September 21, 2008 by PD.

I was recently invited to another event intended to bring together conservative and inclusive churches over the issues of GLBT sexuality and the Christian message. One of the sponsoring conservative organizations has on its web site a statement about “the authority and power of the Bible.”

I would probably use the phrase “authority and applicability” to discuss the Scriptures in terms of most contemporary issues. While we like to hold to the idea that the Bible is eternally valid and timeless, it has been almost two thousand years since the writers’ ink was dry, and let’s face it, much of the Scriptures seem irrelevant to the world. I spend a huge portion of my Bible Study teaching time simply trying to explain the context, language, history, culture and curiosities of the Bible so that people are not completely lost or baffled.

But it is easy to get snared in all that stuff to the extent that people are still not fed spiritually because year after year the Jewish and Christian scriptures slip further into history. Dedicated scholars — God bless ‘em— devote their lives to unearthing and bringing forward that both the details and the divine message in the Bible. But there are millions of people on this planet who will never give the Bible that kind of attention, and if we quibble and quarrel over every last word of it we are still failing to communicate God’s message to all humanity.

Then there is the problem of human sexuality which doesn’t fit the picture of either sexuality or love portrayed in either Testament. Christians are dividing from other Christians over issues of human sexuality, when all that should truly unite us is our trust and faith in God’s promises.

I always insert the term “applicability” into conversations about “authority” and “infallibility.” The Bible has the highest authority, but not every word is useful to us today. the best example is that much of the Hebrews scriptures are written to address the terms of the covenant between God and the Hebrew people as an ancient nation. None of us—not even the Jewish people—today are part of that nation. Can we therefore insist that every Christian must recognize every word of the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative for us today? That would mean that we would have to require circumcision, and also take rebellious teenagers and stone them to death.

The list is long of things which no Christian today would in his or her right mind say is applicable to our life in Christ. Obviously there are different lists which we all maintain. But to flatly insist in the totality of the Scripture being authoritative is untruthful, and to reject other Christians because they will not obediently sign on to this view is disingenuous and itself disobedient to Christ who commanded us to love one another and to abide in his love.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Sex, Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian | Print | No Comments »

August 8, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

This past Thursday, the Los Angeles Times ran a story from Orange County on a  Christian bikers group—you know, those people who wear lots of black leather gear and have fierce tattoos and drive enormous, intimidating motorcycles which make a lot of noise.

But this article said a Christian bikers group, known as the “Set Free Soldiers”, describing themselves as “a group of men who love Jesus and love to ride hard”  was founded by an ex-convict and ex-drug addict, Phil Aguilar over 25 years ago, after he became a Christian in prison.

This isn’t exactly my cup of tea (but then I drive a Prius, more conservatively than any other car I’ve had, to maximize my mileage). But I figure, like a lot of folks, well maybe they can reach people that ordinary churches can’t.

Steven Sawyer’s long-haired, tattooed Jesus.

The story wasn’t about this unusual ministry to ex-felons and ex-druggies, however.  The story was about seven members of the Set Free Soldiers being arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. Aguilar is being held on $1 million bail and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. All this after a double stabbing and a nasty brawl with some of the Hells Angels in a bar in Newport Beach that required 150 officers, including SWAT teams and Federal drug agents, to round up.

It sounds like a ”B movie” script, with the “biker soldiers of God” in a do-or-die struggle with the “biker soldiers of Satan.” Except, this is no black hat and white hat drama.  According to the Times, a neighbor of the Set Free Soldiers’ leader in Anaheim described the group as having a history of intimidating the neighbors and having taken over the neighborhood.  For the past several years, apparently, some of the Set Free Soldiers have even been carrying guns. 

This is a Christian bikers group? These are men who love Jesus?

LA Times caption:  Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

An officer stands watch after an early morning raid by the Anaheim  Police department on several homes in Anaheim occupied by the Set Free Soldiers Christian motorcycle group.

I cannot help musing over some of our own times’ most-fun rhetorical questions. What would Jesus ride? What would Jesus wear? Who would Jesus intimidate? What weapon would Jesus carry?

I think this all makes the point that even Christian people are not clear on the concept. There are still a lot of goody-good Christians out there, who are staid, conservative, boring, and digging in their heels against every social change.  Then there are liberal Christians who embrace every social change, buy into the latest fads, and have nearly forgotten that the Scriptures call us to self-discipline and self-denial, and expect Christians to take up the cross and follow Jesus. And there are Christians whose worship services are indistinguishable from a rock concert, and the decibels would deafen anybody over 30.  And there are Christians who still try to retreat from the world, chant ancient-sounding music in monotones, and keep their hands clean from all the grime of this crazy world.

