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William Stell, "Born Again Queer: A History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity" (Princeton UP, 2026)
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Dr. William Stell
Welcome to the New Books Network
- [02:40]
Jacob Barrett
hello and welcome back to the New Books Network I'm your host, Jacob Barrett, and today I am talking with Dr. William Stell, whose new book, Born Again A History of Evangelical Gay Act Activism and the Making of Anti Gay Christianity, is out on May 12, 2026 with Princeton University Press. William, thank you for being here.
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Dr. William Stell
Thanks so much for having me, Jacob, and thanks to our listeners. Looking forward to this conversation.
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Jacob Barrett
This is. Before we start, I just want to say this is a fantastic book, a really well done history and it's something that I wish I had had when I was reading for my comprehensive exam. So I'm excited to have it. Now, let's start with the big picture of the book. The title Born Again Queer is going to stop a lot of people in their tracks. I think it sounds maybe like an oxymoron, which of course you do a great job of telling us why it's not. Can you tell us what this book is and what the title is doing for you?
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Dr. William Stell
Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. My, my vision for the book is that it's both explaining why it is not an oxymoron historically, but also explaining why it sounds like one to, to so many of us. In short, this book is a new history of evangelicalism and homosexuality in the United States. It's a history of shifts, of tensions, of contestations and of internal dissent, dissent which has been almost entirely overlooked by scholars and other commentators on American religion, sexuality, politics. I think there are multiple reasons for that neglect, multiple reasons why everyone assumes that the history of evangelicalism and homosexuality is, I don't know, about as boring as history can get. You know, surely it's just the same biblical beliefs, right? The same distinctively severe condemnation over and over again through the years. Perhaps we'll talk more about what's behind that erroneous assumption, as I see it later on. But in short, the book demonstrates that evangelical positions on homosexuality have been contested, have been variable and have been vulnerable over the years, such that evangelicalism's anti gay majority that used to be much less dominant and used to be much more precarious than it has been more recently and then many people assume it has always been so. The book begins in the post war period, so in the late 1940s, 50s when the nation at large is becoming, let's say, freshly fixated on homosexuality, thanks in part to the work of Alfred Kinsey, thanks in part to the anti communist panic known as the Lavender Scare. And in the same period, 40s, 50s, a movement branding itself neo evangelicalism is getting off the ground. Much of this movement is connected in one way or another to the man who is quickly becoming America's most famous evangelist, and that is Billy Graham. And the book starts there in the 40s and 50s, but the book focuses on the 1970s because in this decade there's a network of evangelical gay activists emerging and causing a lot of problems for anti gay evangelical leaders, particularly in the late 70s. We'll talk more about those evangelical gay activists in a few minutes. But I will say just one more word or two about the title, right? Born Again Queer is doing double duty for me, right? It has two reference. So first, it refers to that network of evangelical gay activists themselves, Evangelicals often identified as born again Christians during this period and later on as well. So Born Again Queer as a title denotes this network of so called born again Christians whose, whose message of gay and lesbian affirmation is setting them apart from the majority of evangelicals. But second, the title is invoking the larger project of the book, which is to historicize evangelicalism's positions on homosexuality and to call on scholars to more robustly historicize other religious positions on other issues, gender and sexuality. So in the introduction I call the book a genealogy of Evangelical Homophobia. I love Foucault's line here. Right? Genealogy as an unstable assemblage. Right. Faults, fissures, heterogeneous layers threatening the fragile inheritor from within. Right. So another way of putting this is to say that evangelical homophobia must always be born again. Right? Each birth looks a little different over the course of the 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, as I show. And to stick with the metaphor that birth is always messier than the parents will admit. That birth, yeah, requires a lot more labor than the parents will admit, making evangelicalism a distinctively homophobic tradition. Movement took work, and this book was about that work.
- [07:38]
Jacob Barrett
I also really appreciate that the book centers on a network of four figures. Troy Perry, Ralph Blair, Virginia Mollenkott and Letha Scanzani. It was a fun way to read the book to kind of get to know these figures for listeners encountering them for the first time. Can you give us a sense of who these people were and what they were trying to do within evangelicalism?
