November 19, 2008 by PD.

Carl had been telling me of his “water-cooler conversations” with people at work about Proposition 8. One work friend, who lives in the San Gabriel Valley, who had attended our wedding a few days before, had actually marched across the street from his home to talk with a neighbor who had posted a “Yes on 8″ lawn sign, and persuaded the man to change his view.

Another married heterosexual, usually very quiet, became interested enough to question Carl about the effects of Proposition 8, and his perspective broadened as a result. In the last few days, Carl came home with a signed note from work. The man had taken the trouble to write a sincere letter to us:

“I suppose social progress does not come as quickly as we would like. Fear and ignorance still have a hold but its grip is weakening. The strain is starting to show as those stuck in the past hold on for all their might and become more and more desperate. Lies and scare tactics are all they have left. Each passing day the hold weakens just a little and then the day will come when the grip is broken.

“There will come a time in the future when children will read in bewilderment how we as a society acted on Tuesday. They will say, “They really did that?” and the teacher will respond with a bit of embarrassment “It was a different time.”

“But here we are today. While I cannot imagine the frustration you and Dan feel that other people made a decision about your private lives, know that Sheri and I share a piece of the frustration as well. It wasn’t even any of our business to vote on your marriage in the first place, but now that this disgraceful addition to the state’s constitution has been made it has become our business. When the voters attacked your marriage they attacked ours as well. We have been weakened knowing that we have a right that has been denied others.

“So while the state of California may not recognize your marriage Sheri and I do.”

In the age of ubiquitous e-mail, I found it touching that both spouses actually signed this letter with a real pen! It kind of makes me think about us putting pen to paper when we signed our application for a marriage license. Thank you, Brad and Sheri, for signing on in this struggle for equal rights and equal dignity under the law!

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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November 13, 2008 by PD.

This just in by e-mail from Andrea Szeredy:

One day, the Catholics of the world realized that they far outnumbered all the other kinds of Christians.

“Look,” they said “There’s over 1.1 billion of us. There’s only 16 million Southern Baptists, 12 million Mormons, 5 million Lutherans… Let’s use our numbers to change some things.”

So they used their voting power and passed laws all over. These laws said that only Catholics were allowed to call themselves ‘Christians’. Only the Catholic Bible could call itself ‘the Bible’.

And only Catholics could refer to Jesus by that name. The law required all the other Churches to use different, more generic names. This law was appropriately called the ‘Defense of Christianity Act’.

Of course, this was met with outrage. Non-Catholic Christians around the world rose up in protest, saying “How dare you! We worship the same God, and our Churches are just as good as yours, if not better! We won’t be treated as second-class Christians!”

And the Catholics responded, “But you’re not really Christians at all, don’t you see? We have a tradition that goes back more than 2000 years unbroken right to Jesus. We’re the real Christians. You guys have only been around for a few hundred years, and you’re changing our ancient traditions. You even took some books out of the Old Testament of the Bible! You rip apart the Bible and expect people to call you Christian. You make Jesus sick.”

The others said “But what does this have to do with you? It doesn’t affect your lives. You don’t have to read our Bible or come to our Churches. Our worship has nothing to do with you!”

The Catholics said “Of course it does. When you call yourselves ‘Christian’, it cheapens the word ‘Christian’, and that takes away from us. Why, if you have equal access to the word ‘Christianity’, then our schools will be forced to tell children that it’s just as good to be a Baptist or a Lutheran as a Catholic!”

The others replied “But we ARE Christians! We follow the teachings of Jesus! How is that any different than you?”

The Catholics smiled sadly and shook their heads. “Christ intended there to be one holy apostolic Church, which He Himself founded on Saint Peter. It’s in the Bible. What you have is just not the same. Besides — what’s wrong with the term ‘Middle-Eastern Special Carpenter Followers’? You can still have your ‘Official Religious Storybook’, just don’t call it ‘the Bible’. You get all the same rights as we do. Oh, and by the way — since your marriages aren’t

performed in a real Christian church, we’re dissolving those, too. You’ll have to settle for a civil union.”

