Wesley Hill

I will be recommending Spiritual Friendship to everyone I meet, whether they're married or single or something in between. His message is so, so important, and his prose just so happens to be lovely and easy on the eyes, even for someone like me who struggles with nonfiction.

Where Hill really succeeds is his unique writing approach. Most of the expository nonfiction I've read projects contagious confidence; the author has done all the research and means to answer every question in one fell swoop. You're meant to come away with a concrete sense of what you had wrong and what you should change. For better or worse, Wesley Hill does not do that.

Instead of confidence, Hill feeds you passion and empathy. Stories, from his own life as well as the lives of historic Christians, pad out his argument regarding the issue of loneliness and the hope of friendship. And then, when he's convinced you to care, he gives you a direction to explore and lets your hand go. Maybe this will infuriate some people, but I find that it accomplishes Hill's goal perfectly, whether he meant it to or not. Perhaps Hill doesn't give us all the answers because he wants us to go out into community and figure it out with others. Perhaps, instead of getting annoyed that he didn't address every question, we're meant to call up a friend and ask them to help puzzle out an answer.

It's a romantic notion, I know, but I just sincerely appreciate how Hill connects form and function so elegantly. And I love the idea of a book about friendship that forces you to talk to others.… (altro)

Summary: An updated narrative of a celibate, gay Christian man, including thoughts about the recovery of the place of celibacy and the importance of spiritual friendship.

Wesley Hill was one of the first to articulate a distinctive perspective in discussions on homosexuality and Christian faith. At a time when people on one side were simply advocating against same-sex intimacy, and for ministries helping gay and lesbian persons develop opposite sex attractions, and those on the other side were affirming LGBT persons in their identities and choices of who they would love, Hill took a different stance. He admitted that he was attracted to men and self identified as gay in orientation, but that as a Christian he was committed to a celibate life, the only option he believed open to him.

When Washed and Waiting was first published in 2010, it gained a great deal of notice for its honest and painful narrative of Hill's growing awareness that there was something "different" about him, even as he also became aware of God's call to ministry. He narrates how hard it was to "come out" to a trusted professor who responded with grace, and connected him with a counselor who began to help him sort out what to do with this. He learned the importance of having people in his life wherever he went who knew his story and were willing to share his journey. He describes the peculiar sense of loneliness and shame he believes many LGBT people feel, even while seeking, and often finding community.

In the original work, he explains why, not seeing a change in orientation likely for him, he chooses celibacy. For him, it is not just the prohibitions, which he believes are clear, but also the larger story of creation, fall, and redemption he finds himself in, and the place given to marriage in that story. He also sees his own condition as emblematic of life between the already and the not yet, where we are washed in the waters of baptism (1 Corinthians 6), but living in what can be the painful tension of embodied life touched by the fall, waiting for the redemption of those bodies spoken of in Romans 8.

He punctuates his story with vignettes of Henri Nouwen and the poet priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, both who experienced homosexual attractions and chose celibate lives. One has a sense in reading of both the real pain these men knew, and yet the real gift their lives became as they lived within the washed and waiting tension.

Hill's afterword takes on the challenge of his critics of writing such things as a young man with much life ahead. In "Washed and Still Waiting" we hear more mature reflections ten years after the original manuscript. Hill's focus is on the celibate call. He contends first, in a society where you are thought not to be fulfilled without sexual intimacy, for restoring the dignity of the celibate calling, noting the biblical commendation of celibacy including the examples of Jesus and Paul as well the honorable instances of celibacy in church history. He also thinks there needs to be frank discussion of stewarding one's sexuality while refraining from sexual intimacy. Finally, he discusses the importance for the celibate of living in community, and enjoy within that "spiritual friendship" (an idea he develops more fully in his book Spiritual Friendship, also reviewed on this blog [https://bobonbooks.com/2015/06/09/review-spiritual-friendship/]).

Hill's work is helpful in several ways. He helps us understand something of the journey of gay persons -- the unsettling awareness, feelings of loneliness and shame, "coming out," and growing in a Christ-shaped acceptance of himself. It strikes me that his was an instance where Christians around him got it right, lavishing grace rather than shame, and giving him the space to come to his own convictions within caring, yet hardly perfect communities which is the most any of us gets. Finally, he challenges us with the reality of the struggle any of us faces who truly tries to live into the tension of the already and the not yet--those of us who refuse the Christian success dreams of white suburbia and the prosperity gospel. He writes:

"More and more, I have the sense that what many of us need is a new conception of our perseverance in faith. We need to reimagine ourselves and our struggles. The temptation for me is to look at my bent and broken sexuality and conclude that, with it, I will never be able to please God, to walk in a manner worthy of his calling, to hear his praise. But what if I had a conception of God-glorifying faith, holiness, and righteousness that included within it a profound element of struggle and stumbling? What if I were to view my sexual orientation, temptations, and occasional failures not as damning disqualifications for living a Christian life but rather as part and parcel of what it means to live by faith in a world that is fallen and scarred by sin and death."

While I do not share Hill's sexual orientation, I identify with every other word in this paragraph. Who of us cannot, if we are honest with ourselves and before God? The calling Hill speaks of here is both gift and challenge to us all, and the only way for any of us to life. We stand together, washed and waiting.… (altro)

For some time now I've wanted to read first person accounts about what it is like to have same sex attraction. So I picked this book up at my church, and also checked out Boy Erased: A Memoir . Two different people, two different experiences, two different outcomes. Wesley Hill is a young Christian man who realized at puberty that he was unlike his peers who were chasing girls: he had strong homoerotic desires. His story is honest, painful, and courageous. He shares intimately with his audience without being crude. Hill's conflict is that he wants to live a Christian life, and yet he has strong homosexual desires and believes that these two truths about himself are incompatible. He makes note of his options: 1) to live as a celibate Christian, 2) to seek out homosexual relationships and give up his Christian beliefs, 3) to adjust his beliefs and seek out same sex relationships. He makes reference to religious people in history who share his conflict , and tells how he finds encouragement in reading their stories. He finds strength in Scripture and the close fellowship of close friends. And his readings. And yet Hill is clear about one thing: his life is one of tremendous struggle and battle.
Garrard Conley's story is also a difficult battle, one of terrible spiritual abuse, and is also very painful to read. His story is one of suffering, misunderstanding and guilt. Conley in the end chooses a different path from Hill. I highly recommend reading Hill's book, as well as Conley's. It's important to learn both sides, and, I think, imperative for Christians to listen well to those who have same sex attraction and not shrink away from relationships with people who think differently from us.… (altro)