Who are we, and what is our one, single, clear message?  Gay and lesbian people aren’t the only ones who think the Christians are not clear on the concept.  There are millions of estranged people out there who are glad to get away from ours and every other religion because our spiritual teaching is so muddled, or so unspiritual, or so worthless in the real world today with its huge and pressing problems, as to be part of the problem, not part of the solutions.

It takes enormous courage to remain open and loving, liberal and steadfast in what we believe.  It takes more than slippery-slope thinking to be able to affirm same-gender marriage, read the Bible seriously but not literally, give one’s heart and time and resources to total strangers, and try to follow Jesus.  To walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

After all, it’s about Christ, not about us.  Not our prejudices, our politics, our outfits, our bikes, our tats, or our tastes and distastes.  To be a Christian today is going to require all of us to unload our past views and rethink our approach to living faithfully in our times.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

July 11, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

This week I am back from “Hearts on Fire” in San Francisco, and I am charged up about the truth of the Gospel. (Bush Co. would say “truthiness” I think.) But at the same time weighed down by the almost-daily news of some fundamentalist or other ranting about gay and lesbian people going to hell. They keep doing this, more or less successfully among their own constituency, because they insist that gay people are possessed by lust, not love, that we choose to be evil, that we corrupt little children, that we can’t be monogamous, and that the cure for homosexuality is to accept Jesus as our “personal” Lord and Savior. None of their rant, of course, is supported by what the Bible says. But the epistle to the Ephesians that we are saved by grace through faith and not by anything of our own efforts.

Posted in Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

June 15, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

These twelve [disciples] Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. . . . Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. — Matthew 10 

The closer we get to legal gay marriage in California, the more the fundagelicals will rant and rave. They have already written us off as “lost”—damned for sure, going to spend all eternity in the fires of hell. They will continue to look for clever new ways to pronounce shame on people who are now largely impervious to new shame. Meanwhile, we are getting married, and are finding new ways to feel proud.

It always amuses and annoys me that people who are losing influence talk more and more stridently about the “dire consequences” if the world does not listen to them. The panicked, angry voices of hateful Christians has been too loud for too long in America—and they will continue to insist that we are sick or “of the devil.”

As we get closer to Tuesday’s new marital opportunity, even lesbian and gay people are having some misgivings. The media have been picking up on this more and more, since they’ve run out of steam about queer euphoria. Some same-sex couples have determined to sit this one out at least until the November ballot is over. Others are dusting off retro-thoughts from the 1970s that “marriage is an institution—who wants to live in an institution?”

We ourselves still live with some of the internalized homophobia of the early gay rights movement a half-century ago, fearful that we are somehow sick or lost or pathetic, or don’t deserve to be free and happy and gay. We wonder out loud if we are really fit for marriage, or that the (especially male) gay character is inherently commitment-phobic—that we are tramps to the core. “All men are pigs.”

Well, no, really. Thousands of us can’t wait to pay our $70 for a license to accept responsibility for one another for the rest of our lives.

For those right wing folks (who still pretend they don’t know any of us personally), we will remain society’s lepers. They insist we are not only unworthy of enjoying the rights, privileges and respect of the mainstream, but suited only for living in our pathetic ghettoes (creative neighborhoods and designer-perfect abodes filled with high-end consumer products).

It was easier for prejudice before our sense of pride emerged. We were dangerous social lepers when we skulked around truck stops, tea rooms (now reserved for Republican senators) or elementary schools. We were lepers in our pathetic promiscuity.

We were lepers when HIV and AIDS killed off our young, bright and beautiful. The right-wing fundagelicals enjoyed trying, and were highly successful for a long time, in shaming us with such terms as “sodomites” and “homosexuals.” They could describe us with words of seeming precision to elicit immediate understanding and financial support within their donor base.

And the whole reason that straight, right-end Christians portray us in such terms is their desire to keep us isolated by our shame, because of their fear of contamination (by our good taste? our open-mindedness? our sculpted abs?).

But it will be harder and harder to isolate and condemn us when we are highly visible as out couples, husbands, and wives, and when it becomes clear that California is not being incinerated under God’s wrath or falling into the ocean.

