Fensham, Charles. Misguided Love: Christians and the Rupture of LGBTQI2+ Persons. Journal of Pastoral Care Publications. c. 2019. 190 pages.
A fresh gospel inspired way of discerning the boundaries of healthy sexual relationships Book Review by Kathy Vandergrift
Harm is not a secondary issue for the discussion on how we relate to LGBTQ+ persons. It needs more
attention now in the face of renewed threats to the dignity of any person who does not easily fit into
traditional categories of male and female. Dr. Charles Fensham helps readers take harm seriously in his
book, Misguided Love: Christians and the Rupture of LGBTQI2+ Persons. He offers helpful analysis and alternative grounding to find a better way forward.
The basic thesis of Dr. Fensham’s work is common sense. Non-affirming Christian teaching causes
harm. He provides evidence of that from history, research, and personal experience. Its basis in
Scripture is ambiguous at best, as he carefully explains. At the same time, there is no basis in Jesus’
gospel message for causing this harm. A scriptural moral logic, then, calls for confession of harms done
and finding a new Biblically-based, life-giving ethic that allows sexual and gender minorities to flourish
together with the whole Christian community.
Dr. Fensham, a Presbyterian pastor, shows deep love and respect for the Bible, the history of
Christianity, and other Bible scholars in his careful attention to traditional thinking. He responds with
respect to possible objections to his careful reading of what the Bible calls us to do at this moment in
the redemption story. Although it was written in 2019, this book is helpful for this moment in time
because it addresses aspects that are often not covered extensively in other books on this topic.
The role of shame and disgust in Christian history is explored in detail, as well as a brutally honest
account of how much Christian teaching contributed to abuse, exploitation, and violence against sexual
and gender minorities. His careful examination of “hate the sin – love the sinner” approaches, including
a critique of Preston Sprinkle’s book, explains why they are harmful. That is particularly relevant for
discussions in churches who say they are welcoming but hold to traditional theology. A “welcoming but
not affirming” approach traps people in a double bind of conflicting, coercive messages; this “form of
moral manipulation” about one’s deepest identity, he argues, leads to guilt, shame, and the self-harm we see and will continue until harmful teaching stops. Rather than dismissing damage done with
a lame apology, Fensham puts harm prevention at the core of theology and practice.
To ground a new approach that takes the whole Bible seriously, Fensham turns to the ethical framework
of Nicholas Wolterstorff to integrate justice and love, and to Margaret Farley’s A Framework for
Christian Sexual Ethics Sexual and gender minority people have a right to be treated with dignity that
allows human flourishing, including intimate, covenantal relationships within the larger family of God.
This is not “anything goes” as often alleged. Fensham provides Biblical grounds for discerning between
sinful erotic relationships and faithful, covenanted relationships in ways that apply to both the more
common heterosexual relationships and non-heterosexual ones.
To ground a new approach that takes the whole Bible seriously, Fensham turns to the ethical framework
of Nicholas Wolterstorff to integrate justice and love, and to Margaret Farley’s A Framework for
Christian Sexual Ethics Sexual and gender minority people have a right to be treated with dignity that
allows human flourishing, including intimate, covenantal relationships within the larger family of God.
This is not “anything goes” as often alleged. Fensham provides Biblical grounds for discerning between
sinful erotic relationships and faithful, covenanted relationships in ways that apply to both the more
common heterosexual relationships and non-heterosexual ones.
The book provides rich material for thought and discussion, as a reward for working through a more
scholarly text. For those within the Christian Reformed community, if this book had been taken
seriously by those who wrote the Human Sexuality Report, the outcome would be much less harm and
more progress toward finding a positive, grace-filled way forward. It is never too late to learn and change.