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Touch us gently.

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

As many of readers of Indwelling Spirit may realize by now, I scribble little “Notes to Self” and don’t get back to them right away. They clutter my desk and brief case and bedside table. Sometimes, months later, these notes take some deciphering, and as I get back to this blog after many months of being overwhelmed by other responsibilities, I am evaluating some of my own scrawled notes:

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Each of us probably remembers this feeling from a doctor or dentist visit: We have pain. The “spot” is very sensitive. We know that this needs the attention of a professional, perhaps even a specialist, but we brace ourselves against what might be careless or overzealous medical attention. “Please be gentle!” we scream under our breath just before we are touched, poked, probed —or drilled!

When someone tells me about a pain they are having, or their story of a recent doctor visit, I am thinking, “I know exactly how you feel,” because I have had similar experiences where a pain was deep or sharp and I found myself pleading for gentle treatment.

Spiritually, there is an important parallel here. We may be living with a lot of pain, spiritually. It takes awhile for it to build up to the point where we recognize its symptoms, or are ready to talk about it. Yet we are really reluctant to take our inner emotional/spiritual pain to a specialist—to a counselor, confessor, pastor or spiritual director.

Why do we avoid getting spiritual help when we are in pain?

I suspect that often the reason is that we don’t expect we will be treated gently, either by a counselor/pastor or by God. Many people have experienced so much judgmentalism, rejection, and threats of punishment from religious figures —and told they can expect the same from Almighty God!—that they avoid taking their spiritual symptoms to them.

All of us have been poked, probed, drilled, scolded, and pushed away at some point—at a very sensitive point in our lives—when what we really needed was a gentle touch or a hug, not a lecture, scolding, ultimatum or damnation.

Time and time again this has been especially true for LGBT people. We have symptoms of emotional and spiritual distress. We hurt. It has taken a lot of time for many of us to bring this pain to the surface, and to recognize the symptom of our deep discomfort. We’re not sure of ourselves let alone sure of our relationship to God.

But because of either our own experiences or those of friends, we avoid seeking counsel or guidance for our spiritual lives, because we cannot take any more harsh treatment. Some of us just go on living with the pain rather than seeking a specialist that can help clear it up, because of the risk of spiritual mistreatment or harm. The so-called Ex-Gay campaign, for example, has been unmasked as an effort that subjects gay people to immeasurable pain and mistreatment.

Often I try to explain to non-gay church people what the significant pastoral and spiritual issues are for LGBT people. Some of these people are sympathetic enough to recognize the prejudice and rejection that lesbian/gay people especially have experienced. But because they are in the sexual majority, not sexual minority, they do not fully understand or fully feel the pain that we talk about.

Yes, there are many other Christian people out there who are not sympathetic at all. They continue to finger the same few “clobber” passages in the Bible, and point to them with a sharpened index finger, like a doctor thumping on a medical manual at the possible diagnosis. And because they are so certain of their allegiance to God as they understand him, they almost aggressively attack the wounded or the hurting with this “immutable” word of the Lord. An old saying expresses this pretty well: The church is the only army that shoots its own wounded.

God does not approach us that way. If anything, God touches all who are in pain, all who have open wounds, more gently. God’s approach to our pain or suffering is an embrace, not a probe or poke or drill. From the Lutheran rite for Confession and Forgiveness (Summer 2011), “As tender as a parent to child, so gentile is God to us. As high as heaven is above the earth, so vast is God’s love for us. As far as east is from west, so far God removes our sin, renewing our lives in Jesus Christ.”

If we would simply look again at even a handful of the stories in the Gospels about how Jesus approached people in pain, we would clearly see this gentle approach: the woman caught in adultery, the woman at the well (who had already been married 5 times), the rich young ruler, Nicodemus, Zaccheus, Thomas the Doubter, Judas Iscariot, the soldiers who crucified him, and the thief on the cross.

To be sure, Jesus often does challenge people to put greater trust and faith in him, or to turn their lives around (“Go, and sin no more”). But his spiritual approach is always gentle. I might even speculate that Jesus had heard of the Hippocratic Oath (5th Century B.C.), to which this classic phrase is often traced: primum non nocere, “first, do no harm.” It certainly calls for reflection for those of us who are spiritual guides, counselors, confessors and pastors, and especially for those who are LGBT people of faith.

