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 »

Different histories in moving forward.

July 18, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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

Oh my God, when?

July 10, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Blythe, California

“I was in prison, and you visited me.” – Matthew 25:36

I used to think that we could paraphrase Jesus from this parable, “I was gay/lesbian, and you did not reject me.” Wouldn’t that suffice for my social conscience purposes? To identify with the oppressed because I too was one of the oppressed.

And after all, the “I was hungry/thirsty” thing we have covered okay with church pot-lucks—nobody goes hungry or thirsty. (Well, I personally never did really do much of the cooking, but, … you know what I mean.)

And then there is “I was naked…” But, c’mon, Jesus, when did we see you or anybody else really naked because they didn’t have any clothes? . . .   I remember one mentally ill man with incredibly thick and dirty blond hair, who used to wander the streets of Silverlake barefoot, winter and summer.  I actually saw him, repeatedly (”When did we see you?”) so I am guilty of not having done a damn thing abut it.  I wonder what ever became of him.

But, Lord, he was mentally ill, after all. What do I know about any of that?

Last winter, the conservative folks over at Silverlake Presbyterian found the frozen body of a homeless man on their front lawn one extremely cold January Sunday morning. He was naked. They guess that he gave up, and took his clothes off to make an unmistakable statement.  And it did.

Oh my God, where was I? We’ve tried to take care of homeless people for years–living in our church parking lot, under the front porch, even in the Narthex, the Tower landing, the Library and an unused choir room. But Silverlake Presbyterian Church is within sight of my own home. I mighty have seen him. “Lord, when did we see you?” I didn’t see him, and knew nothing about this until I read it in the newspaper.  Was it the man with the bare feet?

Of course, we visit the sick. We bring flowers and communion, and get well cards. We try to do all the right things, well—some of the right things— as often as we can, with our consciences reminding us how important these merciful acts are to a Christian. But there is one thing that almost all of us overlook—the part that says “I was in prison, and you visited me.” No, I can’t say I ever pictured Jesus or anybody else in prison. Prison just wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t know any prisoners.

Jeffrey’s court date was February 12 several years ago.  I sat with his parents and the public defender attorney when, because of a parole violation, he was sent up for another 3½ years in state prison. This was a man who was homeless when I met him at the gay A.A. meeting in our church basement. We tried to help him and his partner over the course of many months. So I was there when the bailiff took him away in handcuffs.

“I saw you, Lord.” I saw him. I saw the injustice. I prayed and counseled with his family outside the courthouse that day. But what else could I do? I am just one person, and one without a lot of “street smarts” at that.

Last night, four of us from the church came to Blythe, on the edge of the state line with Arizona. After weeks of paperwork, letters and delays to get our security clearances, and then a 240-mile drive into this God-forsaken piece of arid real estate, we waited in three different lines for nearly two hours just to get into the Visiting Room. It was 115 degrees under a relentless July sun.

You can see the guard tower and 16′ foot high razor-wire encrusted fences more clearly here.

I started to get weepy when I saw him coming in.  Thank God Jeffrey was in a good mood or I would have been a basket case. “Only 267 days left,” he said, “but who’s counting?”

The food is terrible, he admitted. Medical care is poor, and delayed as long as they can do it.  He has to defend himself from slurs and innuendos for being gay in an overwhelmingly heterosexual cell block. It’s a pressure cooker environment (he’s lucky to be over 6′–1″) with 360 men stacked in triple-high bunks in a “cube.” The whole prison has 3,600 men – it was designed for a capacity about half that number — and the courts and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation are still arguing about the overcrowding. Chuckawalla Valley State Prison is only one of 33 prisons up and down this great Golden State that are nowhere near anybody’s “back yard.” Remember NIMBY? It’s another way of saying “Lord, when did we see you? We sent you as far away as we possibly could!”

What little money we’ve sent to him in prison Jeffrey uses for cosmetics from the prison store.  The state doesn’t provide deodorant.

