Some thoughts about generalizing and particularizing.

August 31, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

People tend to generalize. (That’s a generalization, of course, so forgive me in advance.) The human mind cannot contain and process every nuance on the thousands of bits of information that come at us, and the brain’s natural wiring is to look for and create patterns. Over time, patterns of thought are reinforced, not eroded, by additional evidence.

On the good side, we are able to get through the day without becoming paralyzed by every stimulus and input. On the bad side, we stereotype, we form prejudices, we cling to bigotry (which can highly individualized or as broad as a social and community or cultural prejudice that resists re-examination at all costs!). And we generalize about things somewhat indiscriminately. We take a particular bit of evidence—a news report, a bad experience, a friend passing on hearsay, and we turn it into a generality. For example:

• One Bernie Madoff allows a new generation to blame and despise Jewish people for their greedy and crooked ways.
• One Willie Horton allows a generation of people to fear and despise African-Americans as criminal and violent (and the electorate to assume that Michael Dukakis wasn’t fit to be President).
• There are voices out there still saying, and influencing thousands of others to believe, that all homosexuals have AIDS. Even the CDC has published generalizations which are particularly damaging.
• Sensational gossip about NAMBLA—a fringe group—allows a broad swath of people to think that all homosexuals are child molesters.
• A few Republican lawmakers who are corrupt allows Democrats to say that all Republicans are evil. Depending on which party you belong to, if any, you may be highly susceptible to believing that.
• A few Democratic lawmakers who are corrupt allows Republicans to say that all Democrats are evil. Depending on which party you belong to, if any, you may be highly susceptible to believing that.
• A handful of high-profile Christian evangelists, or the Pope, doing something hypocritical leads a generation of people to reject the Christian faith because they generalize that ” Christians are hypocrites.”

It is really difficult to reverse this pattern because of another generality: that people are drawn toward bad news, selfish motivations, etc..

St. Paul certainly was given to generalities, and because of his enormous influence, his particular comments have had power over human thinking for centuries. For example, in his letter to the Romans, 3:23, he generalizes about the human race: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In Paul’s thinking, all human beings are deficient in God’s eyes. In other words, Paul’s God is given to generalities. What part of “all” don’t we understand?

Here’s what bothers me. I am most troubled that the faith I live by, and teach, is tainted, through the process of corporate generalization, with the stains that other Christian faith groups have left behind. Recently novelist Anne Rice left the Catholic Church. “Today I quit being a Christian,” she said, for the sake of Jesus. Yes, Rice was generalizing from her particular experiences and her perceptions of the church’s dark side. But other Catholics I know —who see and hear the same problems and issues such as the present Pope’s medieval clericalism and sexist, homophobic views, or priestly sexual abuse, etc., see those problems as specific problems and not as evidence that God does not exist or that all Christians are hypocrites or the Church has nothing to offer.

Also recently, the documentary film “8: The Mormon Proposition” detailed the role of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in covertly promoting and raising funds to ensure the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Along with other right-wing fundamentalist groups— and the Catholic Church— the Mormons generalized about what opening civil marriage to gay or lesbian couples might do to destroy marriage as an institution. “Save Marriage!” became the highly generalized battle cry. And on the side of tolerance, thousands more people who have seen the film will go away with another generalization fixed in their brains: Organized religion sucks!

We have joked in our local congregation that we’re okay because we’re not that organized. But the truth is, Christ’s message is damaged by Christians who are hypocritical, unethical, abusive, manipulative, and prejudiced. It is harder to put the positive message out there that we, and thousands of other local churches, are doing good things in the name of God, when those good things usually are that new or news-worthy, when a few things which grab the news headlines show that some bad things are also being done in the name of God.

This is where particularizing comes in. Most human beings can’t do much about bad generalizations (although Benedict XVI could go a long way by moving his own thinking into the 21^st century). But we can particularize the grace of God, one life at a time. We can clean up our own acts. We can show kindness and compassion to one other individual. And we can even save the institution of marriage by attending to the quality of our own marriage rather than blaming it on generalizations about society.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Homophobia, Catholic matters, HIV and AIDS, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Fundamentalism, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

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 »

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

Posted in Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Faith, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Keeping the pressure up against hatred.

February 4, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I am passing along Wayne Besen’s timely review of the Prayer Breakfast and Obama’s speech. Maybe we don’t need to write off the president if he continues to stand up to hatred and bigotry.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Obama Boldy Speaks Out Against Uganda Bill at National Prayer BreakfastTruth Wins Out praised President Barack Obama today for his bold speech at the National Prayer Breakfast condemning Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill. The bill aims to imprison, hunt down and even execute gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The bill also threatens imprisonment for those who do not turn in their LGBT friends and family members to authorities.

In his speech, Obama said: “We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it’s here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.”

The President’s words were particularly powerful given the setting of this breakfast, which is hosted by the fundamentalist group known as The Family. This secretive organization is directly linked to the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda. The bill’s sponsor, David Bahati, is a key member of The Family.

