Sam Allberry's Theology Led to This

A man who believes his homosexual desire is not sinful has no reason to fight it.

It happened again. I take no delight in writing this, but another pastor has been removed from ministry. This time it's different, though, because the sin is the direct result of his theology. Let me explain.

Sam Allberry has been removed from pastoral ministry following what’s been described as an “inappropriate relationship” with a man. Whatever the full details turn out to be, this moment deserves more than just sadness. This was no random, moral failure, but the fruit of a system that refused to acknowledge “same sex attraction” as a dangerous and sinful error, one that particularly aligns with the world’s agenda of normalizing every kind of sexual perversion.

If Allberry were merely an ordinary Christian man who fell into sin, it could be handled with discretion as fits the situation. But Allberry is not an ordinary Christian man. He became the most respectable face of the “Side B” movement that was eagerly peddling the idea that a “gay orientation” isn’t sinful in itself.

Allberry was formerly an Anglican pastor, apologist (with Ravi Zacharias ministries, which is a whole other matter), conference speaker, and, until recently, an associate pastor at Immanuel Church in Nashville. Immanuel Church features a who’s who of prominent, left-leaning evangelical leaders, such as Ray Ortlund (founding pastor, pastor Emeritus, and pastor to pastors), Dr. Russell Moore (minister in residence), Dr. Gavin Ortlund (theologian in residence and son of Ray Ortlund), and Barnabas Piper (Assistant Pastor, author, and son of John Piper).

Given his zealous advocacy for the non-sinfulness of “same sex attraction,” Allberry’s actions deserve particular scrutiny, especially since he has authored multiple books seemingly aimed to normalize and promote his unusual way of practicing Christianity. Among his published books include these titles: Is God Anti-Gay?, 7 Myths About Singleness, What God Has to Say About Our Bodies, and Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?.

The novel, “side B” view would always have a friendly audience amongst liberals who want to normalize homosexual desires and practices. But it also gained traction in conservative Christian circles because it was promoted beneath a fig leaf of maintaining the orthodox view of marriage as one man and one woman. In other words, their message was, “trust us on all things related to homosexuality because we reject gay marriage!”

This is the same word game that prominent leaders like Preston Sprinkle use to normalize unbiblical ideas about sexuality. Sprinkle was the general editor of the NIV Upside-Down Kingdom Bible, which promotes “side B” perspective on gay desires. Personally, I find it unfathomable that someone would publish study notes and articles that deny biblical teaching bound together with the pages of scripture itself. They seem to think holding to the traditional view of marriage gives them license to distort biblical anthropology in other areas.

“Side B” has been gaining prominence over the last 15-30 years or so, with the label first gaining prominent in the late 90s. It crystallized under episcopal priest Wesley Hill’s book, Washed and Waiting. This book outlines the contemporary view that “same sex attraction” (SSA) is a persistent, unchosen experience or temptation that does not require repentance in itself. In other words, if a man is sexually attracted to another man, that attraction isn’t a sin to mortify in itself, it only becomes sin when he physically engages in a sexual act with another man. Many “Side B” proponents are comfortable with the label, “gay Christian.” Some other big names in this movement are Greg Johnson, Rachel Gilson, Nate Collins, and Mark Yarhouse.

Prominent Side B organizations include the “Revoice” conference, “Spiritual Friendship” website, “Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender” (founded by Preston Sprinkle), “Living Out” (Sam Allberry’s ministry), and “EQUIP”. This view has also been platformed in popular media outlets such as The Gospel Coalition (TGC) and Christianity Today (CT). CRU (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) uses Preston Sprinkle’s training materials for their staff. In short, this is a large, influential movement promoted by prominent leaders and enjoys solid funding and institutional support.

This is one of the most destructive forces in modern evangelicalism. And the whole godless enterprise needs to be dismantled, brick by brick, and burned to the ground.

To understand the depths of this error, you need to understand three important categories the Bible uses to describe human sexuality: behavior, desire, and identity.

Behavior

The Biblical view of sexual behavior is this: God designed physical intimacy to be enjoyed by a husband and wife within the covenant of marriage. Any sexual act outside that covenant is sin. Paul uses the Greek word “porneia” to describe a very broad category of sexual sin. Basically, porneia can refer to anything that falls outside of God’s prescribed boundary of sexual activity.

