Did Evangelical bigwig Chuck Swindoll have a lesbian sister?
Chuck Swindoll has for decades been an iconic Evangelical cleric. His sister went along for the ride, often out saying that being unmarried is a valid religious choice.
In the “family values” religion, that was startling. Luci Swindoll died last October of COVID-19. A friend wrote to mention that she’d been a rather ‘queer’ presence in the religion. I spent a little while looking up her story.
At the age of 12 she decided she’d never marry.
This was horrifying to her mother. Swindoll recalls the speech she gave in her 1982 book, Wide My World, Narrow My Bed.
“Mother, I don’t want to get married. I want to go to school and have a career. I want to sing professionally and travel and read books and have my own home and meet lots of people and dream my own dreams. How can I do all that and be married too?”
Her mother remained deeply unhappy with her for years. But Swindoll searched the Bible for verses to affirm her stance of being single. “Do not fear, for I am with you,” she found in Isaiah 41:10. She realized that “I had chosen a partner for my life.” Her spouse was to be God Himself.