In Matthew 10, Jesus says that on the day of judgment God will look with greater tolerance upon Sodom and Gomorrah that upon other places that do not receive Jesus’ word or turn away Jesus’ offer of peace, who refuse hospitality to those who come in his name. The contrast between the self-righteous Christian and the compassionate Christ couldn’t be more stark. Today we are finding that lesbian and gay people are open to Jesus’ word of compassion, and to our offer of peace in his name. It is the right wing which rants and warns of damnation.

In this same chapter Jesus recognizes that ministry will almost certainly trigger controversy. The wolves out there may try to tear us apart, and we should be prepared.

It will not be any different for those of us in the Christian church who welcome couples who want to marry and to revel in the sense of God’s blessing.

Less than 48 hours from now, it will be legal for two women or two men to tie the knot in California. “Gay marriage” will become the new leprosy to the Religious Right. They are expected to spend at least 10 million dollars by November to fight the Supreme Court’s decision. This will be a summer of great controversy because the religious right is seeding it into our society.

In our congregation, there have been, and there will be many more wedding ceremonies for women and men who love one another against all odds. Our hospitality to the lesbian and gay community will never be more thoroughly tested than it will with the legalizing of marriage. But our doors will remain open to lesbian and gay couples simply because Jesus sends us his disciples to serve the outcasts, the lepers and those rejected or harassed by others, and to offer a word of peace, not dire warning.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, HIV and AIDS, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Coming Out, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

May 19, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

It seems that at a time when people are avoiding or rejecting traditional creeds (Latin credo = “I believe”) that they are also embracing personals statements of belief. National Public Radio is still running its “This I believe” series, sponsored by a big corporation. Some are real statements of faith, or values, or at least persuasions about specific public policy issues. A few months ago, a little “fluff” piece in Parade magazine (the throw-away in your Sunday paper) featured Brad Pitt telling you what he believes in. Turns out he believes in his family. Sweet.

So it seems that people who don’t believe in God or in any beyond-ourselves spiritual force do believe in other finite beings, or things, or issues. Is this the great spirituality of our age. Is this all we have to rely on? Ourselves?

Yet the ancient creeds do not satisfy. This being the Christian “Trinity Sunday” or the Feast of the Holy Trinity (yesterday), I thought it deserves comment. But even here, the doctrine of the Trinity (One God in three “persons”: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) has never been universally accepted by all Christians. It isn’t that they rejected the New Testament’s voice on this. They just don’t like the formula, the theology, which developed in the next three or four hundred years.

The ancient creeds are all about God. We don’t see ourselves in them, so we don’t relate to them as being statements that tell us about ourselves in relationship to God. In Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass”, the “Credo” consists of a strophe on the Latin mass credo, but the soloist sings in a rock-and-roll style, “I believe in God, but does God believe in me?”

In a previous study of the Nicene Creed, which is the ultimate test of Christian orthodoxy (for example, Mitt Romney does not really qualify as Christian because Mormons do not subscribe to the Nicene Creed), I was startled to realize that even though it describes Jesus as coming from God, being born of the Virgin Mary, being crucified, dead, buried and raised again, it does not bother to explain why Jesus came, why he died, or what he accomplished. The reason these things were not included in the 5^th century statement of belief, I surmise, is that they were not being disputed the way Jesus’ origins, divinity and equality with “the Father” were being disputed.

At any rate, creeds continue to bore even many Christian church-goers, let alone the larger world. What to do? Well, I have written my own, form time to time — my own “This I believe” statement. Here, in part, is what I had to say for this Trinity Sunday:

Early believers simply said, “Jesus is Lord.” They said that because they were deeply moved by his presence, his healing, his word, his grace, his compassion, and his love. And they said to themselves, we have met the God above in Jesus, and he changed our lives!

But then, they took Jesus away and killed him, and his friends scattered with fear, and almost lost all hope, until they began to remember, Jesus promised that he would never desert them, but give them his Spirit to be with them forever. And this living Spirit, moving Spirit, guiding Spirit is with us to this day. The Spirit is not prompting us to get our doctrines all squared away, or to split hairs over market share in the God-business, or to argue with our brothers and sisters about how God could be three different persons at once. The Spirit is calling us to do something far more simple: to share the same compassion and love and grace and healing which his disciples first experienced in Jesus Christ.

