This memoir recounts how one man’s disheartened questions and comments to his pastor, the Rev. Jimmy Creech, inspired Creech to advocate for the rights of gay people in the church and society as a whole. In “Adam’s Gift” (Duke University Press; $30), Creech tells how he overcame the stereotypes he’d grown up with about sexuality and homosexuality, and how his compassion for Adam’s plight led Creech to become a militant champion of the movement toward freedom and justice for gays despite the risk to his future, his livelihood and his personal safety.

As devoted as he is to the church, Creech was troubled by Adam’s revelation to him that Adam was hurt by the church’s condemnation of homosexuality. Although Creech didn’t realize it immediately, Adam’s visit that day in the mid-1980s set the rest of Creech’s life and ministry on a new course.

He writes: “While I knew the church did much good, I was not unaware of the harm it had done and could do. Because I’d seen how the church had supported and promoted racism in the South, anointing racial segregation and the myth of white supremacy as God’s will, making God the enemy of racial equality and justice, the holy oppressor of black people, I knew that the church I loved was capable of the spiritual violence that Adam had described to me. I’d also witnessed Southern prejudice against Jews, Roman Catholics, and women, often supported by the church. These were injustices that I knew the church had acknowledged and repudiated. Now, however, Adam had revealed another injustice that the church had not acknowledged, one that I had not known before.

“As a pastor, my mission was to help people overcome whatever damaged them spiritually, whatever diminished their capacity to trust God’s love, to love others, and to love themselves. I’d never imagined sexuality to be an issue of justice, much less a spiritual one.”

Because of the dignity and integrity of people like Adam in his pastoral care, Creech began to pursue his research about homosexuality, the Bible, and the church. (The issue of homosexuality in a religious context never came up during his four years of biblical studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill or his three years at Duke Divinity School.) Creech devotes a chapter to his findings in biblical passages, the social sciences and history and to the fact that the words defining sexual orientation originated with psychologists in the late 1800s. He learned, for instance, that the biblical story of Sodom in Genesis is about intended male-against-male violent rape with political inferences – not about caring sexual intimacy. In that chapter, he also confesses to fighting the old culturally conditioned assumptions about sexuality which were ingrained in his upbringing. He concludes the chapter with the knowledge that books changed his mind and the humanity of these people changed his heart.

A section of the memoir is devoted to Creech’s personal story. He tells how devastated he was when his first wife, Merle, whom he married in 1967, a month after graduating from UNC, wanted a divorce. They had one child, a son, now a professional musician. Creech contemplated suicide, but he couldn’t give in to the urge: “There were always things I needed to do, parishioners I needed to visit, a wedding to prepare for, a death and funeral that got in the way. ... My love for my son and my sense of obligation to the church kept me alive.”

Something he heard in a lecture he heard at Duke also helped: “Don’t measure the value of your life by what you get out of it.” He realized that he was measuring his life by what he was losing; he didn’t recover overnight, but he started to think of what he had to offer, what he had to give, a reason to live. The record shows that what he has given has made a difference on an immeasurable scale, in the long run.

A wry act of fate led to Creech’s meeting the woman he would later marry. He supported the AIDS Service Agency of Wake County. In 1989, the president of the agency, noting that there was no clergyman on the board, nominated him. After much discussion, all but one member agreed to vote for him. The lone dissenter was the agency’s vice president, Chris Weedy, a senior clinical worker at Duke. A few years later, she became Mrs. Jimmy Creech.

Because of his years of activism and civil disobedience in fighting unpopular causes, advocating for full civil and human rights and officiating at same-sex commitment ceremonies, Creech twice was tried for violating the Order of Discipline of the United Methodist Church. The first time, he was acquitted; however, in the second trial, he was found guilty by all 13 jurors. The transcripts of both trials are revealing, sermons in themselves; the plea for making a difference is spelled out in compassionate terms. There also are legal arguments on the side of Methodist discipline. The second trial brought to an end a 29-year relationship with the United Methodist Church as an ordained minister.

“The ordination that was taken from me by the jury was given to me by the United Methodist Church,” he writes. “It belonged to the church, and the church had a right to take it back. ... But the alternative I had was to deny that gay people were being persecuted by the church I served and to turn my back on what I knew to be morally right and just.”

Anecdotal and deeply felt, this book includes almost 20 color photos, extensive notes and an epilogue, bibliography and index.

Adam, of course, is a pseudonym; he died of a heart attack in 1990.

The Creeches live in Raleigh.