- [08:02]
Dr. William Stell
For sure. Let's start with Troy Perry. Reverend Troy Perry. He is most likely to be familiar to the most number of our listeners. Many scholars of American religion will recognize his name, as will many historians of sexuality in the U.S. this is a Pentecostal pastor from the Tallahassee area. He has one of the more interesting backstories I think you'll ever Read there's a snake handling and, and the bootlegging father. And he's running away from home, becoming a kid preacher all across the south. We won't get into any of that. But Troy Perry is, is famous because he founds the Metropolitan Community Churches. This is a largely LGBTQ plus Christian denomination. Founded in Los Angeles in 1968, it will be one of the biggest LGBTQ organizations of any kind in the United states throughout the 70s. And by the late 70s into the 1990s, the MCC is the largest LGBTQ organization in the world. When it comes to Troy Perry himself, apart from his institutional work through the mcc, he's a gay activist in his own right. And the early 70s and the few years after the Stonewall riots in 1969, he really is the most famous gay activist in the nation. No one else is getting their picture in Life magazine, Time, the New York Times, Newsweek, et cetera. So all this to say he is well known relative to the other three figures that I focus on in this book. The denomination that he founds, the mcc, has some pretty strong evangelical factions and features. It's an ecumenical denomination. You've got plenty of folks from all kinds of religious traditions within it. The church looks different depending on where you are, depending on who's leading it. When Troy Perry's leading it, this Pentecostal pastor from Florida, it looks pretty evangelical, and more to say about that in a bit when I talk about all four of these together, but that's Troy Perry. Ralph Blair is a very different kind of evangelical. Ralph Blair is a capital R Reformed evangelical. He is a Calvinist evangelical. He works for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and evangelical college ministry. He goes to multiple fundamentalist schools for college, for seminary. And then he founds, in 1976, while he's working in New York City, working as a therapist, actually, he founds an organization called Evangelicals Concerned, which is a gay advocacy organization explicitly for evangelicals, targeting non affirming evangelicals, trying to get more and more evangelicals open to his message of gay affirmation, his very evangelical message of gay affirmation. He's got a dozen or so chapters across the country in the early 80s. That number climbs to, I think, 18 by the end of the 80s. But it's a much smaller operation than the MCC where Ralph Blair's influence comes in as he's behind the scenes a lot. He builds a lot of connections, as the book shows, with some pretty powerful evangelical leaders. Which means that even though his numbers through his organization, his own periodicals, newsletters through that organization, those numbers aren't all that great. He's still coming up quite a bit in anti gay evangelical literature, particularly in the late 70s. So that's Ralph Blair. I'll talk about the final two together. Virginia Mallincott and Meet the Scansoni are both leaders of the evangelical feminist movement growing over the course of the 70s. They are both prolific writers for evangelical periodicals. They're both writing books for evangelical, multiple books for evangelical presses. They're both speaking often on evangelical campuses, college campuses, seminary campuses. They're low key, famous. They're certainly well known in this network of self identified evangelical institutions over the course of the 60s 70s. Now in 78 they co author a book called Is the Homosexual My Neighbor Another Christian View. And I argue in the book and in an article for the Journal of the History of Sexuality that this book is the pinnacle of evangelical gay activism during this, this period. And we can talk more about, if we want, about any of those, any of those figures, but I'll say just a word or two about them together. What they're doing is this network because again, they come from different traditions, different denominational backgrounds, different regional backgrounds. They are all white, they all grow up working class or middle class. But what they have in common that's most salient for my work is that they are all formed by the time they're young adults. They have all been formed by these evangelical institutions, these in the 50s 60s, neo evangelical institutions, their campus ministries, their schools, their publishing houses. All four of these individuals are consuming these products, participating in these communities, helping to produce themselves these products, writing for these publications, et cetera. So what that means is that these four and a few others who I don't talk about at length in the book, they are using characteristically evangelical discourse, discourse about the gospel, discourse about the Bible, and not just the Bible, but biblical authority, authority, biblical infallibility, using evangelicals own language, right, to make a case for a certain kind of affirmation of gay and lesbian people. And I'll end with this comment saying that what we're seeing from this network, what we're seeing in this evangelical gay activism is not, let's say, like an especially robust affirmation of queerness. These folks are concerned, at least when they're working together and at least in their public discourse course, they have a very particular mission. They're advocating for other Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, but Christians more broadly, to support the civil rights, the relationships and the ministries of gay and lesbian people, in particular gay and lesbian Christians. They are concerned with the right of gay and lesbian people to pursue ordained ministry. They are concerned with their right to have their relationships, their marriage, esque relationships, respected in the church and in the wider society. So they are especially focused on long term monogamous relationships analogous to marriage and what that focus means, what it entails. I'm thinking here of Michael Warner's phrase in his wonderful book, important work of queer theory, queer studies. Right. The trouble with normal, normal, he writes, and I'm paraphrasing here, you don't get a good gay without invoking the bad queer. The shadow side of the good gay is the bad queer. And at least when these four are working together in this network, they're the good gays. Right? And they are in the process of establishing themselves as, presenting themselves as the good gays. They are, to varying degrees amongst them, invoking and helping to produce the bad queer.
