Book Review – Vikcky Beeching, Undivided:

Coming out, becoming whole and living free from shame

Vicky Beeching’s autobiography, Undivided¹, tells the story of a young British girl, raised in a Pentecostal home, with godly parents and grandparents. This young girl grew to be a talented, gifted, intelligent woman who loved God and her evangelical church. She became a successful Christian singer/songwriter based in the U.S.A. The primary focus of the book is Beeching’s sexuality, her struggle as a gay person in an evangelical world and her longing to find acceptance there. At times, she describes this evangelical world as home but she also describes it as hostile, homophobic and misogynist. Beeching describes her struggle and even her attempts at controversial conversion therapy. However, she does not write about finding a soul friend to pray with her and stand with her as a gay person wanting to live faithfully to the scriptures. I can’t help wondering that if she had, her story may have been different. Beeching tells in heartbreaking detail how her battle with her sexuality took its toll on her mental and physical health. At her lowest, she contemplated suicide.

At various points in the book Beeching speaks of evangelicals’ poor treatment of gay people. I have learned much from this book about the struggle that gay people face in evangelical circles and I am deeply saddened that Beeching, and some others like her, feel ending their own life seems the only viable option. I long to see more support for gay people within evangelical churches- supporting them to live faithfully to scripture in their very hard circumstances.

Beeching and I share some common ground: beyond the biological fact that we are both women, we both came to faith in Pentecostal churches, we love Jesus and the Bible, and seek to follow Christ wholeheartedly. We both feel at home in evangelical churches and we have both felt hurt and rejection from them. We have both embarked on theological training, and we have both pursued a call to ministry. We have both faced rejection because of our sex. We both have CFS/ME, a cruel and debilitating illness. There are many points of shared experience.

However, we differ on a crucial theological point. Beeching has come to believe that God created her gay and that he wants her to live her life as an openly gay person with his blessing. This is what it means for her to follow Jesus. I cannot agree with this. I believe the best way to follow Jesus Christ is revealed to us through the scriptures, which teach us that God’s design for human sexuality and marriage is a covenant union between one man and one woman for life. I do not believe that the Spirit of Christ would say anything contrary to the written word, the Bible. God has given us gracious boundaries for marriage and sexual activity within this and anything beyond this is a distortion of God’s design and rebellion against his good will and purpose for our lives.

I am truly sorry for Beeching’s struggles and for those of other people like her. Yet the conclusion that she has come to in her book is false. It not only endangers her soul but endangers many others who seek to follow her example. In what follows I wish to refute several points Beeching makes in her book

1. Authentic Self

Beeching talks a lot about finding and being her authentic self. These statements belong to the post-modern way of thinking which tells us: ‘You can be anything, as long as you are true to your authentic self.’ Beeching reasons that this is what God wants for her, that being actively gay and calling herself a follower of Christ is what it means for her to be her authentic self. I believe that this is an uninformed choice for followers of Jesus. There is no reference at all in her book to the fall. However, this is our reality—we live in a fallen world. Everything God created has been affected by the fall—even our sexual desires. Christ came to usher in the kingdom of God, which has come in part, but its fullness is yet to come. We are living between the now and the not yet. In the meantime, we are called to submit our sexual desires to him, and only when the kingdom comes in its fullness, we will truly be the people we were created to be. Until then, we cannot trust our feelings or desires. This is why Christ revealed to us through scripture the standard by which we must live. When the kingdom comes in its fullness and all things are made new—then, and only then—our desires will be perfectly in line with God’s desires for us.