I have a definite sense of what God’s gentle touch means. (See my essay, “About Jesus,” for example.) Obviously, a lot of rock-hard conservative clergy and laity wouldn’t agree with me, and they can drill their forefinger into the pages of the Bible to “prove” it. But as I’ve said before, “God’s Word for us is always an invitation, not an ultimatum.” And you can quote me on that.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Coming Out, Doctrine, ELCA, Ex-Gay, Fundamentalism, Gay Catechism, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Ministry, Spirituality | No Comments »

We are a Sanctuary.

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

As our church polishes us and celebrates the recent completion of new things in our sanctuary (such as flooring and pipe organ), my mind turns to the significance of the sacred space, what it has meant historically as a place of prayer and sacrament for nearly 90 years, and what it should mean in the lives of Christians—not just here but everywhere.

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The idea of Sanctuary is an ancient one. A sanctuary is not merely a sacred space where we can pray to God, but a safe space from the anxieties, terrors and violence of the world around us.

From time to time, churches also serve as a refuge or sanctuary for illegal immigrants, for runaways and for the hungry and homeless. Battered wives have fled to the church as a place of safety, hiding and understanding. After natural disasters, many people who have been displaced by fire or flood have come to churches seeking help and temporary shelter.

Hollywood Lutheran Church is a sanctuary for sexual minorities (LGBTQ etc.), people in recovery from alcohol, drugs and other addictions, people living with HIV/AIDS, people of color and everybody else who suffers discrimination, and even inmates and parolees who are shunned even after they have “paid their debt to society.”

We don’t just sit in a Sanctuary to pray! The purpose of the Christian Church everywhere should be to enlarge the Sanctuary of God’s love and compassion, and to become a living sanctuary of people committed to mercy, safety, healing and wholeness.

There is no place in our church for judgmentalism, rejection, hatred, prejudice or fear. The Christ we know in faith—who on the Cross gave up his life for our sake and took away the sins of the world—is a Lord who seeks the lost, upholds the weak, feeds those who hunger and thirst, and reveals the light of God to anyone who struggles against the darkness.

If that sounds over-dramatic, it shouldn’t. Christians are in a life-and-death struggle with evil in the world. Every day I see the ruins and results of evil—broken lives, fearful people, indifference or hatred. In the midst of this world, there is no reason to be “religious” if not to follow in the steps of Jesus Christ. And if we follow Christ, we must be the change we want to see in the world. We must be the sanctuary to which others may come and rest and pray and feel safe. This is true religion . This is the life of faith.

—Pastor Dan

P.S. If you’re curious, here are some key Bible passages about sanctuary: Psalm 20:1–5, Psalm 28:1–3; Isaiah 8:13–14; Ezekiel 37:26–27; Hebrews 10:19–24.

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, Faith, History, HIV and AIDS, Homophobia, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Ministry, PRAYERS, Recovery, Spirituality, Uncategorized, Violence | No Comments »

Is there a trend going?

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

Just weeks after the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. finally opened its doors to lesbian and gay clergy, today’s breaking news is that the Church of Scotland is doing the same.

The British Guardian reports the story, which also touches on the issue of same-sex marriage.

The Church of Scotland is the largest Protestant body in Scotland (although not large, only some 450,000 members). Since the Reformation four centuries ago, the Church of Scotland has been a part of the Reformed movement which is essentially Presbyterian in polity.

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“The church’s general assembly, its law-making body, voted on Monday to lift that moratorium, officially allowing gay ministers to take on parishes for the first time since its formation 450 years ago.”

The story, however, dies not indicate whether the Church of Scotland voters were in any way influenced by the ratification of changes in policy in the PCUSA earlier this month.What is fascinating in the Guardian story are the competing predictions of potential disaster (before the vote was taken by the church’s general Assembly): the number of ministers and congregants who would leave the church if homosexual clergy are permitted, and the number of ministers and congregants who would leave the church if homosexual clergy are not permitted. It seems human nature cannot resist the making of polarizing threats.For the record, there were hundreds of clergy and thousands of believers in my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America who never promised to leave or threatened anything for the decades it took to shift the thinking of the entire churchbody. Although we have certainly not won over every heart and mind, the scale tipped in favor of openness and tolerance in August 2009, and all efforts to rescind this new liberal policy have thus far failed miserably.

