 1 Corinthians and it used the word "homosexual", but I remember having this moment of, Oh my goodness, I think this refers to me. And the way I interpreted that verse was, shall not inherit the kingdom of God. And that began a whole new anxiety in my life as a young Christian.
Eric Huffman: Today, Brandan Robertson, who's also known as the TikTok Pastor, challenges traditional interpretations of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus, and conservative Christianity's teachings on marriage and sexuality.
I think, just like you think some of what I am teaching and I'm advocating for is dangerous, I think some of what you're advocating for is quite dangerous. Brandan's new book, Queer and Christian, is set to release in May of 2025.
Brandan, welcome to Maybe God.
Brandan Robertson: Thank you so much for having me, it's so good to be here.
Eric Huffman: I've followed you online for years now, it feels like. I think the first time I saw you was on Justin Brierley's old show in the UK, I think you were debating David Bennett, maybe, or something on that show, and followed you ever since.
I've seen you on a lot of Christian podcasts and YouTube shows, that some of them are more charitable than others toward you. My goal here is to be as absolutely charitable as I can be, because I don't really love the way you're sometimes treated.
It seems like you're the guy that Christians love to hate for some reason, and I don't want to go there, even though we obviously are gonna have our disagreements and all of that, that's to be expected. I just really wanted to have a fruitful, respectful conversation and kind of get in your head a little bit and understand you more, maybe you could understand me and other, I guess, evangelicals more. Although I use that term a little loosely. I'm not sure what it means that much anymore. I just don't want us to continue demonizing each other. So, thanks for being here, given everything that you've probably been through over the years.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, thank you for this opportunity. This is so important in this moment in particular.
Eric Huffman: Of course. Of course. So, what I'd like to do is just, having read your new book, thank you for the advance copy, what I'd like to do is just get into a little bit of what you get into there, because that really was refreshing and eye-opening, learning about your life, even growing up. So, you come from a pretty middle-class family, kind of a nondescript upbringing, but there were some things about your childhood that were hard. Just tell us about where you come from and what it was like to grow up as Brandan Roberts.
Brandan Robertson: I mean, I grew up outside of Washington DC in Maryland in a trailer park with an abusive alcoholic father and a mother who had a fair share of mental health issues. And so it was rough. By the time I was 12, just the amount of trauma and abuse and chaos in my life really brought me to a place of severe depression and anxiety.
And it was at that point that my neighbors started inviting me to their fundamentalist Baptist Church. But despite disagreeing with that brand of Christianity these days, it was in that context that I heard the good news that there was a God who loved me and could redeem my circumstances and give me hope and a future. I had a transformative encounter with Christ in that context. And that set me on this long journey, eventually feeling called to be a pastor and continuing to do that despite the changes in my theology and context and all of that good stuff.
Eric Huffman: Would you say your conversion to Christianity happened when you were 12 or when did it happen?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, it was just very quickly once I started attending the church. I had one of those altar call moments, walked down the aisle while they were singing Just As I Am, and truly encountered Christ. It was really profound.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. What did that mean to you as a child? You know, given everything you were going through, how did it change you?
Brandan Robertson: It's hard to overestimate how much it changed me. I remember walking in the night after it happened, it was a Wednesday evening church service, and I told my mom, I got redeemed tonight. And I think she thought I was joining a cult or something. They had no context for any of that.
But I feel like a lot of young people who have conversions really do become very zealous. And I certainly did. I began being known in school as the kid who wore a six-inch wooden cross around my neck every day and handed out gospel tracts to my friends and told folks they were going to hell.
I used to debate a Mormon before school. Every morning we would meet in a music room and debate theology. It became my life. I became fascinated with Christianity, but also my relationship with God at that stage was so palpable. It was a very experiential relationship. And that gave me so much hope and comfort in some very turbulent years of my life.
Eric Huffman: At that point, did you know or have some inclination that you were different from the straight kids?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah. You know, my story on that front was I didn't really identify with the word "gay" or think of myself as that. But strangely enough, I have experiences like first grade on the blacktop remembering a girl coming up to me. I was a very shy kid. And I had another shy best friend who was a guy. And she came up to me in first grade and said, "Everybody thinks you two are gay." That kind of stuff continued to happen through my life. And it wasn't until high school when puberty really hit that this began to kind of emerge very clearly. But it seemed that people knew way before I knew.
Eric Huffman: Ah, okay. Yeah, you hear that story sometimes or stories like that. What did that do when that realization started to hit you? What did that do to your faith? Was it a conflict?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it sounds like I'm making a dramatized story. But this is absolutely what happened. I used to go to the church every time I could be there. And so after school, I would get dropped off at the church and just wander around. And I remember sitting in this large sanctuary, and I opened up to 1 Corinthians and whatever translation it was, it used the word "homosexual".
I didn't expect that word to be in the Bible because it seems so modern and clinical. But I remember laying eyes on that word in that verse and having this moment of, "Oh, my goodness, I think this refers to me." And the way I interpreted that verse was "shall not inherit the kingdom of God". And that began a whole new anxiety in my life as a young Christian.
Eric Huffman: A lot of people coming to that fork in the road would say, "Well, I am who I am, I want who I want, I want to love who I want to love. So Christianity is not for me." But you didn't do that. You stayed tethered to your faith somehow. Do you remember what led to that decision?
Brandan Robertson: I mean, there wasn't any other option for me. I had found hope in Christ through this church. I had found a community. I found a calling. And yeah, there was no thought in those early years that I was going to choose the homosexual lifestyle, so to speak. I dated women in high school. And then even when I went off to Moody Bible Institute, tried to date women, and really, I believed wrongly.
I think a lot of young Christians do believe this that struggle with same-sex attraction, that by committing my life to serve God, that God, of course, was going to take away this struggle. That just never really happened during those four years in college.
Eric Huffman: I've heard you in other interviews, describe yourself as bisexual. I don't need to get super personal on this. But has there been attraction to women as well as men?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah. I mean, very similar to many LGBT people when I first came out, which was like 2015. I used the language of bisexuality. And that was honest because I did... In high school, I dated a girl and I was attracted to her. Now, increasingly, I use the word "gay" or "queer", just because my attraction seemed to be mostly oriented in that direction.
