They call them adolescents for a reason.

August 7, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

“Among teens, who’s gay is less clear than in past” — USA Today August 7, 2009

“TORONTO — Who’s gay and who’s not is less clear than it used to be among today’s young people — and that’s complicating how researchers conduct studies on the sexual behavior of teens and young adults, a developmental psychologist who studies gays, lesbians, and bisexuals told a session today at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association here.”

Well, yes, but what it means to be adolescent is also less clear than in the past, and adolescence has never been the time of life for clarity.  I remember being 15 at a time when I, and most every body else I knew, were sort of sullen and non-communicative, at least around adults, even if we were brash, wacky and highly verbal when running in our own packs.  The generation gap is hardest to bridge with teens because teens don’t want to bridge it.  They have good reason to be wary of adult motives in prying into their inner lives.

And adolescent feelings are about as firm as Jell-O.  They can be squished, mashed and remolded easily by the press of peer pressure, and may or may not return to their original shape.

“In his presentation, Savin-Williams [Ritch Savin-Williams of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., a clinical psychologist] cited several studies on the way teens categorize their sexual preferences and behavior, to illustrate the difficulties researchers have in studying adolescent sexuality. Some describe themselves as ‘mostly heterosexual.’”

Knowing whether one is lesbian/gay may not be easily identified by anyone who is trying to surf the waves of pop culture, 21st century America, adolescence, endless war, 24/7 communications, global shortages and an economy that continues to circle the drain.  We are a nation of people who don’t want to commit—and self-revelati0n takes a form of commitment, is it not?  The only thing that forces young adults to be less fluid and more self-revealing about their sexual behavior is if it somehow gets entangled with love. 

Why bother to identify as LGBT or heterosexual if I have no particular love object? As we used to say about homosexuals two generations ago, you can always excuse your sexual behavior:   “Jesus I must have been really drunk last night.”  But when you actually (intended or not) fall in love with someone of your own gender, it is almost impossible not to admit to yourself or at least one or two friends that yes, you are queer. 

Peer pressure forces many teens to conform to their social group’s expectations.  If you think of our entire culture as also another social group, perhaps today’s adolescents are trying to read the tea leaves in America to see whether it is safe to come out or to self-disclosure a sexual orientation.  After all, we have people ranting and screaming out there on both extremes about human sexuality and homosexuality.  Which one will win when the dust has settled?  If the striaghts win the culture war, then maybe I better say I’m mostly heterosexual, or if I’m courageous I might say that I don’t like labels and don’t want to be labeled.  Or if the LGBTQ people are winning the culture war, I can gradually push my closet door further open.  Are today’s adolescents uncertain of themselves or just evasive?

Adolescence is just too unstable and fluid by almost every other measure as well as sexuality.  So these findings do not contribute a lot to the “nature vs. nurture” arguments about the “cause” of homosexualty.  Today’s kids, like the generations before them, are clueless about what they want to do/be when the grow up and nearly everything else because, … they are adolescents.

“Savin-Williams, who has written several books on adolescent development, including the 2005 book, The New Gay Teenager, says he’s in the midst of work to find out more about those who are particularly vulnerable.”

I’m not familiar with this book, but it be worth a look. Has anybody out there read it?

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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The Biblical Issue in Three Parts: Part Three

August 6, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This is the third and concluding part of the discussion of Acts 15, continuing from yesterday.

What do I mean by “internal evidence”? I mean these obscure references in the “short list” of four commandments which are themselves now quite obsolete. Christians gave up even minimal imitation of kosher laws long ago.

Internal to the Christian church we decided that avoiding what has been strangled (the manner in which animals were killed and prepared as food) or meat which has not been drained of its blood (Leviticus 17:15) was not a defining doctrine of the Christian faith. Thankfully, we are again more aware that as stewards of God’s creation we should be concerned for the humane treatment of animals, including animals which are raised for slaughter for human food. But nowhere do I see Christians damning one another over the inhumane or humane treatment of animals, or citing the Bible as the final word.

But external to the Christian church, another of these minimum prohibitions has also become quite irrelevant. To my knowledge, there are no meats being sold in the supermarkets today which have already been ritually sacrificed to pagan gods. I think that sort of went out with ancient paganism, and even today’s neo-pagans (oh my!) haven’t re-relevantized Acts 15:20, 29.

Now, how do we have conversation with those sisters and brothers who don’t approach Scripture, or approach Acts 15, the way we do? Often their method of biblical interpretation is far less sophisticated: if you can flip and point to it somewhere in the Bible, you can use it. In other words, if you can read it and quote it, you can slap it on somebody and insist “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.”

There is where I look back to some of the testimony in Acts 15 again. I’ve quoted Peter’s testimony previously in this blog. It is important, because he is speaking directly to other Christians who had opposing points of view. They were the so-called Judaizers, those who insisted that for a Gentile to become a Christian he must first become a Jew and take upon himself all the commandments of Judaism including the commandment that he be circumcised.