In short, I don’t reject the Nicene Creed. Greater minds than mine wrote it, and defended it as the best explanation of God’s own inner mystery. But I don’t believe in the Nicene Creed, I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe that God created me and cares for me like a Father. I believe that the Spirit dwells within me, to encourage me to do Christ’s work for others. Here is my creed: I believe in a living God, not a statement of ideas. I believe God calls me to live as if my life matters, and to use my life to show others that God’s love matters. I believe that– from the inside out–God’s Spirit works on me, and works with me to help bring God’s saving grace to my small corner of the world.

That is my faith, my belief system. Is it yours? If we could all just say “Jesus is Lord, so let us follow his lead,” wouldn’t that be holy enough to unite all Christians and to make new disciples and to save the world?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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April 7, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

Dedicated to the memory of Marc Anthon Reilly

Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear, having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. —1 Peter 3:15–16, KJV

In the 1980s, Marc came to our small gatherings in an upper room of a church that was uneasy about our being there.  But we talked and talked, as he asked questions and I scrambled to frame potential answers about faith and sexuality, love and ethics.  We challenged each other, and I especially needed that, to better understand my own struggle to keep faith.

When my friend Marc died of AIDS in 1989, I inherited some of his own books, among them a Bible given to him by his family on his birthday, October 14, years before.  Recently, I needed an open Bible for the main photo for my new site site, www.gaycatechism.net (a soft-covered Bible that would flop open for a pleasing picture), and I picked up Marc’s Bible quite randomly from my bookshelf.  The flyleaf was inscribed:

Dear Marc:

This Book contains the Word of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers.

Its doctrines are holy, its precepts immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be saved, and practice it to be holy.

It contains Light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you.  Christ is its grand object, our good its design, and the Glory of God its end.

It should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet.

Read it slowly, frequently, and prayerfully.  It is given to you in life, will be opened at the judgment, and will be remembered forever!

I met them briefly at the end of Marc’s funeral, knowing from his prior warning that they would likely be judgmental.  Most of us shrug off such momentary meetings at funerals, but I was the preacher for that service, and I had done my best to proclaim pure, unadulterated Gospel to everyone present:  to a congregation that had long since gotten over its antipathy to gay and lesbian people, and had become a “Reconciling in Christ” congregation; and to these parents whom none of the rest of us knew, except that Marc had told us they did not accept his homosexuality and probably believed God was punishing him with AIDS.

So, in reading this inscription page, apparently in Mom’s handwriting, I came face to face with what my friend had felt in his own struggle both to live as a beloved child of God and to die an untimely death comforted by friends but estranged from his parents.

What do we make of stuff like this?  LGBTQ people might blame the church, or would blame the parents for this estrangement.  The parents would blame the sin (”love the sinner, hate the sin.”)  The Church would go on studying the issue for another couple of decades, and blame its lack of resources for dragging this out at a snail’s pace.  But what do we make of this?

Personally, I am absolutely sick of hearing about the latest skirmish in the “culture wars” over homosexuality.  But unlike the right-wing person who is equally sick of it, I cannot close my ears or eyes to an unpleasant, tiresome “issue.”  Because I am gay, I must be ready to defend the hope that is within me, and even more, always be vigilant for the possible violence coming at me (whether physical, verbal, psychological, political or judicial) because of the underlying homophobia and hatred, much of it based on this Book.

I don’t formally disagree with the intentions of what Mom wrote to her son —she must have labored over the prose more than a little — but I see within it the smug and pious language of a faith which considers itself so superior to doubt or unbelief.  Why is it that the Christian hope, the Christian Gospel, cannot be proclaimed without this smug, sharp edge in its voice?

“The doom of sinners, . . . [this Book] will be opened at judgment.”  That is the kind of imagery which fundamentalists crave, but which kills relationships, estranges fathers from sons, and launches culture wars.  Can LGBTQ people find words of life here that aren’t dripping with the blood of apocalyptic warnings?  Can heterosexuals love the Lord without constantly arming themselves for a moral Armageddon?

My friend Marc was one of the lucky ones.  He died faithful to a Gospel which his parents did not fully understand, with a degree of honor and respect from the congregation which undoubtedly surprised them.  Through his battle (and his partner’s battle before him) against HIV and AIDS, he did not desert Jesus Christ in a time when cynicism and bitterness could easily have taken him down long before his death.