- [15:01]
Jacob Barrett
I want to ask about a specific. Well, I guess zooming in on an experience with Virginia Mollenkott. So you open and close the book with this really extraordinary scene and this kind of gripping scene. You're at Virginia's memorial service, you're in her garage and you find your manuscript annotated in her handwriting. Can you tell us about that experience, what it was like? And I'm also curious, not just, you know, of course, personally that would be important, but what it means for you as a historian working on this project to find that.
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Dr. William Stell
Yeah. I'm so glad you enjoyed this scene. It is, it's nice. It comes at the introduction, comes at the beginning. Right. It's the part that most people are going to read and even, even now, right. We're only in the, we're still in pre release territory now as we're recording this, but some people are getting their hands on the book and it, it seems to have captivated a lot of people. And I'm. And I'm glad that's how I, how I intended it. It was certainly, as you said, right, an extraordinary experience for me. I don't want to say too much about it because I don't want to give it away the way my colleague and dear friend Melina Laudig framed it. When I first told her the story way back, right after it happened, she asked what was it like to find yourself in the archive. And that's a description that could apply to many different experiences. Right. Finding yourself in the archive, many of which I think would look quite different from what I experienced, what I stumbled on, what I will say is that the text that I had written and that I had mailed to Virginia two years earlier. And then that came back into my possession at Virginia's memorial service, which I was invited to as a historian writing about Virginia. Right. That. That experience, those coming back into my possession, that was enormously valuable for my scholarship. Like, I. I didn't have to wonder what my subject thought of my analysis. I didn't have to just trust that whatever words that subject chose to share with me on the matter, just trust those words. Right. Which, of course, could be colored by. Inflected by all kinds of factors. I got what Virginia was saying to Virginia about my analysis. Incredible. Enormously valuable. But apart from that, apart from its, like, utility, scholarly utility, there were really was just something precious which I still haven't managed to articulate adequately, something, honestly, I might say, transcendent about, about the connection, about the bond that I felt to my subject in that moment and really felt henceforth. I mean, in a sense, my subject spoke back to me, spoke back to my work from the grave. Right. And I am. I'll end here by saying I'm. I'm very slowly writing a creative nonfiction piece, also a bit of a theory piece, about what I'm currently calling the spirituality of queer history, a piece about what we, as queer historians are desiring, what we are looking for and what we find when we pursue the queer past. And it's in dialogue with Heather Love and Neil Bartlett and Ishan Crawley and others who have written about or around this question. But what I'll say is that my connection to Virginia after their death is a huge part of the fuel for this piece.
- [18:32]
Jacob Barrett
That was a great. No spoilers answer to the question. So, dear listener, go pre order the book. One of the things that I found really striking as well is your account of how Christianity Today handled homosexuality across these decades that you're looking at. It was really apparent in your analysis that the ground underneath their feet kept shifting. And, you know, at one point, you talk about how they put. There was a cover where there were two peacocks on the COVID And that. That was interesting. Can you walk us through what was happening in that example?
- [19:03]
Dr. William Stell
And.