The others said “That’s discrimination! You can’t treat us differently just because we have a different religion!”

The Catholics said “Don’t be silly. You have exactly the same rights we do. Just like any person, you have the right to be Baptized Catholic, so that you call call yourselves Christians and get

married. See how it all works? Now stop complaining, or we’ll pass a law against that.” Then the Catholics looked at each other and smiled. “Isn’t it nice to outnumber minorities?” they said to each other.

And they all lived together in their new ‘equality’.

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Christian, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

September 7, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

At a special congregational meeting convened today, September 7, the voting members of Hollywood Lutheran Church unanimously approved a motion to endorse the No on 8 campaign, adding its public voice against the ballot measure that would eliminate marriage rights for same-sex couples.The congregation received and discussed information about all 12 measures on the November 2008 general election ballot, as well as information about taking positions on matters of public policy from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Office of Public Policy in Sacramento, and other faith and justice organizations.

Posted in Hollywood, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, History, Public Affairs, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

April 12, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

My friend Roberta was ordained to today. It’s a start.

A well educated, mature woman, with a theology degree and a Ph. D., Roberta became Roman Catholic and sought her theological education at a time, fresh after Vatican II, when thousands of women thought that the Roman Catholic Church was going to start ordaining women to the priesthood any day now. In the meantime, Robert is a writer, teacher, and professional mediator.

Forty years after Vatican II, she’s still waiting, of course. I can’t help wondering if we are now all waiting for the present Pope to die for things to finally change, or for the church itself to die. Hmm.

Today Roberta was ordained as a Deacon, not a Priest— in the American Catholic Church, one of those independent churchbodies that traces their line back to the Old Catholics who broke with Rome in 1870 over last-straw dogmas which they would not accept: papal infallibility and the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven, etc.

Roberta was ordained in our Lutheran parish sanctuary, of course. Welcome, my friend to the original “old” Catholics – the churches of the Reformation, who have been waiting 500 years for reconciliation.

We have little to brag about, of course. We didn’t start ordaining women to the ministry in this country until 1970. It’s almost as if Vatican II made more of an impression on us than on the Roman Catholics. At any rate, 38 years is a long time to wait for ordination.

As desperately as the whole church of Christ needs servants and ministers, it continues to find ways to drag its feet. My friend Scott, an ELCA heterosexual seminary graduate, waited about two years for a call and ordination to serve a congregation. What as wrong with him? Is he chopped liver? And in the meantime, dozens of congregations in our geographic area are dragging their feet, unable to work the process to select and to call a Pastor. Why? Scott wanted a call very much, and continued to be a servant of the church in a non-ordained position while he was waiting. On hold, as it were.

“Your Call is important to us. Please hold.” This seems to be the church’s message to its seminary graduates.

Then I got to thinking: Was there something wrong with this guy? I mean, did he fail some key courses? Does he have an attitude problem? Is he a closeted heretic? Why are they overlooking him? I finally asked him one day at a clergy gathering face-to-face, “Whom did you piss off?”

“That’s what I’m beginning to wonder,” he said with a sad chuckle in his voice.

Women routinely have to wait a long time to get the Call. And for their second call (if— God forbid—they should ever want or have to move on to a new opportunity to serve), there are “on hold” for a very long time.

It’s especially true of course for lesbian and gay, bisexual and transgender students and graduates and pastors. The institutional church has spent the same forty years ditzing around with its LGBT children.

“Are we welcome in the church, or not?”

“Well, yes, sorta,” they tell us.

“We have faith, and we have been loyal to a fault to an institution which really doesn’t know what to do with us, so are we welcome to participate fully in the life of the church or not?”

“Well, yes.”

“Does that participation include professional ministry, under Call, as ordained servants of the servants of God?

“Hello?”

“Your Call is important to us. Please continue to hold.”

It really isn’t a matter of whether the church will ever finish studying us, like butterflies pinned under glass. It is a matter of whether the church of Christ will ever get on with its mission to follow Jesus, serve people, and move on to new and exciting opportunities. But sadly, the institutional church seems to be incapable—institutionally—of carrying out real ministry and stepping up to anything new.