“We applaud President Obama for having the courage to confront those responsible for the heinous anti-gay bill in Uganda,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “We hope that the President’s laudable stand makes it clear to Family members in the United States and Uganda that the world is watching. Religion can no longer be used to justify bigotry, intolerance and persecution anywhere on the face of the earth.”

Besen is the coordinator of The American Prayer Hour, which is an alternative to the National Prayer Breakfast. Fifteen national organization’s launched the American Prayer Hour to shine a spotlight on The Family’s nefarious role in Uganda on the week of their annual National Prayer Breakfast. There are American Prayer Hour events in 20 cities across the nation.

“The safe course would have been for President Obama to remain silent,” said TWO’s Besen. “Instead, he walked into The Family’s house and held them accountable for their actions in Uganda. It was a huge victory for human rights and the president’s actions were courageous and honorable.”

Truth Wins Out is a New York City-based non-profit organization that fights religious extremism and the ex-gay industry.

Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director |  E-mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org  | Phone: 917-691-5118  | Truth Wins Out | 33 West 19th Street, 4th Floor | New York | NY | 10011

Posted in Homophobia, Fundamentalism, Public Affairs, PRAYERS | Print | No Comments »

Lack of credentials, lack of accountability.

February 2, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Dan Neil’s column in the Los Angeles Times this morning, “No Coming Out Party for Super Bowl” was amusing, about the application of a new gay dating service (”Man Crunch” dot com) to get their video aired during the Super Bowl, which was rejected by CBS even while Tim Tebow’s Focus on the Family anti-abortion ad will apparently get the green light to run. Neil rightly cries about this being a double standard in the part of CBS.

That’s not surprising. Double standards are just one weapon in the culture wars we are living through.

But what caught my eye was Neil’s perhaps-innocent error in referring to “The Rev. James Dobson” as “well-known as an All-Pro gay hater.”

Can it be that any journalist worth his keyboard doesn’t know that Dobson is not and never has been an ordained minister of any church? Check his biography here.

I sent Mr. Neil the following e-mail:

As amusing as your column was in this morning’s Times, it contained a serious error. Dr. James Dobson is not and never has been an ordained minister. Please see, for example, this article: “Attention journalists everywhere: James Dobson is not a minister” on the www.regrettheerror.com web site. And for future reference, Pat Robertson is no longer a minister either.

The article at Regret the Error is thorough and cites erroneous articles going back several years with 22 retractions that had to be printed in respectable newspapers and news magazines about Dobson. This is my opinion, unsubstantiated, but I can’t help wondering if Dr. Dobson enjoys the free credibility he gets by being mistakenly respected as an ordained minister.

This little cyclone-in-a-coffee-cup (okay, “tempest in a tea pot”, but who remembers that cliché?) illustrates a major problem in both reporting and blogging: we all tend to write about people we’ve not actually interviewed and probably haven’t even met. That is probably unavoidable, but it simply increases the pressure on us to check our facts, not overstretch our points or be too quick to rush to publish.

It illustrates a deeper and more disturbing issue, of course. What are the credentials of the Religious Reich figures who have plagued America’s otherwise open-hearted compassion and generosity of spirit? Pat Robertson is not an ordained anything, either, having resigned from the ranks of the Southern Baptist clergy when he decided to run for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 1988. (You may roll your eyes now. What, after all, were his credentials to be a candidate for the nation’s top office?)

But what are the credentials of Christian ministers, period? Many well-known preachers have run through Bible colleges while others have advanced degrees. The procedure by which any particular local church, or national denomination, certifies one to be competent to lead Christian churches and to speak for God, are vastly different form place to place, denomination to denomination. The lack of a uniform high standard doesn’t merely allow the wing nuts to use the title “Reverend” with their name. It has also allowed unqualified people who are also sexual predators to gain access to the vulnerabilities of innocent people, and who are manipulators and thieves to help themselves to huge sums of money.

Wikipedia conveniently lists the dirt on 27 public evangelists involved in scandals of one sort or another, including Aimee Semple McPherson, Jim Bakker, Paul Crouch, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard and Tony Alamo.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s official website has this on its Frequently Asked Questions page:

2. “What is the procedure for ordination in the SBC?

“Actually, there is no standard process or policy concerning ordination in the SBC. In fact, the SBC cannot ordain anyone. The matter of ordination is addressed strictly on a local church level. Every Southern Baptist church is autonomous and decides individually whether or not to ordain, or whether to require ordination of its pastor. When a church senses that God has led a person into pastoral ministry, it is a common practice to have a council (usually of pastors) review his testimony of salvation, his pastoral calling from the Lord, and his qualifications (including theological preparation and scriptural qualifications according to 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:7-9) for pastoral ministry. Based upon that interview the church typically decides whether or not ordination would be appropriate.

“Some SBC churches require seminary training from an SBC seminary, while others may not, such a requirement is entirely up to the church.

“Of course, every SBC church is free to approach ordination in the manner it deems best.”

