Joshua Settlemoir

Christianity Today has published an outlandish story alleging that Elisabeth Elliott was bisexual. You read that correctly. Christianity Today—the journal of evangelical conviction founded by Carl Henry and Billy Graham—is making the case that Elisabeth Elliott was in some sort of a lesbian relationship with feminist Virginia Mollenkott. Among the eye-popping claims are these: “William Stell… brings to light new primary source material which, in context, strongly suggests that Elliot was what we would now call bisexual.” “There should be nothing shocking or scandalous about the mere discovery that Elliot was attracted to women as well as men.” “The source material Stell has brought to light, though, should inform the church’s treatment of Christians who experience same-sex attraction, as Elliot seems likely to have experienced.” The scandal here is not Elliott. The scandal is that the article provides exactly zero evidence to support the claim that Elliott was a bisexual. Zero. None. Nada. Rather, the entire case rests on a single interview with the late Mollenkott who recounted a story not of a lesbian affair with Elliott but of Mollenkott threatening to smear Elliott as a lesbian if Elliott outed Mollenkott. As the author of the article admits, we don’t even know if Mollenkott’s account is true. The event she recounts happened 50 years before the interview, has not been corroborated by anyone, and both of the principles are dead (Elliott and Mollenkott). It’s entirely tendentious and salacious to spin this brief confrontation between Elliott and a Mollenkott as evidence of a lesbian relationship. It’s preposterous, actually. Especially in light of Elliott’s repeated public statements about the ethics of homosexuality. For example, the Elisabeth Elliott Foundation has a YouTube recording of a Q&A with Elliott in which she affirms the traditional biblical view in no uncertain terms. Elliott declares, “Scripture is crystal clear, absolutely crystal clear. Homosexuality is classified along with murder and adultery and everything else. It’s just in that list of sins… What would give a homosexual person who claims that he was born that way the right to be sexually active when God has made it crystal clear that the only place for sexual activity is in the marriage bed?… What gives the homosexual the right to think that he has a special dispensation to sleep with members of the same sex? God deplores it. He hates it.” [source linked in thread below.] This does not reflect well on the editors of CT, who assure readers that the story has been through a rigorous editorial vetting. I don’t know how the editors could make such a claim based on the flimsy evidence and tendentious conclusions reached in this report. But perhaps most disturbing of all is the perspective of the author of the article concerning gay relationships. The author is Lucy Austen, Elliott’s biographer. Austen apparently believes that there is nothing “scandalous” or wrong about Elliott’s alleged experience of same-sex attraction. According to her, Christians shouldn’t be troubled by this at all. I don’t know anything about Austen, but this statement raises major questions about what her views are on the ethics of homosexuality. Is she saying that there is nothing scandalous about homosexual attraction? It kind of sounds like she is. In any case, read the article for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. I suspect you’ll find the claims to be just as provocative as I’ve described them.