Eric Huffman: Okay. Just so everybody's on the same page, when you say queer, what is it that you mean with that word?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, it means lots of things to lots of people. But for me, it just means essentially non-normative, so to speak, sexuality. So it's a catch-all term for anyone that's not heterosexual, or cisgender, which is the opposite of transgender.
Eric Huffman: So it's a little bit, I mean, to use another word that can mean a lot of things, a little fluid.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, absolutely.
Eric Huffman: So at what point did you come out to mom and dad and to your church?
Brandan Robertson: That was another traumatic experience. Life was quite traumatic in those early years. It was while I was a student at Moody Bible Institute that I received my first book deal to write as a young evangelical about kind of my experience becoming slightly more progressive, kind of in the emergent church crowd, where I was hanging out.
After I graduated, I turned in that book. But I had also started to advocate publicly for marriage equality among evangelicals. My theology wasn't made up about what the Bible said about sexuality. But it did seem clear that the strong opposition of evangelicals to the civil rights for marriage equality just wasn't good for our witness. So I started advocating publicly.
The long story short is a Time Magazine article reporter wanted to write a story because I lost my book deal for my marriage equality advocacy. As she started kind of doing interviews with folks in my life, it became clear that I was struggling with my sexuality.
She was giving me a period of time to kind of wrestle with what I wanted to do and how I wanted to identify, but her editors hit "publish" early. And the headline of that Time article was "Young Evangelical Leader Loses Book Deal After Coming Out."
Eric Huffman: Oh.
Brandan Robertson: That's literally how my parents found out. It's literally how most people in my life found out before I had officially even come out.
Eric Huffman: That's not ideal.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, it was traumatic but I saw the grace of God in it. Because what happened in that moment was, yes, I got a lot of evangelical pushback. Al Mohler and those folks were using this as a moment and an example. But that is when this kind of progressive community emerged. And it was the kind of Christianity I'd never explored really before. And I found a welcome and people who told me, you can still be a pastor, you can still have space in the church. And that's part of what led me to where I am today.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Looking back, I can't quite piece the timeline together of when terms like Side A and Side B kind of hit the mainstream. Was that an option that you considered? For people watching who may not know Side A, I'm such a layman on this, but like, Side A are people that live out their sexuality, come out and live out whatever that means to them openly and without shame or fear of God's judgment. Side B is more, yeah, I'm oriented this way for same-sex attraction, but I choose to be celibate, or I choose to be in a monogamous relationship with someone of the opposite sex, despite my orientation. Did you have that option?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah. I mean, that language comes from Justin Lee, his book Torn came out in I think like 2012. I was familiar with it at the time. I mean, during Bible College at Moody, I would definitely... as I started to be more comfortable acknowledging that I felt like I was wired to be non-heterosexual, I probably would have used similar language as Side B.
But what really also happened at Moody was, the more I studied the scripture in an academic context, the more I realized that there wasn't as clear of a consensus as I was at least initially taught. So I was more agnostic on the issue and didn't feel super compelled in either direction, Side A or Side B, for a couple of years.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Moody is pretty conservative theologically, right? Was it a hostile environment for you at that point?
Brandan Robertson: For so many reasons, it was just because for all the good that Moody does in the world, it does create a kind of fundamentalistic style of Christian. And so I was like blogging and I had a podcast on campus at the time where I was talking to people like NT Wright, who was very left for Moody. So professors would call me into their offices, the deans would call me into their office, students would corner me and debate me, because they thought I was introducing heresy into the campus. And that's, again, not an overstatement, that's kind of literally the language that was used.
So it was really my theology first that became an issue. The LGBT thing didn't really happen until after I graduated. So most people didn't know I was wrestling with that issue, except for a few professors.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, got it. Were other students secretly gay that came to you in confidence? Did you have that privilege?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah. I mean, I served as the chaplain of the men's choir for two years, and I was shocked. My senior year, I often tell this story, our floor in our dorm hall had, I think it was like 30 men living on the floor. 12 of them my senior year came out to me as struggling with same-sex attraction. And by that point, I was just realizing that this was such a huge issue that I didn't think was being dealt with well. And whatever direction I was going to go in, it felt like it was being presented to me as something to try to engage with to help those who are really struggling.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. As you were struggling with it, and my sense is now you don't see yourself as struggling with this anymore. You've kind of come full circle on that. But when you were in that season of struggle, did you ever go to any of the conversion therapy camps or whatever?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah. I was mentored at Moody by Christopher Yuan, who is pretty well known as kind of somebody... he doesn't necessarily say he's been healed of his sexuality, but through his conversion, he's left his LGBT lifestyle behind. That was kind of the initial framework I was given. But then I was also encouraged my senior year to go to healing prayer, which I consider a version of conversion therapy, but it was founded by Leanne Payne. And it's this kind of psychological spiritual healing meant for people struggling with same-sex attractions. I did that for an entire year of my senior year.
Again, it was all earnest, I was really trying to be healed. And I saw some progress. It was a powerful practice. But the sexual orientation part of me never felt like it was actually shifting. Lots of trauma was being healed. But it occurred to me that trauma wasn't what caused me to be LGBT, which is kind of the modality, or the theory behind healing prayer.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, that childhood trauma is sort of a... there's a causational effect for LGBTQ orientation or confusion or whatever. That's the theory. And what I hear you saying is that you discovered that you've got some healing for that trauma, but it didn't really affect your orientation.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, absolutely.
Eric Huffman: Got it. Overall, was that experience positive or negative? Do you regret it? How do you look back on that?
Brandan Robertson: I mean, I feel lucky because you hear so many terrible conversion therapy experiences. I think we probably agree that there are some really terrible things that have happened. But I formed a really great relationship with the professor that was helping me through this. She knew everything about me. And it was a level of openness with God that I had not had in a long time. So I didn't feel traumatized per se by that experience. It was really the response after coming out that was more traumatic for me.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. So you came out, you acknowledged your orientation, but you sort of struggled with it for a while. What was the sort of second coming out moment, so to speak, where you decided you're okay with this part of who you are as a Christian?
