Author-Meets-Respondents Panel: William Stell, Born Again Queer: A History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity (Princeton University Press, 2026)

In this author-meets-respondents roundtable, four scholars of diverse rank and expertise will engage critically and constructively with William Stell’s book Born Again Queer: A History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity (Princeton University Press, 2026). A groundbreaking history of evangelicalism and homosexuality in the United States, Born Again Queer argues that evangelical homophobia used to be much less dominant than it has been in recent years. In this book, Stell uncovers a network of evangelical gay activists who, over the course of the 1970s, nurtured a surprisingly influential gay-affirming minority within evangelicalism. In addition, Stell traces the shifts and tensions in evangelical positions on homosexuality from the 1950s to the present. Panelists will respond to the book’s historiographic, methodological, and theoretical interventions in the study of evangelicalism, queer and anti-queer religious movements, gay activism and feminism in the 1970s and 1980s, and sexuality and religion broadly.