Who I am

Am I really an Evangelical?

Yup. As an evangelical Christian I’ve always believed that “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…” (2 Timothy 3:16).

I fully sign up to the Evangelical Alliance’s Basis of Faith at https://www.eauk.org/about-us/how-we-work/basis-of-faith save for one reservation I share with the late great evangelical, John Stott. I believe there is no “eternal condemnation for the lost”. I believe the punishment for those who reject Christ is “age-during” and not forever and ever (see e,g. Young’s Literal 98’s more accurate translation of the Greek aionion in Matthew 25:41, but that’s a whole other debate!)

But, for the Bible to be useful for our teaching today, we need to read it intelligently, as the Bible Society’s Bible Course reminds us - see https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/the-bible-course.

We need to understand the God-breathed Hebrew and Greek words in the context in which they were originally written so that we can understand God’s underlying spiritual logic. Only then can we really understand how they apply to us today. If we simply seek to follow all the Bible in a literal way sooner or later we are going to come across some serious difficulties and contradictions, such as should men grow their hair long as the Old Testament frequently encouraged (e.g. Numbers 6:5) or keep it short as Paul instructed his 1st century Greek audience (1 Corinthians 11:14-15)? (Admittedly a rather academic issue for baldies like me!) I believe there are no contradictions to the truths revealed in Scripture; just different applications of those truths to different contexts.

Because I believe in God’s word, I also believe Jesus’s promise in John 16 that God’s word was not the only thing he provided to guide us. He also gave us the Holy Spirit , “the Spirit of truth” to “guide [us] into all the truth.” (John 16:13, NRSV). God’s word is “the sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17). If you'll excuse the mix of metaphors, the two should always be used hand in hand like a bow and arrow; otherwise we will miss the mark.

Who am I?

I’m Jeremy. In my head, I’m still that 17-year old singer in a rock band with a thick lion’s mane of blonde hair, in love with my gorgeous girlfriend, Hannah.

In reality, I’m a rather boring, bald, middle-aged, middle class, white, heterosexual man.

Image courtesy of Brachers LLP

But I’m still besotted with that same girl I’ve been married to for 33 years and with whom I’m privileged to share amazing boy-girl adult twins, Sam and Josie.

I’m a personal injury solicitor by trade – mainly asbestos disease (and, unusually, with experience of acting on both sides). But my real passion is to write. I’m part way through penning a, yet to be published, fantasy saga, Three Kings on a Space Ark Came , from which, like the evangelist Philip, I believe God has temporarily snatched me away - to research and write about all this!

I was brought up to believe in Jesus and first really started to get to know him when I was 13. One night I felt him calling on me to write for him and my head was filled with modern day parables which I scribbled down. Sadly, I’ve long since lost those scraps of paper and I also soon lost connection with the Lord. I came back to him when I was 16. I was really just looking for a girlfriend. So I jumped at a school friend’s invitation to join an Anglican youth fellowship group full of girls! But through joining that group God took me on a different journey. The group was led by two wonderfully Christ-like charismatic evangelicals, Phil and Peggy. I did date two girls from the group and got my tender teenage heart broken once before God brought me to the one I was really meant for: Jesus! I give my life back to him at a Louis Palau mission concert at Queen’s Park Ranger’s football ground in June 1984, alongside my brother Frazer and my best friend, also called Jeremy. (They were the proper musicians in our teenage Christian rock band, Metric Yard). Three months later, the Lord brought me to the wonderful woman I’ve shared my last 41 years with. (She hates all this mushy stuff by the way!)

In case it matters, I’m both a confirmed Anglican and a fully dunked Baptist! I also believe the gifts of the Spirit are for today but, unlike my good mate Barry, I don’t speak in tongues. So I’m not sure if I’d qualify as a full charismatic!

With my wife, I’m a middle aged convert to running and have run one ultra marathon.

Why have I started this website?

Because through a journey of over 40 years I believe God has shown me that I and most of the church have got this issue seriously wrong. As a result, I believe we have caused a great deal of harm and pain. And rather than helping advance the gospel, as all good evangelicals long to, we have hindered it.

I want to do my bit in helping to put right some of that error and damage that I contributed to.

It’s also because I feel so richly blessed by God through my own marriage that I want to encourage those same blessings for any LGBTQ+ people not content with singleness - blessings which the church for too long has tried to deny them.

For me it’s an issue of justice and equality - part of doing what God requires of us all - “to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Some serious evangelical theologians have been on the same journey with me – like James Brownson, and the late Richard B. Hays and his son Christopher. (And I highly commend theirs and others’ books to you – see my Further Resources section.)

Like them I’ve come to believe that the Holy Spirit is today calling on the church to embrace LGBTQ+ people and their same-sex relationships on equal terms with heterosexual people.

I’m not a great theologian like them (a B grade Religious Studies A level 39 years ago really doesn’t cut it!).

I’m a lawyer and a writer. But I believe the Lord has blessed (or cursed!?) me to often see and communicate things in a different way – often spotting and joining dots invisible to others (albeit occasionally seeing dots that just aren’t there!)

I also believe the Lord has called me to bring to this issue my own skills and experience as a successful litigation lawyer

- weighing expert, documentary and witness evidence, and a rather obsessive, dogged personality, looking at things rather more exhaustively and exhaustingly than most people do or can - often to my wife’s despair! (And yes I guess I am somewhere on that spectrum!)

Next stop ... press here to learn more about how and why I changed my changed my views