If you\u2019ve never changed your mind about something, you may be dead. Spiritually, intellectually, and even politically, if new facts and realities don\u2019t ever prompt you to alter your way of thinking, you might as well be dead. To not learn and change, especially spiritually, is a form of death.<\/p>\n
But change is hard. It\u2019s also risky.<\/p>\n
I know about the consequences of changing one\u2019s thinking. I was fired from my position as vice-president for governmental relations at the National Association of Evangelicals. That\u2019s right, I was asked to resign for comments made on a nationally syndicated radio show called \u201cFresh Air.\u201d I provided too much \u201cfresh air\u201d for my bosses to handle. Officially, I was asked to resign. But the reality is that I was fired.
This event devastated me and my family. We were shocked that such a drastic action had been taken. \u201cPlease have your office cleared out within a few days\u201d\u2014these were my instructions. That wasn\u2019t an easy thing to do. I had worked for the Association since 1980, and this was 2008. So, for twenty-eight years I had faithfully represented the organization, the last ten as vice president. I loved it and the people I had worked with.<\/p>\n
Being axed in such a fashion proved hard. As if to dramatize their dissatisfaction, my \u201cgoing away\u201d severance was three months of salary. It was a clear message: please, just go away. Or as one editor wrote: \u201cEvangelicals, one surmises, aren\u2019t always against divorce.\u201d
I was heartbroken. The nation\u2019s newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as small dailies such as my hometown Free Lance-Star, ran stories with these headlines: \u201cEvangelical Leader Quits Over Gay Union Remark,\u201d and \u201cTruth Breaks a Fall.\u201d
In a broad-ranging conversation about my work to educate my fellow evangelicals about the impacts of climate change, I told Terry Gross, the host of NPR\u2019s \u201cFresh Air,\u201d that I could support \u201ccivil unions\u201d for gays and lesbians and that government funding of contraception was morally acceptable as a way to avoid abortion.<\/p>\n