Different histories in moving forward.

July 18, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

A couple of weeks ago (okay, I’m slow to process everything. I have a life and a “day job.”) the Presbyterians met in the same city as the Lutherans did 11 months ago, to conduct their periodic denominational business and to change their “gatekeeping” control over their clergy—specifically their LGBT clergy.

The Presbyterians aren’t getting as much press on their decision for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the Unitarians/Universalists, United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have beaten them to it, so the media become less interested. Secondly, this didn’t go as far as the Lutheran decisions, and this may not stick at all.

The action of the General Assembly is similar, in fact, to what their denomination attempted to do several years ago. On the up side 53% of the convention delegates decided to approve policy changes to permit same-gender clergy who are not abstinent—they are sexually active—to still serve as clergy.

But I’m not excited yet for my Presbyterian colleagues. This convention action doesn’t take effect unless a majority of the presbyteries (groups of local churches) agree. Two years ago, 94 of the 173 local presbyteries voted it down (54%). Weeks later, by the way, and that news was off the front page.

The other issue is that unlike the Lutheran decision, the Presbyterian one on July 9 was not connected to a thorough study and official statement about human sexuality that recognized the validity of same-sex intimate relationships. According to Associated Press, the Presbyterian delegates ” decided not to redefine marriage in their church constitution to include same-sex couples.”

Well, the Lutherans didn’t “redefine marriage” either but made some room for an understanding that gay or lesbian couples may have valid relationships. For all the years that Lutheran activists “belly-ached” about the ELCA dodging the decisions by sending out our lives for another study, the last study process actually paid off. It involved more people at more levels of the church in a sincere attempt to understand what LGBT people are about, and especially why we can be people of faith just like heterosexuals can be. In fairness, it’s important to know that many denominations, including Lutherans and Presbyterians, etc. have conducted studies of human sexuality and homosexuality. (Many of them take up chunks of drawer space in my filing cabinets because they were done before you could download them as a PDF file.) But it has been repeatedly observed that the only minds changed by sexuality studies are those who actually participated in them—usually the commission members who read, interviewed, debated and drafted the reports, not the official board which received the reports.

Although it now seems that the ELCA is more progressive than the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. or the United Methodist Church (which rejected gay marriage 15 months ago) continues to dig in its heels for similar reasons—there are thousands of country churches or small town churches that do not want to look at the sexuality issues at all), progress can be a double-edged sword. The partly-approved new Presbyterian policy would allow non-celibate (a misnomer for sexually active) individuals to be ordained and serve as clergy and presumably elders of the church. The ELCA action was more intentional in opening its gates to clergy who are either sexually abstinent or in a lifelong PALM or publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous relationship—a far cry from sexual libertinism.

In effect, the Lutheran decision means that by recognizing the validity of committed same-gender relationships the church expects gay or lesbian people to be held to an ethical standard which is identical, except for the gender of the partner, to a heterosexual marriage. The Presbyterian measure apparently doesn’t go that far because the delegates didn’t want to affirm a redefinition of marriage.

So my gay Presbyterian colleague across town, if this policy is not rejected by 87 local presbyteries who shudder and wince at the thought of a West Hollywood or San Francisco, could be “recognized” as a non-celibate pastor. Since he is single and not coupled let alone married, he would slide into a normalized status without having to cross his fingers behind his back. But my Lutheran colleague across town who is officially “single” but sexually-active in a series of short-term, no commitment, quick-but-not-deep relationships, would likely be scrutinized carefully about his sexual expression and his non-permanent boyfriends. But since I am in a publically-accountable, lifelong monogamous relationship (monogamous for 34 years; the public accountability wasn’t possible until Domestic Partnerships became legal a few years ago) ??  I have nothing to fear from such scrutiny, which doesn’t afford me any smugness. Homophobic people wouldn’t care one whit about the distinction I have raised.  

Change has its costs as well as benefits. Plainly, if LGBT people want to be treated with respectability and to be able to not keep their sexuality and their relationships in a stifling closet, they have to get used to the idea that there are other ethical standards in the community which are broader and more important than the gender of one’s “significant other.”

So while the LGBT/Presbyterian activists may be disappointed that the marriage redefinition failed in convention, and may be further disappointed if the local presbyteries don’t support the one positive decision in Minneapolis, they may have two or more years to get used to additional levels of public accountability.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Sex, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, History, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Blessed are . . . but woe unto!

April 27, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. . . .

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” —Luke 6:20–25

My friend Robert and his wife were visiting for a week from the Midwest. We got into long conversations about how different California is from where they live, and how different the churches are. Robert is African-American, and an astute observer of the almost completely white culture around him, including church culture.

It seems to me that most of all, the line between Christian values and social attitudes gets completely blurred out, so that where you live and what the social setting is like will profoundly impact your faith life. In the part of the Midwest where Robert lives, successful middle and upper-middle class people with Republican politics and conformist social attitudes prevail. He has heard a lot of frustration and anger, for example, over the decision that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America made last summer to finally open its doors to partnered gay and lesbian clergy. And he hears a lot of frustration and anger about politics under the Obama administration. “they’ve taken my country away! I want my country back!” he says dramatically, imitating the big tears from his neighbors and even his brother-in-law.

If there is any one thing which is pulling this country apart, it is the underlying sense of privilege and entitlement held by many of its citizens. the people who currently have and hoard privileges will “squeal like a stuck pig” at the slightest suggestion that they must share those privileges with others who do not have them. (If you pool together all of the individual pleas for justice, equality and a decent life from many quarters that are individually dismissed as “special interests” you get a picture of the great big chunk of our nation’s people who don’t have privileges.)