It also doesn’t provide any hope for a better life. The rehabilitation part is extremely limited. California spends an average $42,000 per inmate per year and over 95% of it is used just to lock them up and guard them.  The California prison guards union is a potent political force.

Jeffrey said he hadn’t had a visitor since January when his grandmother came to visit. I don’t even remember January anymore. It flew by like every other month when you’re busy. I felt shame that it had taken me over two years to get over my fears or blindness and come out here to see him. “Lord, when did we see you?”

And did I mention it was 115 outside? Doesn’t that constitute “cruel and unusual punishment? Lord, when did we notice how hard NIMBY makes it for families to see their loved ones? When did we see the inhumanity in our justice system? When did we see the real people? When did we go blind?

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Faithful discernment in reactionary times.

March 30, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re here, we’re queer, we’re Christian.

February 27, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Further to my recent post on the “core” of the faith and those congregations voting to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the March 2010 issue of the Lutheran magazine has one entire News page devoted to this mess. From this source, a box with a fraying rope picture reports:

Congregations vote to leaveTwenty-eight of the ELCA’s some 10,200 congregations passed a second and final vote to leave the denomination as of Feb. 4.  The Office of the Secretary also reported an additional 128 passed a first vote, while first votes in 64 congregations failed.  In four congregations the votes are being disputed.  Nineteen of the ELCA’s 65 synods had no congregations taking votes.Synods with the most congregations taking votes were: Montana (17), Southwestern Texas (12), East-Central Synod of Wisconsin (11), Southeastern (11), Pacifica (10) [Orange County, California, etc.] and Eastern Washington-Idaho (10).”The Lutheran magazine is trying to be even-handed and journalistically professional. At least they’re reporting this, rather than hiding or ignoring the conflict.  On the same page, other news briefs indicate that some congregations that had been withholding benevolence money from the denomination over the pro-LGBT vote last August have now decided to begin donating it again.  The news also reports on an Iowa congregation that is disputing with its bishop over the exact count of a 2/3 vote of voting members needed to leave the denomination.  And meanwhile the Northeastern Iowa Synod Council has rescinded two very anti-gay resolutions it had previously adopted.  Iowa, you will remember, has legal same-sex marriage, so it’s an issue that is closer to home than the streets of San Francisco.  But such turmoil! trouble! disagreement! 

And, we are the people who started all this?  Well, hardly.  No.  We refuse to take responsibility for homophobic reactions to our lives.  We are LGBT Christians, in the midst of the larger church, who decided to claim our integrity as well as our inborn sexuality.  We decided to be honest, to tell our church that we are here and that we have faith and that we want to fully participate in the community’s life of faith with honesty. All the turmoil is not coming from us, but from the people who can’t handle the truth. When they are prodded to handle the truth, some of them want to flee from the church, and want to believe they are being driven out.  Hey, we could write the manual on what it feels like to be driven out, and guess what?  We didn’t leave.  We are the people of faith who didn’t cave in or go away when we felt unwelcome because we knew the truth that God welcomes, God includes, God blesses, and God heals.

I know there are thousands—millions—of people raised in the Church of Christ who came to terms with their sexuality and no longer have anything to do with any church.  Some are deeply scarred and have rejected all religion, all Christian spirituality.  Others long to come home, but they are not about to come home unless it is safe to do so.  They need assurance they will not get beat up again.

Watching the ELCA come to terms with its lesbian and gay clergy is kind of like watching a family come to terms with a lesbian daughter or a gay nephew.  You want to walk away—quickly—but it’s your family, and something deeply rooted in you believes that, because you know your family, they will eventually come around.  It’s still painful watching them argue with each other, and bring up their wildly irrational fears and complaints, but after awhile, all the emotion sort of drains out of it, and they are still the same people we’ve lived with our whole lives.  They’ll get over it and life will go on.

All I can do is commend these people, this church, and this process, to the all-embracing arms of God.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in LGBT Christian, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Faith, Public Affairs, Ministry, Coming Out, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

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

February 25, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Counter reformation: you can have the CORE.