This underlines an issue for evangelical churches across the land, with their emphasis on feel-good enthusiasm and direct inspiration form God: lack of accountability. It is in the accountability area where a thread of relationship is woven into recent Roman Catholic sex scandals as well. Predatory priests have evaded accountability and so have the bishops who have place and replaced them time after time to protect both the priest and the privilege of holy orders.

But Jesus set the standard for those who would be ministers by washing his disciples’ feet. To minister means to serve, not to be served. The scramble for larger-than-life credibility and power in our society has led too many so-called Christians to ditch all standards in the effort to have public authority.  Academic credentials are harder to fake (although not impossible; I get spam e-mails all the time advertising the degrees for sale that I never tried to earn in school). Being elected to office requires cesspools of money if not mountains of integrity. But to become a “reverend” seems to be easy enough to attract wing nuts of all kinds.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Violence, Go figure!, Sex, Ecumenical Issues, Public Affairs, Fundamentalism, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

The Cause of it all.

January 22, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I am constantly surveying the news and opinions of the Religious Reich and the conservative milieux in the hopes that they are getting wiser. Alas but this process is not making me an optimist. The old saying is, “people see what they want to see.” Or as Jesus put it, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” (John 9:41)

Several years ago, I tried to give systematic thought to the problem the Right has with sexual minorities. It all comes down to “the cause of it all.” Here is the reasoning: As long as conservative/heterosexual people are determined to follow a preconceived mental outline, they will force its logic to a conclusion that supports their determination. This can be outlined quite plainly:

1. There is something terribly wrong with homosexuality.

2. When something is wrong, there must be a reason or cause that “normal” sexuality “went wrong.”

3. If it can be found what went wrong, then a way to fix it can and must be found.

Ergo, in response to this logic, organizations that operate “ex-gay” ministries have created a formula, a service, an entire industry geared to working with people who are unhappy with being homosexual, or are motivated to change.

Most often, however, the unhappiness and motivation to change are the result of family and societal pressures to be heterosexual, to “appear” to be heterosexual, or at least behave heterosexually in a heterosexual world. The emphasis on the “fix” in these ministries is an emphasis which firmly believes that sexual behavior can be successfully re-directed, like turning someone who is blindfolded around and pointing her/him in a new direction.

In some cases, “ex-gay” leaders will quietly admit that an inner change of sexual orientation may not or does not happen. they are content enough if somebody replaces the “homosexual lifestyle” with a “heterosexual lifestyle,” whether or not any fundamental psychosexual change has actually taken place.

However, many young people who come to these “ex-gay” therapy operations do not come because they are unhappy or motivated to change, but because their parents or families are unhappy or highly motivated to make them change. It is often said that a sweater is what a child puts on when the child’s mother is cold! The pressure on young people to conform comes not only from peers but from parents. As more and more people come out to their peers and families, peer pressure to be heterosexual is literally disappearing. But parental pressure is another thing.

Wayne Besen, in his preface to his book Anything But Straight, tell the story of coming out to his own parents. His mother bought a motivational tape for him titled “Gay and Unhappy” which, he said, tried to create a problem in his relationship with his parents and make it the cause for why he is gay.

“The problem was, I always had a very close relationship with my parents—at least until I came out. I listened to the tape twice and realize that there was absolutely nothing in it that applied to my life. It was trying to establish a cause and effect relationship that did not exist. It actually seemed like the tape was trying to create a wedge between my parents and me by having me manufacture a traumatic event from my past that did not actually occur.”Besen describes the scene at the breakfast table the next morning, after listening to the tape twice and trying for the third time. “‘So, how did it go with the tape last night?’ my father keenly asked while my mother’s eyes glowed with anticipation.‘Dad, it was great. All I’ve got to do to become straight, according to the tape, is figure out when you and Mom became lousy, distant parents.’That was the last subliminal ex-gay tape they bought me.The reactionary defenders of “cause” thinking, of course, often try to tie it to molestation. That is, homosexuals are homosexual because they were seduced, drawn, led or somehow forced into homosexual behavior against their real nature by some other homosexual.So in the federal Proposition 8 case going on right now in San Francisco, right-wingnut pro-8 witness Hak-Shing William Tam still insists that homosexuals are child molesters.

(Tam is one of the defendant-intervenors in the case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, who later wanted to withdraw from the case entirely.  See “The likely real reason for Hak-Shing William Tam pulling out of Perry v. Schwarzenegger” on the Box Turtle Bulletin site.)

Here’s a summary of an Associated Press story posted January 21 on Newser:

(AP) – A proponent of California’s same-sex marriage ban testified today that he thinks gays are more likely to be pedophiles and that allowing them to wed would lead to efforts to lower the age at which teenagers can legally have sex with adults. Lawyers seeking to overturn Proposition 8 called Hak-Shing William Tam in their efforts to prove that bias toward gays fueled the campaign to pass the measure.Prop 8 sponsors have tried to distance themselves from Tam, even though his name appeared alongside ballot arguments for the measure in voter- information pamphlets during the 2008 campaign. Tam is secretary of a Chinese-American evangelical Christian group whose site contained a link to another article claiming gays were 12 times more likely to molest children; under questioning, Tam said he agreed with that view though he could cite no evidence to support it.Well, that kind of nails it for me.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Fundamentalism, Public Affairs, Ministry, Ex-Gay | Print | No Comments »

You can hide your money but not your behind.