So here’s to you, Deacon Roberta. Congratulations!!

She has selected her area of missional concentration as a Diaconate for Spirituality and the Arts in the Los Feliz area of Hollywood/Los Angeles. I don’t think it’s been tried before, and of course there’s no money for it, but knowing Roberta, it will happen. Like thousands of women, minorities, lesbian and gay people, renegades and troublemakers within the body of Christ, she has the vision while the whole church seems to be blind. You go, Roberta!

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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April 8, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

The Good News of Christ’s reconciling mission in the world has been unbelievably snagged in the nonsense of papal counter-reforms. His Bavarianess, Pope Benedict XVI is trying to rip out of the Catholic cloth all the tailoring which was sewn by the Vatican II reformers two generations ago. The Latin Mass is back—strongly encouraged by Benedict. Apparently continuity with the irrelevant past into an irrelevant future is more important than the participation of the faithful.

And now even his choice of liturgical vestments is going retro. An opinion piece, “Papal Dress Code“, —by former altar boy and senior editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times, Michael McGough —ventures into the world of papal vestments which Benedict prefers and likely will model when he comes to the United States later this month.

In trying to find suitable graphics with Google, I have followed the threads into an arcane world of medieval repristinators who, like sleeping dogs, should probably be left to their own dreams.

(Above) Here you see Benedict celebrating mass with an enormous host (I guess everything papal can be super-sized), surrounded by attendants dressed in what appear to be clear plastic raincoats. Hmmm.  A blog comment identifies these as “Shantung silk.” What would Jesus wear?

If you want to peek further, there are sites and blogs such as “Save the Liturgy Save the World“ which devolves quickly from believing that the Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life (okay, I can’t disagree), to stating that violations of rubrics, like a pebble tossed in a pond, create spiritual ripples in the Church and the world!

Violation of rubrics? Does anybody but the gay boys in the Sacristy remember what rubrics are? They are the little ceremonial notes, usually written in red ink, which ride along with liturgical rites in those big, dusty altar missals, to help the ministers perform the services “decently and in order.”

Rubrics are like stage directions for a play—lines which the actors don’t deliver but must remember (”cross to stage left, waving right arm and shouting …”). But apparently for some faithful believers, violations of these stage directions are tantamount to irreverence and cause spiritual ripples felt around the world.

Is it any wonder that bumper stickers (which are also seen everywhere, at least everywhere around my world) poke such fun, “Jesus Save Me from your followers!”? Is it any wonder that the Barna Group research says today’s young adults admire Jesus and avoid the Church?  (see also: “Spirituality: Do We Look Like Jesus?“)

Could it be because the Church takes its eyes off of its Lord and starts gazing at its own embroidered navel? I was frankly aghast last year to see a photo of Cardinal Mahoney washing the feet of his disciples on Maundy Thursday in full liturgical vestments,

after having read the same Gospel passage he did, where Jesus took off his outer vestments and simply tied a towel around his waist (John 13:3–4). Can’t we serve Christ with humility, boys?

I say these things not to beat up on traditional Roman Catholics, or to put the Pope down for his three-times-head height miters, but to call the true church to repentance and faith in the Christ who empowers us to serve God by serving others, not serving ourselves. I myself wear a chasuble for the Eucharist. But I remember the good counsel I received more than 30 years ago about the reform of Christian worship practices – there are three criteria which should not be out of balance with one another: historic precedent, ecumenical consensus and contemporary need. Benedict has apparently decided to blow off the latter two.

I have always tried to keep my high church tendencies in check (”must control the wrist of death”), and only recently have allowed a little more elaboration and festive stuff in our parish worship because of the large number of recovering catholics in our community. But at the same time I am committed to proclaiming Gospel, not navel, and to prayer from the heart, and to serving the community around us with compassion and humility. If anything causes spiritual ripples in the world, it ought to be the deeds by which we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, visit the prisoners, and proclaim liberty to the oppressed. Benedict, would you care to join us?