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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

Enveloped on the mountaintop.

February 14, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Living by Grace, LGBT Christian, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

The Spirit moves among us.

February 11, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I was quite astonished to read the following, because the subject matter in the e-mail didn’t completely display in my window. The parable in this is that you have to wait for the last word, in this case, “lifted.” I think my spirits are lifted, too.  — P.D.

Censure of Abiding Peace Lutheran Congregation LiftedBishop Gerald Mansholt, ELCA Central States Synod, has lifted the censure against Abiding Peace Lutheran congregation of Kansas City, Missouri, which had been imposed in March 2001 because the congregation called and ordained Pastor Donna Simon the previous October. Pastor Donna is rostered with Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM) and was ordained extraordinarily (meaning outside the normal rubrics of the ELCA) under a provision in the Lutheran Confessions allowing such ordinations when bishops can’‘t or won’‘t.

Pastor Donna has served that congregation since her ordination and call. That service and her ministry drew praise from the bishop. In his letter to the congregation, he said of Pastor Donna, a lesbian not yet on the roster of the ELCA, and her service as pastor for nine years: “…though ordained outside the established processes of the Church, Pastor Simon has been a gracious witness among us in this synod as well as in the larger Church. She has spoken the truth in love, and shared her witness and struggle as a baptized child of God, even as she has prayed for a day of wider understanding and acceptance in the Church.”

Bishop Mansholt, in notifying the synod of the lifting of the censure, repeated the above praise for Pastor Donna and commented on the faithfulness of the congregation at Abiding Lutheran: “As the Church studied, prayed and conversed with one another over the matters of gay and lesbian people in the Church, Abiding Peace Church might have walked away. But they remained in the Church and stayed in dialog with brothers and sisters who were trying to make sense of these issues in the light of the Gospel. They kept on praying for a better day, a time of wider awareness and acceptance. . . . I know the congregation also longs for the day when their pastor might be welcomed onto the roster of the ELCA.”

Emily Eastwood, Executive Director, Lutherans Concerned, said, “We are very pleased that the stalwart faithfulness and grace-filled witness of both Pastor Donna Simon and the congregation of Abiding Peace have at long last been recognized and uplifted by the Church and the body of Christ they serve so well. It is our fervent, prayerful hope and our continuing advocacy that more of the Church come to understand and honor the service of LGBT Lutherans as we continue the journey from ignorance, misunderstanding and oppression into the light of Christ Jesus.”

See http://tiny.cc/PE9ks for the full text of Bishop Mansholt’s letter to the Central States Synod.

Phil Soucy

Director Communications LC/NA

communications@lcna.org

Posted in LGBT Christian, Faith, History, Ministry, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

The bridge between faith and rights.

February 5, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Full disclosure: this column is not about Sarah Palin or any other bridge to nowhere that politicians may have built.

Some of us who have been active in the LGBT rights movement for a long time can remember when activist organizations competed viciously against one another, or were torn apart internally because of strident competition between gay men and lesbians. Worse still, there seemed to be this unbridgeable chasm between civil and political activism and the world of faith and religion. No one built a bridge nor even wanted a bridge between them.

I have lived a significant period of my life with a split personality — keeping the “Christian self” apart from the “gay self”; I avoided situations where I would have to come out as gay to a Christian community or as Christian in the LGBT communities. There was something unspoken in me–in many of us–that believed these two distinct selves would never communicate.

It was not altogether accurate, however, and also not true to my faith to suppose that I could not be honest in both communities. As I have matured in faith, I am far less insecure in telling other LGBT people that I am not only a Christian, but a pastor of a Christian congregation.

In recent years we’ve begun to see much more cross-over between LGBT activism in the public/civil/political realm and the faith/spirituality/religion realm. It has probably come about because of another “tipping point” in social change when both camps realized how much we need one another. Case in point, the outcry from the religious communities of America against the evil and draconian legislation proposed in Uganda to annihilate all homosexuals. (For Christ’s sake, even our traditional enemies at Focus on the Family have spoken against it!)