January 21, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Well, the Proposition 8 lawsuit in federal court right now is churning up a lot of stuff, and airing a lot of “dirty linen.” What would it be like if all of us had to live our everyday lives “under oath” to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? How much sooner would the Catholic bishops have had to confess they were hiding the real child molesters, for example? but that’s another story.

Mormon Church Aimed to Cover Tracks on Marriage Ban — Directed funds to outside organizationBy Will McCahill| Posted Jan 20, 10 9:45 PM CST

(Newser) – The Mormon church wanted its members to support the 2008 effort to ban same-sex marriage in California, but urged they do it through an outside organization to give the leadership “plausible deniability,” according to documents released today in the Proposition 8 trial in San Francisco. The Catholic church also helped bankroll the operation, an executive says in one email, while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provided “financial, organizational and management contributions.”Later in today’s session, a Stanford professor testified that although high-profile politicians pay lip service to homosexual issues, “Gays and lesbians do not possess a meaningful degree of political power. They are not able to protect their essential interests.” Though President Obama describes himself as a “fierce advocate” for gay causes, lack of action on the military’s ban on openly gay service members and other issues shows he “is not a reliable ally.”I can corroborate at least part of this. In the wake of the Prop 8 victory in November 2008 I spent several hours pouring over the donor list posted by the state of California, trying to find the contributions of the Mormon Church. Nothing significant turned up, and I was quite surprised. It began to dawn on me and many others that they had covered their behind successfully.It is no coincidence that Catholic and Mormon money funded a large part of the Proposition 8 campaign, however. Both have moral issues of their own they would just as soon hide or at least forget. It seems logical that the best way to distract the public memory from Mormon polygamy or Catholic priestly child molestation is to try to take the “moral high ground” when it comes to marriage.But the “moral high ground” lies quite bare and fallow when a court of law focuses its attention there. The high ground and plausible deniability simply don’t congeal. The moral high ground benefits from transparency, and it is quite obvious that the donors—major and minor—that literally “bought” Proposition 8 for the California Constitution—fear transparency and want their identity concealed as much as possible.Shame! Shame! Shame!

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Go figure!, Catholic matters, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Fundamentalism, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

The devil you say.

January 20, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I guess I am not through lambasting Robertsonian Christianity (fundagelical-blame-the-victim-praise-Jesus-cash-the-check theology). When I wrote recently, “Is he still totally nuts?” I hadn’t yet absorbed the fullness of the history lesson that wasn’t even in my college history textbooks.

Pat Robertson insinuated a “what do you expect?” view of the disastrous earthquake which has collapsed most of the infrastructure of Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The ex/wannabe reverend Robertson, who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars annual and has a personal fortune estimated to be near one billion dollars, is said to be quite compassionate for the people of Haiti: he called for prayer for them. Not he sent funds to help emergency life-saving efforts. He called for prayer.

Robertson gives a bad name to prayer and an evil name to what it means to be Christian. Why is he being singled out for criticism? For his remark that Haiti’s slaves in 1791 “made a pact with the devil” to obtain their freedom from the French. Mind you—this was a man who launched a campaign to run for President of the United States. Imagine how his foreign policy views would have shaped up.

Thank God for Elizabeth Palmberg’s blog entry on the Sojourners blog last week (and in posting it here I reproduce her important hyperlinks):

“So Pat Robertson, to whom the media are still inexplicably willing to pay attention, is saying that Haiti is being punished for an alleged pact with the devil?

“This might be a reasonable time to point out that, when Haiti threw out the French, it was the latter who were on the side of evil — first, as slave-owners (Haiti was the only modern nation created by a slave revolt). And then, when Haitians had finally attained freedom from plantation chattel slavery, France forced Haiti to pay reparations to the former slave-owners, to compensate them for their loss of ‘property.’

“You read that sentence right — the ex-slaves were forced to pay their former masters, the equivalent of $21 billion (billion-with-a-b) in today’s dollars. It took the tiny nation from 1825 to 1947 — that’s right, over a century — to finish paying off this “debt,” a crushing burden which bled away resources for education and economic development.

“I’ll leave it up to you to decide where the devil is in that history. But if you want to be on the side of the angels — and God’s Jubilee economics, as laid out in the Old Testament — then surf over to Jubilee USA and see their advocacy points for Haiti today.”