Allberry claimed to agree with this, which gave him credibility to speak on these matters to conservative Christian audiences. He affirmed traditional marriage, opposed homosexual sex, and advocated celibacy for Christians who experience “same-sex attraction.”

Behavior was never where he diverged from orthodoxy. The divergence came one level deeper.

Desire

The Bible isn’t merely interested in sexual acts people perform with their body parts. The Bible also addresses the desires that lead to those acts, and humans are morally culpable for those desires. This is where Allberry’s error lives, and where side B does its nastiest damage.

The Side B position maintains that homosexual desire is not itself sinful. They say it’s an orientation, an unchosen and fixed feature of their personhood, making it merely a cross to bear rather than a sin to mortify. The only sin they’ll acknowledge is the behavior, the desires themselves are morally neutral.

The desires can even be befriended and worn as an identity. Wesley Hill has written that being gay “colors everything” about him, including his friendships, his aesthetic sensibilities, and his emotional life. He doesn’t merely experience same-sex temptation. He is gay, and that gayness is a gift to be stewarded rather than a disorder to be fought.

This is a direct contradiction of Scripture.

The first nine commandments forbid external acts, but the tenth commandment is different. It forbids sinful desires. In Romans 7, Paul explained how the command against coveting was what made him realize just how deep sin truly goes, leading him to exclaim, “wretched man that I am!” (v24).

Specifically, Exodus 20:17 prohibits desiring your neighbor’s wife. While the seventh commandment forbids adultery, the tenth commandment addresses the desires that lead to adultery. They are distinct commands addressing distinct sins. Jesus sharpens this distinction in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).

Simply put, the desire to sin is sin. Jesus wasn’t being innovative. He was connecting the seventh commandment to the tenth, which had always been there.

In Romans 1, Paul describes men who were “consumed with passion for one another.” They weren’t merely committing homosexual acts, the desire itself is indicted as sinful. The Greek word here is orexis, which refers to appetite, or raw craving. Paul isn’t describing men who reluctantly fell into behavior they didn’t want. He’s describing men whose desires were disordered and who followed them.

In Galatians 5, porneia, akatharsia, and aselgeia appear together as “works of the flesh,” such as sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality. These aren’t just behaviors. They’re the desires from which behaviors flow. In Colossians 3:5, Paul says to put to death “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire.” Passion and evil desire are listed alongside the behaviors, not excused from the list.

Thus, all of our desires, whether we chose them consciously or not, are morally implicated. Our desires are aimed at something, and when we desire something sinful, the morality of the desire is determined by the object of that desire. One cannot say that his or her desire isn’t sinful because it was involuntary. That doesn’t matter. The involuntary nature of a sinful desire doesn’t sanctify it. It means you need grace to fight it, not permission to keep it.

There’s a further distinction worth making here. Some sinful, sexual desires can be worse than others if they are unnatural. In other words, not all sinful sexual desire is the same kind of sin. An engaged couple who sinfully lusts for each other is desiring something that is natural and good but premature. The desire is sinful because they are unmarried, not because the desire itself is unnatural. Paul’s word for this situation: “if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Cor. 7:9). Once they get married, their formerly sinful desires are now sanctified by their marriage covenant.

But homosexual desires are different because they’re unnatural. A man who lusts after another man has no place where his desires could find legitimate expression. God would not sanction a sexual union between two men in any context because it is unnatural. Paul addresses this in Romans 1 when he says, “men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another” (v27). Thus, heterosexual lust is sinful, but can become holy through lawful marriage. Homosexual lust is also sinful, but carries the additional weight of sinning against nature itself.

The pastoral implication here is serious. A man who believes his homosexual desire is not sinful has no reason to fight it. He has every reason to befriend it, explore it, protect it from outside interference. He is in a far more dangerous position than a man who knows his desires are disordered and needs to mortify them. You cannot fight an enemy you’ve been told is a friend. The Side B framework, whatever its intentions, removes the theological ground for the fight. It tells men to carry their desires as a cross rather than kill them as a sin. Those are not the same thing.

