God's mercy wide enough for all, including LGBTTQ+, esteemed conservative scholar says in new book

 

Since the mid-1990s, opposition to same-sex relationships in most North American evangelical churches, and many other Protestant denominations, has been informed by the work of theologian and scholar Richard B. Hays. 

Hays, the former dean of Duke Divinity School, was author of the widely influential 1996 book The Moral Vision of the New Testament. In it, he argued that same-sex relationships were “one among many tragic signs that we are a broken people, alienated from God’s loving purpose.” 

His scholarly work was used by many church leaders as justification for seeing same-sex relationships as sinful and to oppose affirmation of LGBTTQ+ Christians. 

So it was like an earthquake in many congregations across the U.S. and Canada when Hays publicly changed his mind on this topic. 

Hays, who died on Jan. 3 of cancer at the age of 76, made his case for welcoming LGBTTQ+ people into the family of God in his newest and last book, titled The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story. 

Read my column about Hays and his change of mind in the Winnipeg Free Press.