Late last week, Christianity Today, formerly the flagship publication for American evangelicalism, published, deleted, and republished an article suggesting that missionary and author Elisabeth Elliot “was bisexual.” The indecision suggests both that the magazine leadership is sensitive to criticism and that it felt publishing this article was more important than placating the critics.

Under the title, “What We Know — and Cannot Know — About Elisabeth Elliot’s Sexuality,” the subtitle whispers the entire narrative: “Historian William Stell has published an interview suggesting Elliot was bisexual. Her private papers make it plausible too.”

Only in the 31st paragraph does the author, Elliot biographer Lucy S.R. Austen, make the key admission, “Christians disagree over sexual ethics and boundaries, and here we don’t have enough information to engage in those kinds of arguments.”

Those five words, “we don’t have enough information,” topple the entire Jenga tower of insinuations that constitute the rest of the piece.

Lack of Evidence

According to the article, the claimed evidences that Elliot was secretly bisexual are three. First, in a 2020 interview, feminist activist Virginia Ramey Mollenkott recounted an anecdote from 1975 to progressive historian William Stell, in which Elliot admitted that Mollenkott could “destroy” her by publicly insinuating that Elliot was attracted to women.

If that sounds like hearsay, that’s because it is. It also does not amount to any admission that Elliot was actually attracted to women, nor is it certain than an 88-year-old woman could perfectly recall a 45-year-old conversation. Both Elliot and Mollenkott are now deceased, so no one can ask them about the exchange.

Second, in March 1964, Elliot wrote to her mother concerning someone who experienced same-sex attraction, “The problem is far more complex than a simple matter of sin. It is not sin in any sense of the word though it is a frame of mind and attitude which presents its own particular kind of temptation. Sin only enters when the law of love is transgressed if I understand Jesus’ interpretation of the law.”

This appears to be nothing more than Elliot drawing a distinction between a person’s natural bent and actual instances of illicit sexual desire, or lust. There are faithful Christians who struggle for sexual purity against same-sex attractions, and we should maintain the truth that their victory against these sins is possible.

Third, Austen reports that Elliot shared a house with a female roommate for years after Jim Elliot’s death, before marrying her second husband, and that she called her second husband a “savior.”

Unless one is prepared to embrace the obvious absurdity that all single Christian women with longtime roommates develop feelings of “romantic love” for their friends, it is difficult to see how this biographical fact rises anywhere near to the label of truth.

Against the full weight of a life so entirely devoted to following the will of God, such vapid insinuations bear the strength of wet toilet paper.

Definition of ‘Bisexual’

Part of the difficulty here seems to stem from the culture’s preposterously slippery definition of “bisexual.” The term denotes a person who is attracted to both women and men at the same time, thus straddling the definitions of (in the case of a woman) both “lesbian” and “straight.” However, individuals are attracted not to abstract genders but to individual persons; someone who identifies as “bisexual” might at any one time be attracted to either a man (making them functionally “straight”) or a woman (making them functionally “lesbian”).

One might propose to save the term by suggesting that it could apply to someone attracted to one or more persons of each gender in sequence, but that does not save the term either, given the fluidity of unnatural sexual orientations. In a longitudinal study on sexual orientation published in June 2023 by Duke University Press, bisexual identity proved to be exceptionally “fluid.” Some 56.8% of people who identified as “bisexual” had changed their identity six years later, a figure surpassed only by the identity categories “other” (85.4%) and “prefer not to answer” (72.9%). Although the proportions were smaller, people who identified as gay or lesbian were still nearly five times more likely (16.1%) to change their identity over six years than people who first expressed a natural orientation to members of the opposite sex (3.3%).

The only time in which the term “bisexual” means something truly unique would be in a (rare) situation where a person was torn between multiple romantic interests simultaneously, and where those love interests included a man and a woman. This author has never heard of such a case, although he cannot rule them out categorically. Still, the term “bisexual” is overused to inflate the number of “LGBT-identifying” individuals with many people who are attracted to a romantic partner of the opposite sex.

Now, the urge to inflate the LGBT ranks seems to have turned to claiming even influential Christian figures like Elisabeth Elliot, who left behind no conclusive evidence that she was ever romantically attracted to a woman.

Unmoored Magazine

The publication of Austen’s Elliot fantasy comes amid yet another period of turmoil for Christianity Today. On October 2, the publication announced Erik Petrik as “incoming editor in chief,” to replace the 76-year-old Marvin Olasky, who stepped in last year to try and right the ship. Olasky published a farewell to Christianity Today readers on Friday, October 16, in the midst of the Elisabeth Elliot drama.