Of course privilege and entitlement are grounded in or mixed up with a belief in the scarcity of all things. I cannot share my wealth with others, for example, because then I won’t have as much. I cannot share equality or justice with others because then I would suffer injustice. Blah, blah, blah.

Racism is a belief that one’s race entitles one to privileges that persons of another race cannot or should not have.

The current rant about illegal immigration is intimately tied into racism, where “Mexicans” (a conflated label for all Latin Americans used by people who are not Latin American) are the “new niggers.”

People with power and privilege, of course, have always maneuvered everything that power and privilege affords them to keep their power and privilege. Legislators who feel privileged and powerful will write the laws and stack the decks to keep their perks. Banks and insurance companies will continue to rig our entire economic system to keep themselves rich. But when the aggregate of “special interests” team up on them – often called “populism”—people of privilege begin to “stoke the fires of indignation”—a phrase form Rachel Maddow that fits a lot of extremist politics going on right now.

In my view, much of the perpetual partisan impasse in Congress and in state legislatures is grounded in this sense that privilege and entitlement are endangered. Politicians who would rather say “no” to everything are implicitly saying “no change” in the status quo, And to defend the status quo is not to say that the world is perfect the way it is, but to say that my position in the world as it is must be defended at all costs.

From a Christian point of view—not one overly affected by the comfortable social values of the middle and upper classes—defending privilege and entitlement is completely contrary to the Gospel of Jesus. His dire warnings were mostly directed at the privileged classes of his ancient society: the priests, scribes and Pharisees that formed the upper social class. Yes, it seems wrong to mix politics and religion (some readers of this will have quit about eight paragraphs ago!), but the fix for that is to not let the politics of privilege influence our faith in God’s justice and care for all people, especially those who have not privileges or entitlement.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Separate drinking fountains for Christians?

April 22, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Last night at Bible study we turned the page to chapter 4 of John’s Gospel, the famed story of the Samaritan woman at the well, who had previously had five husbands and was now apparently intimate with a man who was not her husband. A lot of people have looked at this and supposed that Jesus turned a blind eye to sexual sin. That is hardly the case, but his answer to sexual wrong-doing is not condemnation but spiritual re-direction.

Nonetheless, the story is embedded in John’s Gospel to remind us that Jesus “stepped over the line” on a lot of issues or public propriety. Later he will stop the religious street mob from killing a woman who had been caught in adultery. He will intervene for a man who had been born blind and was supposed by the religious “groupthink” of the day to have either been a terrible sinner or his parents had been, for him to be punished with blindness. Repeatedly Jesus deflects the religious judgment of petty minds and points to a broader, more compassionate answer to human failings.

The sexual issue is not the first line in this story, however, that Jesus steps across. The first is that he even entered into the region of Samaria. In his time, Samaria was not part of the Jewish homeland. Its people accepted the authority of Moses, and the patriarch Jacob’s well was there on the edge of town. But to the Jews, Samaritans were considered half-breeds or outsiders whose bloodlines were far from pure, and whose religious practices were not “orthodox.”

Samaritans had come to accept this prejudice from the Jews, in a way not too different from how African-Americans accept that white Americans harbor a lot of prejudice today.

When Jesus enters Samaria (which he didn’t have to do except that he felt the necessity to go there for the sake of his mission), he stops at old Jacob’s well and he is thirsty. When a woman comes by to draw water, she accepts the prevail prejudices: that this Jewish man should not even be in Samaria, that this stranger would not approach a woman in public, and certainly that he would not ask her for a drink of water.

The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?”

The fact that Jesus has no bucket is significant for two reasons.  One is that he is talking about spirituality welling up from within one’s soul.  But the situation supposes that the woman could draw water and offer it to him to drink, either from the bucket or from a cup or ladle.  Except that “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.”  The underlying racism of this scene smacks us in the face. It was unthinkable to the Samaritan woman that a Jewish man would want to drink from her bucket or her cup when the two ethnic groups (with a common ancestor) shared nothing in common. The town well was the virtual equivalent of a drinking fountain in our culture.  It was expected and accepted that Jews and Samaritans would not share the same drinking fountain.

So it is not a stretch to see the racial tension in this story.  And it is not difficult to see that Jesus voluntarily steps over the line of common cultural prejudices:  he ignores the fact that men were not to approach women in public, that Jews were never to be involved with Samaritans (or worse, with Gentiles a.k.a. pagans), and especially that they would not share drinking implements. 

With a little prodding and study, Christians can at least “get it” that Jesus breaks down barriers, overlooks or overturns rules, customs, habits, prejudices.  What I do not get, however, is that if Jesus is Lord and he clearly shows that he is no respecter of race or ethnic prejudice, or gender prejudice, how and why can people who claim to follow Jesus (a.k.a. Christians) ever harbor prejudice based on gender or ethnicity (or many other prejudices which we harbor)?

The bottom line is that in all of his teaching—whether with words or by example—Jesus did everything to show his disciples that we must get over our sense of privilege and entitlement.  Until Christians really and fully “get” this, and admit to their own foolish and evil ways in being racist or sexist, etc., they will not get why homophobia is also completely wrong for Christians.  Clearly, there is no way to rationalize away our sense of entitlement or privilege if we follow Jesus, because he will not go there. If we are seeking the path of entitlement or privilege sustained by prejudice, bigotry and hatred, we have taken a different path than the one Jesus is on, and we are no longer his disciples.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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The Two Systems

April 16, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Our Wednesday studies engage a wide diversity of people who are not (yet?) members of our congregation, but who find their spiritual centering in our midst. This week we were discussing this passage at the end of John 3.

31 The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. ³² He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. ³³ Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. ³⁴ He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. ³⁵ The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. ³⁶ Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.