Brandan Robertson: I mean, it's hard to put it into a single moment. But I do think if there's anything close to a single moment, it was when I started seminary. I was at Wesley Theological Seminary initially in Washington, DC. And I took a summer seminar on sexuality and gender in the New Testament. And it was the first time that I was really presented with kind of the hardcore academic look at Greco-Roman culture and the language and the way the Bible speaks of sexuality.
And by the end of that, reading all these original first-century sources and reading what the scholarly consensus seems to be moving towards, I was really confident that I thought conservative Christians had been getting this wrong. I thought there was a real lack in biblical and cultural knowledge among a lot of conservative Christians. I was pretty convinced that the Bible didn't condemn homosexuality. So I had no reason to be afraid as I continued to explore what my life would look like.
Eric Huffman: Got it. So now you're leading a church. Tell us about your church and your ministry now.
Brandan Robertson: I led a church in San Diego for four years that was primarily LGBT... a couple hundred people, but over 50% were LGBT. And that was an incredible first pastoral experience to stand on a stage and preach each week and to realize this could actually exist because I didn't think it could.
Now my community is a lot more traditional. It's a Reformed church, which is not my background, but it's largely older. And yet, they have been on their own journey over the past decade and had made a commitment that they wanted a pastor that was going to be LGBT-inclusive. So now I get to serve in New York City, which is an incredible and challenging place to be. But my community is... it's really wonderful. What's relationship like with mom and dad these days?
Brandan Robertson: It's good. I mean, we've all had a lot of healing over the past decade. And without trash-talking conservatives, I do think when I was a fundamentalist, I was a little bit of a pain in the neck to them because I was always... I mean, I ripped up... my mom had a picture of the Pope for some reason, and I ripped it off the wall and stomped on it when I was a kid because the Pope was the great whore of Babylon.
So now having a more inclusive, progressive son, I think helps them a little bit. But it's also strange to have a son who's a pastor, but also doing this LGBT work. So yeah, it's interesting.
Eric Huffman: I was thinking about your story as I read your book and thought about what I've seen online and thinking about it in relation to my story. And it's interesting. I feel like we're almost like ships passing in the night.
I grew up Christian, but progressive-ish Christian Methodist. My family was particularly progressive for our part of the world. I think we were the only progressive family in town that I knew of. So that sort of set me on a path. I followed that progressive path for most of my young life. It led me almost to do away with Christianity, but really, I stayed tethered to the church. I say I became a pastor before I was really a Christian. That's sort of how I put it because I had this come-to-Jesus moment at 34 in the Holy Land that really shook me. And I consider that the moment I actually became a Christian, even though I had always called myself one before that. Because it was only then that I really decided that Jesus is the Lord of my life, and that He's God and worthy of worship and worthy of my surrender and obedience and all of that.
So I sort of went from being pretty progressive in my 20s, being very progressive and activist on lots of social issues and things like that, saying, frankly, a lot of the things you say now. And I see a lot of my former self in you, and I don't mean that pejoratively or in any shorthanded kind of way. I just think it's interesting, except for the sexuality struggle, which I understand to an extent because I did struggle deeply with what I consider sexual sin and lust. It just happened to be in the heterosexual fashion.
So I can identify a lot with where you come from. And I understand and respect why you do and say the things you do and say. But I've come a whole different direction and ended up in a whole different place where now I do believe these orthodox things, and I am, I guess, an evangelical by definition. And so it's almost like we've crisscrossed each other a little bit. I don't know, that's interesting to me.
I just kind of want to get into some questions now about some of the theological stuff and maybe some points of disagreement, I guess. One thing that's interesting to me is your concept of the Bible and your dedication, which I respect your dedication to not, as you put it, concede the Bible to people who misuse it or misapply it to abuse others or exclude others. Because there's something about the Bible you have deemed worthy of pursuing and not conceding. So what is that? What is the Bible to you? Given your experience with people wielding it against you, why hold on to it?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, it's a great question. I think, first and foremost, the Bible is the foundational text. I talk about it as kind of a diary of sorts of my forerunners in the faith, who have shared this wisdom and these stories and these practices that are the core of what it means to be a Christian in the world.
I think there's something interesting there, particularly about this moment, because so many millennials in my generation grew up in an America where we didn't have stories or structure or culture or tradition. It was like a very amorphous upbringing. And so to have something to root myself in and to find myself within that story of Scripture is so profound.
I also think God speaks through the Bible. I don't think there's anyone who can honestly debate that. For thousands of years, people have looked to the text and it has transformed people, and it convicts people and it guides people.
At the same time, I no longer believe that the Bible is, I wouldn't use the I words, the inerrant, infallible Word of God.
Eric Huffman: Inspired?
Brandan Robertson: Yes. But I think we probably mean different things when we say that. I would say the people who wrote Scripture were inspired by God, but not in a divine transmission to write truths on behalf of God, but were trying to be honest about what they thought God was leading them to do and say and how to be in the world.
And so it's authoritative in so much as it comes from the tradition I'm a part of. I'm also free, and I think this is actually deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition of how to engage with Scripture, to wrestle with the text, and to sometimes disagree with the text. And sometimes to say, some of the things and the ways that God is portrayed in the text is not the God revealed in Jesus. So I don't find those texts authoritative.
But the one thing I would want your audience to hear is that what it isn't, and this is the kind of simplification I often get accused of from more conservative people, is that it's just simple picking and choosing. The way I've tried to engage with the Bible, and I can't speak for all progressives, but like, I'm getting a PhD in this because I believe the Bible's importance. And I want to be right. Truth matters to me.
And so as I'm studying, I'm trying to be as honest with what does the text say? What does that mean for me? And doing that with the best knowledge and evidence I have, even though that sometimes does lead me to conclusions that are not orthodox.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, that's interesting. Obviously, we're not going to agree on this. We're not going to solve that problem. But I do wonder if, as you said, the Bible is just... I won't say just. I don't want to misquote you. The Bible is a thoroughly human document, is what you've said in several interviews. And that's what you've implied here.