But who am I? I am only the voice of a heretic (demoted from “separated brethren” under Vatican II) who belongs to a nearly 500 year old movement (the Evangelical Lutheran Church) that the present pope does not consider to be a church.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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March 10, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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February 4, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I’m not sure I have the best term for this, since I just discovered the thoughts of Peter Russell, but perhaps “pop philosopher” will serve for now. Russell is a scientist/writer/futurist/mystic. His views and wisdom can be found on his web site, www.peterrussell.com, along with intriguing devices.

Sample his World Clock for example, that rolls through the number of counters, including the rate of abortions, deaths from cardiovascular disease, world population etc., how fast cars and bicycles are being produced, and forests denuded, all  on one screen. Or his Life Expectancy Calculator which, in a series of 34 questions, will tell you how long you will live. You may be amazed at what counts as a debit and what counts as a credit in this accounting.

Looking beyond the so-called “Information Age,” I am intrigued by his suggestion that evolution itself is speeding up like global warming, that the universe’s intelligence is expanding exponentially (intelligence being sharply distinguished from wisdom—both terms are adequately defined—which is still in its infancy), and that change itself may reach a maximum point or a leveling-off. Russell presents ideas such as “singularity”, the ingression of novelty, and how human beings see our real selves apart from our external circumstances. We are a “Half-Awake Species,” he suggests with good reason (from “A Singularity in Time“):

In addition, we are only half-awake to our deeper needs and how to attain them. Most of us would like to avoid pain and suffering, and find greater peace and happiness, but we believe that how we feel inside depends on external circumstances. This is true in some cases, for example. if we are suffering because we are cold or hungry. In the modern world, most of us can fulfill these demands very easily. The flick of a switch or a trip to the store usually suffices. But we apply the same thinking to everything else in life. We believe that if we could just get enough of the right things or experiences we would finally be happy. This is the root of human greed, our love of money, our need to control events (and other people); it is the cause of much of our fear and anxiety, we worry whether events are going to be the way we think they should be if we are to be happy. This thinking is also at the heart of the many ways we mistreat, and often abuse, our planetary home.

The global crisis we are now facing is, at its root, a crisis of consciousness—a crisis born of the fact that we have prodigious technological powers, but still remain half-awake. We need to awaken to who we are and what we really want.

Needless to say, Russell’s consciousness steps into the spiritual. I am usually cautious and skeptical about such ideas, until I begin to realize that spirituality is found widely in the Judeo-Christian heritage, and not always cloaked in or tied to specific religious or dogmatic language. If sectarian Christians are unwilling to explore this, we should at least note that the pioneers of the “emergent church” are doing it with or without our blessing.  Much more on that later.

As I have noted, I’ve just discovered this pop philosopher. But I expect to spend some time reading what he has written and, at least, exploring his prodigious web site.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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December 9, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney finally made his “religion speech” last week. http://www.getreligion.org/ notes that Romney basically wrote the speech. Certainly this is a big enough issue for a sizeable block of the American people he had better take responsibility for his words, and choose them carefully.

For many Christians – at least those in an official position where they represent the teachings and doctrines of their faith— the Latter Day Saints are not Christian. I know this causes these people great pain – and that they see it as a form of prejudice and bigotry.

(And who shouldn’t be against prejudice and bigotry? In the last 40 years we have seen Christians at many levels in society reject conversation and collegiality with the Metropolitan Community Church, for example because it is the denomination that unequivocally welcomes sexual minorities and is served primarily by lesbian and gay clergy. But is the M.C.C. not Christian?)  Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints not Christian?  Logically it is only fair to conclude that Mormons do not share many of the same essential beliefs about the person of Jesus that other Christians do.  Mitt Romney tried to massage this fact in his speech, here quoted from www.getreligion.org: 

“What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind.  My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history.  These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance.  Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.”

