Review:

Love is an orientation

Andrew Marin has spent his life as a straight, evangelical Christian living among the gay and lesbian communities of Chicago. His story of building a bridge with the GLBT community is at the centre of this engaging and challenging book. Marin believes that the conversation between the evangelical church and the gay community needs to be ‘elevated’. This means abandoning the prevailing ‘us versus them’ mentality and a litmus test of orthodoxy. Instead he encourages open-ended conversations that recognise the full humanity of a person and their need of relationship with God, gay or straight.

Marin never abandons the evangelical view of homosexuality, but he introduces a completely different way of interacting with the Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) communities. It is one that models a Christ-like approach better than anything I have read or seen in this area before. If you want a black and white commentary on the gay issue, don’t buy this book. If you want something that reflects the reality of getting messy in the pastoral and spiritual issues of ministering to gays and lesbians, then I would recommend it wholeheartedly.

HIGH: A range of heart-warming and heart-breaking stories that come from the author’s life among the GLBT community.

LOW: Marin’s careful phrasing of his own beliefs about homosexuality can sometimes feel like an exercise in reading between the lines.

Published by: IVP