By Bailey Basham
Trevecca President Dan Boone wants the church to not be afraid to talk to about human sexuality, and his latest book is an effort to help the conversation.
Human Sexuality: A Primer for Christians, will hit the stands next month.
“I do not believe the current discussion about human sexuality will result in a unified church. I also think the categories of liberal and conservative are not capable of defining where the church might come to rest,” said Boone in the preface of his book. “For that reason, I have tried to write a brief theology of human sexuality in the language of the pew… I believe the discussion of human sexuality needs a fresh start. If we are to be the bearers of good news to a broken world, we must recover a biblical theology of the human body and of our human sexuality.”
In the book, Boone references a model devised by Mark Yarhouse, an author and professor of psychology at Regent University in Virginia.
“Mark Yarhouse uses a model that allows us to treat sexual minorities [identities other than heterosexual and homosexual] as individuals with personal stories,” said Boone in chapter 7 of his book. “His approach seeks to hear the journey of a person based on milestone events along the way.”
Boone said he felt called to write on this subject because of the fact that so many people in the church struggle with gender identity and sexuality issues.
He hopes an initiation of the conversation will benefit members of the Church of the Nazarene.
“I think the church is afraid of the topic, and so until some respected leaders in the church begin to demonstrate that we have nothing to be afraid of in entering this topic, I think a lot of churches just won’t,” said Boone. “What will happen is that people will disagree, and in the process of people disagreeing sometimes, we think we have to stop the conversation. It’s okay that not everybody agrees with one another. Peter and Paul didn’t even agree with one another in scripture, so it’s not like disagreement is the most horrible thing in the world.”
In addition to writing his book, Boone also recently spoke at Mission 2015, a Nazarene youth conference in Kansas City, where he and other pastors addressed the issue of homosexuality in the church.
Boone’s book includes two chapters on homosexuality and also touches on pornography, celibacy, marriage, raising children, the church’s public conversation on marriage rights, and on dating culture in today’s society.
The book is currently undergoing the final stages of the editing process and is slated to be released within the next month. Students and faculty interested in reading the book will be able to find it both in the campus bookstore and in Waggoner Library.