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Jacob Barrett
And how. I don't know, as you were dealing with Christianity today and looking at how they were working through this, what you found.
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Dr. William Stell
Yeah, let's talk about the peacocks. Right? But in order to talk about the peacocks, we got to take a few steps back. So the first handful of chapters of Born Again Queer, and mind you, there are. There are 28 chapters, but they average like, eight pages in length. They are intentionally Short chapters divided into parts, six parts for our academic readers, the parts are the chapters, but the first handful of chapters, the first part of the book titled How Evangelicals Talked about Homosexuality and the Bible. Those handful of chapters are teasing out all these shifts, tensions and conflicts in evangelical discourse on homosexuality from the 50s into the 80s, with the primary case study being Christianity Today, this flagship magazine for the evangelical movement during this period. And what I found is that evangelicals spilled surprisingly little ink on homosexuality for much of the 50s and into the 60s. What's especially surprising is how little they talked about homosexuality and the Bible during these years. Really, evangelical discourse on homosexuality at mid century is more evidently shaped by evangelical anti communism than it is by evangelical readings of the Bible. And I elaborate on that in in the book. When evangelicals do start talking at length about homosexuality in the Bible in the late 60s, it's in direct response to other Christians who are advocating for, if not affirming a more tolerant stance toward gay people. Some of our listeners may have heard of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, founded I believe, in 1964, which Heather White has written about marvelously in her excellent book Reforming Sodom. Christianity Today is watching these folks at the CRH commenting on what they're doing in the late 60s and what happens over the course of the 70s as gay and gay affirming religious voices are growing, as they're spreading and as they're honing their own messages, theological, exegetical and otherwise, evangelicals are chiming in, right, and saying, well, here's what the Bible really says about homosexuality. The problem is that their answers keep shifting and keep conflicting with each other, even as, and I argue, especially as these evangelicals insist that, well, they're just giving us the plain meaning, the clear meaning, the literal meaning of the biblical text. There's this irony that I analyze in the book, which is particularly as the cacophony is growing, as they themselves are becoming more incoherent, less consistent in their exegesis, they are all the more adamant about this supposedly plain, supposedly queer meaning that apparently eludes them. But in short, what we see over the course of the 70s is that a growing number of evangelical leaders subtly acknowledge that anti gay interpretations of certain biblical texts aren't quite as clear, aren't quite as airtight as they would like. So over the course of the 70s, you'll have this growing number of evangelical leaders who basically say, you know, reader or listener, you may hear someone argue that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 is a story about group sexual assaults and that the story thus isn't convincing when it's interpreted as a blanket condemnation of all gay relationships. You, reader, listener, you may, you may hear that. And then these, these evangelical leaders will effectively whisper like, and they may have a point, but that's okay. They quickly follow up. We can look elsewhere in the Bible to condemn homosexuality. Let's, let's go to Paul. And you see the same thing happen over the course of the seventies with the prohibition texts and the book of Leviticus. You see more and more evangelical leaders subtly be like, you may hear someone argue that, well, Christians don't follow these laws and those people may have a point, a bit of a point, but that's okay, let's, let's go back to Paul. But then by the late 70s, you start to see a few evangelical leaders say, you may hear something about Paul, Paul. You may hear from these gay, gay affirming religious voices that Paul's concept of what we call homosexuality would have been informed by ancient practices of prostitution, ancient practices of pederasty. And someone might tell you that that doesn't mean that Paul or the Bible necessarily condemns all gay relationships. You might hear this reader, listener and, and the evangelical leader will certainly insist, right, Paul does indeed condemn gay relationships. That the Bible does indeed condemn gay relationships. But in order to be like fully convincing, we might need something more than Paul. Even in very subtle ways, evangelical leaders over the course of the 70s acknowledged that, you know, their anti gay exegesis could use some backup, to put it bluntly. And here's where the peacocks come in. What's that backup? The backup is a theology of gender. A theology of gender complementarity purported to be conveyed in Genesis 1 and 2 as some of these early anti gay interpretations are losing ground as Genesis 19, Leviticus, even some of