I have two questions. First of all, how do you know which parts are true for you or not? What does that discernment process look like? How do you safeguard against just, like you said, picking and choosing based on your own likes and dislikes?
Brandan Robertson: I mean, I think I find that question so interesting. And I think it's because I've had so much time outside of the evangelical world that it feels almost hard to relate to. Because it's not going through the Scripture and saying, is this true for me or is this not true for me? It's going through the Scripture and asking, what did this mean to the people that wrote this? What was the culture and the context? And is this a true thing about the world, about humans, about God?
Now, I also use language, I'm sure you've heard. I talk about Christian agnostic. When it comes to things about the divine, I think I agree with the Scripture that says God's ways are higher than our ways, and God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts. I don't think that any human can fully grasp and understand the divine and how God works in the world.
So on those questions, I'm always open for conversation, debate, and I'm not going to be dogmatic on anything about the nature of God and things like that. But on questions of like morality and ethics, like homosexuality, these aren't actually that hard to figure out.
Look at the context of Leviticus, for instance, and Leviticus 18, it's addressed to the people of Israel. It's addressed to the people living in the land of Israel, trying to distinguish them from ancient Egyptians and Canaanites. That's what the text says.
So as I'm reading these texts, I'm trying to ground it in the culture, that ancient world, and also recognizing the limitations. Leviticus is not for me, it's a Jewish text for the Jewish people living in the land of Israel. So again, it's not just kind of making stuff up as we go along and saying, I don't like that, so I'm not going to agree with it. It's what is the text intending to be? And is it for me? Is it applicable to us? And I think those are actually pretty objective questions. It's not a matter of speculation. It's a matter of scholarship.
Eric Huffman: But certainly you would say that things like the Ten Commandments are for everyone, for us, some general moral code, and that's in Leviticus and Exodus. It still sounds to me a little bit like picking and choosing, with respect.
Brandan Robertson: Well, no. So I wouldn't paint the whole book of Leviticus as moral codes for just the people of Israel, because within the book of Leviticus itself, there are different kinds of codes and the text itself says what those contexts are. So yes, I agree the Ten Commandments is a good moral code.
I do believe it was originally given to the Jewish people for the Jewish people. But we have good precedents that Jesus's own ethics that were then taken to the world by Paul makes the summary of the Ten Commandments a good universal code, or at least that's how early Christians understood it.
Leviticus, on the other hand, we see very robust debate throughout the New Testament about what is applicable and if it's applicable and who is it applicable to. And that's why I would go to those various kind of very specific law codes within Leviticus and say, we have to look at culture, context, language, intention, and make our best-educated guess.
Eric Huffman: Again, we can't be 100% certain but...
Eric Huffman: Yeah. But you know, in a lot of cases with Levitical laws that Christians no longer feel bound to, it's because somewhere in the New Testament particular, you know, Jesus says, I've made all things clean in reference to food, and Peter has the vision with the food laws. And that's why we don't feel bound to those laws.
And I guess in reference to the sexuality codes, I would feel very differently than I do today about the sexuality boundaries that we follow as Orthodox Christians, if there were some inclination in the New Testament that that was the same as food laws, you know, and other... I could use other examples too that had been somehow canceled out or fulfilled in some way that we don't have to pay attention to that anymore. But in the New Testament, we don't see that. I don't see that. Maybe you do.
Brandan Robertson: I mean, on the Levitical passages that then I do agree get picked up by the Apostle Paul when he uses the word arsenokoitai as a reference to Leviticus. Again, my whole argument is that I think that is contextually bound. How was same sex sex happening in the book of Leviticus in the culture of ancient Canaan and ancient Egypt.
And I think the preponderance of the evidence is that what we didn't see a lot of in the ancient world were consensual loving gay couples forming families together. What we did see and what was permitted legally in most of these ancient cultures was a man of a higher status to sexually abuse essentially a man of a lower status for his own pleasure, but also as a way to assert his superiority.
When we zoom to the first-century Greco-Roman world, that's certainly what was happening all throughout the Roman Empire. And we have, again, dozens of first-century texts that talk about this common practice of men degrading other men, not out of love and passion or commitment, but out of feeling superior as Roman citizens. And I think if that is how the text is being interpreted, which is how I believe it should be, I agree with Leviticus, I agree with Paul, and I'm not actually standing against those verses at all. I think it is a display of people turning away from the way and the will of God.
Eric Huffman: If it's meant in terms of what you understand to be this sort of abusive or coercive power dynamic across class lines that you talk about in your book. And that's a pretty common argument. I used to say similar things as well. And I appreciate that you acknowledging that you would be on board with this if that's what was meant by these teachings. I mean, the preponderance of these, I guess, the clobber verses or clobber passages or whatever. And that combined with the fact that maybe this is a Christological question.
In my mind, if Jesus is who I think He is, if he's God, and he loves everyone, then there would have been some opening, some acknowledgment of, you know, any two people in loving union, or, you know, if He's outside of space and time, he could have given some sort of allowance for that. I just don't see that. Do you see examples of that in Scripture? I know, you've talked a little bit in your book about it, examples of, you know, that sort of sexual relationship being blessed by God.
Brandan Robertson: I mean, to be fair, I think that's an unfair question to put up against the Bible. The best studies today show that LGBT people are at most 8% of the population and throughout history, probably around 5%.
Eric Huffman: So Gen Z, apparently.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a whole other conversation. I mean, to expect that 5% of the population, and probably less among the people of Israel would show up in this ancient Jewish text, and I'm referring to both the New and Old Testament, I think it's just a highly unlikely thing. We don't see queer relationships mentioned in most literature throughout history. And so I just don't think it's probably reasonable to expect queer folks to show up as an explicit endorsement in Scripture.
But I would say, and I do have a whole section, and it took me a long time to decide if I want it to go in this direction. But I think the historical studies led me to believe that I think the eunuch is the closest thing in Scripture we have-
Eric Huffman: The Ethiopian eunuch?