Although the Guardian story is too brief and vague, it notes that “In addition, the church has set up a commission to investigate the theological issues raised by the acceptance of gay clergy.” In contrast, the ELCA studied the issues almost to death, including the adoption of a comprehensive statement on Human Sexuality, before it recommended action two years ago.

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We shall stay on the look-out for more information coming directly from the Church of Scotland.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Coming Out, Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, ELCA, History, International, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, Ministry | No Comments »

An extraordinary moment of history.

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

I wish I could easily summarize the feelings I had participating in the ordination of my friend Guy Erwin to the ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on Wednesday, May 11.

With four bishops present and two choirs singing, Erwin was ordained in a moving ceremony attending by more than 500 people in Samuelson Chapel at California Lutheran University.

Erwin, who is a brilliant scholar and affable and effective teacher, holds the Belgum chair of Confessional Lutheran Theology at CLU in Thousand Oaks, California. He also serves as the ELCA’s representative on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. Although he is more than qualified to serve on the ELCA’s clergy roster, until the ELCA changed its anti-gay policies in August 2009, Erwin was never eligible to be called to an ordained position. He is gay and permanently partnered.

This ordination is historic for several reasons, in my view. First of all, he is the successor (although the title and scope of the position have changed over the years) at Cal Lu to Rev. Dr. Paul Wennes Egertson, who died unexpectedly last January, and before him to the Rev. Dr. Gerhard Belgum. I am old enough to remember Gerhard Belgum, and although these things were not spoken out loud in the 1970s, I remember hearing enough covert information to believe that Dr. Belgum was more than a little homophobic. Be that as it may, when Paul Egertson took up responsibilities in Thousand Oaks at what was then called the Center for Theological Studies, he became the bridge. Paul’s amazing first-born son Greg came out to the family and triggered the complete re-education of this central family in Southern California Lutheranism. (Paul’s father was also an esteemed Lutheran pastor; Paul served as Bishop of the Synod in Los Angeles and Paul’s cousin Howard Wennes served as Bishop in the Grand Canyon Synod of the ELCA.)

You can see a six-minute tribute to Dr. Egertson on Youtube which was produced as part of the first annual Clarence E. Anderson Peace and Justice Award.  Dr. Erwin narrates the video.

Once he clearly understood the personal, pastoral and theological issues at the center of the controversy about LGBT Lutherans, Paul Egertson “changed sides” with passion and determination and became a champion for opening the doors of the Lutheran Church to LGBT people and pastors.

Now the transition is complete, as Rev. Dr. Erwin inherits the mantle, not only as a key theologian at our local university, but as an eminently qualified teacher of the larger church. the second reason, in my view, that Erwin’s ordination is important is that a young but important academic institution of the whole church has participated fully and enthusiastically in his ordination, even though it is possible that the university’s “donor base” may include conservative or even homophobic people who will withdraw from active support of the university because a gay pastor holds an endowed chair in the University. To me this means that the regents are also claiming and participating in the shifting of the Christian paradigm from being anti-homosexual to welcoming and utilizing all people who have God-given gifts to serve.

I am delighted to have such an extraordinary man as Pastor Guy Erwin in the church I love and in such an influential setting as he has been given in the university.

By the way, in addition to the fifty or so pastors participating in the laying-on of hands for Pastor Erwin were ELCA Bishop Dean Nelson and Bishop Murray Finck, Episcopal Suffragan Bishop Mary Glasspool and Retired ELCA Bishop Howard Wennes. It was a splendid and remarkable moment in our faith community’s life.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, ELCA, History, Homophobia, LGBT Christian, Ministry | No Comments »

Another close call coming, another earthquake?

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

More Light Presbyterians and Lutherans Concerned began their advocacy, education and support work about the same time, in 1974. Over the years we have had a great deal of dialogue about LGBT issues between the two bodies. I first met the late Dr. John Boswell at a Presbyterian event in West Hollywood not long after the publication of his blockbuster Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality in 1981. Chris Glaser, a Presbyterian pioneer in the gay/Christian movement, has worked tirelessly and written numerous books although he could never be ordained as a Presbyterian elder or minister.