I note in this passage that Romney is deflecting the religious doctrine question and trying to make it a social tolerance issue. And perhaps in terms of serving in the high office of President it is. “He seized the opportunity to connect his candidacy to something larger and transcendent: the history of religious freedom in America,” said Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. “He made a virtue of necessity.” But he sidesteps the core question (sidestepping = “spin” = political necessity) which Christian voters are still curious and unnerved about:  Are Mormons to be considered Christian—either by other Christians (a very subjective measure), or by some objective standard? Is there such a thing as an objective test for using the term “Christian” anyway?

Unhappily, the Christian church has slugged that one out for 2,000 years. In the earliest centuries it excommunicated dissenters.  By the 4^th century, with new-found civil power, it had heretics put to death over theological disagreements– something which even St. Martin of Tour found to be odious.  A hundred years before Luther, the Catholic Church was still killing off dissenters such as John Hus, Michael Servetus and of course the Jews; Martin Luther survived only because his politically well-placed friends helped him hide (and later supported capital punishment for heresy!).  When the 16^th Reformers argued their case, they bent over backwards to show the Roman authorities that, by objective standards, they had not departed from the true Christian faith.  In the Lutheran confessional document, the Augsburg Confession, written in 1530 as a trial brief, for example, the core Christian dogmas are incorporated by reference:  the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, the doctrines embedded in the Old and New Testaments about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the Church.  If by no other measure, over 2,000 years these key elements (”symbols”) have come to define what “Christian” means.

Then why is there such fragmentation in the Christian Church, and isn’t the Mormon church just another expression, or denomination or tradition or fragmentation within the larger Christian Church?

By the way, it seems that another piece of “Christian” teaching which has deep tap roots in the Jewish/Christian Bible, is that once a doctrine is thoroughly defined, the Christian faith holds that anyone who holds different views (even slightly varied views) is wrong.  In talking about the great Councils of Christian history, where doctrines were hammered out, the late John Boswell, author of Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, once remarked: “Before the vote is taken, there is a majority and a minority. After the vote is taken, the minority is dead wrong.”  (The Athanasian Creed makes the rejection of other points of view a matter of dogma, which many Christians including me find very unsettling and choose to selectively ignore!)

Objectively speaking, Romney’s faith tradition is not Christian, or it is at best quasi-Christian, because, as he says, “My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths.” [Emphasis added.]

Be honest, Mitt. They are not the same as the beliefs of the Christian churches.  The LDS Church does not sign on to the Apostles, Nicene (and here is a very fascinating link for theological discussion!) and Athanasian Creeds, for example.   LDS founder Joseph Smith built his following on the premise that a heavenly angel revealed to him the right stuff and that all the other Christian churches were wrong.  Smith and many other 19^th century splinter and reformist groups carved out their “market share” (as we would call it now) by dropping some core Christian beliefs and adding others which are rejected by Christian churches.

Although it took from the year 1530 to 1999, the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church worldwide are now in agreement about the essential issues of justification by faith which are at the heart of the Augsburg Confession.  The Lutherans and the Orthodox now see almost eye to eye on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 

Do not look for the Mormon Church to sign on any time soon to these Christian teachings. For what they teach about Jesus and salvation, etc., are expressly and decisively opposed to these core Christian teachings.

Technically, the argument over who is a Christian, or what objective tests can be use to decide that, are irrelevant in the race for the Presidency. Romney is hoping that American tolerance of differences will not be an impediment to his election as President. But if the pollsters are correct, for the Christian evangelical crowd (the religious “right” wing), Baptist Rev. Mike Huckabee looks a lot more acceptable than ex-Governor Romney.

In my personal perspective, neither one of them would get my vote but not because of their particular theological views, or the official teachings of their church traditions and doctrines (Christian or not). I don’t agree with their social values, and I would worry more than a little that they would use those faith-influenced social values to enforce a particular, prejudicial and unjust agenda on this nation. (CNN’s sound-byte: “Romney: ‘My convictions will indeed inform my presidency’”.) From what I have read about Romney, while he appeals to American tolerance, he is not likely to promote the view that all the laws of this land be broadened to guarantee equal tolerance for the views of others. He does not support the legalization of same-gender marriage, for example, as the tolerant, American, thing to do.

