Revoice and a Vocation of “Yes”
by Wesley Hill, First Things:
At the end of July, in a barely air-conditioned Presbyterian church in St. Louis, Missouri, beneath soaring stained glass windows, a crowd of mostly non-straight people—some four hundred strong—gathered for the first annual Revoice conference, an event aiming to help LGBTQ+ Christians thrive in their churches and families. Appearance-wise, many of the attendees wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in Boystown or Brighton. Rainbow bracelets and body piercings abounded (one friend of mine sported rainbow-colored shoelaces to match the rainbow Ichthus pendant on his lapel). Meanwhile, other non-straight attendees, some of them still closeted, admitted that Revoice was more or less their first time to be around other LGBT people. Unfamiliar with queer culture, they were cautious and curious, looking for some insight into how to persevere in homes and churches where their reception was uncertain.
But unlike its more progressive counterparts—from Q Christian Fellowship to The Reformation Project to any number of mainline Protestant activist organizations, such as More Light (PCUSA) or Integrity USA (TEC)—the Revoice conference billed itself as an effort to fortify “LGBT people who adhere to the historic, Christian sexual ethic.” All of the keynote speakers and workshop leaders professed their adherence to the Scriptural teaching that sexual intimacy belongs within male-and-female marriage, despite the pain this adherence inevitably entails for them. (I say this as one of the conference speakers myself.) Still, attendees sang their hearts out to hymns and choruses, wiping away tears while belting out the lines, “It is well with my soul!” Hugs were plentiful, and post-session dinners lasted long into the night. As one attendee put it, the Revoice conference was “the family reunion I never knew I needed.”
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