the. Paul is like slowly being just like a little relinquished. This notion, this notion of gender that there are natural, fundamental, divinely ordained differences between men and women is effectively brought in to compensate for that lost ground, even though the lost ground is never explicitly acknowledged. And we see this phenomenon in the very first cover story that Christianity Today ever does on homosexuality. It's published in 1977 and the article is titled Sexual Differences A Cultural Convention Question mark. And the COVID for this very first article, very first cover article, cover story on homosexuality from Christianity Today has a peacock on it, a peacock, very large, very colorful in the front. And then in the foreground, off to the side, this very plain looking pee hen, very different looking Peahenberg. And there are no peacocks in this article, right? There, There are no animals other than humans in this article. But what's in this article? Well, this idea that natural, fundamental, divinely ordained differences between males and females of whatever species. It seems this is the crucial idea in the article. Yeah, and there's, there are other examples that I could give, but the peacocks one is my, my favorite. Right. The idea seems to be here, right? Like how could anyone believe that sexual differences are a cultural convention, right? Just look how different these two peacocks are. And I'll add as I close here, right. So one of the provocations of this little history I'm tracing of evangelical discourse on homosexuality in the Bible from 50s into the 80s, right. What we see is some evangelical leaders are becoming more, more committed to anti feminism because anti feminism is helping them be anti gay. And this goes against the grain of what many of us expect. We're used to, to thinking about, for good reason, used to thinking about certain views of gender fueling certain views on sexuality. Right. We've got our patriarchy, we've got our anti feminism. And that's where, so we're told. And again, for, for some good reason the homophobia comes from. We are less primed to notice when certain views on sexuality are fueling certain views on gender. To be clear, Right. I believe that patriarchy is very much a part of the root of a lot of homophobia. The book talks about this, but I also think we have historical evidence that some roots have been planted in the other direction as well.
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Jacob Barrett
I perhaps should have asked this next question first, but here we are. You introduced this concept that you call hermeneutical determinism, which is the tendency to explain evangelicals position as straightforward products of their approach to the Bible. Why do you think that that explanation has been so durable even among scholars? And what does your history reveal about its limits? I think you, you just told us, you know, that it's not so clear, clear cut from, you know, just biblical interpretation, that there's other things happening. But why do you think that that explanation of evangelical positions has remained so, so prevalent?
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Dr. William Stell
Yeah, well, for, for listeners who are interested, I wrote a little article on this concept for the imminent frame. It's called they tell the Bible. So. And I developed this concept of hermeneutical determinism very much with scholarship on evangelicalism in mind. But I'm very curious to know what other scholars working in other religious contexts, what they make of this concept and its utility or not or non utility for them in their own work. So as I define it, hermeneutical determinism is when scholars attribute the actions of their religious subjects to the interpretive principles or interpretive approaches that their own subjects purport to apply when they read their scriptures. So why are evangelicals so anti gay? Ask a scholar of religion or a historian of sexuality or a political scientist. You will likely get some version of the same thing. Some version of, well, you see, evangelicals are biblical literalists, or evangelicals believe in biblical inerrancy, or evangelicals have a high view of biblical authority or, or some such thing. I argue that this is a variously problematic and at the very least inherently insufficient historical explanation. One of the book's I don't know, edgier arguments is that, is that these terms biblical authority, inerrancy, biblical literalism, right. These are not stable beliefs. They just aren't coherent methods of reading. We should understand them instead as versatile rhetorical tools which evangelicals, including evangelical gay activists, wield in a plethora of ways. But apart from that argument, hermeneutical determinism, as I see it, can't adequately account for the history that born again queer is relaying, namely the extensive variability in evangelical hermeneutics, in this case variability in how evangelicals talk about homosexuality in the Bible. And not just variability between evangelical gay activists and anti gay evangelicals, but between and among anti gay evangelicals themselves, as we were just discussing. So clearly different people within the same tradition can profess the same hermeneutical principles, implement