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All that may be about to change, if the Twin Cities Presbytery votes tonight to ratify a measure, Amendment 10-A, removing the ban on non-celibate lesbian/gay clergy in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. In Presbyterian polity, a vote such as this in the General Assembly must be ratified by a majority of local presbyteries (smaller than Lutheran synods). According to Minnesota Public Radio, the Twin Cities Presbytery vote to rescind the policy would be the 87th ratifying vote. Sixty-two presbyteries have voted against the change. Not all presbyteries have weighed in yet.

Because of the advocacy—lobbying—work of More Light Presbyterians and many others, the Presbyterian General Assembly (national convention) has three times voted to rescind the 1996 policy which expressly banned partnered lesbian/gay people from ordained service.

But we live in an era of domino-effect tipping points. The United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have all dismantled their gate-keeping rules that kept lesbian and gay clergy out. The ELCA, which is larger than the other three church bodies, changed its policies most recently, in 2009.

Even more interesting, the PCUSA is one of the “full communion” partners with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And so are the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church. (And the Moravian Church.) Together this group of Protestant bodies represents close to 10 million members, and begin to present a common witness of sexual inclusivity.

But there are “wrinkles” in this witness. Another “full communion” partner of the ELCA, the United Methodist Church, has not budged on sexuality issues and is not likely to any time soon, largely because it is a global church body, and because it is a very rural church in the United States. So the changing attitudes of large urban centers in the United States will not be enough, culturally, to shift the anti-gay attitudes of the Methodists.

Another significant wrinkle, of course, is that every time a church body moves forward on a social issue, it leaves some people behind who refuse to move on. The Presbyterians in American, for example, split over the issue of slavery more than 150 years ago, and have never completely reunited all of their congregations into the PCUSA. The Episcopal Church lost a lot of people over the ordination of women to the priesthood, and is still engaged in a battle with its global partners of the Anglican Communion over the consecration of openly-gay and partnered Bishop V. Gene Robinson. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has lost somewhere around 100-200 of its 10,000 congregations because of its courageous tipping vote in favor of partnered same-sex clergy in 2009, and lost a considerable amount of revenue flowing to the national church from other congregations who are withholding their cash in spite.

The PCUSA faces a similar on-going breach with congregations and individuals who won’t move on about sexuality issues. A disgruntled group, Presbyterians for Renewal, already has its own executive director and will hold its own convention later this year in Minneapolis, even though its director concedes that Amendment 10-A is likely to be ratified.

But according to MPR, Presbyterian polity will make it harder for individual congregations to just “pull out” and form a break-away churchbody. The local presbytery holds all church properties in its area in trust, so a local congregation would have to buy their own church buildings (and I guess convince the presbytery to sell!), or else just be disgruntled out in the street.

These years of struggle to change the church are really the raw data of a massive realignment of Christian groups as they confront the extraordinary social change happening in our times in the world. I can’t help thinking of the shifting of the globe’s huge tectonic plates, as entire continents or ocean floors continue to either slide past or move over or under each other. All that movement is bound to cause quite a few earthquakes. So it is with communities of faith.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, ELCA, History, LGBT Christian, Ministry, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Day of arising.

Saturday, May 7th, 2011

The Easter hymn comes to mind tonight:  “When we are walking, doubtful and dreading, blinded by sadness, slowness of heart; yet Christ walks with us, ever awaiting our invitation: Stay, do not part.”  It is based on tomorrow’s Gospel text from Luke 24, the “Road to Emmaus” story.

On Thursday, our friend Jeffrey was finally released from state prison—one month late due to the passive-aggressive incompetence of our state department of “corrections.”

Jeffrey is a gay man who was part of our church community, even though actually homeless when he was nabbed for a technical violation of his parole—failing to report his whereabouts to the parole officer.

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Our “criminal justice” system is broken.  In California it eats up about as much as our entire educational system, some $10.5 billion a year.  The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation admits that more than 95% of that monstrous sum goes to simply keeping inmates locked up.  Prisons are running at over 200% design capacity.  Actual “correction” or “rehabilitation” scarcely happen at all.  Job training is spotty and inadequate.  Those inmates who never finished high school may only be permitted to take one class per week toward their G.E.D., while prison guards have the money sewed up and take home huge sums of overtime pay.  Medical care is equally spotty, and we know inmates who have had to manipulate the system just to get a nurse to see them.  There really is no such thing as counseling available to inmates, and it is extremely onerous to get the permission needed to visit inmates as pastors or volunteer chaplains.