Identity

The last stop on the side B train is to treat one’s sinful sexual desires as a personal identity.

Allberry has written openly about being gay as a core dimension of his personhood. He avoids describing it as a temptation, but prefers to describe it as who he is. He has argued that a gay identity is appropriate for celibate Christians, that it shapes how they move through the world, how they form friendships, what they notice and feel and love. Once homosexual desire is no longer sinful, there is no theological reason not to embrace it as identity. Once sexual sin becomes an identity, one begins to organize his or her entire life around it.

Scripture has no category for this. The concept of sexual orientation as a fundamental category of personhood is a modern innovation. The word “homosexual” didn’t even exist until the 1950’s by John Money. He argued that one’s sexual desires constitute a core part of their identity, drawing on Freudian assumptions about the self. Before that, men who committed homosexual acts were simply men who committed homosexual acts. The idea that committing homosexual acts could become a personal identity is an idea that about 70 years old. The fact that churches have accepted the idea of “gay Christian” shows just how powerfully worldly ideologies can creep in through teaching like Allberry’s.

Biblically speaking, there are two and only two legitimate sexual identities: male and female. Scripture identifies sinful desires and sinful behaviors, calls them sin, and calls sinners to repentance, forgiveness, and adoption into God’s family as sons and daughters of God. That is the identity on offer. The gospel doesn’t baptize your disordered desires and hand them back as a stable foundation for personhood. It kills them and gives you something far better.

When a person builds their identity on sin, it becomes a prison of their own making. Equating sexual desire with personal identity is a Satanic masterstroke. It convinces people that their sin is essential to their humanity. Repentance stops being a door into the Kingdom of God and becomes a wall that prevents people from entering. If a man believes being gay is essential to his identity, telling him to repent is the same as telling him to stop existing. It’s powerful rhetoric. When pastors adopt the language of “gay identity,” even in its celibate Side B form, they are handing that man the bricks to build his own prison.

There’s a linguistic piece of this worth addressing. The phrase “same-sex attraction” has become standard in many orthodox Christian circles, often out of genuine pastoral concern for people fighting this sin. The intention is good, but the language is not. “Attraction” is a word with positive associations. When typically use the word “attract” to refer to things like beauty, or a future spouse. Importing the word “attraction” into a discussion of sinful desire softens what Scripture teaches and trains us to be afraid of the Bible’s hard, direct words.

People aren’t “same sex attracted.” People have sinful lusts and passions. We need hard words to describe harmful realities we need to be warned against. We don’t say a greedy man is “attracted to money.” We say he’s greedy. We don’t say a liar is “attracted to deceit,” we call him a liar. Plain language is more honest and, in the long run, more merciful.

What this should tell us

Nobody should be happy about what Sam Allberry did, but public figures deserve public scrutiny, especially when the stakes are so high. Allberry is not beyond the reach of grace, but I pray he not only repents of his recently discovered sin, but the worldview and teaching that put him (and countless others with similar temptations) in a dangerous position to begin with.

Simply put, Allberry is reaping what he’s sown, as painful as it is to acknowledge. He spent years telling himself and others that homosexual desire is not sinful and is a legitimate part of his identity. Are we surprised that his ministry was ended by an “inappropriate relationship” with a man? He was navigating with a broken compass. This moral failure was the direct result of his worldview and teaching, and I’m afraid many, many others have already followed him into the same error.

“Side B” Christianity is not compassionate. Christians must never make space to legitimize or normalize gay lust or a gay identity. To do so robs men and women from the biblical teaching they need to identify sin, convincing them they don’t need the Spirit’s power to fight it because there’s nothing wrong with it. God help us. That kind of teaching will only open the door to more people who will struggle with it.

The church needs to say, with clarity and without cruelty, that same-sex desire is sin to be mortified, not an identity to be managed. The grace of God is sufficient for that fight. Peter says we have been given “all things that pertain to life and godliness” and have “become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Pet. 1:3-4). We are not controlled by our sinful desires. We have power over them. But we have to name them first. We have to call them what they are.

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These three concepts are developed further in my book, “God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality.”