As Petrik explains, in an editor’s note that now precedes the article:

“On Thursday, October 15, 2026, CT published an article by biographer Lucy S. R. Austen regarding Elisabeth Elliot’s sexuality. In the midst of internal leadership transitions, Austen’s article was not reviewed prior to publication by some key members of our content team. I removed the article from our website until that review could take place and the piece could be properly framed. The review has now occurred, and the article is once again live on our site as of Friday, October 16, 2026.”

The note does not specify which internal decisions did or did not approve the publication of the article. But The Christian Post notes that the article was republished hours after Olasky’s farewell.

Ministry Watch editor-in-chief Warren Cole Smith suggested Petrik’s appointment symbolized internal chaos at Christianity Today, as “it means that CT — in less than a seven-year span — has had six editors in chief: Mark Galli, Daniel Harrell, Tim Dalrymple, Russell Moore, Marvin Olasky and Erik Petrik.”

The other symptom of internal chaos, Smith added, is the way in which Christianity Today is hemorrhaging staff. “The Oct. 2 announcement also did not say that simultaneous to Petrik’s appointment, the magazine was laying off 20% of its staff and 40% of the editorial team. … This recent round of layoffs followed two rounds of staff reductions in 2025 (in March and September), which shed another 20 people,” he noted.

Christianity Today’s new CEO Nicole Martin told Smith that the staffing changes would “bring our projected expenses in line with our projected income,” a sign that the magazine is struggling financially. Martin added that “historically CT has hired staff editors, which then allowed us to source great writers from the wider evangelical community. We are returning to that model.” Smith called that comment “strange,” as it would mean “rejecting and undoing Olasky’s vision for a team of journalistically trained staff writers,” so soon after Olasky’s departure.

In October 1956, the original editors of Christianity Today, including Carl F.H. Henry declared:

“CHRISTIANITY TODAY has its origin in a deepfelt desire to express historical Christianity to the present generation. Neglected, slighted, misrepresented — evangelical Christianity needs a clear voice, to speak with conviction and love, and to state its true position and its relevance to the world crisis. A generation has grown up unaware of the basic truths of the Christian faith taught in the Scriptures and expressed in the creeds of the historic evangelical churches.”

Sadly, Christianity Today has long ceased to represent “evangelical Christianity” with a “clear voice,” or even “to state its true position and its relevance to the world crisis.” When evangelical Christian and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2023, Christianity Today borrowed reporting from a wire service instead of covering the historic news from a distinctly evangelical perspective. On Easter weekend in 2025, Christianity Today published an article falsely suggesting that Jesus was not nailed to the cross.

With the most recent scandal, Christianity Today is not even representing evangelicals at all, but rather following the lead and indulging the musings of the culture. The central claims of the Elliot piece come from William Snell, a historian specializing in queer studies at New York University, and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, a feminist whose last published book was titled “Omnigender: A Trans-religious Approach.” For their sake, Christianity Today is trying to rewrite the history of one of the most beloved female Christian authors of the 20th century — just the sort of representation every evangelical wasn’t hoping for.

What Is the Point?

It’s worth asking the question, what purpose is the Elisabeth Elliot article supposed to serve? Christianity Today had to know the piece would provoke controversy — they did un-publish it, after all. So to re-publish the article, they must have thought it served some purpose. But who is edified by this speculation about unproven secret sins of a saint who has now passed on to be with the Lord?

As far as the article itself provides any hint, the purpose seems to be eroding evangelical stigma against same-sex attraction. Austen wrote, “There should be nothing shocking or scandalous about the mere discovery that Elliot was attracted to women as well as men.” (In other news, Austen is publishing a children’s book on Elisabeth Elliot with Crossway Publishers, scheduled for a February 2027 release.)

On the contrary, all same-sex attraction constitutes a shocking affront to God’s good order in creation. If being a Christian means anything, it means that we follow Jesus and conform our thoughts to him. When asked about the hot-button sexual issues of his day, Jesus appealed to Genesis 1-2 as an authoritative pattern, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matthew 19:4-5). Sexual intimacy should be reserved for the context of marriage, which Jesus defines as a union of one man and one woman.

Paul exhorts the church at Philippi, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). And he exhorts the Ephesian church, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).

Does this idiosyncratic theory about Elisabeth Elliot build up the church in any way? Is it true, pure, lovely, or commendable?

It certainly does not promote God’s glory in the eyes of the world. A secular blogger noticed and responded with a title sniggering with unholy glee, “Evangelicals Admit Their Great Sex Teacher Was Queer.”

“The scandal here is not Elliott,” wrote Boyce College Professor Denny Burk. “The scandal is that the article provides exactly zero evidence to support the claim that Elliott was a bisexual. Zero. None. Nada.”