Single, Gay, Christian, Gregory Coles
Single, Gay, Christian, Gregory Coles
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Single, Gay, Christian
A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity

Author: Gregory Coles, Wesley Hill

Narrator: Richard Powers

Unabridged: 4 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/22/2017


Synopsis

Let’s make a deal, you and me. Let’s make promises to each other. I promise to tell you my story. The whole story. I’ll tell you about a boy in love with Jesus who, at the fateful onset of puberty, realized his sexual attractions were persistently and exclusively for other guys. I’ll tell you how I lay on my bed in the middle of the night and whispered to myself the words I’ve whispered a thousand times since: “I’m gay.” I’ll show you the world through my eyes.I’ll tell you what it’s like to belong nowhere. To know that much of my Christian family will forever consider me unnatural, dangerous, because of something that feels as involuntary as my eye color. And to know that much of the LGBTQ community that shares my experience as a sexual minority will disagree with the way I’ve chosen to interpret the call of Jesus, believing I’ve bought into a tragic, archaic ritual of self-hatred.But I promise my story won’t all be sadness and loneliness and struggle. I’ll tell you good things too, hopeful things, funny things, like the time I accidentally came out to my best friend during his bachelor party. I’ll tell you what it felt like the first time someone looked me in the eyes and said, “You are not a mistake.” I’ll tell you that joy and sorrow are not opposites, that my life has never been more beautiful than when it was most brokenhearted.If you’ll listen, I promise I’ll tell you everything, and you can decide for yourself what you want to believe about me.

About Gregory Coles

Gregory Coles is a writer, speaker, and worship leader. His first book, Single, Gay, Christian, was a 2017 Foreword INDIES Award Finalist. He lives in central Pennsylvania, where he recently completed a PhD in English from Penn State.

About Wesley Hill

Wesley Hill (PhD, Durham University, UK) is assistant professor of biblical studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Zondervan, 2010), Paul and the Trinity?: Persons, Relations, and the Pauline Letters? (Eerdmans, 2015), and Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian (Brazos, 2015). He is on the editorial board for Christianity Today and writes regularly for that magazine as well as for Books & Culture, First Things, and other publications.  

About Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, and Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Peter

This type of book is becoming more common: a professing Christian struggles with gay/homosexual desires, etc. He comes to realize after some study that gay sex is wrong (for them), but gay desires are not. They chose to remain celibate, but admit that others might disagree and pursue homosexual/lesb......more

Goodreads review by Bob

Summary: An autobiographical narrative of a young Christian who becomes aware of his attraction to other men, his struggles against this within a Christian context, his experiences of "coming out," and how he has decided to follow Christ through all of this. This book had me at the first page. Ordina......more

Goodreads review by Neil

Greg Coles is a tremendous writer, and I loved reading these musings about his life and his faith. “I saw the power of the stories we tell,” he writes, “how one person’s machete-hewn journey through the briars can become someone else’s highway to hope. I found myself believing that, as long as it co......more

Goodreads review by Amanda

Makes me long for and want to follow Jesus, which is the highest praise I could ever give.......more


Quotes

“With refreshing candor, the author documents his journey…A modern reflection on what constitutes an authentic faith. The power of Coles’ book is his honest battle with faith and identity politics, meditating ever so sparingly on how the world might be.” Library Journal

“Coles’ work will raise questions for those involved in the debates about Christianity and sexuality because it pushes for a third way between discarding tradition and ignoring identity.” Publishers Weekly

“To say this book is important is a painful understatement…Superbly written, this book stands athwart the shibboleths of our day and reminds us what submission to King Jesus looks like, what it feels like. This book needs to be thoughtfully read by straight people and by gay people, by unbelievers and by Christians. It is not to be read with a condescending smirk, but with humility.” D. A. Carson, president of the Gospel Coalition and research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“This is a book every Christian…must read if we are to learn to love our LGBTQ neighbors…the way Jesus does.” Ronald J. Sider, Palmer Seminary at Eastern University

“A book that is a delight to read both because of the beauty of his writing and his main message: that our good God made no mistakes in either making him the way that he is or asking him to live life the way that he is.” Ed Shaw, author of Same-Sex Attraction and the Church

“Greg Coles has poured himself out beautifully in this transparent account of his life with Christ as a young gay man. He asks whether the Bible leaves room for monogamous same-sex relationships and agonizes over how the church will treat singleness and sexual minorities. His answers are not easy. Especially for him. If you want to be inspired by one man’s deep and unfailing love of Jesus, read this book. If you or someone you love is a follower of Jesus who happens to be gay, this is a must-read.” Carolyn Carney, director of spiritual formation and prayer, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship