In 1959, David was a 21-year-old first-year seminary student in Canada. Everyone around him recognized him as a spiritually sensitive person. His mother knew when he was six years old that she needed to switch church homes so that young David could be in a better Sunday school program. His minister, who had watched him grow spiritually through his teen years into early manhood, recommended him for the United Church ministry track at age nineteen. People around him recognized him as someone special and set apart.

He had always loved reading his Bible. In his earlier years, he read the King James Version. In 1952 the Revised Standard Version (RSV) was adopted by the United Church for use in general worship. During his first year of Divinity School, David began reading the RSV. It was then that he came across its translation of I Corinthians 6: 9-10:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals (j), nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. (j) two Greek words are rendered by this expression

David had known he was gay since the age of sixteen. He also knew he was both loved and accepted by God, and called to the ministry. The RSV was the first time in any translation of the Bible, in any language, that the word “homosexuals” had been used. David thought the RSV wording of I Cor. 6:9-10 was wrong. He checked the wording of the passage in the KJV and thought it was more accurate (“nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind”). Then he looked in his Greek lexicon for the meaning of the two Greek words (malakos and arsenokoites) indicated as combined in the RSV footnote. This convinced him that the RSV translation team had made an error.

After much thought and study, he wrote a several page compelling letter stating his case and sent one copy to The National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America (NCC), the organization that commissioned the RSV, and the other copy to the publisher, Thomas Nelson Publishers. The NCC Executive Secretary sent his letter on to Dr. Luther Weigle, Dean of Yale Divinity and the head of the RSV translation team. David was surprised to receive a personal response a few weeks later from Dr. Luther Weigle. The two exchanged two additional letters. In the final letter, Dr. Weigle agreed the team would consider an alternate term for “homosexuals” in the next revision.

David never spoke about or shared the contents of the letters with anyone. He didn’t want to risk someone even considering that he might be gay himself. After all, it was the 1950s. Why might a person care to address the topic so thoroughly and passionately unless he were gay? In signing the letter, he altered his identity enough to ensure privacy.

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UPDATE February 2020

Kathy Baldock speaks with Reverend David, the author of a recently-discovered 1959 letter challenging the introduction of the word “homosexual” into the Bible, at The Reformation Project’s Reconcile and Reform conference in Seattle on Friday, November 8, 2019. In 1959, a young, gay seminary student named David wrote a letter to the head of the Revised Standard Version biblical translation team challenging the RSV’s use of the word “homosexual” in 1 Corinthians 6:9. David wrote: “I write… because of my deep concern for those who are wronged and slandered by the incorrect usage of this word. Since this is a Holy Book of Scripture sacred to the Christian, I am the more deeply concerned because well-meaning and sincere, but misinformed and misguided people may use this Revised Standard Version translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 as a sacred weapon, not in fact for the purification of the Church, but in fact for injustice against a defenseless minority group.” Dr. Luther Weigle, the Dean of Yale Divinity School and the head of the translation committee, wrote back to David and admitted that the RSV translation was wrong—leading to a change in a later version of the RSV to the more generic phrase “sexual perverts” rather than a specific condemnation of gay people. The letters between David and Dr. Weigle remained buried in the Yale Archives until Kathy Baldock and her colleague Ed Oxford found them in 2018. Remarkably, Kathy was able to connect with David, who is now over 80 years old and a retired pastor in Canada. Here, he shares his story publicly.

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Forward to 2017 . . .