And thankfully he is not forgotten.  Marc left a small bequest to Lutherans Concerned/Los Angeles to help us carry on our teaching ministry through periodic lectureships.  And his faithfulness left a mark (a marc?) on me that has impelled me to keep teaching, writing and proclaiming the Gospel, without an edge to it.

Thank you, Marc.  I will always remember the gift you gave me through your faith.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in HIV and AIDS, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Faith, LGBT Christian, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

April 6, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

For better or worse I am launching another project that has been lurking in my consciousness and blogosphere for more than a year.  Today, a Gay & Christian Catechism is born (www.gaycatechism.net).

In our times, many lesbian and gay people–or really, sexual minorities of all kinds— know the basic teachings of the Christian faith.  We know about God, the Bible, Jesus, salvation, etc.  We grew up with some religious instruction, in many different Christian denominations.

The Gay Catechism has been written with young adults and adults in mind — to help LGBTQ people who have already come to terms with being a sexual minority person, but now want to come to terms with the Christian faith which has harmed us deeply since we came out to ourselves or others.

For even though many of us had Christian instruction or catechesis as children and teenagers, at some point we walked away from the church and from God.  Some of us even fled from the churches in which we were instructed as children and in which we once had found love, comfort and belonging.

After coming to terms with our sexuality and gender identity, feelings of insecurity, unworthiness, fear or even outright terror simply eclipsed all other aspects of the Christian faith.  In the process of coming to awareness about our sexual orientation or gender identity, and the “coming out” process, it didn’t seem to matter that we had once learned and believed that:

• God is love
• all sins can be forgiven
• we are accepted by God because of God’s grace, not because of our good deeds.

The secondary message which was being taught to us both privately and publicly, was that we are unloved, worthless, and damned.  And this secondary message seemed to erase everything loving, everything good and hopeful and reassuring we had once learned.

Because of this tragedy, two other even worse effects have captivated many sexual minority persons:  many have abandoned all forms of spirituality, thinking that the only thing real is material—wealth, power, pleasure, food, drugs and good times.  And others have simply committed suicide because of the profound suffering they experienced in their spiritually dystonic state:  “God loves everybody, except me.”

From my Mission Statement:

The mission of the Gay Catechism project and this site is to provide a simple framework in which LGBTQ Christians can re-understand their faith with honesty and integrity, and to enable more of God’s children to come home to their faith.

The mission of the Gay Catechism is not to convince hateful, rejective and punitive Christians to change their mind about LGBTQ Christians, although this occasionally happens.  Sadly, most of them have their answers and their answer books, well-rehearsed and cemented into their consciousness so rigidly that they cannot hear a new truth or listen to a different voice.

Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22) and he was speaking about those who were so stuck in spiritual concrete that they could not accept his teaching and follow his lead.  Those who believe that their view of Christ’s teaching is so complete, so perfect, so flawless, are actually in danger of missing his teaching, for he speaks to us in the Bible as a spiritual teacher of enormous openness and flexibility.

So, here goes.  I will keep updating the new site, adding topics according to an outline I’m developing, with bits from Luther’s Small Catechism, from biblical, contemporary and even secular sources.  I would appreciate your feedback.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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

March 28, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I am in the midst of preparing for a gay wedding, the joining of two lives together at the heart—a wedding at which, along with friends and families, I will bless God for the gift of love which two men have found in one another.

This is heresy to the world’s conservative Christians, and it is troubling to those who are out in the middle on this spectrum of love and hate.  As I mentioned recently, we are not considered to even be Christian in the eyes of the right wing (the “religious reich”).

Who or what is a “Christian”?

Dr. Rembert Truluck offers a simple suggestion in his essay, “A Gay Christian Response to Southern Baptists”:  a Christian is one who is Christ-like.  Truluck is not picking on the Southern Baptists.  He has the credentials to take them on as an insider, not an outsider.  He received his Doctor of Theology degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky; he was a Southern Baptist pastor, and even served as a writer of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Lessons for six years.

So when Dr. Truluck suggests that “Southern Baptists ceased to be Christian (Christ-like)” it is worth paying attention to his reasoning.

This is not a stretch, but fundamentally good Bible study: Jesus began his teaching and healing ministry by including people who had previously been left out by his faith tradition. In Luke 4:18–19, we see that Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth, his boyhood home.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Curiously, the passage goes on to say that “the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.”  Meaning that people were watching, and wondering what he meant to imply.  From the very outset, there were those who held Jesus in suspicion because he included people whom others excluded from their faith communities.