Gay men are still targets in prison, and get raped—often by guards, not other inmates.  (See Just Detention International.)  We know of inmates who got HIV while doing time.  One straight inmate has gotten himself permanently into Ad Seg, or Administrative Segregation, so that other inmates don’t hit on him or try to beat him up because he is not real masculine-appearing.  How do we know he’s straight?  He serving time for raping his girl friend (even though she was living with him at the time, but that’s another symptom of a broken justice system).

I wouldn’t have thought so, but transgender M2F (male to female) inmates have it easier, and often find a straight protector in a fellow inmate who likes having someone feminine around for friendship and privileges.  We’ve had some difficulty with one transgender parolee, who looked for the same sweet deal “on the outside,” expecting someone would protect and support her.

It is hard to get an accurate picture of the system unless you get to know the people who have been swept into its grasp.  Voters see periodic reports that California has the highest recidivism rate in America, but according to the UC-Irvine Center for Evidence-Based Corrections in September 2005, “Two-thirds of California’s offenders return to prison within three years, but more than 50% of those offenders are sent back for parole violations alone, a rate considerably higher than in other large states.”

Such parole violations may sound serious, but how they are defined is itself often at the whim of the system which is abused not only by the guards union but political opportunists.  They have created a climate of “lock ‘em up and throw the key away” at the same time we don’t have enough money for education or the decent humanitarian care of our most vulnerable citizens.  As if the Three Strikes Law weren’t ineffective enough, in 2010—thanks to governor Arnold Schwarzenegger—Chelsea’s Law added to the insanity of Jessica’s Law, making it almost impossible to live in an urban county in this state if you are a sex offender.  (This is on top of Megan’s Law.)  The two options for such parolees are idiotic: either you declare yourself homeless, in which case the public is no safer if it doesn’t know where you are from night to night; or move to a rural county where there are no jobs or future, increasing the likelihood that parolees will eventually turn to criminal activity just to eat and stay alive.

Yet the CDCR and parole system requires parolees to return to the county in which they were originally apprehended.  We were working with another gay parolee a few months ago who did not want to return to the central valley county where he had been mixed up with local gangs that got him into trouble in the first place.  He had the official promise he could return instead to Los Angeles, where there was a support network waiting to help him start a brand-new life. But the minute he actually got our on parole, the parole officer changed everything, had him nabbed for a parole violation for not returning to his home county, and forced him back into the very criminal environment he was trying to avoid. As a result, he has disappeared.

Yet Christ walks with us, even as we try to carry out the mandate of Matthew 25:36. Tomorrow Jeffrey comes home to our congregation, to meet the people who have kept faith with him for three years of imprisonment.  Thanks to the vision of church members, we’ve been able to visit him twice in prison, write frequently, send him supplies and accept collect calls from prison several times a month.  Tomorrow is a homecoming, even though he still faces homelessness, unemployment, and three more years of close surveillance under parole. Yet Christ walks with us!

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Ministry, Public Affairs, Sex | No Comments »

The devil doesn’t frighten me.

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Be careful what you pray for. We have an interesting legacy of hands-on Bible Study in our parish, complete with all the urgent shouts of differences of opinion. It took us 9 months, for example, to slog through the Gospel of John verse by verse.

And when it ended we took a survey of what people wanted to study next. Guess. People want to study Satan, and tonight was the opening volley of our local war of good against evil.

Of course, we pray constantly for all people, dozens of them by name on Sundays, Wednesday and Thursdays, including those who are suffering from addictions, mental health problems, unemployment, homelessness, you name it.

And tonight three guys walked in who are not part of our “usual crowd,” two of whom I knew from prior episodes and one I’d never seen before. One is a known drug addict who thinks he is serving Jesus by preaching to the wackos on Skid Row but has himself never mastered his addiction to crystal meth. Another is certifiably mentally ill who cannot stop talking and making grimacing faces as if he is digging deep into intellectual turf. And the third turned out to be a raving fundamentalist who wanted to make sure we are a Christian Church before he would sit down, and later admitted he is homeless. This on top of several other “regulars” who tend to dominate, act out or digress into tabloid news, pop psychology or Dan Brown-esque conspiracy theories.

