The Theologian Who Changed His Mind About Gay Marriage

I’ve spent my life in politics, but faith has been most central to shaping who I am. My conversations with people of faith have been among the most enriching of my life. Richard Hays, an ordained minister who is an emeritus professor at Duke Divinity School, is one of the world’s leading New Testament theologians. In 1996 he wrote “The Moral Vision of the New Testament,” in which he argued that gay and lesbian sexual relationships distort God’s created order and that churches should not bless same-sex unions. In his new book, “The Widening of God’s Mercy,” written with his son Christopher Hays, Richard Hays says he was wrong. I spoke to Richard Hays about his journey and what changed his mind. This conversation, which has been lightly edited, is the first of what I hope will be a series exploring the world of faith.

1. A Different Way of Looking at How God Sees Gay Relationships

Peter Wehner: You now hold an affirming view, the belief that gay relationships are not sinful and that sexual orientation and gender identity are not justification for exclusion from church membership or leadership. You had a very different view in 1996 when you wrote “The Moral Vision of the New Testament.” What do you see now that you didn’t see in 1996, and what would Richard Hays circa 2024 say to his younger self?

Richard Hays: What I see now has been over the last 10 to 15 years, the experience of having gay and lesbian students in my classes, when I was still teaching, who were very clearly committed to the church and to Christian faith and who were seeking conscientiously how best to serve going forward. That couldn’t help but make an impression on me.

And the other thing closely related to that is that in my own experience in the church, I saw church members who were not theological students or anything like that but who were exercising roles of gracious and meaningful leadership.

The other thing that I’ve seen is that in the conservative evangelical churches, there was a kind of smug hostility toward gay and lesbian people, and the attitudes that I was encountering there didn’t seem to me consonant with the New Testament’s portrayal of what people seeking to follow Jesus should be like. That they should be patient, kind, generous. And I didn’t see that.

I saw ugly condescension in those churches where that was the strongly held view. And the most dismaying thing about that is that people who were manifesting those attitudes were appealing to my book as a justification, which I actually think means they didn’t read my book very carefully. Because back in 1996, at the time when gay marriage was illegal in the United States and forbidden in just about every church, with maybe one or two exceptions, I saw that chapter as, in part, making an appeal for people to be graciously accepting of gay folks.