Now, what has this to do with an LGBT/Christian blog? It is not Pat Robertson’s inanities which need to be shamed somehow. But it is important that we who are open-hearted, “progressive” and compassionate Christians—whether sexual minorities or not—absolutely divorce ourselves from the evil theology that uses Jesus as a commodity to make money for the preacher not for ministry. Robertson is only an emblem of this kind of profitable evangelism. He is not the only one. But his misuse of Scripture and of God Above to blame the victim, shame gay/lesbian people, and now malign an entire nation, is irredeemably shameful.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Fundamentalism, Violence, Go figure!, LGBT Christian, History, PRAYERS, Public Affairs, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

Is he still totally nuts?

January 14, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I first heard it at a clergy association meeting yesterday, and all I could do was shake my head, again, that Pat Robertson cannot resist publicly saying inane and inappropriate things, especially when natural disasters happen. It is one thing to blame Hurricane Katrina destroying New Orleans on legalized abortion (I am not making this up! You might also enjoy Wikipedia’s entry on the “fringe theories” behind Hurricane Katrina), but to allude that a slave rebellion in 1791 in a “pact with the devil” has anything to do with natural disasters takes an extra special dose of hubris and ignorance.

See: “Pat Robertson links Haiti quake to pact with devil” in the Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2010.Pat Robertson completely misses the heart of Christian faith in trying to explain why things happen in terms of the Devil! I was more saddened than shocked at his public comment and its follow-up effort to save face.The heart of our faith as Christians is to live out the compassion of Jesus in our own times, both in our own community and wherever people are in need. Our own congregation is just beginning to explore ways to respond to this disaster as we did three years ago when we sent $2,000 directly to people affected by the South Asian tsunami, which was enough to re-build an entire building.We are also connected with ELCA International Disaster Response, which is seeking immediate financial gifts to send on to long-standing relief and assistance partner agencies. One hundred percent of all donations go directly to the disaster response. (There is no overhead or administrative percentage held out. Anyone interested in helping can find information about giving at www.elca.org/disaster.)

Robertson’s latest foot-in-mouth or head-up-behind remark cannot be overlooked as the musings of a doddering old man His broadcasting empire still influences huge numbers. Officially founded 50 years ago this week, CBN’s own web site claims that the 700 Club has an average viewership of 1 million, and that the media empire Robertson built broadcasts to 200 countries.

But Pat Robertson’s own sense of “compassion” seems to be pathetically limited (Americans United’s Barry Lynn labels his remarks “grotesque insensitivity“), in my opinion based on a follow-up statement form the 700 Club quoted in the Times story:

Hours after his comments ignited a firestorm in the news media and online, Robertson’s “The 700 Club” TV show issued a statement elaborating on his remarks. . . .”Dr. Robertson never stated that the earthquake was God’s wrath,” the statement went on. It added that “Dr. Robertson’s compassion for the people of Haiti is clear. He called for prayer for them.”As part of Robertson’s bizarre legacy, last October the CBN network warned trick-or-treaters about demonic Halloween candy. Eight years ago Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell blamed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the ACLU, feminists, abortionists and homosexuals.It has been estimated that Robertson’s personal fortune may be approaching $1 billion. He personally owned an oil refinery here in Southern California and a diamond mine in South Africa. If he were disposed from a Christ-like heart, he could personally finance an enormous amount of relief efforts in Haiti.Robertson’s own life expectancy isn’t so hot (he turns 80 in March). At his point in life he ought to be giving more thought to his legacy than his ego. What true ministry has he put into place which is Christ-like? Instead he will leave a legacy of ignorant and arrogant comments about the supposed sins and demonic forces behind high-profile calamities.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Posted in Environment, Fundamentalism, Public Affairs, PRAYERS, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

If this is true, CBN has lost it.

October 31, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

Press Release

Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network Warns Americans Of ‘Demonic’ Halloween Candy AU’s Lynn Says Religious Broadcaster Should Send ‘Trick Or Treat’ Goodies Over To His House October 29, 2009 Put aside your fears of swine flu. TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Web site has just issued a bulletin warning Americans of the real threat we face this season: Demons may be lurking in our Halloween candy. In a column on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Web site, writer Kimberly Daniels asserts that “demons” sneak into bags of Halloween candy at grocery stores. “[M]ost of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches,” Daniels wrote. “I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.” The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, urged Robertson and Daniels to lighten up.

The only thing that amazes me about this is that Pat Robertson has continued to amass a personal fortune (thought to be between $700 million and $1 billion) and a “Christian” war chest that will keep his broadcasting on the air for generations to come.  Why/how can people just send their money to someone, or some thing (CBN) that is so completely out of touch with reality?  See screen capture below:

Okay, we can just shrug and say people are looney.  But the looney people have the cash to spread their hatred, and their mental illness, to millions of other people and to future generations.

By the way, the link above (”a column”) does not work, so I suspect that CBN yanked the column as being too ridiculous.  Or, could it be that Americans United was wrong.  I checked the CBN.com web site’s Search box, and the list of 93 articles by Kimberly Daniels clearly displayed the column mentioned in AU’s news release.  So this isn’t fiction.  But, when I tried to click on the article (marked below with the red arrow), it also comes back saying the article cannot be found.  That confirms it was there, and is no more.