^{7 After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. 8 And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; 9 and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. 10 Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? 11 On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”}Simon Peter, like Bishop Rogness in the St. Paul Area Synod of the ELCA, is acknowledging that he sees the work of the Holy Spirit in the deeds and wonders of the church. Peter saw the work of the Spirit in the faith and life of Gentile believers who had come to Christ. Bishop Rogness saw the work of the Spirit in congregations led by lesbian or gay pastors (and drawing into Christ’s body LGBT people of faith).Clearly, this steps beyond the relatively simple issues of what the Bible says and what it means. This steps into the area of trusting that God is alive and present today, that we Christians who are living today are entrusted not only with the content of faith—the doctrine which everybody from Peter Akinola to Fred Phelps to Gene Robinson all say they believe and want to preserve—but with the witness of faith lived in the presence of the living Spirit of God.Clearly, the Bible does not settle all questions of Christian faith. It contains all we need, however, to ask the relevant questions of Christian faith. And it provides guidance for answering them, not final answers.

It has been said a million times or so (I have lost count, actually) that the only way people change their minds about LGBT people is when they meet them and come to know them. This works first among families, when a gay son or a lesbian daughter shares his or her discernment of sexual orientation. Then tears are shed and words are said, some of which are regretted later. But finally people come around and realize that loves makes a family, not gender. The family regains the son or daughter it thought it would have to kick out the door. And what is lost is prejudice and homophobia.

This could also be said of the Christian family. The only way Christians will change their minds about LGBT people is when they meet them and come to know them. Lesbians, gay men, bisexual persons and most recently those who are transitioning from male to female or female to male, have come forward to be honest and tell their stories and also express their abiding faith in God’s grace. And like Simon Peter, and Peter Rogness, the church really finds that it must re-open its arms to its own—because the Bible tells us that this is the way Christ wills it to be.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Sex, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Ministry, Faith, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

The Biblical Issue in Three Parts: Part Two

August 5, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Friends, we are still in Acts 15, continuing from yesterday. The third part appears tomorrow.

James was serving as the presiding elder of the church, in much the same position as Bishop Rogness or any other bishop. He expressed not his opinion but his decision, based on the testimony brought to him that God had done many signs and wonders among the Gentiles—among people whom other strict conservative Christians considered reprehensible and outside the grace of God. James references both the Scripture (Simeon and the prophets) and the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the immediate context of this decision. In drafting the letter which communicates this apostolic decision, James and the other apostles said this:

^{23 “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. 24 Since we have heard that certain persons who have gone out from us, though with no instructions from us, have said things to disturb you and have unsettled your minds, 25 we have decided unanimously to choose representatives and send them to you, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 26 who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. 28 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: 29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”}Please note: “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” This is the amazing confidence —apostolic certainty of faith—that the church has the authority from Christ himself to relax the rules and lighten the load, to “impose no further burden” than the essentials. Out are the complete 613 mitzvot or commandments of the Torah. All that is left are four essentials.The “essentials” of course don’t seem to make sense to us now. The human story moves on. The essentials in their day were to avoid foods that had been offered as sacrifices to idols, from blood, from what has been strangled — these seem to be hold-overs from kosher food law — and from fornication (in Greek, porneia).

This last is serious because it makes the “short list” of four things which Gentile believers should avoid. It is the only one of the four which has anything to do with sexuality, by the way. Problem is, we can’t say with absolute certainty what the early church meant by porneia, except we get the English word “porn” from it. It probably refers to prostitution or to sexual relationships which break the marital covenant, that is, infidelity. The notes in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible NRSV (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003) says that fornication “likely refers to marriage with a close relative.” Incest, in other words.

“Conservative” Christians and fundamentalists, however, liberally expand their sense of what “fornication” means to include far more than what is meant in the original Greek New Testament. They include everything they want to condemn.

And for our purposes here, this is the sticking point: Does fornication also mean sex between two persons of the same sex because it is outside of heterosexual marriage? Is the intent here, in this key passage, to draw strict boundaries and remove all “wiggle room,” to build a wall or draw a line in the sand, to declare a “culture war” against anything that steps over the line? Obviously, conservatives and fundamentalists have drawn that line, and they insist that the Bible backs them up.

But the clear message in Acts 15 is that James’ decision, and the guidance of all the apostles in reaching this decision, was not to build walls but to tear them down, not to draw a line in the sand or declare a war, not to exclude but to include any people of faith (Gentiles) who had been very rigidly excluded by the religious rigors which the apostles are consciously abandoning.

I repeat part of the quote from Bishop Peter Rogness: “There are some who will simply say Leviticus calls homosexuality an abomination and that ends it. The problem with that, of course is that that reasoning would have most of us sinning because of wearing clothes with mixed threads or eating unclean foods or all the other things the Leviticus Holiness Codes condemn. Yet some of Leviticus we still take very seriously. So interpretation is involved.”

Catch the final phrase here: “So interpretation is involved.” Christians of the Lutheran Reformation have always been conscious that in order to be faithful to Scripture we must continually interpret that Scripture in the light of a changing world. The interpretive issue on the human sexuality and homosexuality question mostly comes down to two different questions to pose after reading and analyzing Acts 15.