the same hermeneutical approaches, and reach different, even vastly different hermeneutical conclusions. And of course we know this as scholars like we know this is how reading works, works. But it seems like we kind of low key, forget it when we're talking about evangelicals or when we're talking about religious subjects who I might say, seem like really, really earnest when they talk about their scripture. Why is that? What's happening here? Why has hermeneutical determinism, as you ask it, been so durable even among scholars? A big part of it, I think, is that how evangelicals themselves explain their actions. Right. Is at play here. In short, right, you know, why do I do what I do? Why do we do? Why has our tradition, our movement, done what it's done, believe what it's believed? Well, the Bible tells us so, tells me so. And the thing is, historical scholarship on evangelicalism at least used to be, to a less extent, lesser extent now, but at least used to be largely dominated by evangelicals. Themselves largely dominated by scholars who even if they, you know, maybe learned more about hermeneutics over the course of their, what higher education still had, like a part of them that was really drawn to, really committed to some version of the Bible tells me so. And many of the titans in the field, the founders of the field, I think it's fair to say, were especially inclined to take their fellow evangelicals to at their word when they said the Bible tells me so. And in some cases, right, some of these founders had demonstrable anti gay commitments early on. Born Again Queer illustrates this with George Marston, for example, a renowned historian of evangelicalism. But the thing is, even among like avowedly secular scholars, maybe especially those who write about politics and religion, I might say there does seem to be this tendency to again, take evangelicals at their word. And honestly, I think part of it is just that again, evangelicals look really earnest to the outsider, even if the scholar is making various kinds of critiques. They might be like a little wary of stepping on that earnestness. But the thing is, you can take people seriously, we can take our subject seriously and not take them at their word. We can. Right. Recognize an earnestness. One can be earnest and still be inaccurate about one's own tradition.
- [32:56]
Jacob Barrett
The book doesn't just tell the story of evangelical gay activism's rise, it tells the story of its decline as well, which I think is one of the more interesting pieces of the book is, I mean, the whole, obviously I keep saying everything was interesting. I thought this whole history was fascinating. But one of the more painful parts, I guess, of the story is how the progressive evangelical left ultimately failed to show up as allies. Again, no spoilers, but. And without giving anything away, or I guess everything away, can you say something about what that failure looked like and why it matters for how we think about the so called culture wars?
- [33:30]
Dr. William Stell
Yeah. So when it comes to explaining the decline of evangelical gay activism, this is a lot easier than explaining its rise in some ways, right? The decline is very easily explained by work that other scholars have done. The, the rise of the Christian right, the rise of the AIDS epidemic, the rise of the ex gay movement, all these things that other historians have talked about wonderfully, Right. This is sufficient to explain why this movement declined. I acknowledge all of that, but then dig a bit deeper into a few facets, a few aspects that scholars have not talked about, have not recognized. One of those aspects is the story of this relationship over the course of the 80s, especially between this larger progressive evangelical movement and this evangelical gay activist network. That the book is focused on. Though some of you, some of our listeners may be familiar with this larger evangelical left, as it was called at the time. We're talking about people like Ron Seider, Evangelicals for social action, people like Jim Wallace and his organization Sojourners, talking about Tony Campolo, talking about the evangelical feminist movement that I've already mentioned, right? Their main organizing arm was called the evangelical women's caucus in the 70s and 80s. So the thing is, quite a few of the evangelical gay activists that I write about in the book, even beyond the four that I focus on, quite a few of them were not just a part of this progressive evangelical movement, not just members of these evangelical left institutions, but actually helped to build them, wrote for Sojourners, were editors for sojourners, right? Did all kinds of different work with this movement. Um, Ron Sider is. Is kind of the main initial organizer of progressive evangelicalism in the early 70s. He's partnering with Virginia Mallankott and Lisa Scansoni from the beginning. And what happens over the course of the 70s is as evangelical gay activism coalesces, these leaders go to their fellow progressive evangelicals and say, hey, we talk about the gospel in the same ways. We talk about the Bible in the same ways. We understand hermeneutics in the same ways. We do politics in similar ways. We have similar values, similar commitments, Particularly when