Jesus went on to welcome women into circles reserved for men, to praise Samaritans who were hated by Jews, to preach tolerance for the leper, the foreigner, and the eunuch (a sexual misfit if ever there was one).

“Jesus in the Gospels defined his ministry by those he included that previously had been left out,” says Dr. Truluck. “When the people rejected the inclusive message of Jesus, he left town. When Southern Baptists defined themselves by who they left out (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people) in changing the bylaws of the Southern Baptist Convention to exclude any church that accepted openly gay and lesbian members, Southern Baptists ceased to be Christian (Christ-like).”

When I first read this I almost whistled out loud—as if to say that was a brave or even dangerous comment to be so critical of the second-largest Christian body in the U.S., and one that must still believe it has hegemony in political circles.  But as an insider, Truluck is entitled to be severe with that denomination.  More importantly, he is right that one important definition of who is a Christian, or what is Christian behavior, is to make the comparison with Christ and his behavior.  If Christ included those whom others exclude or “preclude” (the ELCA), they are at variance with Jesus Christ.

Of course (if you could ever have a civil discussion with them!), the conservatives would argue that Jesus never included homosexuals.

But that becomes a matter of heated debate over the “dangerous memories” (Dr. Theodore Jennings, The Man Jesus Loved), and somewhat obscure passages of the New Testament.  [See Joe Perez’s review of Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.]

It can be fiercely argued that Jesus and the Beloved Disciple were not gay (John 13:21–26; 19:25–27; 21:20–24); that Cleopas and his companion sharing a home in the village of Emmaus (Luke 24:13–32) were not gay, that the centurion and his pais (lad or boy; Matthew 8:5–13) were not gay. It can also be fiercely—and responsibly—argued that those of us who are LGBT are given clues in these places in the Gospels to “read between the lines”: Jesus means include us, too, who formerly were excluded.

It is not merely a little “side issue” of no particular importance, to include LGBT people, if we see that Jesus defined his ministry and his Gospel by those he included who had been excluded before. In fact, his inclusion is fundamental, central and of the highest importance to what it means to be Christ-like.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Ecumenical Issues, Fundamentalism, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

March 27, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

It is funny–to me–that Christians can get into such arguments about whether one can be gay and Christian, or lesbian and Christian, etc.  Those on the religious extreme right insist that it is impossible, as if to be who we are as human beings is contrary to Christian teaching.  This religious right is not made up only of “Narrow Baptists” in the American “Bible Belt.”  It also includes other fundamentalists, such as Archbishop Peter Akinola of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, who has made it his personal mission to split that worldwide church communion down the middle over homosexuality.

But there have to be some standards, they say, some benchmarks.  They feel that there is a “slippery slope” or a complete sell-out of Christian doctrine if we invite homosexuals in the door.

Aside from the obvious fact that we are already in the door because we were baptized as young people and accepted the faith and have never departed from it, there is something fundamentally wrong with their reasoning.  Let’s take a look:

Christian teaching is first and foremost teaching about Jesus Christ.  It is teaching about God’s gracious redemption of the human race for the sake of Jesus Christ.  It is teaching about the Good News that Jesus died upon the cross in order to reconcile God and humanity.

If there is a standard or a benchmark, it would be the Nicene Creed, which was finalized in the 4^th Century.  This is the same creed that I used to bring some clarity to whether former presidential candidate Mitt Romney is really a Christian.  I didn’t do that on the basis of whether Mitt Romney is a person of great integrity, and lives a clean life.  I did it on the basis of whether Mitt Romney confesses the faith which all Christians have confessed in the defining doctrines which have never changed since the 4^th Century.

A Creed is a concise statement of what a person or a group believes.  The essential thing about this defining document of the Christian faith is that it states what Christians believe about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, the Christian Church and the sacraments.

It does not state what our opinions are about each other. It does not enumerate sins.  It does not set admission standards except this faith in God and Jesus Christ.  It does not include a doctrine about the Holy Bible, so as to whether the Bible is to be taken literally or figuratively in different spots, whether every word of the Bible is binding upon all Christians forever, the Nicene Creed doesn’t even go there.  And most importantly, it makes no statement about human sexuality.

