Ryan Struyk is a member of the Christian Reformed Church of Washington, D.C. He graduated from Calvin University in 2014, and he won the school’s young alumni award in 2021. He is a former Banner news correspondent, and he was member of a CRCNA synodical study committee to provide pastoral guidance on same-sex marriage. He was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He works as a television news producer.
Today marks one decade since I came out publicly for the first time.
It has been a long journey with many emotional moments—from crying in my car with close friends on my university campus to growing to accept who I am today. But it’s also been a journey into greater knowledge of Scripture—growing a deeper appreciation for who God is and how Reformed theology shapes our view of our world.
This essay marks a milestone in that journey. Too often the debate over same-sex marriage is reduced to trying to sidestep a few tangential passages or throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. Instead, we need a comprehensive Reformed theology of marriage that honors the full arc of Scripture from creation to eschaton.
I will be the first to admit that I do not have formal theological training. However, the Christian Reformed Church has been derelict in its duty to engage the modern arguments on same-sex marriage in good faith. Pastors and office-bearers who have questions about the merits of our position are now banned from asking them. And LGBTQ individuals like myself have been abandoned to sort through the patchwork of modern arguments for same-sex marriage on our own. Our LGBTQ children deserve better. In that spirit, I humbly present this Reformed theological argument for same-sex marriage for discussion in our denomination and beyond.