All true Christians, of course, show up for things late, and that meant that our special friends tonight were the first ones there. I was praying next not for the homeless, the addicted or the mentally ill, but for a very fast-acting dose of patience. Jesus, you promise you will never test us with more than we can handle (that is the Bible, isn’t it, however obliquely?), and I don’t think I can handle three at once with special needs.

But we launched the study of Satan with some general observations that people tend to believe stuff about Satan, the devil, evil and human nature that are not grounded in the Bible but mostly shaped by pop culture. In truth, pop culture has always yanked the chains of Christian theology and has been doing it for thousands of years.

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We started with a verse-by-verse reading of Genesis 3. As improbable as it is, I had to argue for a mythic reading of this story–a story of talking snakes and the low-hanging fruit of good and evil. People want to believe the story is literally true—fact—because they think that somehow they are honoring the Bible and showing their loyalty as believers. Then the grimacing man asked in all seriousness if scholars have ever researched what kind of tree it was and what kind of fruit Adam and Eve were eating.

Hello? Lord, please show me some mercy. Help me show them that a parable is a story with Truth of far greater significance than the kind of fruit or the talking snake. A parable is not untrue just because it has no historic facts in it. If we obsess about the facts we will likely not be paying attention to the Truth even if it bit us in the heel!

What we will agonize about in coming weeks of course, is whether there is such a creature as Satan, the Devil, as an individual being who is God’s nemesis and truth’s antithesis, who is able to take over the brains and fates of all human beings at will. The idea that the Devil is God’s evil counterpart, with nearly all the same omniscience and omnipotence to inflict suffering, is largely non-scriptural. Such an idea entered into the western pop psychology thousands of years ago as their contemporary answer to the problem of evil in the world and the human aversion to responsibility for ourselves, our lives and relationships, and our world.

It may be a tough sell that Satan is the personification of evil run amok in the world–the aggregate of thousands of frailties, selfish choices, avoidance of spiritual struggle, and indifference to the suffering of others. Evil takes on a life of its own, I keep saying. If, as the homeless man said tonight, we leave an open door, evil will enter. That is not paranoia, but an understanding that evil seeks opportunity like seeds seek a crevice in the earth and water seeks its own level. Think Osama bin Laden, who is his madness and contempt opened every door he could and squandered much of his own $300 million fortune causing untold human suffering.

Where do the mythic and screwball images of the devil in our culture come from?— think of the evil child horror movie genre. Think “The Exorcist” (which grossed over $400 million, the most “successful” horror film ever), or “Rosemary’s Baby” or “The Omen.”

The screwball stuff does not come from the Bible. In my opinion, the Bible does not have an elaborate “doctrine” of Satan, assigning him great supernatural power over humanity for two reasons: (1) it believes that Almighty God is the source of all created things, all good, all power, all blessing, all purpose and all destiny; and (2) it believes that humanity is responsible for our own errors, failures and rebellion against God.

Two quotes to end this reflection, the first from Leo Tolstoy: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

And this from the late M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled, People of the Lie): “The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual–for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, Fundamentalism, Go figure!, History, Ministry, Recovery, Violence | No Comments »

Pastor Jay Wiesner received to ELCA roster.

Friday, December 10th, 2010

LC/NA Celebrates the ELCA Reception to the Clergy Roster of Pastor Jay Wiesner, an Openly Gay Philadelphia Pastor

Lutherans Concerned/North America (LC/NA) celebrates the upcoming reception of Pastor Jay Wiesner onto the clergy roster by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) on Sunday, December 12.

He will be received as clergy during a Service of Reception presided over by Bishop Claire Burkat, ELCA Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, held during the 10:30 a.m. Sunday service at the University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation (www.uniluphila.org), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pastor Anita Hill, a pastor at St. Paul Reformation Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and also recently similarly received onto the clergy roster, will preach.

Pastor Jay Wiesner had been ordained “extraordinarily” in 2004. “Extraordinary” in this context means the ordination was outside of the usual practices of the ELCA. As a result, the ELCA did not recognize his ordination at the time it occurred. At this Service of Reception, the ELCA recognizes that ordination and the ministries Pastor Wiesner has done over time.

