Summary: People to Be Loved

The GIST

People to Be Loved by Preston Sprinkle announces its argument in its subtitle: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue. Published by Zondervan in 2015, it is a study of what the Bible says about same-sex relationships, written by a scholar with a doctorate in New Testament from the University of Aberdeen who has taught Bible and theology at colleges in the United States and Britain. But Sprinkle's first concern is not to win a debate. It is that the debate keeps forgetting who it is about. Homosexuality, he insists, is not a talking point or a position paper. It is people, with names and faces and stories, and many of them are sitting in church or are loved by someone who is.

The book matters because it refuses the usual mold. Sprinkle says he began his research with an open mind, ready to follow Scripture wherever it led, and he speaks to both sides, which he calls affirming and non-affirming. He ends up where most theologically conservative writers do: he concludes that the Bible reserves sex for marriage between a man and a woman. Yet reviewers from that same camp say they have rarely read anything so gracious, and he spends a good part of the book challenging the people who already agree with him. He takes apart weak arguments on both sides, and he delivers a blunt message to the church: keep your convictions, but change the way you hold them.

The Big Ideas

People before positions

The book opens with a story, under a chapter title that repeats a slur. Sprinkle tells of a gay man who took his own life, driven toward it in no small part by the loveless words and attitudes of Christians, when what he needed was to find love in Christ. The chapter is the book in miniature. Sprinkle writes that he is "disheartened... that the Christian church has often played an unintended yet active role in pushing gay people away from Christ."

From there the logic is simple and thoroughly Christian. Christ came to love sinful people, which means all of us, and Christians are called to do the same. So people in the LGBT community are first of all people to be loved. Sprinkle keeps that in view by attaching the theological discussion to stories of gay people he clearly knows and cares about, so that it never drifts far from real lives.

He is equally impatient with lazy certainty. He recalls a man he met on a plane who announced that the Bible is very clear on homosexuality and then could not explain what it says or why. Christians, Sprinkle argues, have tried to make this conversation easy by repeating tired, simple arguments, and the result has been poor reasoning, poor reading of the Bible, poor discipleship and a failure of love. So he asks readers on both sides to come without a conclusion already in hand and do the work.

What marriage is, and what the hard passages say

The bulk of the book, chapters two through seven, is a careful reading of Scripture, set out as an open exploration that tries to state the opposing position fairly. Sprinkle starts with a foundation question: does marriage require sexual difference? He builds his answer less on the phrase "one flesh" than on the description in Genesis of the woman as a "helper suitable" for the man, and he notes that when Jesus defends God's design for marriage he reaches back to Genesis: "He made them male and female." Sprinkle admits this does not settle the debate. It is a beginning.

Then he turns to the six texts so often used against gay people that they are known as the "clobber passages," and here he gives up some ground conservatives have long claimed. On Sodom, he argues it is unfairly simple to reduce the city's sin to homosexuality. The story involves inhospitality and attempted rape, and it has little bearing on monogamous same-sex relationships.

On the two prohibitions in Leviticus, he looks honestly at the texts and pushes back against attempts to narrow their scope. One reviewer who shares his conclusion still calls this his weakest stretch, because the long discussion of which Old Testament laws still apply leaves him open to the charge of picking and choosing. Sprinkle also draws a distinction here that matters for everything else: what Leviticus calls an abomination is a particular act between men, not gay or lesbian people themselves.

On Romans 1, he concludes that Paul does condemn same-sex relations, and he walks through the affirming counterarguments so that readers know them. He adds two cautions. These verses have been used in very unloving ways, and Paul's indictment in that chapter falls on everyone in the world, so fixing on a single verse does not do it justice. His rule for the whole exercise: "It's not about being affirming or non-affirming; it's about being biblical."

Last come the two disputed Greek words in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy, malakoi and arsenokoites. Sprinkle argues that they cover same-sex sexual relationships generally and not only exploitative ones, a chapter one reviewer found especially compelling. He also holds that simply translating them as "homosexuals," as one major English version does, fails to give the full picture of what Paul meant.