Brandan Robertson: Ethiopian eunuch, but also the eunuchs referred to in the Hebrew Bible as a parallel to a queer person in our modern world. And that's not a new thing. But I just think the evidence really points to yes, there are some eunuchs that were forced to be eunuchs out of punishment. But there's a lot of evidence, especially in the first century, of people who were born effeminate that end up being given these positions as eunuchs, because they don't fit the patriarchal mold of gender identity and sexuality.
The Ethiopian eunuch, we don't have enough about his particular story to know exactly who he is. And so I'm not going to say definitively he was a queer person. But the very fact that the early Christians wanted to put this dark-skinned sexual minority, gender minority, early on in the Book of Acts to show the expansion of the kingdom of God, seems to me to be at least an opening for a conversation about why is the modern church not at least really wrestling with how to perhaps open the door a little bit more. And there's a whole lot we can unpack there.
Eric Huffman: No, I can actually get on board with that. That's the passage I go to most often in my preaching and teaching with my congregation here about this issue. I mean, it's massive, like this issue, whatever. But it's to talk about how to be true and faithful to Scripture while also being radically inclusive and open to everyone, that story is kind of my go-to. Because I think you're talking about someone who's clearly other, outside the normative culture or whatever, especially among the first Christians. And there was no hesitation at all about including him. We think his history seems to indicate that Simeon was the evangelist to Africa, you know. And so there's real power in that story.
I'm not sure it fully supports your wholesale arguments about, you know, the full inclusion argument or the side A argument, but it is a compelling story that Christians should pay attention to, for sure.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't hang my entirety of my argument on that story. But I mean, if you just look at the way eunuchs are talked about throughout the entirety of the Bible, even in Isaiah's prophecy of the end times, where eunuchs are given a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters, like, clearly the Jewish vision was that one day God was going to welcome in the most unlikely, even the unclean people, according to some Levitical laws.
And that's just something, regardless of where you land on this issue, like that inclusive push throughout the entirety of the Bible should challenge all of us, because it's really fascinating.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, it really is. I definitely am happy to concede that point. I think what's nagging me in my mind right now is just this bigger issue of the Bible and how it stands apart. In your worldview, how does it stand apart from other texts that speak of God? Like, how is it in any way unique or special or authoritative compared to rabbinical texts that aren't in the canon or early church fathers that wrote about God or sermons today that are inspired by God in some way? Like, is it any different? Is it any more special or authoritative?
Brandan Robertson: I mean, one part of that answer is no. I don't think it is necessarily unique. I think God continues to speak through people. I think we all, at some level, we believe it in different degrees that God continues to speak through people today.
But it is authoritative for me, because I am a Christian, I am committed to Christ. And this is the text of Jesus, this is the scripture of my tradition. And I would argue to an atheist that there is something I can't wrap my mind around or objectively prove.
But something about the Bible's influence and endurance and impact in the world over the last 4000 years, give or take, is really unique. It might not be objectively, like, you could say the Quran has very similar influence in the billions of people that look to it as a sacred text. But the enduring relevance of the Bible and the way that it has shaped the world and cultures for better and for worse, I do think makes it unique.
And I think there's something mysterious about that, perhaps supernatural about that. But I don't know how to prove that in any objective way. And I don't know if that's actually a helpful thing to spend time on.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. And we don't take it to the same lengths. Like I would take it a little further and say, well, therefore, we should do our very best to surrender our lives to what we find in Scripture, even if we feel like things are true that the Bible says aren't, or if we discern things are good the Bible says aren't, we should do our level best to submit ourselves to that.
I sense more of a desire on your part to wrestle against some of those things and be willing to say, well, the Bible is not right about this. We're right about this. And we should be okay with that.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah. We should have a very long conversation about this, because I do think... I hear you say that, and I hear other many, most evangelicals say that but I also don't think that's how you actually always engage with Scripture or how evangelicals have always engaged with Scripture. Because there are some black-and-white things in Scripture that we don't stand for, because they are unethical. And we say they're unethical. And this is overused.-
Eric Huffman: No, that's great.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, it's overused. But like, it's objectively true that the Apostle Paul reaffirms that slaves should obey their master, and he doesn't, in the book of Philemon, liberate-
Eric Huffman: Osiris. No. Is that right?
Brandan Robertson: Something like that. Does it fully liberate him, but tells him that he should stay in his position? I think that's wrong. I think the Apostle Paul was wrong. We could argue about whether it was the same as slavery in the American South or not. But I just think any sort of enslavement, or indentured servitude, or any of that is immoral. And I think most Christians actually believe that today. And it's problematic that we have it affirmed all the way through the New Testament.
Eric Huffman: Well, affirmed all the way through the New Testament, Brandan? I mean, I hear what you're saying, but the vision is clear from Jesus. One of your favorite passages, I hear you quote a lot, is Jesus unrolling the scroll in the Nazareth synagogue and repeating the refrain from Isaiah that all the captives will go free in His name.
And so clearly, the gist or the thrust of Scripture is toward total liberation of all in captivity. I think Paul was kind of being pastoral and slow playing it, but he says, "Treat this man as your brother." And you can't for long in good conscience treat a man as your brother. I hear what you're saying is, why didn't Paul just lay down some new law and say slavery is bad? I think the idea of slavery being bad and God's desire to overcome it is clear in Scripture. But I don't think you can treat a brother in Christ as a brother for long without liberating him as well.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, the only thing I would say to that is, in the same way that your question to me earlier was, why didn't God explicitly say affirm LGBT people in the text? Or I would say, well, why wouldn't God explicitly just say through Paul, through Jesus, through somebody, slaves should be liberated? I think it's because God didn't write these texts. I think it's because they reflect human culture.
I do think if Paul was here today, if we could bring him from his context into our world today, I think Paul would have been okay with slavery. And I think that's-
Eric Huffman: Like modern-day slavery?
