Every time we see the rainbow it ought to remind us that this is the day of salvation, and to motivate us to urgency in evangelism. Our task is to urge men and women to be reconciled to God while there is still time, because we know that this era of grace will not last forever. Jesus will return to bring final judgement, but today there is both hope and opportunity. The rainbow ought to remind us to take pride in the Lord Jesus and the gospel as we “boast” in him rather than in ourselves.

Last week I was in London for the Evangelical Ministry Assembly. I was struck by the ubiquity of rainbow imagery to coincide with Pride month. The tunnel at St Pancras station was lit like a rainbow, and a flight of stairs at Victoria were decorated with rainbow colours. Shop displays and advertising posters were heralding their “gay friendly” credentials. Marks & Spencer were selling an LBGT sandwich combining chicken, tomato and avocado.

As a Christian it is hard to know how to respond to this new secular festival that demands that we celebrate both gay civil rights and the gay lifestyle. It is all too easy for Christians to respond in a knee-jerk way with anger and frustration at how radically our society has changed in the last few years. However, I think we need to stand back and reflect more carefully on how we ought to feel and respond. What would Jesus do if he were to walk into a city celebrating Gay Pride?

On reflection I have a variety of feelings and responses to Pride:

I feel alienated.

The overwhelming public support for Pride and what it stands for leaves me feeling an outsider in my own culture in a way that would not have been the case thirty years ago. I am unable to join in the celebration of a lifestyle that I believe to be morally wrong. According to the Office for National Statistics 1.7% of the adult population identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. The British Social Attitudes Survey in 2016 found that 64% of the population believe that same sex-relationships are “not wrong at all” compared to a mere 17% who felt this way in 1983.

The changed attitudes towards homosexuality, and especially the shift from a demand to tolerate to a requirement to celebrate, has left evangelical Christians, alongside other religious minorities, outside of the cultural mainstream. We are viewed at best as unreconstructed dinosaurs, and at worst as dangerous and intolerant bigots. Pride forces us to face the reality that we are “strangers and aliens” living in exile in our own culture. We are no more than 2-3% of the population. Although this feels psychologically uncomfortable, we should be neither surprised nor phased by this. The natural situation for the true church is to be in exile in the world, and the collapse of cultural Christianity is merely making this obvious. We need to adjust our expectations and ministry to this new reality.

I am thankful.

At the same time, I feel thankful that Pride is able to take place, and that I live in a society that supports human rights for all groups. I would not prefer to live in a society in which homosexuality were illegal or criminalised, as is still the case in many other countries around the world, nor in which people are forced to live underground lives. I don’t read the New Testament as saying that the church is to regulate the sexual behaviour of the world. In fact, 1 Corinthians 5-6 says exactly the opposite.

I believe that the biblical pattern as we wait for the final judgement and the eschatological consummation of the Kingdom of God is to allow as much freedom to consenting adults as possible, provided that it does not undermine civic peace and order. Transformation comes as people voluntarily choose to submit to the rule of Christ and live accordingly, not because they are coerced into external moral conformity. If we want to enjoy freedom as Christians, to proclaim the gospel and to refuse to celebrate homosexuality, then we need to accord freedom to others.

I am thankful that the gay rights movement has not achieved the radical deconstruction of marriage and the family that many hoped would be the case. Peter Tatchell wrote a fascinating article in the Guardian lamenting how the gay rights movement has sold out to consumerism and chosen to copy heterosexual norms rather than replace them. I would say that this is a result of the fact that human beings are made in the image of God, and his basic pattern for human life cannot be eradicated. For all the radicalism of many activists, the overwhelming majority of people still opt for marriage and children on the traditional pattern.

I am also thankful that Pride reflects the reality of LBGTQ life and culture, not a sanitised version of it. It glories in sexual freedom and the breaking of boundaries. It celebrates not just committed loving same-sex relationships, but also wild promiscuity. One rarely hears the Christians who are advocating for the acceptance of same-sex relationships critiquing the obvious promiscuity advocated by large section of the gay community, which simply does not want to be confined to loving, committed and exclusive relationships but regards this as inherently oppressive and restrictive.

I am fearful.

At the same time I am fearful that the spirit of tolerance that has allowed Pride and radically transformed the civic rights of the LBGTQ community has been, and will increasingly be, withdrawn from those who hold to traditional religious convictions about human sexuality, even when there is no evidence that they are practicing or advocating discrimination. The acceptance and celebration of homosexuality as equivalent to heterosexuality is becoming a new “Test Act” that will exclude evangelical believers from public office and employment.

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