The world Jesus lived in, and whom he loved

Between those studies Sprinkle sets the historical scene, reviewing how ancient Judaism and the Greek and Roman world thought about same-sex relations. That background helps with an argument often made on the affirming side: Jesus never mentions homosexuality, so he cannot have opposed it. Read against the Jewish thinking of his day, Sprinkle says, the silence looks different. And he points to a pattern: "in sexual matters that were debated within Judaism, Jesus takes a stricter stance and not a more lenient one."

That is his challenge to affirming readers. The other half of the chapter, titled "Whom would Jesus love?", is aimed squarely at his own side, and reviewers call it some of the best material in the book. Sprinkle looks beyond what Jesus taught about sex to how he treated people, especially the outcasts whom religious society despised. He writes: "The fact is: religious people today treat LGBT people the same way that ancient religious people treated tax collectors. Therefore, Jesus' encounter with tax collectors should inform and challenge our approach to gay people." The church must not let gay people become the new tax collectors.

The point is summed up in the sentence at the center of the book: "I am not calling on the church to give up its convictions. I am calling on the church to change its posture, to be convicted about Christ's stubborn one-way love that he called us to mediate to others." After the biblical chapters, an interlude gathers up the main points. Sprinkle's conclusion is the traditional one: Scripture does not approve of same-sex sexual activity in any form, and sex belongs within marriage between a man and a woman. But he is clear that loving people does not simply mean affirming all their choices, and equally clear that holding this view gives no one permission to stop loving.

Does God make people gay, and can you be gay and Christian?

The final three chapters turn pastoral and take up the questions people actually ask. First, where does same-sex attraction come from? Sprinkle observes that thoughtful people on both sides grant that the old contest between nature and nurture is too simple. And he separates two questions that are usually tangled together: "'Is it a sin?' and 'Does it have biological roots?' are two completely separate questions." Knowing the cause of an attraction does not settle the ethics of acting on it.

Second, what does the word "gay" mean? Sprinkle asks whether it must always refer to a sexual act, and answers that there is more to it than that. This shapes his answer to whether a person can be both gay and Christian. He rejects the idea that experiencing same-sex attraction is sinful in itself, and asks what repentance would even look like if it were: confessing constantly until God makes you straight? The attraction and the act are different things.

Three paths, and the dignity of singleness

So what should a Christian who is attracted to the same sex do? Sprinkle sets out three options. The first is reparative therapy, which he thinks is useful only if the person wants it for themselves and is almost certain to fail when forced on anyone. The second is a mixed-orientation marriage, for example a gay man married to a straight woman, which is plainly not for the faint of heart. The third is celibacy.

Because his reading of Scripture means celibacy for many, Sprinkle turns the demand back on the church. Singleness must not be treated as a curse or a defect. He holds it up as a holy calling, in the spirit of Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 7, and he urges congregations to give it real value. A church that asks people to live this way owes them a place where such a life can be lived well.

Putting It to Work

Sprinkle closes with a set of challenges to the church. One reviewer says they come down to a single word: listen.

• Make room to talk. Cultivate an environment where people who experience same-sex attraction can say so.
• Listen to the stories of LGBT people before you speak about them.
• Put homophobia to death.
• Promote biblical, not cultural, masculinity and femininity.
• Remember that God is holy. Compassion does not cancel conviction.
• Do the homework. Don't be the man on the plane. If you say the Bible is clear, be able to show where and why, and know the best arguments of the other side.
• Assume good faith. People who reach an affirming conclusion are not necessarily being dishonest. Disagreement should begin a conversation, not end it.
• Honor singleness as a calling, not a consolation prize.

Who Should Read It

This is for Christians who are confused by the debate and want a serious study of the Bible that never loses sight of the people involved. Pastors, church leaders and anyone who speaks publicly about sexuality are the readers its reviewers have most in mind, along with those asking these questions about their own lives or about someone they love. It works for scholars and for lay readers willing to roll up their sleeves. Readers who hold an affirming view will not agree with where Sprinkle lands, and reviewers note that his content covers familiar ground. What is fresh is the tone: one reviewer who shares his view says he would be comfortable seeing a gay friend who is not a Christian pick it up.

This has been a summary of People to Be Loved by Preston Sprinkle, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST.