For many years, conservative Christians who oppose homosexuality have cited the biblical scholarship of Richard B. Hayes, dean of Duke’s divinity faculty, who supplied a full scriptural argument in opposition to homosexual relationships.
“Homosexuality is considered one of many tragic indicators that we’re a damaged folks, alienated from God’s loving goal,” Mr. Hayes argued in his guide, The Ethical Imaginative and prescient of the New Testomony (1996), which was learn by a era of seminary college students.
Then, final yr, Mr. Hayes prompted an uproar within the evangelical world by repudiating his earlier views and saying {that a} deeper studying of the Bible revealed that same-sex relationships weren’t fallacious in spite of everything.
Simply as shocking as his about-face was his rationalization for why: Mr. Hayes modified his thoughts about same-sex relationships, he mentioned, as a result of God modified his thoughts
The New Testomony “totally contains” LGBTQ folks, he wrote in what could be his final guide, written as he knew he was dying. Since same-sex marriages are blessed by God, he argued, the church also needs to bless them.
Mr. Hayes, an ordained Methodist minister who was one of many world’s main New Testomony theologians, died Jan. 3 at his dwelling in Nashville. He was 76.
His demise from pancreatic most cancers was introduced by Duke Divinity Faculty, the place he taught for 27 years earlier than retiring in 2018.
In The Widening of God’s Mercy, printed in September by Yale College Press and written along with his son Christopher B. Hayes, Mr. Hayes argues that if the Bible is learn holistically, as an entire narrative, it reveals a God who is continually extending grace and mercy to ever-widening circles of individuals, together with those that had been as soon as exiles.
“Biblical narratives within the Outdated and New Testaments hint a trajectory of mercy that leads us to welcome sexual minorities now not as ‘strangers and foreigners’ however as ‘fellow residents with the saints and in addition members of God’s family,'” the authors wrote, citing the Guide of the Ephesians.
Based on Mr Hayes, the Bible repeatedly presents a portrait of a God who modifications his thoughts and develops his considering – an idea that may make many Christians wince.
“I feel the concept the idea of God as being past change is one thing that’s refuted repeatedly within the Bible,” he said New York Instances author Peter Wenner in November. “We actually see God as a dynamic private being or pressure or nonetheless you need to perceive who God is. Many occasions there are modifications, modifications, diversifications in the way in which God offers with folks. And I do know that assertion is sort of explosive to some folks.
Reactions to “Extending God’s Mercy” had been predictably blended.
Conservative theologians known as it sophistry or worse. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, said it was “a name for complete theological give up.” Robert AJ Gagnon, the writer of The Bible and Gay Observe, said Mr. Hayes had “fallen into heresy.”
Progressive Christian students noticed Mr. Hayes’ conversion as an extra step within the welcoming of homosexual {couples} from many Christian denominations that started with the Supreme Court docket’s 2015 determination. to legalize same-sex marriage all through the nation.
Against this, same-sex marriage was not authorized wherever within the US in 1996 when Mr. Hayes wrote “The Ethical Imaginative and prescient of the New Testomony,” which Christianity At present named one of many 100 main Christian books of the twentieth century. In it he argued that the New Testomony ought to be learn as a complete and that its themes apply to the ethics of contemporary life.
The British scientist N. T. Wright hails the guide as “a hurricane that dispels the fog of half-understood pseudo-morality and trendy compromise and divulges as a substitute the early Christian imaginative and prescient of true humanity and true holiness.”
The guide’s chapter on homosexuality urges church buildings to simply accept gays and lesbians as members, however to insist that they continue to be single and celibate. Mr Hayes primarily based his place on half a dozen quick biblical passages condemning same-sex relationships, equivalent to Paul’s speech in Romans about ladies practising “unnatural” intercourse and males being “consumed with ardour for each other”.
He noticed this evaluation as falsely slim, the equal of a contemporary Christian arguing that slavery is ethical as a result of the Bible in locations approves of it.
However the guide was extensively cited to exclude LGBTQ folks from church buildings, even because it was pressed on Christians who came out as gay to indicate them the error of their methods.
It harm Mr Hayes rather a lot, he advised The Instances. His views started to vary when he met homosexual college students in his courses who had been dedicated to their religion, in addition to by homosexual members of his church in Durham, North Carolina
In distinction, he mentioned, he noticed an “ugly condescension” towards LGBTQ folks in lots of evangelical church buildings.
“The Extension of God’s Mercy” was written as an act of repentance and to make sure that his earlier condemnation of same-sex intimacy wouldn’t be his legacy, he mentioned.
“Once you come throughout one thing that is fallacious, what you want to do is admit it and apologize,” Mr. Hayes said a big gathering of LGBTQ Christians in Dallas in October.
A lady behind the room known as out, “Within the title of Jesus Christ, you might be forgiven!”
A hush fell among the many 500 folks gathered, in accordance with an account in Baptist Information International, and Mr. Hayes bowed and clasped his fingers in prayer.
Richard Bevan Hayes was born on 4 Could 1948. in Oklahoma Metropolis. His mother and father divorced when he was 3, and though he grew up across the Methodist church the place his mom performed the organ, he violently rejected Christianity in highschool.
As a pupil at Yale, the place he earned a BA in English in 1970, he was impressed by the social activism of the college’s well-known chaplain, William Sloane’s Coffin.
He rediscovered his religion after present process a conversion at his mom’s church throughout a school trip.
After marrying Judy Cheek in 1970, he briefly taught highschool English earlier than enrolling at Yale Divinity Faculty. He acquired a Grasp of Divinity from Yale and a Ph.D. from Emory College in Atlanta.
He joined the school of Yale Divinity Faculty in 1981, the identical yr he was ordained within the United Methodist Church. A decade later, he moved to Duke, the place in 2002 was appointed the George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testomony and in 2010 for Dean of the Divinity Faculty.
His different books embody Echoes of Scripture within the Pauline Letters (1989), New Testomony Ethics: The Story Retold (1998), and The Transformation of the Creativeness (2005).
Apart from his spouse and son, he’s survived by a brother, Lloyd Hayes; a daughter, Sarah Coomer; and 4 grandchildren.
When Mr Hayes’ pancreatic most cancers was identified in 2015 and he was advised he won’t reside to see the yr, he sobbed uncontrollably on the considered not seeing his grandchildren develop up.
Throughout his remedy, he and his spouse started studying psalms each night time. She was a favourite Psalm 118 and the exclamation “That is the day which the Lord hath made, allow us to rejoice and be glad in it.”
“So I went by the grief to my angle of opening my arms to God,” Mr. Hayes mentioned.
His most cancers went into remission and he returned to Duke to show one final semester earlier than retiring. A scanner final yr confirmed the illness had returned, metastasized to each lungs.