2. Following Jesus

Beeching calls herself a follower of Jesus Christ. To follow Christ means accepting him as Saviour but also acknowledging him as Lord. To declare that Jesus Christ is Lord is as much a political statement as it is personal homage. If Jesus is Lord, then no one else can be. Neither Caesar, nor king, nor prime minister and especially not self. The Bible tells us that God is holy and that Jesus led a holy (sanctified) life on earth. When we turn to Christ in repentance, asking for forgiveness of our sin, we embark on an ongoing process of sanctification which is a lifelong journey. Through regular Spirit-filled reading of his word, we allow Christ to change us and mould us to be more like him. Part of this call to holiness is the daily act of dying to self, as Jesus says in Matthew 16:24. It is not an easy thing for any believer to continually bring our passions and motivations before God, asking him to search us and change us. The desire to be our own master and have our own way is strong, but each time we choose our own way and not God’s we rebel against his Lordship. This applies to any situation in life and not just to sexual ethics. It is human nature to rebel against God, to want to be our own master, justifying any decisions we make that are not God-honouring. Such justifications may fool others, they may even fool ourselves (which is their real goal), but they will never fool God. He alone knows the motivation of our hearts. My criticism of Beeching’s book is that it never mentions the cost of discipleship and dying to self. 

3. True Love Waits (Purity Movement)

Beeching used to be an advocate for sexual purity, preaching a message of abstinence to young people wherever she performed. However, after coming out, she went back on this and spoke with regret of her time as a sexual-purity advocate. She even went so far as to say that teaching young people sexual purity is psychologically damaging to them. In the latter part of her book, she describes her relationship with a girlfriend. She does not describe any physical intimacy, but this is implied. In my view, her change of mind on the appropriateness of sex outside marriage rejects God’s call to holiness as found in scripture. That is, that the only appropriate place for sexual intimacy is within the gracious boundaries of biblical marriage. Beeching seems to be advocating premarital sexual relationships and suggests that saving oneself for marriage, whether gay or straight, is damaging. Unfortunately, by rejecting the teaching of the scriptures in this respect, Beeching puts her own lordship above the one she proclaims with her lips. God’s perfect design for intimacy within marriage is both healthy and fulfilling. It is my opinion that a list of failed romances and casual sex does more psychological and emotional damage to a person than any abstinence ever will. It is not my intention to load guilt or shame on to Beeching, or those of us who may have engaged in premarital sex (as Beeching unfairly accuses evangelicals of doing) it is only God convicting us that leads to repentance and a desire empowered by the Holy Spirit to move forward, so that we may commit ourselves to the high bar of sexual purity in our longing to pursue holiness.

4. Eternity

Nowhere in the book does Beeching reflect on her sexual orientation in the wider perspective of eternity. Whenever she speaks of her Christian grandparents it is always with love and respect. She describes one ‘awkward’ conversation with her grandfather after she had come out. Her grandfather wanted her to watch some videos that taught about homosexuality from an evangelical perspective, which Beeching found repulsive. In the end they agreed to respect each other’s position. In my opinion, this is a wonderful example on the part of the grandfather of unconditional love. He loved his granddaughter enough to risk offending or upsetting her on this issue rather than agreeing to disagree.

True love isn’t always permissive, sometimes love is protective, sometimes love says “No”. Where we will spend eternity is a real consideration. Indeed, the most important consideration. For those who reject Christ as Lord, there are eternal consequences. I think that Beeching’s grandfather had these consequences in mind as he tried to reach his granddaughter. For someone who is same sex attracted and committed to living life faithfully to scripture, the cross they must carry is undoubtedly painful. However, like all pain, this pain needs to be viewed through the lens of eternity. The words of the apostle Paul seem appropriate here: ‘I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us’ (Romans 8:18). 

5. Celibacy

Having hinted at celibacy above, it seems fitting that I now refute Beeching’s comments on the subject. Beeching rejects celibacy for her own life, considering it a ‘choice’ and not something someone should be ‘forced’ into. I consider celibacy not as a choice but as a calling, like marriage is a calling. Beeching does not consider that her own circumstances (being gay and a Christian) could be interpreted as a call to celibacy—not something anyone is forced into but an active choice for a gay person who seeks to follow Christ and be faithful to his word. In Matthew 19:12 Jesus says that ‘some are made eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom.’ These words could be understood as a call to choose celibacy over one’s personal desires for the sake of the gospel, and it could apply equally to people with gay or straight orientation. I acknowledge that a gay orientation is—at least for many people, though not for all—not a choice but a given. Yet when they live out this orientation from a biblical perspective, the call on people with a homosexual orientation is celibacy. 