1. Does the decision reached by this Jerusalem council give Christians a new final answer to our moral questions under the Law of Moses in particular and the teachings of the Bible in general? Or,

2. Does the process used by this Jerusalem council give Christians a model and a set of tools by which we are to draw our own conclusions and offer our own guidance for lives of faith in our times?

Clearly, we know that Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are not the final word from the Christian Bible on sexuality (these anti-same-sex rules are part of the 613 commandments or mitzvot of Judaism, and they did not make James’ short list). But we must together wrestle with whether or not Acts 15 is the final answer, sort of a “replacement commandment,” or a new approach to finding our own answers on moral questions.

It is pretty clear that I think the second is the correct interpretation. I say this not because it is self-serving, or because the Levitical laws and their threat of capital punishment is thereby set aside (they are already set aside for Christians either way you want to read Acts 15). I say this because the internal evidence of James’ decision reveals to us that all Christians must be prepared to hear testimony, listen for the guidance Holy Spirit, be surprised when a changing world invites a changing faith response on the part of Christ’s followers, which can easily have tectonic implications equal to the decision which stopped the practice of circumcision and set aside the commandments in the first century church.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Part Two appears tomorrow.

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The Biblical Issue in Three Parts. Part One.

August 4, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The following three blogs are lengthy because I took the freedom and opportunity to finish something I had started—to address those conservative Christians who are not merely opposed to homosexuality but passionately angry about the presence of gay and lesbian people in the Church, and who insist that they cannot reconcile because we have very different understandings of the authority of Holy Scripture. I am also posting these essays on my Gay Catechism web site.

Kudos to ELCA Bishop Peter Rogness for his report to his St. Paul Area Synod Assembly in May. The full text just appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of the Network Letter (Lutheran Network for Inclusive Vision), and on line at the Synod web site. It is six pages, but worth reading all of it. 

Rogness’ main subject is to express his own views, values and teaching in response to the proposed ELCA Sexuality statement and particularly to the proposed changes to Lutheran policy which still currently tries to exclude LGBT people from the ranks of its clergy.

More and more, people are saying what the big fight in the Christian church about sexuality is over is really how we read scripture.

I quote only Rogness’ summary of Biblical issues in the context of what conservatives insist is clearly condemned in the Bible.

“People are right to take Scripture seriously in this conversation; we wouldn’t be Lutherans with integrity if we didn’t.

“There are some who will simply say Leviticus calls homosexuality an abomination and that ends it. The problem with that, of course is that that reasoning would have most of us sinning because of wearing clothes with mixed threads or eating unclean foods or all the other things the Leviticus Holiness Codes condemn. Yet some of Leviticus we still take very seriously. So interpretation is involved.

“We begin with the basic question of whether what we speak of today—faithful, lifelong relationships between two persons of the same gender—is what the few biblical references are speaking to, and the answer is, probably not. We probably understand some things about sexual orientation differently today. But that doesn’t mean the Bible is irrelevant on this matter, or has no guidance to offer. . .

“This leads us to a point where, … very astute, committed, biblically-grounded scholars can come to different conclusions. The Bible clearly holds marriage between a man and a woman as a holy estate. It also holds before us the value of trusting and loving care for one another in families—and in all other relationships. And then it’s left to us, with humility, to recognize Paul’s words that “now we see in a mirror dimly,” [1 Corinthians 13:12] and, faithful to what we know of God revealed in Scripture, to make our best judgment.”

I wish there was room to include Rogness’ entire report. He is deliberate and thorough in working through the logic of agreeing with the ELCA Task Force recommendations on ministry policies to allow partnered lesbian or gay persons to serve as clergy of the church—a somewhat different conclusion (but a liveable one) that that of the Episcopal Church’s general convention two weeks ago.

Rogness’ thinking has obviously been affected by his own pastoral experience with the clergy and congregations of his synod. “In St. Paul and Minneapolis, we have several congregations where openly gay or lesbian persons, trained and gifted for ministry, have served because their congregations called them to serve,” he writes. “We are prohibited from placing them under call on the [clergy] roster. But anyone who is familiar with that ministry can’t dispute that something good is happening there.”

I am somewhat familiar with one of them, Reformation-St. Paul Lutheran Church in St. Paul, MN. With countless other dear friends in the movement, I was there for the extraordinary (extra ordinem = without the permission of the Bishop) ordination of Pastor Anita Hill, an extraordinary pastor and leader.

Rogness’ reference to her ministry closely parallels the experience in the early church when controversy threatened to tear the tiny community of Christ’s followers apart over whether or not to accept Gentile believers into full communion with Jewish believers without these converts having to first submit to circumcision (dear Lord, is it always about sex?). In Acts 15 we have the direct report of that first “Church Council” meeting:

^{1 Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. 3 So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the believers. 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. 5 But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.”}Remember the Brick Testament? I talked about this chapter most recently on April 29. It is one of the premier texts we have on how disagreements in the church of Christ ought to be approached. ^{12 “The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. 13 After they finished speaking, James replied, “My brothers, listen to me. 14 Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. 15 This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written,16 ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up,17 so that all other peoples may seek the Lord — even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called.}Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things ¹⁸ known from long ago.’

19 Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, ²⁰ but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Part Two appears tomorrow.

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