We have talked in the study many times about the overarching power of grace, and the danger of “works righteousness.” Some people “get it,” and others don’t, because they seem to have a great deal invested in their own sense of personal righteousness as dutiful, believing Christians. As I try to probe with them what it is they are “hanging on to” this explanation began to unfold itself for me.

It seems there are basically two rules or systems which may govern our relationship with God and one another. The one is the rule of rewards and punishments. The other is the rule of grace. In the Bible, of course, we find language that is descriptive of both, and so it takes enormous discernment to give weight to each of these and to decide by which rule we will live.Under the rule of rewards and punishments, we will always strive for reward and try to avoid punishment. We will measure our achievement and calculate our relationship both to God and to other human beings on the basis of how we can gain rewards and what we might lose or suffer. The bottom line is that we will expect our behavior and good works (or our abstaining from bad things) counts for something, and that in the end—the judgment day—we will receive the ultimate rewards of eternal bliss, a heavenly mansion, a heavenly banquet, a crown, etc.

But under that rule of rewards and punishments, we become more like Muslims than different from them, for they too hope to receive entrance to Paradise on the judgment day, except of course that their doctrine affords them no advance certainty that God will grant to them the eternal reward.

The rule of grace, on the other hand, cares little about rewards or punishment. We stop measuring our performance against a standard which is impossible. We simply live under grace, honest in the knowledge that we do not deserve it yet confident that we have already received it without measure. Under grace, we are not ultimately terrified about damnation, for the scripture assures us that we may draw near to the throne of grace with confidence.

Moral theology, especially under the definition of the medieval Catholic system, would attempt to marry these two rules together, but in fact that results in a tragic, upended mishmash in which grace must be subordinated to law. When Lutherans insist— relying on where St. Paul tells us that all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, and that all are justified by God’s grace apart from the law— we do not mean that grace is merely the strength we need from beyond ourselves to perform all the required works and deeds and abstinences of moral law. Rather we mean that we are wholly and completely justified —not by any effort on our part nor by refraining from anything, nor even confessing to our sinful nature and our manifold iniquities—only and totally as a free and undeserved gift from God for Christ’s sake.

If it is not the melding of these two rules, which I think is destructive at best, here is the bottom line: It is left to each of us to choose under which rule we will order our lives—whether under the rule of rewards and punishments, or under the rule of grace. If we voluntarily choose the system of rewards and punishments, we may be caught up in a giddy hopefulness for an exclusive parcel of eternal real estate, but in this life we will be preoccupied with fear of punishment and with being given credit for each correct moral choice we make and the sum of our accomplishments.

But if we voluntarily choose the rule of grace, all those things pale before the wonder-filled knowledge of God’s generous love and forgiveness, whereby gratitude for God’s gifts of grace so overwhelms our hearts that our life itself overflows with generosity and compassion.

This topic will be more fully explored on my other web site Gay Catechism. 

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Ecumenical Issues, Living by Grace, Fundamentalism, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

Faithful discernment in reactionary times.

March 30, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

There is little doubt that America and the world are going through “reactionary times.” The whole human race seems to have a “knee-jerk” response to every stimulus, from fundamentalist Islam to fundamentalist Christianity on several continents. Then there is politics, in which it seems every commentator strives to become a loudmouth, and every loudmouth strives to run for office.

We might like to walk away from all this, but the apostles of reactionary thinking hunt us down, invade our privacy, and badger us with inflammatory and indignant dichotomies. If I hear one more person, secular or religious, who declares that the current state of affairs is an “Armageddon” I think I will puke.

(Armageddon, by the way, appears only once in the entire Bible in one measly verse, Revelation 16.16. Its place and meaning are fraught with interpretive pitfalls, but I think it’s interesting that the folks who insist that the entire Bible must be taken literally take this one verse symbolically. If Armageddon is an actual geographical place where the final battle between God and Satan will take place, then that will be in the Holy Land—if anybody can ever figure out where Mount Megiddo is. Even crazier, Rev. 16:16 indicates “the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon,” but alas there is no such word or place in the Hebrew Bible or Hebrew language. Hmmm.)

One thing seems certain to me ~ the final battle between good and evil is not likely to happen in New Brighton, Minnesota (home of the reactionary Word Alone club) or any of the dozen odd places around the U.S. where conservative Lutherans have their shorts in a knot over last summer’s decision by the churchwide assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to allow the ordination of lesbian and gay clergy.

As we have observed in recent months, there are sub-armagiddish battles going on in Lutheran congregations over whether they should stay in the national churchbody or instead run to . . . wherever they think that queers are least likely to turn up, I guess.

Even I have to rethink my time-honed prejudices about red and blue states, open and closed minds and the progressive or retentive expressions of ideas about God and human sexuality. I was delighted to read that as group of 18 current and retired/emeritus faculty from one of our seminaries —not one I had considered “progressive” by any stretch— have decided to speak up in favor of the ELCA’s churchwide decisions, in other words, in support of its discernment that LGBT people are also children of God and full brothers and sisters to other Christians. Faculty from Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina have issued the Columbia Declaration, with an entire web site publishing various resources in support of the ELCA’s actions, including materials with biblical, historical, confessional, practical and missional focus.

Some of these resources tread over well-worn liberalizing paths, but one can hope that perhaps some new people will walk these paths and discover new territory. If you want fresh material to think through these controversies today, I commend the articles published here.