Robertson, by the way, is not a minister. He resigned as one when he ran for President (try not to dwell on that for more than a moment or two or you may go into shock) in the early 90’s.  But his “Christian” Bullcasting keeps on presenting itself as a bona fide expression of Christian thought.

Happy Halloween!

—Dan Hooper

Posted in Go figure!, Fundamentalism, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Lasting Peace: the Unsplit Life

October 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

On the train to Riverside today I finally picked up a book I had set aside last July: the anthology “Wrestling with the Angel” [Brian Bouldrey, ed.; New York: Riverhead Books, 1995]. Today I came to Andrew Holleran’s chapter in which he wrestles with Catholic guilt more than any angel.

Holleran (Eric Garber) is a gay novelist and essayist roughly my contemporary in age but far more advanced in finding his voice as an activist. You can Google for a lot about his life and work if you like.

So much of what he writes about religion parallels my own awareness if not experience, and I can’t help wondering if it is more because he was Catholic and I Lutheran that he left most of the faith behind and I never did. Holleran identifies, at least he did in 1995 in “The Sense of Sin” as a “cafeteria Catholic,” taking what he wants from the religious smorgasbord and leaving the rest behind. But his chief insight in his brief autobiography of confession reveals that he could neither abandon his childhood and adolescent Catholic faith nor fully embrace it.

“The sense of Sin is, of course, missing in some people, keen, more keen, keenest in others. When I drew up a list of my own one evening, I was surprised to see that all of mine amounted to sins that did not include homosexual acts themselves but the consequences of hiding them from people who loved and expected more out of me, perhaps than I’d given the world. In other words, I suspected myself of shame, withdrawal, and finally that most classic of Catholic sins, despair. Still, none of them seemed correctable; I hadn’t any more faith in homosexuality’s virtues, really, than I did in the existence of God—though the latter was no something I could bring myself to entirely disbelieve, either.”For me, this no-man’s land, this love-hate experience is what happens when one has absorbed the Religion of Christianity without ever finding a manner in which to live out the Christian Faith. Guilt truly is the gift that goes on giving, and we have good reason to jokingly insist that the Lutheran persuasion is “Catholic Lite: one third less guilt.”As a young writer and preacher I was always more than a bit brash, but taking the longer view now in mid-life and mature years I notice with enormous gratitude that I did not pick up much guilt about sex and sexuality in childhood and adolescence. Lutheran preachers were far too conventional and inhibited even to mention that sexuality exists. There were no warnings or scoldings from Sunday School teachers. Luther’s Small Catechism sticks to the basics of the Christian faith —faith in God and Christ and the Spirit and the Sacraments— rather than building moral fences and trying to provide guidelines to control our daily impulses. So to this day I insist that attitudes about human sexuality and homosexuality cannot, in and of themselves “split the church.” Opening our minds about gay and lesbian people and relationships is not an “abandonment of the historic faith” because, the Lutherans would insist, the true Christian faith does not contain doctrines about sex in the first place.

Holleran’s dilemma is that he cannot live with the dire ultimatums which either Catholicism or fundamentalism presents to him, but he realizes at mid-life that homosexuality and sexual liberalism are not a substitute faith, either. Even as a fallen child of his Church, he sees his sexuality in Catholic vocabulary: “a cross one had to bear.”

“That one kept thinking in Catholic phrases was, of course, part of the legacy of a Catholic childhood. The gay Catholic operates on two levels, I suspect; on the one hand, he believes it is quite moral to act on his sexual orientation, to form a sexual bond, of whatever duration, with another man; that the antihomosexual tenets of Christianity are parochial, culture-bound, and heterosexual; that the active gay man has acquired, and provided others, a human dimension available uniquely in erotic intimacy; that kindness, beauty, tenderness, love can be experienced only through the medium of another person. On the other, he suspects that he has turned sex into a form of fast-food junk, that he is trapped in a way of life from which there is no escape and no real chance of finding any lasting peace of mind. In other words, this was cognitive dissonance as a way of life.”All that I can counter is that I do not suffer that dissonance and I preach to dismantle its power over others. But my understanding is not to trivialize the core message of Jesus nor to re-Puritanize sexual expression. That I have remained not celibate but monogamous is not because I have struck some self-devised compromise with God or have internalized homophobic guilt about having casual or anonymous sexual experiences. It is because I have experienced the greatest personal and spiritual growth in relationships (one man, one Lord) which are long-lasting and able to grapple with the tension most human beings live with between the superficiality of the flesh and the overwhelming depth of the soul.If all of that is really a cross one has to bear, it is the cross I have chosen not because of a bifurcated life (hiding my sexuality from the church and hiding my faith from the boys at the gay bar), but because of my awareness that I live only one life and will struggle to keep it integrated. If I can live without splitting my life, then maybe the Church can live without splitting itself apart.—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Sex, Gay Catechism, Catholic matters, Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, Faith, LGBT Christian, Fundamentalism, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

Mr. Fundamentalist and the Theology of Scarcity.

