The antagonists in this ecclesial conflict are not conservatives vs. liberals, Christians vs. post-Christian pagans, or even confessionalists (broadly construed) vs. non-confessionalists. The conflict is between radical contextualizers on one hand and advocates of  simple, ordinary means-of-grace ministry, subject to the plain reading of the denomination’s standards on the other.

Revoice theology or the tenets of Side B celibate same-sex attracted Christianity are, at the same time new and not new. They are strikingly current and redolent of revivalism and of the theological liberalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Revoice and Side B do not seek to destroy Christianity or cripple the church. Rather (as with the liberals of yesteryear), they seek to save the church’s mission for a new generation and for some very specific segments of society.

A helpful shorthand term for the clunky  terms “Revoice theology” and “Side B celibate same-sex attracted Christianity” is Johnsonism, after the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) pastor Greg Johnson who personifies the movement. Surely there is range, lexical and doctrinal, in the movement—Greg Johnson is not Revoice and all Side B folk do not agree on every point. But just as Rosaria Butterfield represents one way of dealing with and speaking to believers who struggle with homosexual desires or sexual confusion, Johnson represents another.

Reading Johnson’s 2021 book Still Time to Care (an attack on conversion therapy and an appeal for compassionate ministry to gay Christians) is one way to understand Johnsonism, but now there is another: a very brief booklet meant to supplement the longer work called On Mission with the LGBTQ+ Community .  In barely seven pages of text Johnson has given us  “some thoughts on ministry to the LGBTQ+ community…and a lot of this is personal experience,” per his introductory Facebook post.

On Mission is Revoice applied, and it starts with Revoice. Johnson begins by recounting the opposition to the inaugural 2018 Revoice Conference (hosted by Johnson’s church—he also spoke at the conference) from the local homosexual activist community, who denounced the celibacy encouraged by Revoice, but quickly turns his shame guns to the right: “There is no community on the planet that longs more deeply for what only the gospel can give. But there is no community on earth that feels more threatened by biblical Christians.”

Biblical Christians are presumed guilty and Johnson has strategies to help the conservative church make amends. Johnson points to the Posture Shift curriculum which pretends to be a “missiological framework” for outreach to “nonstraight people,” but which reminds those versed in church history of the Social Gospel and the ethos of Protestant liberal missionaries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Posture Shift pithily exhorts:

Offer enhanced inclusion. Prove justice through visible care. Level the playing field. Collaborate. Be humble. Resist the theological hammer. Avoid trigger words/clichés. Never lead with theology. Avoid politics.

There is not much original there. In fact, the above sounds like a general primer on outreach to cities, college campuses, or culture-making leaders in the arts, business, and culture. Further, given the degree to which homosexuals have penetrated these elite circles, the overlap is natural: The culture is gay so you must be gay (in some way) to reach the culture.

From the familiar “for the city” tropes, Johnson turns to the insights of cross-cultural, international missions for help with mission to (or with , per the title) the LGBTQ+ community.  In quoting a missiologist Johnson clearly implies that the Western “sexual minorities” (many of whom enjoy great privilege and favor at the moment) are as different from conservative Christians as are tribal folk in New Guinea. The quoted missiologist mentions a number of sexual perversions that missionaries encounter in certain parts of the world. Somehow, the tolerant, gentle approach of missionaries to tribal people’s bizarre sexual mores is supposed to be helpful since missiology is “attentive both to the possibilities of syncretism with cultural ideology on the one end, and healthy contextualization on the other.”

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