The “Columbia Declaration” (obviously dubbed in distinction from the so-called Manhattan Declaration last fall) says in part,

We believe that the ELCA’s Assembly actions are consistent with the biblical and Lutheran confessional tradition. We therefore support the opening of the roster of the ELCA to qualified and approved candidates for ministry who are in lifelong, committed, publicly accountable, monogamous same-sex relationships. We also support the actions of the Assembly that create the possibility for individual congregations who so choose to bless same-sex unions.May I just quote and echo the concluding remarks of Rev. Dr. Harold F. Park from Southern Seminary: After instituting the Lord’s Supper, Jesus said to the eleven disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you LOVE one another, just as I have loved you.” Jesus did NOT say, “that you AGREE with each other.” Then in His prayer to the Father before being crucified for OUR sins, Jesus prayed, “…that they may all be ONE, just as we are one . . . completely one.” (John 17: 21,23)In reading and applying the Bible, I give much more importance to the words of JESUS than to the words of Paul or the Old Testament writers.Amen.— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Ministry, History, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Prayer in the heart of Hollywood.

March 25, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

The music of Taizé has been around for a generation or more, but continues to grow in popularity, in part because of those who come from around the world to pray in this southern French town are met with simple and direct piety in an amazing blend of experiences.

Taizé was founded by Brother Roger during World War II, quickly became a refuge for Jews escaping the Nazi slaughter, and today draws as many as 7,000 visitors per week.

We have begun to pattern our prayer life on the piety and music of Taizé here in Hollywood. It has begun as a Lenten experiment, will continue on Maundy Thursday next week, and hopefully in the weeks after Easter.

There is no doubt that the experience is monastic — it provides a temporary retreat from the world into pure contemplation. There a re few words, time for silence and easily repetitive prayer. But when monasticism gently opens its arms to the outside world, it is grace.

Better yet, the brothers of Taizé welcome imitation all over the world. Their simple ecumenism fits our emerging church sensibility that the only way to be post-denominational as Christians is to start living like Christians with no prefixes or suffixes.

Even more amazing, doctrine and official dogma clearly are in the back seat or not present at all. The texts give voice to the words of Scripture alone, and interpretation is simply left to the Spirit to bring to each heart. The worship style of Taizé takes seriously the prophetic words of Jeremiah 31, “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD.”

In our experience, the role of the leader is unimportant, and formality is forgotten. Some sit on the floor or on cushions. Different people simply rise to read or to offer pray from the heart.

What is gratifying to many is that this kind of faith and spiritual expression is attracting young people. The music is singable, not complex, not packed with theology, and the mood enhanced by things as un-high tech as candles allows each person to bring what she or he has to offer and place it before God with honesty and simplicity. In our house of worship, each week different people have been close to tears. I hope we can continue this in the future to welcome people who don’t feel they belong in a church on a Sunday morning.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Catholic matters, Bible & Interpretation, Ecumenical Issues, PRAYERS, Faith, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

The “core” of the faith: not about sex.

February 25, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Associated Press had a feature story yesterday on the dissenters who are leaving the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America because of its increasingly liberal agenda. The story, which is even-handed if not totally sympathetic, highlights the experiences of several Lutheran churches—some small and some large— and pastors who have taken action to abandon their membership in the ELCA.

This kind of thing is not new. From time to time for decades thee have been individual congregations who get exercised over one or another issue and cannot countenance having organizational relations with people who do not agree with them on whatever pressing issue of the day is causing a stir.

You can read the full story here: Lutherans seeing fallout over gay clergy issue.

Statistically, the division is insignificant. Only a couple hundred congregations out of the ELCA’s 10,000+ have taken any steps to leave because the ELCA is now on a path to officially welcome lesbian/gay clergy in same-sex intimate relationships. Here in Southern California, we’ve seen a couple of these couple hundred, and most of them have been small congregations, and one or two very large parishes that are full of themselves and must feel a certain economic and egotistic independence.

The thrust of the AP story is that not all these conservative congregations are moving in the same direction. They are splitting off into several different little splinter groups which have formed in the last decade or so as receptacles for them.

The one that has any significance is called Lutheran CORE, headed by one Rev. Mark Chavez. CORE hopes to form a new denomination by August called North American Lutheran Church. By my count off their web screen, they have 135 congregations in the U.S. and 4 in Canada, plus some overseas. Hardly a counter-Reformation.

CORE posts some theological statements, among which stuff on traditional views of marriage and family figures prominently. But they also had this article that intrigued me, “The Diminution of God as Father (And his Holy Pronouns)” written by the Bishop Emeritus of the ELCA Virginia Synod. (Ahh, Virginia again: think Falwell, think 3/5 of a human being…) Turns out that author Rev. Richard Bansemer is exercised about contemporary prayer language that tires to diminish he, him, and his in referring to God the Creator. His 1,900 word essay (about the length of a typical Sunday sermon for me: a 12-minute listen) has a couple dozen quotes from the Bible, and nothing from any other Christian scholar ancient or modern. So it’s a light weight argument that implies that the ELCA is going under because we have diminished the God-our-Father language.

Will these men ever get it? A good place to start is the scholarly work by Gail Ramshaw, God Beyond Gender [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995] and her chapter, “Pronouns and the Christian God.”

Bansemer and his ilk in CORE, I guess, wouldn’t be interested in Ramshaw’s finding that the brilliant ancient Cappadocian Fathers of the 4^th century (St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, St. Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus and St. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa) wrote and taught that God is not male in the way that human beings are male and female. These guys were as orthodox as you could get, and triumphed at the Council of Constantinople in a.d. 381 over Arianism. Ramshaw notes Gregory of Nazianzus “ridiculing those who would draw from the gender designation in language a notion of actual sexuality within God.”

That God is consistently referred to in the Bible with masculine is above all an effort to distinguish the Hebrew and Christian faith(s) from the pagan goddess worship in the ancient world, a religious paradigm which was very obsessed with fertility and therefore with sexuality.

