The #1 Evangelical Bible scholar says the Bible is pro-gay

Tim Mackie of ‘The Bible Project’ shocks his religion

His voice is nervous. “I never get nervous before sermons,” he says, “but I totally am right now…” And then he proceeds to talk about Jesus and sexuality.

Tim Mackie is the most popular Bible scholar in Evangelicalism for his work on ‘The Bible Project’. In a sermon he gave in 2015, just recently noticed, he does a shock smackdown of his religion’s anti-gay obsession.

The religion isn’t at all amused.

I look over the snippet that was singled out for scrutiny.

Evidently, Evangelicals felt this was deeply objectionable:

From that came denunciations of Mackie as a “false teacher,” etc. The well-known conservative Dale Partridge piped up:

“Tim Mackie (of the Bible Project) was my Old Testament Professor at Western Seminary in Oregon in 2017. After I took that class, I was seriously concerned about his theology. He is a liberal theologian at best and a wolf at worst.”

A ‘wolf’ is a Satanic figure. As factions of Mackie’s own religion are trying to cancel him, I’m thinking about his Evangelical story.

Born in 1976 and growing up in Portland, Oregon, Mackie became a Christian at age 20.

Early on, he set about trying to teach the Bible to a community he knew: young skateboarders.

He went to an Evangelical seminary, and became a pastor. But then he made the unusual decision to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he got a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies.

In doing this, Mackie was certainly stepping outside of his religion. Evangelicals don’t really “do” Bible scholarship. The Bible is seen to be divinely revealed to men approved through clerical channels. Whatever they say, goes—even if it doesn’t make much sense.

Mackie got married and had two kids. He worked in Portland as an Evangelical seminary professor and a pastor. An artist friend, Jon Collins, suggested they try to illustrate the Bible as an online ministry.

The Bible Project was born, and from 2016 on became famous in the religion. It was first noticed in Christianity Today in 2019.

Mackie stopped doing social media in 2017.

That was around the time his videos started getting millions of views. He seemed to just try to evade the ordinary Evangelical culture wars. In a 2018 interview he’s asked about the LGBT issue and ducks out of it.

But back in 2015 he was a local pastor giving a series of sermons on the gospel of Matthew. That brought him to Matthew 19:12 where Jesus is teaching on the figure of the ‘eunuch’.

“For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others — and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” (Matthew 19:12; NIV)

Jesus praises unmarried people!

That’s Mackie’s takeaway. He says:

“Jesus was the first religious teacher that we know of to elevate the role of unmarried, single life to be a normal, honorable, significant, meaningful way of life. Early Christianity was the first religious movement that elevated people not getting married as leading exemplary lives.”

That’s no way for an Evangelical to talk.

In the religion, heterosexual marriage is seen as the basic state of personhood, and all but means ‘saved’. An unmarried person, certainly, has little status in church and cannot be a leader.

Mackie has thoughts on all that. As he continues:

“Why is it that in the majority of American churches, single people feel isolated, and not included, and alone? Because the dominant paradigm is ‘get married and have kids’. That’s the pathway to a meaningful life. And just to be super clear, I’m really, pretty sure that Jesus doesn’t share that view. He didn’t get married, right? I mean, just like, historical fact number one. Do you think Jesus did not have a meaningful life?”

A church, he adds, is typically a place where “people who are not married feel second class, and where people who are gay feel even more ostracized — because they where do they fit, right?”

This isn’t Jesus’ view.

The messiah, Mackie continues, “envisions a full, meaningful, significant human existence that does not involve having sex or having children but it does involve a life of covenant love.”

In contrast to Jesus’ vision, he adds: “I actually think we’re the ones who are not seeing clearly.”

In saying “gay” a few times, his voice vibrates with anxiety. It’s a term avoided in Evangelical discussions, where “same-sex attracted” or even better, ‘SSA’, are discreet admissions of a ‘sinful’ nature. He wants to stress the eunuch as a sexless figure, but using the word “gay” is very loaded.

Mackie is otherwise coming off as conservative, and basically Evangelical. He does see heterosexual sex as a “covenant-making” activity—that is, a sacred act that binds the man and woman to God. He doesn’t see that happening in intimacies of people of the same sex.

And yet, he clearly sees the “gay” person as divinely approved—at least until they have sex—and adds that a life of service to other people has the same or a greater ‘covenantal’ effect as heterosexual marriage.

In a parting benediction, Mackie presses into more radical theology.

He summarizes Jesus’s teachings as saying that “the meaning of human existence is to love God and to love your neighbor.” This calls, he says, for a Christian inclusivity that ignores surface differences between people.

He continues:

“In Messiah Jesus, there is no male or female, no slave or free, no Jew or non-Jew, no gay, no straight—just beautiful humans made in the image of God who are deeply flawed and who all need God’s grace.”

It’s just not how Evangelicals talk, and leaves an impression of a more pro-gay stance than he will specifically articulate.

In the YouTube video, the ‘eunuch’ talk starts at about 44:56.

Mistaking the sermon for a recent one, a range of Evangelical sites went to work.

Mackie’s salvation was now the question, as Hell was dangled in front of him. As one piece puts it:

“These false teachings are a serious breach of duty and those who continue to perpetuate them will face the wrath of God in the most serious way.”

As I look over a range of attacks on Mackie, it’s clear these Evangelicals do not believe in any concept of ‘salvation’ or ‘grace’. All that matters is a public position on homosexuality.

Mackie’s 2015 sermon wouldn’t be his fullest thoughts on eunuchs.

As a scholar, he knows far more than he’d be able to tell any Christian audience. In the ancient world, eunuchs were not non-sexual.

Eunuchs were well-known for sexual skills, and were often sex slaves who’d been castrated to preserve boyish looks. They were kept by familiar New Testament figures like Herod the Great.

The eunuch as a non-sexual figure was just a later Christian contrivance to manage the problem of Jesus’ teachings. But Mackie can’t drop too many facts. The religion would just get confused—and then it gets mean. 🔶