A blockbuster Christianity Today (CT) article claims evangelical hero Elisabeth Elliot was likely a bisexual. You read that right. And yes, it’s totally crazy. Here’s why.
The article was published last week, then pulled because it had not been properly vetted by executives. It was then subsequently reviewed and republished on October 16, insinuating Elliot had a sexual relationship with the late Virginia Mollenkott, a lesbian-identified feminist scholar on the fringes of evangelicalism who, later in life, considered herself “bigender.”
CT, a once great magazine founded in 1956 by the late, great Billy Graham, made this charge on a single, unconfirmed accusation by a gay advocate “historian” William Stell who is promoting his new book, Born Again Queer: The History of Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity. (Truth is Christianity turned “antigay” when Jesus uttered the texts of Mark 10:6-8 and Matthew 19:4-6.)
Stell bases his conclusion on a story Mollenkott told him in an interview for his book. There is no evidence in the CT story that Stell tried to corroborate Mollenkott’s claim with any confirming source. Mollenkott died in 2020, and Elliot passed in 2015, so neither woman can be consulted on the matter.
But this fact does not keep CT from instructing us, “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.” Should it really? Especially considering the only evidence CT provides is unsubstantiated hearsay?
The CT article was written by award-winning author Lucy S.R. Austen, who researched and penned the 2023 biography, Elisabeth Elliot: A Life. It was published by Crossway, a scripturally-faithful and exacting evangelical publisher. After writing such a beautiful biography of Elliot, Austen does nearly nothing to defend Elliot’s reputation.
She appears to trade in the same salacious gossip about Elliot that Stell did in his pro-gay book. CT masks all this under the title, “What We Know – and Cannot Know – About Elisabeth’s Elliot’s Sexuality.” CT’s subtitle explains, “Historian William Stell has published an interview suggesting Elliot was bisexual. Her private papers make it plausible too.”
The accounts from Elliot’s private papers?
There’s not really much there. Exhibit #1 is a letter Elliot wrote to her mother in 1964 about someone close to them who experienced same-sex attraction. CT notes this is the same year she first met Mollenkott, when she showed interest in a novel Elliot was working on.
The section of the letter cited by Austen in the article touched on the topic of homosexuality and temptation. The section highlighted is not really clear about anything relative to the topic of Elliot’s own sexuality. It is just an adult daughter writing to her mother about Scripture and homosexuality. (You can read the segment here and judge for yourself if this implies Elliot’s own same-sex attraction and activity.) CT just implies that it could possibly mean something that Elliot wrote to her mother about homosexuality at the same time she met Mollenkott.
There are also references to places in Elliot’s letters where she and Mollenkott spent time together, including instances where they slept in the same home while Mollenkott helped Elliot with constructive critiques of her novel. Yes, it is a cobbled together conclusion with no real evidence whatsoever.
Austen also implies, without any evidence, that Elliot might have been trying to keep parts of her relationship with Mollenkott a secret from her family, explaining, “As Elisabeth Elliot: A Life shows, this wouldn’t be the first time in family letters that Elliot diverted attention from something important in her life that she wasn’t ready to talk about.”
Austen also hints that it’s possible Elliot had a “romantic love” relationship with her longtime friend, Eleanor Vandevort. Yet, there is no such hint of this relationship or one with Mollenkott in Austen’s lengthy and detailed Elisabeth Elliot: A Life. Why didn’t Austen speak of any of this in her book? Either she is now impressed with and working solely off Stell’s unsubstantiated story, or she harbored these now admitted concerns and didn’t bring them up, knowing Crossway would have certainly killed her book project. Either conclusion does not bode well for her journalistic integrity.
Austen does note in her CT piece, “Of course, years after both women’s deaths and the events in question, we can’t know whether the conversation happened as Mollenkott described – or indeed whether it happened at all” as “[n]either woman is available for further inquiry.” They are not.
But that didn’t keep Austen and CT from publishing their salacious piece on nothing but innuendo. And they conclude it with two paragraphs of soft gay apologetics, explaining, “There should be nothing shocking or scandalous about the mere discovery that Elliot was attracted to women as well as men.” Austen adds, “To welcome honesty about that experience is not to approve of sin, and we can work toward a world where people aren’t forced to choose between staying in the closet and leaving the evangelical church.”
So, Austen spends years carefully studying and cataloguing the life of a great Christian woman and publishes her work in a wonderful book with no hint of any question of Elliot’s sexuality. But a young queer advocacy historian dredges up an unsubstantiated story and she feels free to backfill the claim for CT with no evidence of her own … only providing carefully selected innuendo.
You should read the CT piece for yourself and look for one piece of actual evidence provided for the claim. Note also that World magazine published a very thoughtful critique of Christianity Today’s provocative article, authored by Boyce College professor, Denny Burk.
Photo courtesy of The Elisabeth Elliot Foundation.
