Dr. Brad Harper, theology professor from Multnomah University, joins Mark and Rex to talk about his book which he co-wrote with his son, Drew, entitled Space at the Table: Conversations Between an Evangelical Theologian and His Gay Son.

TRANSCRIPT

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Hey everyone. Welcome to Jessup Think I'm your host Mark Moore

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and your co-host Rex gurney.

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And on the show today we have Dr. Brad Harper. He's a professor of theology and church history at Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon.

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Gotta be a good guy if he's a church history. Yeah, fellow

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church history buff on the show. And he's here to talk with us about a book he co wrote with his son entitled space at the table conversations between an evangelical theologian and his gay son.

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And I think the conversation we're about to have is not only interesting, but I think it's really important.

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Enjoy the show. Brad, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Really, really excited for you to be here. Sure, glad to be here. And in our booth, when we were talking before, made a connection that you've actually taken some classes from San Jose Bible college, which became William Jessup University,

1:03

right. A long, long time ago in 1977. You

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remember the VLF. When I first started working, I was only at I guess, San Jose Christian College, which morphed out of San Jose Bible college for two years before we moved up here to Rocklin. And when I first stepped on the campus, the Old San Jose campus, I was like, this looks like an elementary school. This doesn't look like a college. If you remember that old campus. It looks like it was an old elementary school.

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Oh, yeah, absolutely. The lockers and the whole

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whatever the whole thing. Yeah. Still some of this dalje for that, though, since Yeah, we're, we're different animal appear more often have very different thing.

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Yeah, that's right. And keep Guerlain and but it's nice to nice to make that connection that we have. I have someone that has some, some roots some tentacles with with William Jessup University, and just again, excited to have you on the show. And, and I recently, read your books based at the table book you did with your son Drew, man was just deeply moved by it. And I actually I listened to the audio version. So which I thought which I thought was powerful to hear you, Andrew both read your parts. And, and for Drew to be able to act out some of the language too, I thought that was it was it was really good and really engaging. And so I'd love for, for listeners to, to maybe just hear a little bit of your story and your journey as a family. And maybe starting with looking at about how old was drew when he started talking to you and your wife about his sexuality? And maybe what was your first reaction? And what have you learned since then?

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Yeah, you know, when Drew started talking to us about it, he was probably around around 13. Okay, so Middle School. Drew is 32. Now. So, you know, that was a while ago, almost 20 years ago, I would say. Now, it's not uncommon for LGBTQ kids in the in, wherever they were, whether they're in the church or not start talking their parenting earlier than that. We, it wasn't our first experience of thinking about drew in his gender identification sexuality, though, because as a little boy, from the time he was very, very young. Drew was kind of naturally attracted to things that social constructs tell us our girl stuff, you know, just, he just when he grew up, he really wasn't interested in sports, you know, or blowing things up or playing army, or whatever. He was interested in fashion, and art and opera. I mean, I remember taking them into to an opera when he was probably seven years old, and he was absolutely transfixed. He couldn't even believe how wonderful this was, you know, he loved writing poetry. By the time he was, you know, 19 years old, he was writi