Why Churches Need to Talk about Sexuality: Lessons Learned from Hard Conversations about Sex, Gender, Identity, and the Bible

Journalist and pastor Mark Wingfield describes how the congregation he serves undertook a detailed study of how the church should respond to the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender members. The study was conducted by a nineteen-member blue-ribbon task force that included wide representation of the church's various constituencies. The author served as a staff liaison, recording secretary, and resource to the study group, keeping meticulous notes of the process and the aftermath of the study.

Why Churches Need to Talk about Sexuality is written for clergy and lay leaders in Protestant congregations of all kinds who need a helpful guide to conversations about human sexuality within congregations. The book also has in mind anyone who wants to understand the controversial debates about human sexuality and the Christian church today and who desire to follow a process to discuss the topic and make decisions about how congregations and individuals will respond to matters of ministry and sexuality.

This book not only details the process used at Wilshire but also tells the human story of why the study was undertaken and what happened to the lives and faith of real people inside and outside the church. The author's hope is to provide a resource to other clergy and church leaders to understand why this issue must be addressed, how difficult it is to address, and what to expect along the way. As the title indicates, even though this is a difficult conversation to have, churches must have the conversation anyway.

Mark Wingfield is a journalist and pastor based in Dallas, Texas. He leads a national nonprofit news service focused on religion and culture. He is the author of Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality (Fortress Press 2019).

David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics and Director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 22 books and approximately 150 book chapters, journal articles, and reviews, including Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, Kingdom Ethics, The Sacredness of Human Life, Evangelical Ethics, A Letter to My Anxious Christian Friends, Still Christian, and the forthcoming Moral Leadership for a Divided Age: Fourteen People Who Dared to Change Our World. He has been President of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics. He has also been heavily involved in numerous activist efforts for peace, justice, human dignity, and the integrity of God's creation, most notably in addressing torture, climate change, and the continued harm being inflicted on LGBTQ persons by Christian churches and families.