it comes to evangelical feminism. The same kind of hermeneutical and theological principles that are informing evangelical feminism are absolutely the same principles informing evangelical gay activism as indicated in part by the same people, right? Mallankott and Scanzoni doing both. So these evangelical gay activists appeal to their fellow progressive evangelical, say, hey, we're a part of your team, right? We're still here. This is part of our message, right? And in short, right? With a few notable exceptions that I talk about in the book, the answer from progressive evangelical leaders, from fellow progressive evangelical leaders, is no, we're not. We can't be on the same team. Now, often what they say is, why can't we be on the same team? Well, because the Bible tells us so, because they're good evangelicals. Meanwhile, it's very evident from behind the scenes that even as folks like Jim Wallace, Ron Cider, using evangelical rhetoric of right, the fancy theological term is perspicuity. This idea of a clear, a plain word in scripture, using literalist tactics to dismiss their fellow progressive evangelicals when they're doing gay activism, right? They're still negotiating, they're still debating. There's disagreement on staff at these institutions that they hold to the line, hold to the evangelical biblical line, there's a lot more we could say about the lessons here. What I draw from this decline and from this rejection from progressive evangelicals, I will say that the book is not, I'm not intent on faulting necessarily, the main point is not to say how could these progressive evangelicals not partner with these gay activists who they had been partnering with all along? I mean, what's happening over the course of the 80s is that taking a gay affirming stance within evangelicalism and beyond is becoming increasingly costly, right? Not just evangelicalism, but America at large is taking an anti gay turn over the course of this decade. And if progressive evangelicals want to continue to do good work in, say, black liberation, continue to do good work toward economic justice, partnering with this gay activist network is going to cost them and stuff. So they're calculating the cost even as they're also. Certainly they've got their own convictions, not to negate the conviction, not to say it's all calculation, but they are calculating. And what is most striking and most poignant to me, and I'll end here, and there are a lot of lessons that I draw from this on this story at the end, what is really poignant to me is to see the ways in which some of these progressive evangelicals, and including some who have been working most closely with evangelical gay activists through the youth, to see the ways in which they will deploy the exact same rhetorical tactics, the exact same rhetorical tricks that more conservative evangelicals have deployed against them. So dismissing Ron Cider because what his as. As it would be called by, by his critics, not by him, the socialism, right, as unbiblical, right. Ron Sider knows why that's silly. And then he goes around and does the same thing, going out of his way to get conservative evangelicals, hear him do the same thing, use the same tricks against, is up until then, partners, collaborators and right. I don't put it this way in the book. I put it this way, way elsewhere. For me, there's a larger lesson here about what I would say are the perils of evangelicalism, both its progressive and its conservative wings. There's a larger lesson here. There is a distinctive need, and I do put it this way in the book, right? Evangelicalism of whatever kind seems to have this distinctive need to make queer outsiders. And then apart from the book, how I would put it is that when I see these progressive evangelicals, right, using the exact same tactics, exact same tricks as conservative evangelicals, used against them as they're excluding some other evangelicals. Right. The more I see this, the more apparent it is to me. I mean, when it comes to evangelicalism, there is no feature more defining, no characteristic that runs deeper than this impulse to exclude and this, again, distinctive need to make queer outsiders.
- [40:20]
Jacob Barrett
And I think it's. I think those lessons and that's. That history becomes so clear throughout the trajectory of the book. I have two final questions that are a little more meta reflective. We've, we've given away enough about the book, hopefully that the listener is intrigued to go, to go get a copy for themselves and fill in the gaps. The first question I want to ask is about your intended audience for this book or who maybe you hope picks it up. So you write near the end that you want queer people, quote, coming from all kinds of places to know that they have a history, which I think is a beautiful way to put it. So who, when you imagine picking up the book, who do you hope picks it up and what do you hope they walk away with? Obviously, you know, earlier when you were talking about the structure of the book, you said, well, dear academics, the parts are your chapters, but they're smaller chapters, so you're obviously thinking on multiple registers of readership. So I guess I just want to hear you talk about who you're hoping picks up this book and what they walk away with.
