Rachel Gilson, a self-described same-sex attracted woman who spoke at the Southern Baptist Convention’s women’s conference in 2023 has now appeared in a promo video released by Preston Sprinkle’s Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. The video portrays God as perfectly accepting of homosexual and transgender lifestyles devoid of any true repentance. In the video appear multiple homosexuals, lesbians, and “transgender” people who argue that one should be able to live out who they really are, including rebelling against who God created them to be, and feel welcomed and accepted in the Church.

Here’s that clip:

In 2019, during a student conference (see video below), Gilson remarked during a sermon that gay married couples who come to Christ can stay together because God hates divorce. Speaking on the topic of homosexuals coming to Christ, after a bit of build-up, Gilson said, “It’s not like if someone in a same-sex marriage comes to know the Lord, it’s like, ‘Okay, what we’ve got to deal with first is your same-sex marriage’…”

“I’ve known some couples where one person came to Christ and to honor the Lord, he needed to be celibate [remaining married] and his husband decided to leave him. Paul talks about this reality in 1 Corinthians 7, sometimes if a spouse comes to know the Lord, the other spouse can’t abide it leaves and that person is free,” Gilson continued.

Gilson then went on to lament the “divorce” of gay couples who are “married” saying, “God hates divorce, he does. It breaks that image of marriage just as surely as anything else.” Here’s the clip:

Gilson has also been closely associated with Grant Hartley, another former Cru leader who converted to Roman Catholicism a few years ago. Just last year, Hartley boasted about his experience of dancing at a gay bar, stating that it felt like “heaven” to him. In 2019, Hartley quote-tweeted a message from Rachel Gilson while she was preaching a sermon at Cru:

Needless to say, Gilson’s advice led Hartley to the following just three years later:

In 2022, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is presided over by Danny Akin, is highlighting Rachel Gilson’s paper on marriage. According to a press release on Southeastern’s website,

Several of Southeastern’s current advanced degree students are presenting papers at this year’s annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in Denver, CO, on November 15-17. As an institution committed to rigorous scholarship and a robust Great Commission vision, Southeastern celebrates the academic contributions of its advanced degree students who are participating in the 2022 ETS meeting.

After scrolling down, you can see Gilson, who self-describes as a “same-sex attracted disciple of Christ,” says that she “cast[s] a positive vision for why Christian marriage is male and female and not any other arrangement of gender” and that she is “concerned that the Church’s default response to same-sex marriages is mostly to look at the ways in which the Bible says “no.” It is a needed reminder that God is saying “yes” to something and not just “no” to something.”

This represents the usual attempt to downplay the sinfulness of same-sex marriage by redefining it as a Christian ordinance rather than a Creation ordinance. It suggests that God’s teachings on marriage are only applicable within the realm of Christianity. While Gilson does acknowledge that marriage is intended for a man and a woman, her viewpoint implies a similarity to Christopher Yuan’s belief that God is primarily concerned with one’s holiness rather than their sexuality, as if the two concepts are not connected. This is how Gilson describes her own motivation for conducting research on this topic when questioned:

As a same-sex-attracted disciple of Christ, the questions were first personal and then ministerial as I became a campus worker for Cru. I realized we need better — more biblical — answers not only for same-sex-attracted people who are trying to be faithful but also for straight people who need to be reminded of God’s design concerning marriage.

Unfortunately, these are the vocal voices leading the conversation on sexuality within the professing Church.