Why bring all this trivia up? Much of CORE’s theological statement seems obsessed not only with gender but with the same relentless masculine privilege that has plagued the Christian faith almost since the day they crucified our first feminist: Jesus Christ. CORE’s Advisory Council, for example, is made up of 17 men and 2 women.

Counter reformation: you can have the CORE.

But worse, CORE looks like an effort to keep beating a drum which is small and bent: the idea that there are deep and fundamental theological issues over which no compromise with the ELCA is possible, and those fundamental issues are all about gender and human sexuality. Somebody should tap the CORE people on the shoulder and point out to them that there is not much in the ancient creeds and confessions about gender and not a word about human sexuality. The faith of the church—the ancient church, the modern church, the ELCA, is our faith in God and in Jesus Christ, not our faith in marriage, family, gender, sexuality, homosexuality, gender role models or the proper way to bring up children in a home with one mom and one dad. In short, CORE has staked out its uniqueness in the same sand trap used by most other contemporary indignational movements that represent the right wing of the so-called Culture Wars.  As for me and my house, we will keep the faith.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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

The crazies are at it again.

February 19, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Fred (”God Hates America“) Phelps continues to attract media attention, which is the only pay-off he could possible get out of flying his family/congregation around the country. … and I won’t say anything more disparaging, not that he doesn’t deserve it.  His “God hates” web sites are evidence enough of his twisted nature.

 

In fact, St. Paul warned us about Fred Phelps and talks to people today who listen to his anti-Christian, ungodly diatribes:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace o fChrist and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.  But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed!  As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrry to what you received, let that one be accursed! — Galatians 1:6-9 (NRSV)

This just in from Pastor Dan forwarding it from Rabbi Steve (I have added emphasis because this apparently happens tomorrow, February 20).  Please pray for our friends in faith, and if you are extra brave, say a prayer for Fred, who has completely blown off the gospel of Jesus.  ~  P.D.

A Message from Rabbi Steven Moskowitz…

Dear Temple Israel Family,

As you may already know, an anti-gay, anti-Semitic group, the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kansas, is scheduled to come to Long Beach to engage in a series of protests at various locations February 19-21.  Among those places to be picketed are Wilson High School, the Alpert Jewish Community Center, and Temple Israel.  Specifically, the group’s schedule states that it will picket Temple Israel on Saturday, February 20, 10:00-10:30 a.m.  Westboro is a small group, which typically has a small number of picketers displaying hateful and offensive signs, engaging in vocal demonstrations but refraining from any violent or unlawful activities.  Below is a link to a Press-Telegram article announcing the group’s intentions. 

The staff has been in touch with the Long Beach Police Department, the Jewish Federation, the Alpert Jewish Community Center, the ADL, and other agencies.  Following discussions that included Sharon Amster Brown, Education VP Judy Blumenthal and Torah Center Chair Katherine Bussi, we have decided to move the 7^th grade program scheduled for that morning to a parents’ home.  Sharon will shortly be sending an email to the 7^th grade families with the details for that morning’s schedule. 

After giving the matter much thought, I approached the South Coast Interfaith Council and proposed that we host at our synagogue that morning a unity prayer service as a way to refocus the story of the day away from Westboro’s message of hate to our community’s message about love, diversity, and unity.  I invited clergy and congregants from this interfaith community both to attend and to contribute to such a service with prayers/readings/songs which speak of the sacred power of love and unity.  I am delighted to say that the SCIC was very enthusiastic about this invitation.  Already I have received responses from neighboring congregations expressing their support for us and their interest in participating.  We are going to change the start time of our service that morning to 9:30 a.m.  It will conclude at 11:00 a.m.  Similarly, we will shift the start of our regular Torah study session to 8:15 a.m. 

Members of the Long Beach Police Department will be present at Temple Israel that morning.  Please do respect their recommended guidelines that there be no direct encounters with the picketers and no counter-demonstrations.  That would only help the group to feel that they had achieved their goals of provocation and attention.  I invite you to join us on February 20 at 9:30 a.m. as we give voice to the view that there are many paths to God, except the path of hate.  On that day we shall bear witness to the prophetic words inscribed on the outside of our synagogue: “My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples.”

Rabbi Steven Moskowitz

Press-Telegram link: http://www.presstelegram.com/search/ci_14272240?IADID=Search-www.presstelegram.com-www.presstelegram.com

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Shifting paradigms: Christ has moved.

February 16, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Our midweek book study is now reading Marcus J. Borg’s book The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith [New York: www.HarperCollins.com, 2003].

We’ve decided not to meet at church but at the local Starbucks two blocks away. (Vermont and Prospect in Hollywood; feel free to join us Tuesday March 2, and have the first 2 chapters read!)

It still takes a little getting used to talking about God with a bit of an audience, hunched around three tables ganged together. So far people are being respectful, but we’re not trying to be exhibitionists with faith, either. At least it’s almost late-night conversation over the contemporary struggle of faith in a secular world.

If people reject the “paradigm” of what Christianity used to peddle, Borg says they are still “hungry for meaning and values.” (p. xii)

But I see hungry people looking for the things that will not satisfy, simply because they are hungering and cannot distinguish between what is worthwhile and what is frivolous. This reminds me of a comment from a colleague years ago in Phoenix. “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing. They will believe in anything,” said Dr. Shelby Lee, who at the time was Senior Pastor at First Congregational Church downtown.

Borg references and labels the “earlier paradigm” and the “emerging paradigm” —terms I am comfortable with. But I tripped over the word Christianity itself. Is the Christian faith different from Christianity?

