OpinionMatt Comer | July 20, 2025
What does it mean to be a Christian in the 21st century? What do our lives of faith look like? Our evangelism? What do we, as followers of Jesus, have to offer the world around us? How do we best open doorways and pathways to faith for those who have never experienced a church community, have been traumatized by the church, and those who, despite all their yearning to belong, have been forcefully rejected, ejected and ignored?
These are big questions, with big and complicated answers if, indeed, there are answers. I’ve been pondering questions like this since I was a teen. They’ve taken on more importance in the last couple of years, as I’ve helped start and lead a new “fresh expression” ministry that aims to reach those experimenting with or questioning their faith and those who, despite heaps of abuse and mistreatment from the church, are still looking for safe ground for their faith to take root again.
Matt Comer
Ideas like “reclamation” and “renewal” have taken up outsized portions of my daily musings. What does it look like to reclaim the Bible from those who use it as a tool of oppression and bigotry? What are the practical benefits, or even the inherent dangers, in trying to reclaim the concept of personal “evangelism” — an idea now so tainted by association with the capital “e” Evangelical political movement that many of our best outward-facing, gospel-oriented Baptist churches are shrinking from it?
To complicate matters, I approach this work as a gay man raised in an independent fundamentalist Baptist church with my own stories of rejection, abuse and later reclamation of faith and reconciliation with the church.
I recently found some of the answers I was seeking in Brandan Roberston’s new book, Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table.
Robertson has long been at the forefront of many important conversations on faith and LGBTQ inclusion. I’ve followed his work for a long time and had been excitedly awaiting his newest book’s publication.
In Queer & Christian, Robertson outlines a thesis for reclamation and renewal in better words than I think I ever could have written. And, although the book centers the experience of LGBTQ people and conversations on faith and sexuality, I believe it offers a roadmap for all progressive Christians regardless of identity.
Robertson’s book seeks to “offer a path toward reclaiming the Bible as a tool of empowerment and inspiration for queer people and all people” and “as a tool for love instead of fear,” as he explains in the book’s introduction. Robertson seeks to “wrest the Bible from the hands of those who use it as a weapon against queer people and to reclaim it as the subversive, liberating and frankly queer text that it has always been.”
For some people, Robertson’s ways of characterizing the Bible, its various prophets and saints, and even of the nature of God, will be off-putting or, at the very least, cause great pause for questioning. But that’s a good thing. Transformative, and dare I say reformational or revolutionary, ideas are not often safe or simple.
Those willing to engage Robertson’s text and their own questions around any of its bold claims will, at minimum, walk away with a better understanding of his thesis and a deeper understanding and appreciation of their own faith.
Robertson treats the Bible with respect, reverence and awe, in the way our sacred and inspired Scripture should be, but he does not let those who have abused and manipulated it off the hook.
“The fundamental way conservative Christians have conceptualized and institutionalized faith is wrong. It’s harmful. It runs counter to reality,” he writes. In laying bare the bad fruits of this toxic theology, Robertson reveals not only the ways LGBTQ people have been harmed, but also women and a whole host of other marginalized people too.
The clearest example of this is Robertson’s exploration of the conservative Christian theology of gender which, he says, “often perpetuates an ancient understanding that men’s bodies are the most powerful, dominant and superior and that a woman’s body is weak, submissive and inferior, resulting in the belief that women should submit to men in every aspect of their lives, including sex, and be available for sexual use whenever their husbands desire it.”
This brand of theology is a “breeding ground” for abuse, he says, because it “undercuts the first and most fundamental teaching of the Bible,” that all humans are created in the image of God and have “equal worth, status and authority over their own lives.”
While calling out oppressive and harmful theologies, Robertson also calls progressive Christians, including queer Christians themselves, into a bold, new responsibility. “It is incumbent upon queer Christians and our allies to stop conceding our Scripture and our faith to nonaffirming people,” he says.
Brandan Robertson
Some progressive Christians, Robertson argues, have been all too willing to shrink from the gospel’s radical, liberatory vision for all people.
“Unfortunately, progressive Christians have always been really bad at PR,” he writes, “so many people don’t even know we exist, which makes it hard to convince others that there is a version of the Christian faith that is pro-choice, pro-women, pro-LGBTQ, anti-racist, anti-way, anti-institutional power, and nondogmatic in a few short messages.”
Many can bring themselves to critique the “clobber passages,” but then stop short of re-examining the overall theological structure and history that gave rise to their use and, thus, leave room for continued abuses. What good is assimilation into a traditional gender theology or a theology of marriage or a theology of power when one does nothing to examine the toxic ways those theologies are also being used to undermine the imago Dei in people other than yourself?
Robertson says progressive Christians “have a moral responsibility to help those who have experienced religious trauma to heal, regardless of where it may lead them. We still bear responsibility for how our broad tradition has harmed and continues to harm millions of people.”
Christians, Robertson argues, must be reminded that the God revealed to us in Jesus did not spend most of his time in the temple, the synagogue or other halls of power, but rather around dinner tables, parties and the market, surrounded by people who had been cast out as unclean and impure. Among those people are queer folks who are producing good fruit and being led by the Holy Spirit.
“We are already the church, we are already affirmed by God, and we are already welcomed to God’s table, despite what our denominations or pastors or families might say,” he concludes.
Robertson’s Queer & Christian has put additional words and a widening framework to my growing understanding of what it means to be a progressive queer Christian — especially one of the Baptist variety — in our 21st-century world of confusion and ignorance, wading dangerously deeper into the waters of bigotry and fascism. It is a timely and refreshing reminder of the full thrust of the biblical narrative toward liberation, not for some, but for all.
Most readers will not find themselves in universal agreement with Robertson’s claims or conclusions, and Robertson’s OK with that. Readers should be too; those willing to approach this text with an open curiosity, ready to engage the areas with which they might disagree, will find something or even many somethings that broaden and sharpen their view of personal and communal Christian faith.
While this book is specifically focused on the intersection between Christian faith and the LGBTQ experience — a worthy endeavor in and of itself, given the impact of toxic and harmful theologies on this community — it also can challenge or refine what it means for any person, laity and clergy alike, to do evangelism and ministry work in our world today. It will outline for many a robust and principled framework, one that remains authentic to Christian faith and tradition, for reimagining, reclaiming, reforming and renewing Christianity for where the Holy Spirit is leading us today and tomorrow.
Matt Comer lives in Charlotte, N.C., where he works as communications director at a United Methodist church and also serves as a deacon at his home church, St. John’s Baptist. He has been active in LGBTQ activism and advocacy, including on issues of faith and sexuality, since his teens. He is currently pursuing a ministry certificate course of study at BSK Theological Seminary as he continues to discern his call into ministry.
Related articles:
Ask Brandan: What’s it like to be a queer Christian?
Yes, Baptist polity makes room for queer Christians | Opinion by Carson Hollis
Love led me out of the closet | Opinion by Brandan Robertson
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