The Wideness of the Sea: How to be Evangelical and Gay Affirming

by Randal Rauser

Can you be both evangelical and gay-affirming? In The Wideness of the Sea, Randal Rauser boldly
challenges the assumption that affirming same-sex relationships is incompatible with evangelical faith.
Drawing on Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, Rauser shows how evangelical identity has
always evolved—and why inclusion is not a contradiction, but a faithful possibility. With clarity and
compassion, this book invites readers into a thoughtful, honest conversation about faith, sexuality, and
the rule of love.

Randal Rauser is the author of many books including Jesus Loves Biblical Genocide in the
Light of Moral Intuition and The Doubters’ How to Be a Christian When You Don’t Believe
It’s True, both published by 2 Cup Press. You can visit him online at randalrauser.com.

178 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Randal Rauser is a systematic and analytic theologian of evangelical persuasion. He is driven by apologetic concerns and above all by the tireless pursuit of truth. The downside is that this requires him to recognize when he is wrong (which is often) for truth is complex and it offers us no guarantees that we shall always find it. At the same time, Randal does not despair of finding truth, for he believes that in a profound sense Jesus Christ is the truth.

For Randal, being like Jesus means knowing the truth, loving the truth, and living the truth. As Randal seeks to live the truth he promotes a culture of life that is anti-militaristic and pro-family, pro-environment and anti-abortion, anti-consumerist and pro-animal. A disciple on the way … alas, he is not half as smart or as good or as right as he thinks he is.

Reviews

[John Martindale · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my Evangelical days, I remember learning the biblical argument for Open Theism and how it seemed overwhelmingly strong to me at the time, and yet many would dismiss the view as heresy, so I had to be careful who I expressed it to. Later, I was struck by the case for Conditionalism from Edward Fudge, and I bought into annihilationism purely on biblical grounds, and I was irked by how this view (at the time) was dismissed out of hand in Evangelical circles. That said, with Rauser, I find it heartening that it is gradually becoming more of a live option.
Rob Bell's love wins stirred the hornet's nest, and all the evangelical gatekeepers came out swinging to defend the eternal conscious torment view of hell, and yet now that the dust has settled, more options seem to be on the table.
I later became a universalist due to David Bentley Hart and Robin Perry's argumentation. Though I am no longer an inerrantist or evangelical, Perry demonstrated to me that a surprisingly strong argument purely rooted in scripture can be made that all will be saved. Anyhow, it is exciting that a Four Views on Hell book allowed Perry to argue for universalism (not merely as a foil) but as a legitimate option for Evangelicals. We've come a long way in my lifetime!
What Rauser attempts to do in this book is to show that even if you disagree with gay affirming evangelicals, a disagreement on this should be like disagreements on Arminianism and Calvinism, Young and Old Earth creationism, penal substitution vs Christus Victor, or premillennial vs amillennialism. An affirming approach should be seen as a legitimate and understandable, reasonable and "biblical" position for evangelical Christians to have. It shouldn't be a canceling offense or deemed heretical.

I appreciate the approach Rauser took and how he expanded on Wesley's quadrilateral (scripture, tradition, reason, and experience).
For a long time, I have been struck by the importance of experience. It is fascinating that in the book of Job, Job and his friends all have the same theology, but Job's experience contradicts it, and he starts to doubt and question, while his friends double down on the "correct theology." At the end of the book, though, Job is praised for allowing his experience to convince him of the utter dubiousness of his previous beliefs.
In the Book of Acts, Peter has a vision telling him to eat unclean food, and then he witnesses uncircumcised Gentiles filled with the Holy Spirit. This was enough to change his thinking on the matter, even though Genesis 17 clearly stated that anyone who is not circumcised is not part of the covenant, and that circumcision was an everlasting covenant. It is amazing that one experience that contradicted this was sufficient for him to deny the “clear reading of his bible”. Anyhow, if experience could have this powerful role for Peter (according to the book of Acts), it would seem that those who experience gay Christians who are filled with the spirit and display evidence of God's life in them, may have reason to reinterpret the handful of clobber passages in the bible!