To me Christianity is nearly synonymous with Churchianity. Christianity includes the Crusades, the Inquisition, St. Augustin and his weird ideas about sexuality, the “Holy Roman Empire,” the Pope and his medieval pronouncements, the Bible bangers and all that crap. It includes all the baggage, the culture and the ungodly assumptions that prop them up. Too bad Borg didn’t ditch the word “Christianity” itself. For more than 30 years I have used another term and I think it still describes all that I want to say with a label: “The Christian faith and life.”

I realize that sitting in a Starbucks to discuss a theological book is itself a shifting paradigm. Funny isn’t it that a commercial establishment can make room for God talk when a lot of people who want to talk about God can’t make room for a difference of opinion, let alone a change of venue. Christ has moved out of the church and into the community: get used to it.

Borg’s point should not be missed, however. There is a choice in the Christian world of the 21^st century. Sad though it be, there are two profoundly different ways to buy into the Christian faith and life. The one, the “earlier paradigm” corresponds to fundagelicalism, but the “emerging paradigm” doesn’t yet have a satisfactory label. It is not a cocksure, alienating belief that the Bible is literally true in every detail and without errors because it was dictated from God’s lips to the writers’ ears. Borg believes that both of these views (for convenience: conservative and liberal) are quite recent approaches to the Christian faith, and he aims to drill deeper to find the heart of the Christian faith.

I have often thought that if the rabid, aggressive, take-no-prisoners fundamentalist brand of Christian faith were the only one out there — if it were my only choice— then I could not be a Christian. Of course, even to make that observation could set me up for very nasty criticism by fundamentalists. Now they can simply link to this site and say, “he is a Bible doubter” or “he is not a Christian.”

But it is not that I doubt the Bible, but I look more deeply for what its meaning is for us than the fundamentalist is willing to look. I am looking for truth, not proof. I know that God speaks to us through the Scriptures, but I know just as fully that God speaks to us apart from the Scriptures. And I agree wholeheartedly with Martin Luther nearly 500 years ago who said, “The Bible is God’s word, but not every word is God’s word for me. God may have been speaking to someone else.”

That is the underlying energy in the “emerging paradigm.” Millions of people today cannot accept that every word in the Bible is speaking to them. So much of it is time– and culture–conditioned that it literally makes no sense to us any more. To say with honesty and integrity that every word of it is without error and literally true and applicable to every human being for all time would be to force not only the ancient message and its truths into a box, but to dumb down our own lives into slavish imitation of a world view that no longer exists. It would be mental suicide, not faith.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Enveloped on the mountaintop.

February 14, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Today being the feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, it deserves some comment. I had to preach on it this morning.

It’s a difficult thing no matter whether you’re a cynic or deeply pious. As the story is told it’s too supernatural–ranks right up there with the Ascension on the list of things no one really believes as narrated.

Yet the narrative tries to convey something intensely mystical and meaningful. In the midst of his public ministry, Jesus seemed profoundly different to his disciples. Something happened that allowed/permitted/forced them to see him in a new and blinding light.

Typically we call that a “mountaintop experience,” and it must have been for Peter James and John, the “inner three” who get lot of attention in the Gospel stories but we are never fully told why. As told in Luke 9, the three of them were “weighed down with sleep” (and you will remember that in Matthew and Mark, the same three disciples are with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and, yup, there they fell asleep too).

Just like the other nine disciples, these guys were not perfect. They had feet of clay. They were as flawed as any human being alive right now—but: the witness of these disciples is that a veil was ripped away, and they saw Christ Jesus as God sees him. They were overshadowed and enveloped by a Cloud— a glory they could not understand and could hardly describe— but the Jesus who came out of the transfiguring Cloud with them was not One to be afraid of, or One to hide from, but One who was to lay down his life for them.

I cannot guarantee you a mountaintop experience. You will find your own mountain, and it probably won’t be a pretty picture in the piney woods with postcard views from the top. For some of us, it may be the mountain of our own failures, or sorrows, or mistakes, or addictions, pain or internalized homophobia. But if we climb the mountains we have heaped up in our lives, there, at the top of these heaps of human experience, we encounter the Cross. And it is not a trigger for terror. It is the revelation of the One True God of grace, forgiveness, compassion and lovingkindness. It may be Law which drives us up the mountain of despair, but it is pure Gospel to find the love of Jesus Christ awaiting us at the top.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

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Things are not always as they seem.

February 6, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Thanks to my friend Jay who runs this quote at the bottom of his e-mails.

“If God is telling us he can’t do anything about starving kids in the Sudan, but he has the time and energy to make gay people straight, then God is one hurting buckaroo.” — Colin McEnroe (according to the Connecticut Forum), well known Connecticut personality, witty and opinionated radio talk show host, columnist, author, social commentator, and playwright.This quote messes with our sense of God— long enough for a quick chuckle —but it really should mess with our sense of ourselves and for quite a long time. The starving kids of Sudan have fallen off the front page, but the homeless and orphaned kids of Haiti are on the front page. Human disasters are not God’s fault (like an earthquake is an “act of God”!) The disasters of humanity are human-caused disasters. Human beings generally have a weird sense of blaming God for tragedy and expecting God to deliver a miracle for human-made events over which we have control anyway, if we would accept responsibility, stop passing blame, and share our resources.Earthquakes would not harm people if humans hadn’t constructed the dangerous buildings that we live and work in. If we were all still living in the shade of big trees or thatched huts, the trees and huts might shake, we would say “wow” and that would be the end of it.People who are starving are hungry because this bountiful earth is either being pillaged or destroyed by sociopathic greed, fear, ego on the part of other human beings. There is plenty of good soil, but we allow water and land to be controlled by the rich and powerful. There is plenty of food in the world, and the human know-how to grow more. In the United States food is so over-plentiful that we have porked out — one third of all Americans are obese. Yet we want to seal our borders to keep the hungry from coming here to eat or work, and we pretend to be are completely in the dark as to why other peoples would despise Americans so much they would become our enemies. there are probably well–meaning Christians who pay to God for protection from our enemies, without realizing our own role in making enemies.