Brandan Robertson: There are a lot of questions about the differences. I honestly don't see huge differences between the common slavery in the first-century Greco-Roman world, though a lot of evangelical scholars seem to have been trying to draw a big distinction. Slaves had virtually no rights. They were able to be murdered at will of their masters. It wasn't that different than the kind of slavery that we learn about in American history. I think that's problematic.
Eric Huffman: Well, I think I understand. I think that's a fair point. My rebuttal would be, well, if Jesus had also said, or if Isaiah before him had also said, you know, the gay and straight or the straight and the queer, you know, alongside the captives going free in the vision, he asked for his new kingdom, then yeah, we're having a whole different conversation right now.
And I hear you suggesting that if same-sex relations, as we know them today, whereas, you know, in the ancient times, they were more subjugating one another, if you had more egalitarian same-sex couples and families and all of that, in Bible times, it was more normative than the Bible would have spoken about it. Is that accurate?
Brandan Robertson: I mean, it's hard to actually say that, but I think, yes, if homosexual people were 50% of the population, I think a lot more of the Bible would include instructions for homosexual people. But that's just not the reality that we have.
Eric Huffman: Okay. Okay. Well, that's helpful. Let's talk real quick about Jesus specifically. Before we run out of time, let's get to that guy. Jesus, who is He to you? And how do you think evangelicals like me misstate or misunderstand the nature of Christ?
Brandan Robertson: I mean, I understand that this is not going to sound like a helpful distinction, but I'm sure you've heard it from progressives before. I do think it's helpful to distinguish between the Christ of faith and the Christ of history. I think that Jesus of history was the first century Jewish rabbi who believed that He was anointed by God to help liberate His people from the oppression of the empire and establish what He understood to be the kingdom of God.
I would also affirm that Jesus is God in the flesh. Now, I don't think that's unique. I think the scripture says He's the firstborn among many brethren. I think we are all Holy Spirit indwelt people, and the same spiritual makeup that Jesus had, is had by all people as well. We all have full access to God and full access to our humanity.
The Christ of faith, though, I mean, this is the part and I'll admit it's fuzzy, but I encountered a supernatural reality that I knew as Jesus. I continue to encounter a supernatural reality that I know as Jesus. And so I can't not affirm that. I think that there's something more going on with Jesus. I just have become uncomfortable with the need of orthodoxy to formulate it down and to absolutely understand. Even when I was orthodox, it actually didn't matter all that much whether the hypostatic union was a precise way to understand Jesus or not. I understood Jesus as the God that I prayed to, the God that's at work in my life. What more do I need beyond that?
Eric Huffman: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I used to be of a mind of, you know, there was the Jesus of Nazareth, the man, and then there's something called the cosmic Christ, which is what I used to preach. And I sort of throw up a little in my mouth when I say that now, because I think it's frankly dangerous. With respect, I hear you saying it's not all that important to figure this out. I think it's pretty tantamount to everything to figure out if Jesus, the man who walked the earth for 33 or whatever years, is exactly the same in identity with this cosmic Christ we talk about, or whatever word we want to put on that, the Christ of faith, or if this Christ of faith is just a spirit that indwelled, you know, a whole bunch of different gurus and religious leaders and movements over the years.
Yeah, I think that's a pretty important distinction to make. I'm just curious what you do with early, early attestations of, you know, the divinity of Christ, Jesus Christ, right? Not just Christ in a cosmic sense, but Jesus Christ being, you know, not just the firstborn of many brethren, the firstborn of all creation, through whom all things were created and for whom and by whom all things came to be. What do you do with the early Christian witness there?
Brandan Robertson: I mean, I would challenge the fact that that's the earliest Christian witness.
Eric Huffman: I didn't say earliest. I said it's early.
Brandan Robertson: I think we have, yeah, we have hundreds of years of people unsure of how to understand who Jesus is, and even how to live out just as disciples of Christ. I do think, although I know a lot of evangelicals rolled their eyes, but I do think there's something very unique. And I haven't spent enough time studying it.
But there was definitely a debate between the Jerusalem Church, the people who knew Jesus personally on the earth, and the Pauline Christianity that begins to be spread by the Apostle Paul, who I would argue, no evidence suggests ever encountered the physical Christ, has the spiritual vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus. And even the early apostles were at least initially questioning whether this is authentic or whether he has the authority.
All of this to say, the earliest Christian witness is there is something supernatural happening around Jesus. And nobody knew exactly what to do with that, or what language to use for that. Of course, you know, Christ was not a divine term. It's simply Messiah, which in Jewish consciousness was not a supernatural person, but an anointed human being that Jews still long for to this day.
So I just don't think it's as clear as I was told in my church growing up. And I think that's why a lot of people when they deconstruct get so frustrated, because it is painted over so quickly as everyone from the beginning knew Jesus was God in the flesh. That's just not what the best evidence says.
Eric Huffman: I used to believe that too. Honestly, I did. And I used to preach it when I preached before I was a Christian. What, frankly, convinced me wasn't the Bible. What convinced me was what I saw in the Holy Land, actually, in Capernaum, in the first-century house church that they uncovered, where the writings on the walls of that first-century house church were dated to the first half of the first century.
So these were actually the people that knew Jesus for sure. Not as described in the pages of Scripture, which I believe at that point in my life were manipulated over time, but actual uncovered scientific evidence that the people who knew Jesus were worshiping Him by that name as God. So they were writing on the walls, God, Jesus Christ, save us, Lord Jesus, you know, all sorts of Mary, mother of God. That one was a little bit later, to be fair. It wasn't in the first half of the century. But these others were, and these are probably the earliest attestations on record.
And these were, again, people in Capernaum where Jesus lived as an adult. And we know that He died on a cross. I think that's probably pretty historically verified outside of Scripture as well. And so I couldn't make sense of that other than these people really did experience Jesus after His death. And they chose not to just laud His teachings as good teachings to follow, but to worship Him as Jews. You don't worship a man, especially a dead man. You worship God and God alone. And they were not just appreciating Jesus. They were worshiping Him. I'm just not sure how you get around that historically, not even just biblically, but historically.