It is pretty clear that George W. Bush used his own religious faith as a big factor to get himself into the White House. It is clear that the votes of his co-religionists counted heavily (even if they don’t know how to count in the state of Florida) in the last two general elections. Now a man equally as socially-conservative as Bush wants the America people not to count his religion against him. Is it any wonder that fundagelicals are finding this hard to do?

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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December 6, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

The AIDS quilts are coming down today, after being displayed for over a week. Hundreds of people came and viewed them, read their messages, and thought about their significance. On these particular panels, some 24 people who died of AIDS are commemorated.

Our friend Paulette procured them from the Names Project Foundation in Atlanta to display over the period of World AIDS Day and our World AIDS Hollywood Vespers Concert.

The last visitors, last night, were teenagers from the Silverlake Children’s Theatre Group, who were on site for their regular rehearsals. They were very interested, and respectful of what they saw. None of them had been born when most of the individuals whose names appear on the quilts were dying of AIDS.

Alas, AIDS has become a “generational thing” in America. Too many young people have little to no experience of anyone having HIV or AIDS. It is natural for them to think it’s an old people’s disease, or a former disease, or one that will never affect them. Tragically, too many young gay people are having unprotected sex in the mistaken belief that AIDS is not their problem. Their gullibility to this falsehood is increased under the influence of crystal meth, which lowers inhibitions to sexual expression. Looking for “hookups” online is deceptively easy. And people still lie about their status. Yesterday a 365Gay.Com story reports allegations that a Roman Catholic priest and Navy chaplain has been having unprotected sex with other men without disclosing that he is HIV+.

AIDS is still killing people by the thousands, although we do not see it as much in America. America can (just barely) afford the miracle drugs that have kept tens of thousands of people alive during the last 15 years. We know individuals who have been living with AIDS for more than twenty years, so AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence.

I remember our friend Andy, who came to Lutherans Concerned events in the 1980s. Young, cute, blond, buff, pleasant, Andy was a UCLA student. He was, however, not out to his parents. And he was not aware of how easily he could contract HIV. In those days there were no miracle drugs. Andy got sick, very sick, and was diagnosed with the virus. In a matter of days, his parents learned the awful truth: that he was gay, that he was infected, and that he was dying. Andy was dead before most of his friends even knew he had been sick.

But because his death occurred twenty years ago, today’s youth just have no connection with it nor with the hundreds of thousands of people who died in their youth.

After years and years of activism, from “Play Safely” ads in gay magazines to total abstinence programs which Republigelicals have been pushing so hard, too many people have little understanding of AIDS or why it must be stopped globally. “Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise.”

One would think that visualizing AIDS as an enemy to be defeated would inspire a new generation of activists. But I’m not seeing that yet. And I don’t think it’s because people are that complacent about the disease, but they seem to be complacent about life itself.

Americans are the worst of human beings when it comes to denial. We are certainly the epicenter of death-denial and death defiance.. Evel Knievel just died November 30, incidentally, after a 40 year career of doing imaginative, stupid things to get attention. A man in Omaha Wednesday killed eight other people in an Omaha shopping mall before killing himself. He apparently left several suicide notes, including one that said, “Now I will be famous.”

And we are in a state of pathological denial about the causes of death, and will eat, drink, race, have sex, and blow off every form of danger, commit murder and suicide, as if our lives do not matter.

Perhaps our lives do not. There is the thinnest of lines between carelessness and callousness about life. But life is what you make of it. Reverence for life is not inherited, it must be learned, adopted, believed. To honor those whom we have lost —such as we did Sunday with the lighting of candles and reading of the names of 250 people— is to love life itself as a gift of God, and to respect ourselves and our finite existence even more. What is “the meaning of life”? The meaning you give to it, beginning with self-respect.