Both the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have reached out especially to the LGBT/Christian movement for one clear and compelling reason: it is obvious that Christian extremism on the right (the Religious Reich) is the biggest single obstacle in America to LGBT people achieving the full and equal rights and benefits of a democratic society.

From the HRC Religion & Faith web site: “The Human Rights Campaign Religion and Faith Program mobilizes people of faith to advocate for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Learn more about HRC’s Religion and Faith Program and about the members of its Religion Council.” the site includes news, articles and resources.

The Revs. Eger, Robinson, Russell and Voelkel

HRC’s Religion Council of 13 significant faith leaders include two from the Los Angeles area: Rabbi Denise Eger, who for 18 years has served as the Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, and Rev. Canon Susan Russell, who is Senior Associate for Pastoral Life at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Both are extremely strong leaders in our environment; both continue to play important roles nationwide, as does Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire.

Under the leadership of Harry Knox, HRC’s Religion and Faith Program has been issuing weekly preaching helps for ministers of welcoming Christian churches to proclaim the full breadth of each week’s Common Lectionary readings.

The Task Force keeps a “Faith” tab on its web menu, and hosts the Institute for Welcoming Resources and the interfaith National Religious Leadership Roundtable. I especially commend the brief “article of faith” by Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, “Why the pro-LGBT movement should welcome religion“, which this blog entry echoes:

“As LGBT religious folks, we often find ourselves in the midst of a squeeze-play between our religious communities and our colleagues in the secular LGBT movement. But, I believe that we, as LGBT religious folks, have a unique and powerful role to play.”In particular, our movement, as it engages our opponents who are overwhelmingly religious, must claim the theological and moral authority of our pro-LGBT voice….”Voelkel, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, is also on the HRC’s Religion Council and serves as Director of the Task Force’s Institute for Welcoming Resources, representing the open/welcoming/affirming/reconciling religious caucuses and movements in faith traditions. There is a wealth of resources on this site.This blog often keeps watch on the weirdos, but we need to keep watch with those strong people of faith who are moving us forward. I hope you will explore these links and plug in wherever is appropriate for you.—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in LGBT Christian, Ecumenical Issues, "The Closet", Faith, History, Coming Out, Public Affairs, Ministry | 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 »

Letters from prison.

December 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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

Is God indulgent or hard-hearted?

December 9, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Gay Catechism, Doctrine, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace | Print | No Comments »

Good news, religious lunacy.

November 30, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

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

Report: Homosexuality no factor in abusive priests 

by The Associated Press • 11.18.2009 9:22am EST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tell Minnesota about your life and faith.

November 25, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

My friend Steve just tipped me off to an informal survey which Minnesota Public Radio is conducting about reactions to the ELCA’s August 2009 decision to allow same-gender-partnered clergy in its ranks. In recent days more than a thousand people have expressed their opinion to MPR’s Public Insight Network. Here is how the network summarizes it:

“Of the people who wrote to us, most said they haven’t considered leaving the church over the ELCA’s stance allowing people in committed same-gender relationships to be pastors. In fact, many were concerned that we are giving too much attention to those who want to leave, rather than focusing on the story that most individuals and churches plan to stay with the ELCA. Some wrote to say that this change will bring them back to the church, or keep them from leaving.”

Here is the link to add your name and commentary. Or click on the graphic.

Of the 1,100 people who have written responses, MPR says that 150 are clergy (15%). So I decided to add my “two cents” to their survey:

“I am one who never left the church, not during college years, not even when I came out as a gay man. In seminary, I was deeply conflicted until I gained the spiritual maturity to see that the Gospel was speaking to me with the good news that it is not my achievements nor my self-denial which earned me God’s favor. It is pure grace.