Brandan Robertson: No, I find that profound. And I would say that there's a lot of stuff that can muck up that simple interpretation of they must have just seen Jesus as God in the way that evangelicals see Jesus as God today. Most of the Jews in that world were Hellenized, they were influenced by the Greco-Roman world. And deifying human beings happened all of the time, even among Jewish people. And so I don't think it was particularly unique that first-century Jews thought that Jesus was anointed by God and that progressed into is God.
Eric Huffman: Within a decade.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah. We see that happening with other folks in the first century as well.
Eric Huffman: Who?
Brandan Robertson: I couldn't name them. But you can simply go into first-century Greco-Roman world and look at all of the people that are anointed as God's most... you know, Caesar was always acknowledged to be the son of God. And I think the early Christians were politically so savvy, because they were parodying what was happening to Caesar. They were making Jesus the rightful ruler of the world. And so they used all the phrases that were attributed to Caesar, including son of God, Lord, God in the flesh, all of these things. We have plenty of evidence saying that that's ways that Caesar was referred to. And now Jesus is the new and the better, and perhaps the final Caesar in the mind of the early Christians.
Eric Huffman: Okay, we'll have to leave that there, because that'll be the rest of our conversation, if we let it. You've gotten into some, I guess, some hot water. You might not feel like it's hot water, you might be comfortable in that water, but about Jesus's sins, I guess, or shortcomings on earth. And you seem to believe that Jesus made mistakes and Jesus sinned. Is that accurate?
Brandan Robertson: Yes. I want to be again, careful, because the way I talk about these things, there are ways to bifurcate it a bit. But yes.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. And I don't want to get into the weeds, because you can find Brandan's talks about that and debates about that in other interviews. My question is, I've also heard you say that He died for our sins, for all sins.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah.
Eric Huffman: How do you reconcile those ideas that if He's a sinner, He could die for everyone's sins?
Brandan Robertson: I think there are plenty within the evangelical camp that would reject penal substitutionary atonement, or at least evangelicals might no longer consider them evangelical, but fairly orthodox, but reject penal substitution.
Eric Huffman: Just for everybody's sake, let's define that.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah. Penal substitutionary atonement quite simply is that Jesus needed to be the sinless sacrifice on the cross, shed His blood in order for God to enact forgiveness for the sins of humanity. I would argue, and I don't think this is actually very debatable, but that view of atonement is fairly late within early Christianity. Things like moral exemplar theory, believing that Jesus is an example that we should follow in, many scholars would say that's what the cross was and how it was understood by early Christians, or Christus Victor, Christ is in a cosmic battle with the forces of evil or Satan, and on the cross and the resurrection, it was this conquering of the devil.
But it's not this God needed blood in order to forgive sins of humanity. And for me... and again, I understand that there's parallels in Jewish scriptures that Christians have pulled forward, but I don't think God needs blood to forgive sins. I think we see that all throughout scripture, God graciously forgiving people without sacrifice.
Eric Huffman: That's fine. What do you mean when you say he died for our sins then?
Brandan Robertson: Well, most often, I'm not sure where you're watching...
Eric Huffman: Sorry, if I'm misquoting you, just correct me. I'm sorry.
Brandan Robertson: Yeah, no, I've definitely used that language before, because it's such second nature language. But I would say more precisely, He died because of our sins. So he's not in our place condemned, He stood as the hymn says. But we respond to the righteousness of God revealed in Christ by murdering God in the flesh, Jesus, and the resurrection is God's triumphing over human injustice and evil.
And the big difference, because I think you could probably affirm most of what I just said, is just whether or not God needed to kill His one and only son as a pure sacrifice in order to enact grace and forgiveness.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. I guess I believe in penal substitution. I just don't believe God ultimately needed or required a blood sacrifice. I think it was more about satiating the human conscience and what could possibly free us from our anxiety, the anxiety that's brought on by any semblance of works righteousness, which is, I better be a good boy more than a bad boy so that I get to go to heaven one day.
What else could possibly send a clear enough message to satiate that anxiety than the blood of God Himself being spilled out as a... I mean, a symbol is not even the word. As a powerful, covenantal symbol of his love for us. There's nothing more worthy in the world than that, if that story is true. And so how could it not cover every sin? That's how I interpret what you're calling penal substitutionary atonement. I know there's all kinds of other teachings out there on that topic, but...
Brandan Robertson: I'm with you. If that's how you're going to describe penal substitutionary atonement, you've got me 85% of the way.
Eric Huffman: Hey, I'll take it. That's great. I love common ground, bro. That's great. All right. Before we close, I got to get to the last couple of questions about the topic you write about and talk about most often, which is sexuality and LGBTQIA+. I hope I hit all the letters. So if the traditional orthodox ethic of sexuality and marriage is wrong, one man, one woman in marriage, would you say there are right boundaries to put around the sexual union? And if so, like, what are those boundaries and why those boundaries?
Brandan Robertson: Give me a little grace here as I defend myself before I answer the question. Just because, again, one of the common tropes I see leveled against me often by conservatives is that the reason I'm doing all of this is just because I want to have sex with men without boundaries and consequences. The chapter in my new book, Queer and Christian, about sexual ethics, I agonized over for two years. I sent it to so many people. I wrestled with it because I want to get this right.
This is something that matters to me, not because I think God's going to judge and condemn us to hell if we get this wrong, but because I believe people's health, wholeness, is all tied up in this deep experience of sexuality. What seems true to me is that the Bible does not actually have this black-and-white sexual ethic that I was taught in church. I think there's a lot of ambiguity in the scripture about what was permissible and what was not permissible, and it changes based on the community and culture that it's being spoken about within.
But what I do see in the scripture is Jesus's ultimate command to love your neighbor as you love oneself. I think that ethic, if that was just it, I think that will lead you to a good, healthy sexual ethic, because that means if you're going to love the person you're engaging sexually with, it should be committed. It should not be exploitative. It should not be about objectification or just gratifying a desire. It should be oriented towards their well-being and, Lord willing, they're orienting towards your well-being.
