N.T. Wright on the past and future of Christianity

For 2,000 years, Christian, Jews, and Muslims—Muslims for less than 2,000 years, but you know what I mean—have just said, That’s not what we think a human life is all about. Suddenly, we have a cultural imperative [to embrace LGBT identity] coming in the last 30 years or so. That’s quite an extraordinary thing …

In the early Church, one of the great attractions of Christianity was actually a sexual ethic. It is a world where more or less anything goes, where women and children are exploited, and where slaves are exploited often in hideous and horrible ways. In the Greco-Roman world, if you’d already had one daughter, and then you had another, the regular thing was either to sell her into slavery or literally to leave her out for the wolves.

So a lot of people, particularly the women, found the Christian ideal of chastity amazingly refreshing.

…

You know, God is the God of surprises. New things can happen; new things should happen. … [T]here are more Anglicans in church in Nigeria on a Sunday than in the whole of Britain and America put together.

… [R]ead the four Gospels. That’s what they’re there for. And recognize that in the prayer Jesus taught us to pray: “Forgive us our trespasses.” You don’t just say that once, at the beginning of your Christian life. You jolly well say it every day, because you will need to. The trouble is that the Church is far too good at hoping that everyone else will be asking for forgiveness for their trespasses. Self-critique is part of the Gospel. And where the Church forgets that—oh boy, things go badly wrong.

N.T. Wright in an interview with Emma Green This is a pretty good interview. Green pushes back on LGBT issues, but I think the second and third paragraphs are a good answer.