Nutting contended that the conflict between Gordon's devoutly held Christian ideals and his sexuality made Gordon deeply ashamed of himself and he attempted to expiate his wretched, sinful nature by seeking a glorious death in battle. Behrman wrote that the first part of Nutting's thesis, that Gordon had a death wish is generally accepted by historians, but the second part, that Gordon was a homosexual is still the subject of much debate. In his "Mission to Khartum—The Apotheosis of General Gordon" (1969) John Marlowe portrays Gordon as "a colourful eccentric—a soldier of fortune, a skilled guerrilla leader, a religious crank, a minor philanthropist, a gadfly buzzing about on the outskirts of public life" who would have been no more than a footnote in today's history books, had it not been for "his mission to Khartoum and the manner of his death", which were elevated by the media "into a kind of contemporary Passion Play".