September 30, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

How hard our righteous sense of judgment dies.

After another wild and intense Bible Study tonight, I drove home just now thinking to write about one of the guys who attends who is steeped in fundamentalist rhetoric. At times, he is so judgmental that it irritates many of the others. (He has been fed at a different theological trough, so to speak, for most of his life, and can quote Scripture—or at least approximate it—freely and frequently. But it seems that he has concentrated his search of the Scriptures on what is the most judgmental.

We get 12 to 15 people each week for food, prayer and study, and right now we’re working through Paul’s Letter to the Romans—a very intense and heavy book for after-dinner conversation. But hey, somebody else suggested it!

Several weeks ago, we got heated over whether —even with God’s divine forbearance and love— we can be certain that some people are going to burn in hell. Hey, I didn’t bring that up either, he did! The phrases “get to heaven” and “go to hell” seem to be a constant staple in his faith diet.

So over and over (and tonight was no exception) I keep bringing up illustrations of God’s awesome grace to fill in the heart and the soul of Paul’s more juridical arguments about justification. One of my favorites is the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), where the Father figure treats both sons generously—both the one who was long on obedience but short on tolerance, and the younger one who has foolhardy and then sorrowful when he came to his senses out of sheer desperation.

Another favorite is the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20), who work varying lengths of the day from as much as 12 hours down to merely 1 hour, but all receive the same wage from the landowner. When there is grumbling, the employer (the God figure) says to those grumblers who worked through the heat of the day, “Do you begrudge my generosity?”

These are both illustrations of God’s grace, but they also bring to light the fundamental human trait of resentment. Scholar are quick to tell us that both parables have a deeper level of interpretation as contrasting the Jews (long obedient and faithful) and the Gentiles (lawless johnny-come-lateleys).

So in the Bible Study, even as I try to affirm what people are saying and thinking, I am always seeking ways to re-channel fundamentalist judgmentalism that wants to be certain God is sending disobedient sinners to eternal damnation. After all, they say, its right here in black and white in the Bible.

As if the parables Jesus told are not also “in black and white”? What is it about our righteous sense of judgment that we will go to great lengths to track down and then lift up the judgmental stuff in the Bible, and then soft-pedal the forgiving, grace-filled forbearance of God? Do we have some profoundly human need, in comparing ourselves against others, to put them down (condemn to hell) in order to lift ourselves up?

Tonight, Mr. Fundamentalist quarreled a little against the parable of the laborers by insisting that in heaven different people would get bigger or smaller rewards based on their deeds in this life. The immediate outcry and groaning from others surprised even me! “Oh brother! No, you’ve got it wrong. That’s irrelevant! Where does it say that? For pity’s sake!”

Christian entitlement fits hand-in-glove with Christian judgmentalism. Both are stuck in the idea that God’s grace is scarce, limited, and that in order for “good” people to receive it, it must be withheld from “bad” people.

Both the parables I mentioned say otherwise. Before the thundering waterfall of God’s gracious and generous love I stand with open hands. I will not receive much if I make my hands into fists. I must have open hands. And I will not receive more by shoving my brother or sister aside. In fact, we are never justified in trying to keep one another away from this constant, bountiful supply of God’s grace. Paul says in Romans that we are justified entirely and only as a gift, received by faith. It is not a reward, but a gift. there is no deserving, no entitlement, no wages at the end of the day. And those who receive the most are probably the most aware of this flood of grace.

But those who think they have earned it, and that it is due them and not to others, have probably received the least. For when our hearts close against others, it is as if we were trying to capture the whole of the waterfall with our fists.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Faith, Living by Grace | Print | No Comments »

Politics and policy are driven by a culture of hatred.

September 26, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

I have decided to post this 9-15-2009 essay from Wayne Dynes, forwarded to me by Billy Glover, because it is compelling and thought-provoking about our relationship to international events and national policy.  There is much here to think deeply about, rather than to become partisan about. - DH

Homophobic killings

Thirteen years ago I joined a gay-conservative listserv on the Internet, consisting of about 60 members. I had never regarded myself as a conservative and found to my pleasant surprise that there were several other centrist (and liberal) members of the group. We were united by our common exasperation with the insufferable smugness and intolerance of the gay left, which had for so long dominated the Movement. Alongside this trend stood the “official” gay groups. These had no viable ideology at all, except for raising money and cosying up to the Democratic Party. No matter how much that Party ignored us, the official gays were determined to hang on. We see this sycophancy even today, when those folks urge “patience,” even though Obama has failed to deliver on any of his campaign promises to us.

For their part, the gaycons were uniformly in favor of the Iraq War. I tried ceaselessly to warn them against this stance, but my erstwhile friends were plugged into the DC establishment, and freely parroted the groupthink prevalent there.

The breaking point came when the double standard of the group became glaringly obvious.