Laws and rules — the things that make criminals and sinners out of us— are humanly determined. Yes, I know about the Ten Commandments, but they don’t’ say a word about, for example, “controlled substances,” the age of majority and statutory rape, moving violations, or derivatives and securities. We have made our society so complex that it creates both the crime and the occasion for wrong-doing. Our human complexity amplifies the human tendency to be greedy and inconsiderate.

There are a higher percentage of people in U.S. prisons than any other nation. Are those people all better people , more moral, less criminal than we are? Or have we criminalized too many things? Or have we made our fat and greedy nation a magnet for bad human behavior. There are more Catholic marriages annulled in the United States than the rest of the world combined (according to an AP report in late January). Could it be that our holy rules about marriage and divorce are the real cause of this? Or do Americans have more ridiculous expectations, which contribute to failed relationships, out of proportion to most other countries?

Human rules, constructions and expectations about sexuality cause our strange expectations and constructions about the divine. Somebody, or the entire aggregate of cultural attitudes reinforced by despicably false religion, has insisted that homosexuality is a choice, so therefore a bad choice. False religionists have deduced from those false premises the idiotic ideas that gay and lesbian people should and therefore must unchoose what they have chosen (even when lesbian and gay people overwhelmingly insist they didn’t choose their sexual orientation); and have created a whole industry set up to fake this un-choosing and re-choosing of sexual orientation.

They have the nerve to call this “reparative therapy.” Therapy is a word that means the treatment or curing of a disorder. But genuine therapists have been saying for 30 years that being gay or lesbian is not a disorder, and yet “pretend-therapists” steal the word and slap it on to something which isn’t broken, doesn’t need fixing, and can’t be changed anyway. Then those same screwballs attempt to put the monkey on God’s back, supposing that if lesbian and gay folks really turn to God, God will make them straight.

Go figure. Is it any wonder that 20-somethings want little to do with the Christian faith when it has already been hijacked? If only we could realize that the fundamentalist agenda is not genuine, that it has little to do with being Christian and nothing to do with Jesus. And that the monkey is on their own backs.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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The birth of joy in a season of darkness.

December 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

A church member called me this morning from the Midwest, where she had gone for Christmas, to report that her nephew was killed yesterday on a highway in Texas. It has abruptly changed her holiday plans as she and her family now drive down to Texas for a funeral the day after Christmas.

Our parish has suffered five deaths in the extended family during this December, beginning with the loss of our pastor emeritus Harry Durkee on December 2, who had served from 1960–1991.

I am mindful that my mother lost her father in December also. Years later her mother succumbed to cancer on Christmas Night. The holiday season seems especially unfair as a time of joy to be taken away by the cruelty of death.  Even as I do my final preparations for Christmas Eve, I cannot shake the sadness of so much death and loss.

We modern people are wimps when it comes to dealing with the reality of death and grief. They are hard, but they are also bracketed by love and grace, and resolved only in a life of faith. I used to think it strange that St. Thomas and St. Stephen were memorialized on the church’s calendar during the days surrounding Christmas. But perhaps it is the wisdom of centuries of faithfulness that Christians offer up to God in prayer. We are certain that God’s gift to us cannot be undone by the meanness or the unfairness of sudden and untimely death.

What better time to remember those we have loved who have lived in faith, than in the very season when we also proclaim a holy birth among us – the coming of Jesus into our world of darkness and sorrow?

Jaroslav Vaja captured the essence of this in his Christmas hymntext, “Before the Marvel of This Night”. In his imaginative poem, the angels before God speak to one another as they prepare to “tear the sky apart with light” and come down to announce the birth of Christ and peace:

The love that we have always known,
our constant joy and endless light,
now to the  oveless world be shown,
now break upon its deathly night.
Into one song compress the love
that rules our universe above:
sing love, sing love, sing God is love.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Letters from prison.

December 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This week I am trying to send out a few Christmas cards — I have essentially given up on that gracious communication with the bulk of our friends, because I get weighed down with everything else, more and more, as Christmas approaches. But I am writing now to several inmates in California prisons, to men who have written to our church from time to time. These men (all men, so far) have written because of one of our own community who is doing time now for a parole violation, and he has told other inmates that, yes, there is a church in Los Angeles which welcomes gay people. So, although the communication is a bit “stiff” in prison letters because every word going out and coming in is pre-read by prison staff, I can only assume that the guys writing to us are probably gay.

A couple of weeks ago, one of them wrote from Kern County. He isn’t ready to tell me what he did that got him convicted, or even how long he is in prison for. But he says this is his first time in prison, and it’s December and I realize he will spend Christmas in a cell.

“Since my imprisonment I have become ever stronger in Jesus Christ and God and church and hold my Christian beliefs even more dear to my heart than ever before.

“What I need: is someone — some church– and some church members to help me and take me under their wings and into their church and allow me to prove myself as a person, as a fellow church member and child of God.”

This young man’s plea is as clear as any I have ever heard. It seems risky for upstanding church-goers to be concerned about convicts who will have to prove themselves in order to be accepted again in society. But as to being a child of God, he has no need of proof. The church is the community of those who put their faith in Christ. Regardless of the division of people into categories—Jew or Greek, male and female, young or old, imprisoned or free, LGBT or straight, there are no subcategories for the children of God.