- [41:19]
Dr. William Stell
Yeah, well, certainly this book is for the academy. Right. It has a lot to say to anyone who thinks about who writes about evangelicalism or the culture wars or lgbt, LGBTQ movements or more religion and sexuality and politics in the US this book is for you. But. Right. Lots of people outside of the academy are interested in religion, sexuality and politics in the US And I would want any of them to pick up this book since, since you gave us this line from the. On the book, this wanting queer people coming from all kinds of places to know that they have a history. I think what I say before that line, I don't put it quite this way, but I will here now. Right? Cards on the table. Right. I, for what it's worth, I am no evangelical and I have no desire for more people, including queer people, to be evangelical, to talk in the ways, believe in the ways, act in the ways that the people I've written about in this book are, are talking, believing, acting. That's not my intent. And frankly, I have no investment in the religiosity or non religiosity of queer people in general. Right. This is not, this is not my agenda. I do Know what it's like having in. In years past, many years ago, now identified as an evangelical, identified as an evangelical before I ever identified as gay. I know what it's like to. To find possibility, to find freedom in recognizing and learning that you have a history and learning that there are people who came before you who inherited the same toolkit that you've got in your hands. People like you who inherited that toolkit and who made a way. I care about that. I care, too. Right. I mean, in some ways, I've got family members and in laws who are ideal audiences for this book. People who have some degree of commitment to evangelicalism as they understand it, but who are some degree of open to some version of queer affirmation, of LGBTQ affirmation. I'm speaking to them even as, you know, what I said earlier about the perils of evangelicalism, and I do want those readers to recognize that peril as I see it as a historian. Yeah. And I had another thought there, but I think I might save it for your last question. I have a feeling we're going to turn. I have a feeling my next thought will help close us out, so I'll end there.
- [44:00]
Jacob Barrett
Yeah, totally. This is your first book. Congratulations. This is a huge deal. It's out with Univers, Princeton University Press. When did I say May. May 12th. So very soon. And it's coming out at a really important time, I think. You know, it's a. It's landing at a moment when questions about evangelicalism, sexuality, and political power are very much alive and very much part of the. The current cultural and political moment. What does it feel like to have this project finally out in the world? Of course, you've been working on it, you know, for so long, and it's. It's probably exciting, but also to be landing at this moment where it seems like this is the conversation people need to be having. What does that feel like for you?
- [44:47]
Dr. William Stell
Yeah, I mean, it's wild. Right. And many of our listeners know this. Well, know this better than me, but I would say. Right. It's its own kind of birth. Not as hard as birthing a human, I don't think, but it's. It's been a labor. It's been wild. And. And it is, too. It's scary. It's a scary labor, in part because, you know, we were talking earlier about how reading works. Right. I'm no longer in control of the narrative. Yeah, I never really was, but I'm especially not in control of it anymore. And related to what I was saying at the end of. Of my answer to your last question, right, all kinds of people are going to pick this up, including, I know, people who are very committed to some version of evangelicalism as they understand it. And those readers will want to do all kinds of things with this book, and they will do all kinds of things with this book. Many of them will want to, let's say, use my work to reclaim, redeem their movement. And I am very clear in the book, I think for those who actually read it, right, this is not a redemptive project, not a project of reclamation. And there are very particular historical and analytical reasons why it's not that. And I need to be prepared for other people to do that. I need to be prepared for as, as I'm here saying, oh, all kinds of queer people coming from all kinds of places, right? I need to be ready for someone to come to me and say, no, but I want to be like Ralph Blair for, for example. So I'm, you know, whatever, mentally, emotionally preparing myself for this and for the gazillion other things that I can't predict that can happen when you, when you put something like this out in the world. But, you know, here, here we go. Let's bring it on.
- [46:33]
Jacob Barrett
Well, I'm so excited to see. See it out soon, to see its reception and, and hopefully the conversations it'll generate across fields. I think it's really such a powerful history. It's an important, an important story to be telling. And like I said at the outset, you know, I. One of my comprehensive exams was about the history of evangelicalism and the Christian right. And this was when I picked this up and got my copy to prep for this interview. I was like, oh, this would have been so helpful because it fills so much of what I had been feeling and thinking. But, you know, it wasn't in the history, so I guess it's, you know, I don't have a way to talk about that. And so this was really, really wonderful. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your work. It was so good talking.
- [47:15]
Dr. William Stell
Thanks so much, Jacob. I really enjoyed it. And thanks to our listeners for listening.
- [47:31]
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