Remember the dead. Thank God for life. Stop AIDS. Keep the promise.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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October 31, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Well, today is Reformation Day in the Lutheran Calendar — the other fun thing to observe besides Halloween festivities. On October 31, 1517 our intrepid and brash leader, Dr. Martin Luther touched off a firestorm in Europe by daring to challenge local church officials to debate him over the matter of selling indulgences. Using the church door as a bulletin board (the custom of the day), Luther posted 95 theses or points for debate.

Sounds like no big deal, except that to church authorities it was a sign of a major confrontation. And, with the printing press having been invented only a few years before, Luther’s ideas spread all over Europe almost instantly.

Fast forward to the 490^th Anniversary of the Reformation. Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries is born, the love-child of Lutheran Lesbian & Gay Ministries and the Extraordinary Candidacy Project. These two pieces of the movement to open the Lutheran churches in the U.S. to the full participation of LGBT people–not only in the pews but in the pulpits–decided last February that they could be more effective if they combined their witness and resources. 

So today ELM is born, by “virtually” nailing its theological statement to the door of the internet. How Luther-an can you get?  (Go ahead:  knock on the red door.)

News of this audacious step will travel all over the Lutheran church and be picked up by people who watch the continuing conflict between Christians and sexual minorities. How it plays out is in the hands of the Holy Spirit, of course (Acts 5:38–39).

Cynics may take this as a step toward breaking with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, after it’s churchwide assembly failed last August to revise or liberalize its anti-gay personnel policies. The compromise measure which passed that Assembly was to urge synods and bishops to refrain or at least restrain their discipline against congregations which choose to knowingly call (hire) a non-celibate gay or lesbian pastor, or act to official ordain them.

But Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries is not a separatist movement like that racking the Episcopal Church and the world-wide Anglican communion. ELM is a consolidation of ongoing efforts not to break from the church but to be the church by raising funds to do real ministry, and calling qualified and committed individuals to carry out specific ministries.

If anything, it will be the homophobic, right-wing ultra-conservatives who will attempt to pick up their marbles and leave the game, but not the LGBT Lutherans. This is not because we, or “the liberals” have taken over the ELCA. Far from it, as the August Assembly votes clearly reveal. No, the LGBT Lutherans are “staying put” within the larger church for very clear reasons.

Being ultra-conservative is, after all, a matter of choice. Being homophobic is under one’s willful control. One chooses to fear and hate gay and lesbian people. One chooses to read scripture in a rejective, punitive way, rather than in a reconciling, healing and compassionate way. But for millions of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, one’s sexuality is not a choice. It’s a given. It is discerned over time, discovered and wrestled with until each person learns self-esteem, and makes peace with the emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions of his or her God-given personhood. The reason that LGBT people are “staying put” in this churchbody is that we are most often born into it, grow up in its graceful embrace, are nurtured by its proclamation of Gospel not laced with shame or hatred, and respond to the invitation of Christ to lay down our heavy burdens (Matthew 11:28–30).

Many conservatives at the Chicago ELCA Assembly hoped that, if discipline is being refrained from or restrained during this period of discernment (the ELCA’s Social Statement on human Sexuality is due out in less than 2 years), the “liberal” wing of the church would also refrain from calling and ordaining more LGBT candidates to ministry. This is the same issue which the ultra-conservatives in the Anglican communion (led by African fundamentalist power-brokers such as Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria) have tried to force on the Episcopal Church in the U.S.: don’t consecrate any more gay bishops!! Or else!!

We await the response of the ELCA and other Lutheran church bodies in the U.S. and around the world about the birth of ELM. There might be some “or else” conditions, but they cannot fall upon ELM itself or those of us who are on its professional Roster as pastors and candidates for ministry. The immediate reason is that the big bad churchbody had already kicked out many of the pastors who are rostered with ELM, or foreclosed ordination for seminarians who came out as lesbian/gay, bisexual or transgender.

But the bigger reason is grounded in the Word. Martin Luther and his movement defended themselves before the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 by staying grounded in the Word.

And Peter and John defended the brash actions which they and Jesus’ other disciples were taking by laying it out just as clear to their critics: “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to bey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19–20)

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