How can I be so sure of that? Because each of us is made a child not by something we do or accomplish, or avoid doing, or even repent, but by the gracious act of God alone. We are God’s children just because God says so. It’s about love, not “Brownie points,” sexual conformity, or the lack of a criminal record. It’s about a love so strong that nothing can tear us away from it.

In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul agonizes about all of the things in life (he mentions “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” as examples) that may conspire to cause pain, failure, regret or worry, but then he says, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I am open-hearted enough to read his phrases very broadly, where he says “in all these things” and especially “things present nor things to come (like our modern world). Can we not see that, if Paul were writing today, he might have mentioned other examples: “poverty, racism, gangs, homophobia or sexual orientation, divorce, unemployment, drugs or alcohol, obesity, health problems or gun violence,” and still come to the same conclusion: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

To my friends in prison: may God keep watch with you at Christmas, knowing that not even bars and walls can separate us from the love which is given to us freely. Keep the faith you have in God’s gracious acceptance. And may the people of God keep faith with you!

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Violence, Doctrine, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Living by Grace, Faith, Recovery | Print | No Comments »

Is God indulgent or hard-hearted?

December 9, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”   Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,” will enter the Kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 7:21

These clear contradictions seem to stymie us nowadays, and Christians still argue whether God is lenient or hard-hearted, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the tenth generation or very indulgent and forgetful of our offenses. Is heaven a place where only a handful will ever get in, or where the gates are never shut?

These apparent contradictions seem to say to us that the ancients and the early Christians were not all of the same mind on the charity and lovingkindness of God. It is not just we who cannot agree on the meaning of Scripture, for Scripture itself gives us different images which seem to contradict (speak against) one another.

Yet for me the overwhelming weight of the Biblical message, not just of spot passages and bumper-sticker length verses, is of God’s endless grace and acceptance. (Forgiveness is one metaphor for God’s grace and compassionate acceptance.)

Seriously, folks, can we actually say (and be theologically correct) that God loves everybody? As we know a certain unmentionable preacher-type from Topeka who argues against this vehemently. If God doesn’t love everybody, then why should we put up with or tolerate or condone anybody who doesn’t toe the line or walk the talk?

But we are the progressive (liberal) Christians, we think. We get it, even if those fundagelicals and Talibangelists don’t.

Alas, the full implication of the phrase “Everybody’s welcome” usually goes over our heads. It doesn’t merely mean that if everybody is welcome, then I am welcome—as reassuring and good as that seems. It doesn’t merely mean the invitation to receive God’s love is to me and to people like me. “Everybody” is an impossibly dangerous, radical word. If everybody is welcome, it means that even people I don’t particularly like or approve of are also welcome. It means that God’s unearned and unlimited grace does not have to be vetted by me personally before it is offered to everybody else in the world.

This takes some degree of self-examination to sink in thoroughly. It doesn’t penetrate our skulls as easily as the mantra “God loves me,” or “I am Jesus’ little sunbeam.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Good news, religious lunacy.

November 30, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The web newscaster www.365gay.com does a cool job of monitoring AP news releases as well as publishing its own reports. One AP post recently (which I’d missed) is probably the best little tidbit of news I’ve seen in awhile, indicating that there is no smoking gun of gay priests behind the widespread Catholic sex abuse scandal.  Read the story:

Report: Homosexuality no factor in abusive priests 

by The Associated Press • 11.18.2009 9:22am EST

The report, commissioned and financed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the tune of $2 million, did not find that the homosexual orientation of priests was any predictor of who would be involved in sexual abuse. In spite of a policy coming from the Vatican itself a year or so ago to essentially “weed out” homosexually-oriented candidates for the Catholic priesthood, the behavioralists and criminologists who have extensively studied sexual predation and pedophilia do not find a gay = child molester link.

According to the AP report, Margaret Smith of John Jay College of Criminal Justice reported to the Bishops meeting in Baltimore: “If that [Vatican anti-gay] exclusion were based on the fact that [a gay person] person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time.”

Also another finding from other reports, that I see as good news, is that clergy sexual abuse cases are on the decline ever since the 1980s. Most of the cases still shaming churches and emptying their coffers stem from abusive behavior in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps the “transparency” and media attention of more recent times is telling pedophiles and sexual opportunists that they won’t be able to hide their behavior as well as they once did.

On the down side, there is nothing on the horizon to suggest that the Roman Catholic Church will any time soon become more realistic about human sexuality in its moral theology. Its rule of celibacy (a rule of the Church, not a Christian doctrine) for clergy and its iniquitizing of any sexual activity outside of a heterosexual-and-procreative context continues to make its moral teaching seem ridiculous in the larger world and puts many Catholic faithful into a hypocritical bind.

Most ridiculous of all (another rule, not dogma) is to continue to ban women from the priesthood while male priests are deserting the ranks of the clergy if not bankrupting the Church. It has been reported that one-fourth of all Catholic parishes world wide have no priest. The numbers who have quit the priesthood to get (heterosexually) married continues to climb. And the molesters, guilty of some 14,000 sexual abuse cases since 1950, have cost the Church an estimated $2.3 billion in the same time period, according to the AP story.

I know that many of the rank-and-file are outraged at by all of this. The expenditure of money alone (yes, a lot of it paid by insurance companies) is appalling and disgusting. You would think the Church would be broke, but somehow it still finds the funds to fight against civil rights for gay and lesbian couples in California and Maine, too. What else can we do but shake our heads in astonishment and resignation to this religious lunacy. — Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Sex, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Catholic matters, Go figure!, Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, LGBT Christian, Ministry | Print | No Comments »