WASHINGTON—When Robin Voss walked into a seminar on what the Bible teaches about homosexuality at a Presbyterian church in Newport Beach, Calif., she expected to hear an anti-gay message—and she didn’t expect to like it.

Voss, a progressive Christian, was in the process of church-shopping with her husband, who is more conservative. They came to Saint Mark in their quest for a church where they would both feel comfortable.

Attending the seminar in March, 2003 was Voss’s strategy for checking out what kind of place Saint Mark was. To her surprise, what she expected to be an anti-gay polemic steeped in a literalist view of the Bible was something entirely different.

Instead, the hours-long seminar spelled out another interpretation of the biblical texts frequently used to suggest God is anti-gay. This view tried to put these oft-cited passages from Genesis, Leviticus and Romans in historical context and re-evaluate what they mean for believers today.

Voss was intrigued. “I saw people responding to content that was so different from what literalists give people from the pulpit,” she said.

The seminar was given by the Rev. Steve Kindle, a Disciples of Christ pastor and founder of Clergy United for the Equality of Homosexuals. Kindle offers information based on 15 years of studying this issue and discussing it with colleagues like his former pastor the Rev. Robert Cornwall.

After the seminar, Voss and Keith Lewis, a friend she’d brought along for moral support, approached Kindle. They told him they’d like to make a documentary about what he was teaching.

That meeting set the wheels in motion for making “For the Bible Tells Me So,” a film that combines the content of Kindle’s seminars with the stories of five Christian families who learn one of their children is gay. Two of the families are well known: that of former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and that of Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopalian bishop.

The film was entered in a number of film festivals and is currently being screened in various cities throughout the country. It has also won several awards and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Voss and Lewis are executive producers.

In the documentary, clergy including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Rev. Peter Gomes of Harvard make some of the same theological points Kindle does in his seminars.

Like Kindle’s seminars, “For the Bible Tells Me So” tries to give both sides of the story. Its success in doing so is limited, party because the Evangelical leaders invited to appear in the film all declined, according to Voss.

Though his participation in the movie diminished as filming proceeded, Kindle does make an onscreen appearance.

Born in North Dakota in 1943 and a pastor since 1967, Kindle never expected to be in a movie. But then, he would not have expected to head an organization like Clergy United, either.

Though he travels the country explaining how passages from Genesis and Leviticus can be reconciled with accepting gays and lesbians, this was not always Kindle’s view.

“I was very homophobic when I began my ministry,” Kindle said.

The biggest factor in what changed his mind, Kindle said, was meeting gay and lesbian people, many of them Christian, and watching his stereotypes dissolve.

These interactions led him to begin reading up on the issue, and eventually developing a different perspective.

Kindle began to organize his seminars. He also talked his ideas through with another pastor, the Rev. Robert Cornwall, who led the church he’d started attending.

Like Kindle, Cornwall was reconsidering his views on homosexuality.

Cornwall attended Fuller Theological Seminary, which he describes as “not the most conservative Evangelical, but still Evangelical.”

Fuller helped shape Cornwall’s views, he said.

“I thought you should treat gays with respect, but that that lifestyle was not acceptable to God,” Cornwall said. “They should be welcome, but we should expect them to change, to be heterosexual or celibate.”

But then his brother came out.

“I had to make a choice of how to approach that,” Cornwall said. “I love my brother, I know him well. I had to start studying, reading, talking to people. I began to move in a new direction.”

After Kindle joined his church in Santa Barbara, Cornwall attended one of his seminars.

“It helped me deal with passages of scripture,” Cornwall said. “I am somewhere between where I was and where Steve is.”