The characteristically careful distinctions he opens with helped me process my sexual feelings in a liveable way. His exposition of the biblical passages that speak about homosexual practice built my confidence in God’s Word. His big picture portrait of the place of marriage in the Bible and Christian doctrine enabled me to make sense of these biblical prohibitions in their wider context.

Back in the mid-1990s I was an undergraduate at a university college with an evangelical heritage. An ordained staff member had just published a book suggesting that sexually active same-sex relationships were not wrong for Christians. A huge amount of controversy followed.

I sat down and read this revisionist book over the next university vacation: I didn’t want to criticise something I hadn’t explored with an open mind for myself. I read it as a young Christian not yet open about my own developing same-sex attractions. I had never come across such new ideas before but both the pain of the author’s experience and his odd methods in questioning scripture and doctrine deeply troubled me. Afterwards I needed someone who could help me respond with both pastoral compassion and biblical clarity to this book – and my own personal experience.

I suspect it would have been my Dad who would have pointed me in the direction of the latest edition of John’s Stott’s Issues Facing Christians Today and this chapter on homosexuality. There I found someone who clearly both loved the people he was writing about and God’s Word. I also benefitted from the insights of an evangelical leader who was not afraid to interact with the ever-developing scientific research in this whole area and those who interpreted the bible very differently to him.

Looking back I have John Stott to thank for encouraging me not to seek a same-sex sexual relationship for myself. The characteristically careful distinctions he opens with helped me process my sexual feelings in a liveable way. His exposition of the biblical passages that speak about homosexual practice built my confidence in God’s Word. His big picture portrait of the place of marriage in the Bible and Christian doctrine enabled me to make sense of these biblical prohibitions in their wider context. His careful refutations of new interpretations and cultural attitudes exposed the flimsy premises on which they were built. But his clear pastoral love and concern for people like me also stopped me from feeling steam-rolled by the intellectual weight of what he was arguing.

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