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Posted on 03/19/2013 6:18:28 AM PDT by Gamecock

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – When Rob Bell signed copies of his latest book March 10 at Schuler Books & Music, two Flint women who came out to see him said the Mars Hill Bible Church founder's teaching had opened their minds about God and made them question whether their same-sex relationship would damn them to hell.

Bell, who followed his visit to Grand Rapids with other public promotions of "What We Talk About When We Talk About God," told an audience Sunday, March 17, in San Francisco that he supports same-sex marriage. You can hear it at about the 42:30-mark of this podcast.

“I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man,” Bell said. “And I think the ship has sailed. This is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”

Bell talks about a variety of topics in the 55-minute Q&A including his upbringing, his college band, the Rev. Ed Dobson, his time as pastor of Mars Hill, quantum physics (to which his latest book devotes several pages) and how “Baptists are people who love God and don’t really like fun.”

Bell also talks around the 38-minute mark about what he sees as the death of Evangelical Christianity in the sense of it being “a very narrow, politically intertwined, culturally ghettoized Evangelical subculture.” He says Evangelicals have “turned away lots of people” from the church by talking about God in ways that “don't actually shape people into more loving, compassionate people,” adding that Evangelicals “have supported policies and ways of viewing the world that are actually destructive, and we've done it in the name of God and we need to repent."

Bell urges people to embrace a difference sense of the term, “Evangelical.”

“The beautiful thing would be if ‘Evangelical’ came to mean buoyant, joyful, honest announcement about all of us receiving the grace of God and then together giving back to the make the world the kind of place God always dreamed it could be,” Bell said. “Let’s reclaim it, all of us.”

The conversation at Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church, finishes with Bell talking more about the television show he’s working on with "Lost" producer Carlton Cuse in California:

“In our culture the two things that get discussion started the quickest at Thanksgiving are religion and politics, or get you sent to the kids’ table,” he said. “And in politics we have every sort of discussion possible under the sun, Rachel Maddow to Fox News to everything in between. And in spiritual faith and religion we have next to nothing, and if you say ‘Touched by an Angel’ I will laugh in your face.

“We are working to create a space, a funny, subversive, welcoming, interesting space somewhere between my Noomas (short films) and sermons and interviews like this, throw in a TED talk, (David) Letterman (show), Ellen (DeGeneres show) and a little bit of ‘Lost’ and put it in a blender. He and I are really, really excited because we think we could create a space that doesn’t exist.”

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