I think that ethic alone is actually good enough to help most Christians play out what a proper sexual ethic is. And I'm not comfortable drawing a black-and-white line and telling somebody, yes, go have premarital sex, or no, don't have premarital sex with your partner of however many years. I want to say, Here's what I can honestly say is the ethic that I believe Jesus offered us, and there's a myriad of ways it's applied in scripture and throughout tradition, and let's go from there and trust the Spirit.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Okay. Pastorally in your work, like that, those myriad of applications are something you're willing to bless? I mean, whether it's a man and a woman, a man and a man, woman and woman, or multiple people? That's what I've heard you say before, polyamory is beautiful and blessed.
Brandan Robertson: Yes. I mean, I don't understand polyamory. I will not claim to be the polyamory advocate because I know polyamorous folks, but it's not my experience and I haven't spent a ton of time exploring it. But many people will have seen that years ago when I was pastoring in San Diego, we did an Ask Me Anything sermon series, and somebody in the congregation said, I've been with my partners, two of them, for however many years it was, are we welcome in this church? My answer was quite simply, yes. If your relationship is committed and consensual and loving and centered on the ethic of Jesus, you're welcome here. You're blessed here. We think any relationship that's coming from that place is blessed. And I understand that's extreme and part of me does regret answering that so publicly in a way only because...
Eric Huffman: It can be used against you.
Brandan Robertson: Well, just most people don't even have a framework for what that means or what that looks like. It just sounds like people who want to have sex with lots of people and don't want to be like... and that's not most polyamorous people's experience. So it's just become, unfortunately, a right wing, look at where the liberal agenda leads us-
Eric Huffman: I'm sensitive to that. I don't want to be that guy. At the same time, I don't think the question is whether they'd be welcome in your church. I think the more important question is whether they, in that circumstance, could be ordained in your church, could teach Sunday school at your church, could, etc., etc. Because I would hope they'd be welcome at any church to come and worship and be a part of the community in some aspect. I know in a lot of churches they wouldn't be. I would hope in my church they would be. But in terms of leadership, ordination, marriage, things like that, obviously, we'd want to draw a line there. It sounds like you might not draw those same lines.
Brandan Robertson: No, because I think the question for me would come down to what is the ethical, moral or spiritual harm? And I don't see ethical, moral or spiritual harm being done in a polyamorous relationship.
Eric Huffman: Okay. Okay. I got one final question. And I'm really reluctant to ask you this question because I think it's a little silly because I don't like hypothetical questions, but I think about this one a lot. In my case, actually, I have people... I know every evangelical Christian has a gay friend. I have people very close to me who, some of them have not always been out. Some of them would say they weren't always gay, but now they are. It's messy, right?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah.
Eric Huffman: And so I spend a lot of time thinking about this topic lately. I've been thinking, hypothetically, if I die and go to heaven's gates and I peek through the gates and there's like a pride parade happening, how would I respond? And I hope, I think it's the case, but I really hope my first reaction, given what I've decided is true and I've spent my life preaching, would be to follow my knees and say, Lord, I missed this. I'm so sorry. I hope I can still get in. And if I do get in, I'll be the first to, you know, don the rainbow flag and join the parade.
I'm curious and forgive me if this is unfair, but hypothetically, Brandan Robertson passes away, ends up at the pearly gates and you find out that you've been wrong and that unrepentant sinners aren't allowed in, and in particular, or especially... not especially, but additionally, unrepentant LGBTQIA people aren't in there, what would your reaction be?
Brandan Robertson: Yeah. I don't think it's an unfair question. I do think those particular circumstances make it very difficult because my response is going to be eternity in hell, if this is indeed the paradigm. And that would of course be a tragedy worthy of repentance. And in traditional evangelical theology, there would be no repentance at that point.
But I do reject the premise only because the one thing that makes me confident in my faith, the only reason I'm still a Christian, frankly, is because of my vast confidence in the grace of God to win out in the end. I don't believe believing the right things about ethical scenarios is what enacts salvation for anyone. And so yes, if I'm wrong, what I believe and confident will happen is God would say, You're wrong, this is something to repent from, and you're welcomed in. And so I believe in God's grace enough and God's nature enough and in the power of Christ enough to say that salvation is not based on getting ethical questions right or wrong or theological questions right or wrong. And so that's why I can do what I do without fear. And that's what keeps me grounded in my faith.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, fair enough. Good answer. I want to close by saying, I don't know if I can apologize on behalf of all evangelicals. I'm sorry for the way some evangelicals, some Christians behave and talk. I'm sorry for the ways you've been demonized. I do understand where some of that comes from. I think, just like you think some of what I'm teaching and advocating for is dangerous, I think some of what you're advocating for is quite dangerous.
But I've also seen, because I used to be where you are now, and you used to be kind of where I am now, I've seen, as I've come into this new place in life, I've seen the people from my old life come to me by email or in person or by phone calls and saying, Look, I've heard about this change in your life. I'm not real happy about it because you used to be for us and now it doesn't seem like you are but I will tell you that your ministry then, even though you think it was illegitimate, kept me tethered to God. And now I'm still in love with God and I'm thriving now and all these things.
And so even if your detractors are right about you, and a lot of what you say is dangerous or antithetical to the truth of the Bible, I will say God is faithful to use us all and our flaws and misunderstandings to keep people in His orbit by His grace. As you said, I'm right there with you when it comes to the grace of God. So I just wanted to say that and I wanted to offer that to you just hopefully as a word of encouragement. And I want to thank you for spending this time with us, Brandan.
Brandan Robertson: Thank you. That means a lot. And I will also take the opportunity to say I'm sorry for the ways that I've demonized evangelicals, because I do believe that folks like you and so many others that are willing to have meaningful relationally based conversations, like this is actually how we win people over.
Eric Huffman: I hope so.
Brandan Robertson: This conversation is drawing me closer towards your perspective than a rambunctious debate that's meant just to demonize. So I appreciate it.
Eric Huffman: That's good to hear, Brandan. Well, man, I hope you have a great day. Thanks for joining us today.
Brandan Robertson: Thank you so much for having me.
Eric Huffman: Bye-bye.