The most pressing question to what's left of gospel-loving, Bible-believing Christianity in America is this: Will we be leaders or followers?
Nate Collins and “Revoice” refused to sign the excellent and thoroughly biblical “Nashville Statement.” The Nashville Statement can be viewed here: https://cbmw.org/nashville-statement/
Nate Collins was interviewed on the podcast called “Sheologians.” That program can be heard here: http://content.blubrry.com/sheologians/Sheologians-Nate-Collins-Revoice.mp3.
If you go to timestamp 1.30 you can hear Nate Collins describe himself as a “gay man” who is married to a woman and that he has 3 sons. To hear Nate Collins’s reasons for refusing to sign the “Nashville Statement,” go to time-stamp: 6.30 and listen for a few minutes. Specifically, here is a transcription of what Nate Collins says about the Nashville Statement and how it prompted him to found the Revoice organization:
Probably the thing that kicked it off in my mind was when the Nashville Statement came out. A lot of us felt that the Nashville Statement unfairly excluded people like me, people like Wesley Hill, people who would loosely be related to the Gay Christian movement. … I felt like there was some excluding going on and some foreclosing conversations by this event. … The idea for Revoice came in the aftermath of that. I thought, “ya know what? There needs to be some community that will welcome anybody who does not identify as straight, who has some complexity in the way they think about their gender and sexuality. And let’s welcome each other. Let’s have a place where we can gather together and enjoy each other’s company and find a new community.
What was “excluding” about the Nashville Statement? The statement consists of 14 articles, each of which has an affirmation and a denial. Here is what Nate Collins and Revoice did not like:
Article 7: WE AFFIRM that self-conception as male or female should be defined by God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture. WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.
Article 8: WE AFFIRM that people who experience sexual attraction for the same sex may live a rich and fruitful life pleasing to God through faith in Jesus Christ, as they, like all Christians, walk in purity of life. WE DENY that sexual attraction for the same sex is part of the natural goodness of God’s original creation, or that it puts a person outside the hope of the gospel.
Article 10: WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness. WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.
Article 13: WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ enables sinners to forsake transgender self-conceptions and by divine forbearance to accept the God-ordained link between one’s biological sex and one’s self-conception as male or female. WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ sanctions self-conceptions that are at odds with God’s revealed will.
These precious biblical and Christian truths spelled out in these particular articles of the Nashville Statement are, in point of fact, denied repeatedly and emphatically by the speakers at the Revoice Conference.