“I began to serve the Church as an ordained pastor–at first closeted, over time less closeted, more outspoken. When the church pushed me off its clergy roster in 1991 I remained faithful anyway. In 2004 I was called back to ministry, by a courageous Lutheran congregation willing to ignore the rules, and specifically to do outreach with gay and lesbian people. I remain in ministry with Hollywood Lutheran Church in an increasingly diverse local community. We are grieved that other powerful and fearful churches threaten to pull out of the ELCA (God bless them wherever they come to rest). As for me and our parish, we continue to give thanks to God for courage, compassion, and open-hearted ministry wherever it springs up. And we believe the Holy Spirit speaks to all through these things.”

Obviously I could say a lot more. This is probably the most condensed form (in 200 words) I have ever told my story and explained my faith.

The hardest to explain briefly is my growing confidence that what has happened in the ELCA, over the last number of years which reached its dramatic conclusion last August, powerfully illustrates the work of the Spirit among us as we try to arrive at truth. It is not the absence of 100 or so congregations which are voting to exit, or the larger number of those congregations who are retaliating against the ELCA by withholding funds, which will change the course of the church to follow Christ more closely. It is the growing number of congregations, pastors and individuals who act courageously, pray fervently, offer hospitality to LGBT people and reserve judgment, and gradually come to see their role in the larger ministry of grace and healing which the whole Christian Church has been given. Regardless of threats of schism, we absolutely must use the courage God gave us to do what is right, continue ministry, speak honestly and lovingly, and not hide in closets of fear or uncertainty.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Faith, LGBT Christian, "The Closet", Living by Grace, Public Affairs, Ministry, Coming Out, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

We’re here. We’re Christian. Get used to it.

November 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The year 2009 has already been momentous enough in the world of faith, what with both the Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church taking decisive left turns on sexuality issues. The Episcopal Church essentially ended its self-imposed moratorium of electing a lesbian/gay bishop, after the existence of out gay Bishop Gene Robinson set the world’s conservative Anglican into a firestorm of indignation.

Then a month later the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America did something almost unthinkable for a mid-America-dominated outfit of good decent folks: it lifted the 20 year old ban on the ordination of partnered lesbian and gay people into the Lutheran ministry. Since that momentous day in August, everybody seemed to threaten to stop talking to the Lutherans, including other Lutherans, Catholics, etc.

Every denomination of Christians knows full well that they already have lesbian and gay clergy in their ranks. But most of them have preferred the continuous hypocrisy of plausible deniability – that they are unaware or even sincerely believe that they do not have lesbian and gay clergy because, well, they don’t allow such a thing. (By the way, the word “plausible” has an interesting history of its own.)

At any rate, the outrage and indignation over the reality of sexual variation even among decent and God-fearing people, is at least the flashpoint for a lot of upheaval in the Christian world.

Upheaval is usually caused by a lot of light material being tossed around by stronger forces. (I imagine the example of, say, a card table full of champagne glasses is upset by a fast-moving house pet.) There is far less upheaval of any sort when something is built on bedrock, and I always thought that the Christian faith was built on bedrock. I was brought up to believe that. More on that later.

But upheaval there is, and many well-respected commentators have been suggesting now for years that what we see emerging is an enormous realignment in the world of religion. Breakaway groups from mainline Protestant denominations, for example, may simply team up and form new unions.

So as the CORE Lutherans announce they are moving ahead to form their own little churchbody, we can’t help wondering if they will eventually converge with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod if that latter can trust their conservatism, or even the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (which is really not evangelical and not Lutheran in my humble opinion).

As a side note, I will watch with enthusiasm mixed with amazement to see how many ELCA congregations actually do go with the CORE movement. My count today on their web site is that 87 congregations are moving in their direction. Keep in mind that somewhere between 300 and 400 ELCA congregations have signed on with the Lutherans Concerned Reconciling in Christ program to publicly welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. So at the moment this doesn’t look like a serious realignment of apocalyptic proportions.

