Is the New Zealand evangelical community starting to transcend its American captivity and think independently about issues like human sexuality? In its latest issue, Stimulus interviews... Michael Parmenter. Yes - our Michael Parmenter. Much to my pleasant surprise, Graham Redding wrote a highly appreciative and analytical review of Jerusalem, Parmenter's dance opera, which explored New Zealand Catholic poet James K. Baxter as well as other elements of Jerusalem. "Huh?But Parmenter is a gay man!" Yes, but apparently, that still means that one can write work that evangelical Christians can appreciate. As if that weren't enough, what happened next was the aforementioned Gavin Drew interview with Michael. It dealt with the dancer and choreographer's dancing and choreographical history, and didn't shy away from his gay sexuality. It didn't make any condemnatory statements about it, and I was left shaking my head in wonderment. Finally, I turned to the back of that issue, and read about the "Forum of the Christian Left." Now, that wasn't so surprising. Although it doesn't look like it in New Zealand, there is political diversity within the evangelical community, although mostly within the United Kingdom and Western Europe, rather than North America and Australasia. Or, at least in our case, not until recently. But lo and behold, evangelical Presbyterian Nathan Perry states that he got rather annoyed at the atmosphere of toxic fundamentalist conservative correctness at the last New Zealand general election, and the obsession with censorious attitudes toward sexuality at the cost of affirmation of ecological responsibility, the Treaty of Waitangi, anti-poverty initiatives and refugee and asylum seeker issues. And so, Nathan and others got together and decided to convene FoCaL, while even inviting Tim Barnett and Peter Lineham, both gay men, as speakers. And oddly enough, I didn't mind the sceptical review related to Morton Smith and the "Secret Gospel of Mark" controversy, which dealt with an allegedly apocryphal gnostic gospel that suggested Christ andthe Apostle Johnwere in a gay relationship, and that John was recipient of secret knowledge as a result. Why? Well, I'm sceptical about whether gnosticism is any less homophobic, or at least, equivocal about homosexuality as a spiritual path. Amidst the Da Vinci Code furore, we seem to have ignored similar controversy about the alleged second-century "Gospel of Judas" and its homophobic content. Gnosticism does buy into these spirit/body tensions, and I wonder if that's healthy, either for women or gay men. Don't we get enough of that in conservative Christianity? In the case of Stimulus, it's good to see this happening. I've been wondering how they'd deal with the bombshell that Laurie Guy dropped in a recent issue with his critical historical account of evangelical and fundamentalist antagonism against homosexual law reform. Watch this space. Recommended: Stimulus website: http://www.stimulus.org.nz Graham Redding: "Looking for a Place to Stand: Parmenter's Jerusalem" Stimulus 14:2: May 2006: 11-17. Gavin Drew: "Michael Parmenter: An Interview, Part One" Stimulus 14:2: May 2006: May 2006: 20-22. Nathan Perry: "Forum of the Christian Left" Stimulus 14:2: May 2006: 46-48 Craig Young - 6th June 2006