6. Biblical Reflection

Beeching describes in some detail how, at university, she came to see that the Bible could be understood in different ways and how she began researching issues of slavery and women, both controversial topics in their time. She realised how historically the church had got it wrong on both of these issues and this inspired her to research the topic of homosexuality, reading liberal theologians on this subject (though she does not state or list which literature she read). She finally concluded that God is happy with her acting on her sexual orientation as a Christian after she reflected on Acts 10. This chapter relates the vision of the apostle Peter.

One day while waiting for his dinner to be ready, Peter had a vision. He saw a sheet let down from heaven with all sorts of animals on it that were unclean according to Jewish law. A voice from heaven told Peter to eat, but he replied that he could not do so as he had never eaten anything unclean. The voice replied, ‘What God has called clean do not call common.’ This happened three times before the vision ended. Just then two men arrived asking Peter to go with them to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, a Gentile. Peter then understood that the vision was not about food but rather about the inclusion of Gentiles (who the Jewish community considered unclean) in the new thing God was doing, the Church. 

Beeching interprets this passage as God allowing outsiders into the Church—which it does. In her personal situation, she sees this as God welcoming gay people, without a change of lifestyle, in the same way he welcomed Gentiles. Sadly, this interpretation, which is common among progressives, is incorrect. Acts 10 is about racial equality. Previously, as worshippers of Yahweh the Jews were to be strict about keeping themselves apart from Gentiles. Converts (called proselytes) faced strict requirements; the men among them had to be circumcised. Gentiles were to be kept at arm’s length so that Jews were ceremonially clean before God. In Acts 10, God tells Peter, and therefore us, that in Christ all nations are to be included as equal brothers and sisters with equal admission to grace and the eternal hope of the gospel.

Acts 10 does change the perimeters for marriage. Previously Jewish people could not marry Gentiles, but now, if both partners are believers, there should be no barriers.² However, the passage cannot be interpreted to say that people of the same sex can marry each other. The marriage directive—God’s gracious boundaries for marriage—is set out in the creation narratives of Genesis and affirmed by Jesus in Matthew 18. In the Old Testament we do read of departures from this in polygamist unions, but the inclusion of these narratives does not condone the practice; in fact, each time we read of a polygamous relationship we read of the difficulties it caused,³ all of which could have been avoided if the people in question had stuck to the creation mandate of marriage of one man to one woman. The interpretation of Acts 10 by the progressives feeds into the trajectory of slave, women, gay that is clearly set out in Beeching’s book. The idea is that of progressive revelation and liberation of each of these groups. However, to read scripture in this way reads into the text what is not there. The Bible shows no trajectory towards the acceptance of homosexual relationships or any other weakening of the marriage directive. Nor is it helpful to conflate the issues of slavery and women with that of homosexuality. They are different things entirely and should be respectfully treated so.⁴

Conclusion

There is no doubt that this book was written from the heart and I wish to treat Beeching’s very real struggle with respect. There are truly some gut-wrenching moments in this book; it was a highly emotional read. I am ashamed that Beeching, and many others like her, has been wounded so badly by other Christians. Nonetheless, while I humbly recognise her feelings, it is important to keep in mind that she is writing from a personal perspective. Her biblical and theological arguments are weak. This book has influenced many others who are same sex attracted and will continue to do so. I care too much for their souls to leave it unchallenged. Sadly, Vicky Beeching’s story is ultimately one of doing what she wants which, of course, she is at liberty to do. However, this choice is incompatible with choosing to commit one’s way to Christ, and choosing his will, not one’s own, in life.

1. London, Harper Collins, 2019 ↩︎
2. See Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, Marriage, Scripture, and the Church (ch. 8), for an excellent analysis of this topic. ↩︎
3. Genesis 14 and 1 Samuel 1 are examples of this but there are others. ↩︎
4. See R.T. France, ‘From Romans to the real world: biblical principles and cultural change in relation to homosexuality and the ministry of women’ in S.K. Soderlund and N.T. Wright (eds), Romans and the People of God. Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Fee on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) 234—253; and William J. Webb, Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis. (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity, 2001).
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