But the this ecumenical thing popped into the news, the so-called Manhattan Declaration which came out three days ago, that attempts to put up a barricade to the enormous social change of recent decades, over the signatures of Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical Christians.

(It seems more than a little odd this group would grab the title from the climate change people who in 2008 issued the Manhattan Declaration in Manhattan. This month’s 7-page religious moratorium was actually released in Washington D.C., not New York. I suppose now anybody could just write up his or her own version of truth and issue it under the title “The Holy Bible,” and it would be okay, huh?)

But this seems to fit the pattern of that “strange bedfellow” coalition of Mormons and Roman Catholics who donated huge sums to “defend” heterosexual marriage in California and again in Maine.

Bruce Garrett, of Truth Wins Out has written a cogent piece (”Statement Of Conscience: Just Give Us The Money”) on the Declaration and warns of its blatantly anti-gay political agenda.

Is there a real Christian realignment going on? Realignment is hard to detect for certainty when things change at glacial speed. And you know how the media loves to exaggerate, hence the word “upheaval” when 87 out of 10,000 congregations pick up their marbles and leave the ELCA’s game.

Personally, I doubt that there is a grand realignment that will abide for very long. The Mormon/Catholic alliance over Proposition 8 was a marriage of convenience. Both, as I have said, did their best to take the moral heat off of their own houses (a wild history of plural marriages, and a current pattern of sexually-abusive priests and pedophiles) by amping up their indignation over same-sex marriage.

Even in the current Declaration, there is so little holding Evangelical and Catholics together theologically that I doubt it means a massive or fundamental realignment. There are still plenty of evangelical Christians who think the Pope is Antichrist, for example. And Benedict XVI hasn’t done anything to dispel that age-old antipathy. It was more than amusing to see the Catholic News Agency identify some of the writers who put the Declaration together as including “renowned Evangelical leader Charles Colson.” Charles Colson, of Watergate notoriety? Charles Colson, who wrote “Born Again” in 1976 after serving time in prison for obstruction of justice? Well, I guess so, because he got into bed with ex-Lutheran convert to Roman Catholicism (the late) Richard John Neuhaus to publish “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission” in 1995. (You can get your used copy from Amazon right now for 59¢.)

And I suspect the Orthodox are not about to cave into Roman Papal authority any time soon, especially in light of its astonishing resurgence in post-Soviet Russia. The ecumenism of recent years on that front has Orthodoxy being cordial but not really trusting the Papacy. And Benedict is not likely to suggest parity with the Patriarch. His recent”generous” offer to welcome disaffected Anglicans back into the Roman fold, for example, smacks of canon law machinations: an Anglican bishop can become a Roman priest, keeping his wife but forfeiting his episcopate. Gee thanks, Ben.

If the Christian faith and witness is built on real bedrock, it is not the bedrock of Christian history nor a unified view of the divisive social issues in any era. It could only be the bedrock of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the historic creeds and confessions of what it means to be Christian. (So there go the Mormons, who hold to some very odd beliefs about God, Jesus, Adam, and human beings becoming Gods, and who turn up their noses at the ancient statements of faith.) Clearly, the bedrock of Christian faith, and the “core” of Lutheran theological teachings, are about what God does for humanity in Jesus Christ. Those core believes including nothing about who is Pope or whether one needs a pope, a bishop or a priest. the core believes including nothing about human sexuality, homosexuality, or marriage, for that matter.

You can appeal all you want to tradition, and loyalty to the real Holy Bible, but unity of faith is grounded on a great deal more than widely-held prejudices and a quickly assembled outrage and bluster promulgated to grab the attention of the media. And most important, a 7-page statement drawn up by indignant traditionalists does absolutely nothing to make reality go away. And a significant part of reality is that there are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning human beings out there, many of whom were raised in Christian homes and in spite of all the conservative bluster still acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We’re here, we’re queer. We’re Christian. Get used to it. Do I have to say that into Latin?

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Doctrine, Catholic matters, Bible & Interpretation, Ecumenical Issues, History, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | No Comments »