Is the argument over homosexuality really an argument of the Bible vs. the Creed?  Those who are extreme right-wing Christians insist that the Bible trumps everything else.  Yet the Bible, even more than the historic Creeds and other dogmatic statements and teaching, must be subject to study and interpretation.  And the Bible itself must ultimately take the back seat to the authority of Jesus Christ.  (”All authority has been given to me…”, Matthew 28:18; “You search the Scriptures…”, John 5:39)

Since at least the year 381 a.d., the Nicene Creed has been the statement which gave Christians unity.  It formed the Church’s catholicity by defining a common faith in God and in the work of Jesus Christ.  It did not attempt to settle all matters, least of all, human sexuality.  After all, we put our faith in Christ, not in sexuality:  not in heterosexuality or homosexuality, bisexuality or asexuality.

Can one “be a Christian” and be LGBT?  To confess my faith in Christ makes me a Christian, whether or not I fully understand myself, my sexuality, my gender, or my fellow believer. Is that clear?

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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March 10, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

One thing I thought I had de facto given up for Lent was blogging. I am overwhelmed with stuff to do, and the extra time for my own reflection has gotten the short end of the deal.

But when I read one of the headlines last Friday which touched a nerve very close to home, I paused to reflect quite a bit. The headline in the Los Angeles Times was the horrifying news that a Palestinian from East Jerusalem entered a Jewish yeshiva (seminary) with an assault rifle and a handgun, and took the lives of eight teenage seminarians before being shot dead by an off-duty army officer and a theological student. Nine more people were also wounded, according to the BBC story.

I still fondly remember my own seminary days, and especially the Library which was really a place of refuge for me as I tried to figure myself out at the age of 22.

According to Haaretz, the seminary’s library floor was covered in blood. Although no one group took credit for the attack at first, Hamas called it heroic and later “flip-flopped.” I call it demonic. This was no suicide killer who could think of himself as a martyr, but he has made defenseless Jewish teenage students into martyrs.

But no one’s hands are clean. We are living in a world grown far more cruel in which every conflict quickly becomes total war. Palestinians see Jewish seminaries of hotbeds of training for the Zionist settlement movement which continues to invade Palestinian territories and make it less and less viable for Palestinians to have a homeland. What do I know? Maybe the Palestinians are right— that theological schools are training grounds of the enemy.

Have we forgotten that the Taliban also operates schools — theological schools for Islam — which the Bush administration identified as the training grounds for terrorists. During the anti-war days in the Vietnam era, American colleges were idealistic hotbeds of resistance. Today’s students in America are far too young to remember the American students who were shot dead by America troops on the campus of Kent State in Ohio. Their martyrdom briefly galvanized the theological schools in Berkeley, and our agitation helped to at least suspend classes for several days in a gesture of shock and remembrance.

I do not doubt there are Westerners or Americans who if it were possible would take violence into Islamic schools with the intention to kill the youth who are studying the Koran. We cannot say, “What is wrong with them?” without also saying “What is wrong with us… the human race?

It seems that every insight leads to a counter-insight, and every point of view to an opposing point of view.  We so quickly divide all reality into “us” and “them.” And once we have “them” defined, it doesn’t take much of a stretch to have “them” in our gun-sights. The Nixon administration so completely and successfully polarized America, that it was no big stretch for the Ohio National Guard troops to see Kent State students as “them,” just as Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s had identified other Americans as “them”—communists and their sympathizers, “pinkos” and perverts.

I do not have a paranoid personality, but at times I suspect— if the present federal Administration were to remain in power much longer—they would eventually come for me, because the cruelty, immorality, greed and dishonesty which has taken over America since 2001 has politicized me as well. I now see too many fellow human beings as “them.” And I confess that my unspoken retort (until this paragraph) is that “they started it”: the fundagelicals, talk-show hosts, defense contractors, Bible-belters, and right-wing politicians (especially those who say thing like “I am not gay” [meaning: “I am not like them“]).

It is my Lenten confession that I too have a lot of trouble seeing every human being as “us” and not writing off the ones I cannot stand as “them.”

I went to the Lutheran seminary in Berkeley, where there was a consortium of schools under the umbrella of the Graduate Theological Union:  six Protestant seminaries and three Catholic ones. We took classes from any of the nine schools as we saw fit.

Wouldn’t it be magnificent if in the aftermath of this terrible bloodshed, in an international city like Jerusalem, there could be a consortium of theological schools, on adjoining campuses, for Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu and other theological students? It would be a powerful witness to all faiths and all the world that we are all “us” and that we have much to learn from one another.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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