In several newspapers and on his site direland.typepad.com, the independent journalist Doug Ireland had meticulously documented the state-sponsored executions of gays in Iran. For the gaycons, of course, Iran was a rogue state, so one could expect nothing good there.

When I reminded my little group of the death squads that were killing gays next door in Iraq, the gaycons wanted none of it. They would have had to admit that the US invasion and occupation of that country had been a disaster for women, Christians, and especially for gays.

As the US presence diminishes in Iraq, the peril that gay men face there has only worsened. An article in the British newspaper, The Guardian, provides some gruesome details (www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/13/iraq-gays-murdered-militias.)

The Muslim extremist groups use young militants with computer training to hunt down gays on chat rooms on the Internet. “It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up,” one said. Once the targets are found, arrangements are made to attack and sometimes kill them. The groups now active are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone. With a stream of homophobic epithets, the deputy leader of one Baghdad group explained its campaign. “Animals deserve more pity than the dirty people who practice such sexual depraved acts,” he told a reporter. “We make sure they know why they are being held and give them the chance to ask God’s forgiveness before they are killed.”

It has been suggested that the violence may be a consequence of the success of the government of Nuri al-Maliki. As militia groups see that their earlier function of providing local security is no longer needed they “shift their focus to the moral and cultural sphere, reverting to classic Islamist tactics of policing moral boundaries,” one observer remarked.

Under Saddam Hussein same-sex behavior was not criminalized, though there was repression, as occurs throughout the Arab world. Violence against gays started in the aftermath of the invasion in 2003. Since 2004, according to Ali Hali, chairman of the Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) group, a human-rights group based in London, no fewer than 680 gay men are known to have died in Iraq, at least 70 of those in the past five months. Actually, the figures may be higher, as most cases involving married men are not reported. Seven victims were women.

Rumor has it that the police are involved, but these reports have been denied. In recent days I received an email from a leftist gay group, noting only the killings in Iraq. This is the mirror image of the blindness of my gaycon friends. The lefties only want to hear about homophobic atrocities in Iraq, which are indeed terrible. They take this selective approach because their template is that all the troubles in the world are due to US “imperialism.” If only we would refrain, all would be well.. (As in Darfur, the Congo, Burma, North Korea, and other such stunning examples of Third World virtue.)

Since gays are being killed in Iran and Palestine, where there is no US presence, this cannot be the key variable. The essential factor is of course the fanaticism of Islamist extremists. Yet the left—and multiculturalists in general—are reluctant to criticize any aspect of Islam.

And of course they cling to their “blame America first” demonology. I would be glad if the US were less active in intervening throughout the world, but this would not mean that conditions would improve in most places. Kleptocracy and repression are rampant in much of the Third World.

Moreover, from Karl Marx to Hugo Chavez, the hard left has a long history of homophobia. That record is nothing to be proud of.

So why not just stop looking at these comments from both the right and the left? The reason I pay attention to them is that I have become disillusioned with the mainstream media. As a resident of New York City, I find that I am obliged to read the New York Times. But after that newspaper allowed the appalling Judith Miller free reign with her incendiary stories about Saddam’s Iraq, I no longer trust that newspaper—or indeed any establishment source.

The only remedy is to get your information from as many sources as you can.

Billy Glover’s forwarding comments (September 17):

I think I agree with your thinking. The problem is that I’m not sure that homosexuals were not as bad off before we invaded Iraq as before, because I agree that it is Islamic nonsense that is the factor. And that is why I supported the war and still do. There is no doubt in my mind that eventually we will have to confront all religious nonsense that is anti-homosexual.I saw a TV documentary, I think on National Geographic channel, on “Inside Islam.” It may be my lack of hearing it before, but I had never heard that there has been a study of the Koran like the Bible, and it came to the same conclusion: parts of the Koran have not only been mistranslated, but things have been added. Specifically, in a modern language translation words like tanks, etc were added, which obviously could not have been in the time it was “written.” (This in a text that supports war on non-Muslims.)

Another aspect is that, like the original Baptist belief, early Islam had no professional leaders, but each person was his own interpreter of the book. And it was pointed out that “Islam’ in non arabic nations is different from the Arabic ones and that, as we already knew, the worst elements are paid for by Saudi-Arabia, the Wahabis-the Islamic element like the right-wing “Christian” extremists in this country.

Need I remind anyone that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons are still being attacked and killed in the United States of America, and that it doesn’t make any difference which party is in power in Washington? We Americans also tolerate a culture of hatred. It isn’t only extremists who are guilty of hatred. We all need to re-examine our mean-spirited and violence-driven rejection of those who differ from us, whether that is in gender or sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, nationality, political persuasions or just every day opinions. People differ from one another. God does not smile on our mean spirits or our culture of violence, hatred and rejection of anyone. Period.

— Dan Hooper

Posted in Violence, Homophobia, Fundamentalism, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

The Biblical Issue in Three Parts: Part Three

August 6, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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

The Biblical Issue in Three Parts: Part Two

August 5, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Part Two appears tomorrow.

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