Pastor Wiesner completed his seminary training in 2002, but, because he was in disagreement with the then policy that imposed celibacy in a life lived without a partner, he was denied ordination by the ELCA. In 2004, Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, called him as Pastor of Outreach Ministry and ordained him, an act of ecclesiastic disobedience at the time. In September 2008, he was called by University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation as pastor, also an act of ecclesiastic disobedience.

His reception onto the roster of clergy is one of the results of the decisions of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly to eliminate the policy that had since 1989 precluded service as ministers by those in a lifelong, committed same-gender relationship. Though not in such a relationship, Pastor Wiesner had disagreed with the previous policy precluding even the possibility of it.

Emily Eastwood, Executive Director, Lutherans Concerned/North America, said “The prophetic witness of Bethany Lutheran, Minneapolis and University Lutheran, Philadelphia is coming true. We give thanks for Jay and the congregations who courageously called him in the face of policies precluding his service. We applaud the Southeast Pennsylvania Synod and its bishop for their visible support for the full inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. While our struggle is not ended, this day leaves an indelible exclamation point in history. This day justice has prevailed, not just for one, but symbolically for all LGBT people.”

Pastor Jay Wiesner said, “This day has been a long time coming and something I have been praying for before I was even ordained in 2004. Both Bethany Lutheran Church and University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation have risked their standing in the greater Church to be a prophetic witness and for that I am truly blessed and grateful.”

Jay is originally from New Ulm, a small town of German descent in southwestern Minnesota. He graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota with a BA in religion. After college, he attended Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. During his senior year, he publicly came out to the faculty and students at Wartburg and left to take some time off. He finished his Master of Divinity degree in 2002 and immediately began work at Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as Pastoral Minister of Outreach. He was called and ordained by Bethany on July 25, 2004. He served that congregation from 2002-2008.

Since September 2008, Pastor Wiesner has served as pastor of University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, an ELCA congregation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (www.uniluphila.org)

Pastor Wiesner is also pastoral director of The Naming Project. The Naming Project is a faith-based youth group serving youth of all sexual and gender identities. The primary focus is to provide a place for youth who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning to learn, grow, and share their experiences. In this way The Naming Project is a space in which youth can comfortably discuss faith and who they understand themselves to be–whether that be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender…or straight.

Phil Soucy
Communications staff
communications@lcna.org

Posted in ELCA, Living by Grace, Ministry, PRAYERS, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Is the self-styled “cathedral” in danger?

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

In an interesting coincidence, right on top of the troubles of Rev. Eddie Long, the “bishop” of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, today we have news that Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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The two mega-churches are more than a generation or two apart in developing. Rev. Robert Schuller built the “Crystal Cathedral” starting in 1955 with a rented drive-in movie parking lot. The “Hour of Power” and the power of positive thinking came next. Schuller’s kingdom grew alongside the explosive prosperity of Orange County itself.

Rev. Eddie Long started working with his congregation in 1987, taking it from 300 to 18,000 people in a decade. Although the two ministries have many things in common (pastoral personality cult, prosperity in newly-developing suburbs, vision and ambition in innovation) their troubles now have differences that couldn’t be more black and white.

Long is and serves a megachurch community which is African-American. He is seen as a character-builder and an ethnic pride beacon at a time when upper-middle class African-Americans were settling in upscale suburbs out of Atlanta. As Long’s kingdom expanded, he moved his congregation from Decatur out to a 240-acre campus in Lithonia that boasts a gym and spa, school, bookstore and 10,000-seat “cathedral.” Although he is mentioned with some derogatory comments about the “prosperity gospel” preachers (Joel Osteen in Texas comes to mind), Long was preaching and promoting the better material life to a class of people who have suffered at the bottom of society for generations.

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The cross sure looks tiny in this “cathedral”

What is bringing Long to his knees in 2010 is, in part, his own success and ego which built it. He is being sued by four young African American men in his own flock who say he seduced them, with gifts and personal attention, into homosexual acts. Never mind the fact that he has received a $3 million salary and drives a Bentley provided by the church, Long has a lot of explaining to do about the sex thing.

The Schuller enterprise grew up two generations earlier on the strength of its leader’s charismatic personality. As big as the Crystal Cathedral is, it is not large enough for the human ego. Although the elder Robert Schuller was not accused of any sexual impropriety, his overreaching dream in the middle of fast-expanding Orange County are catching up with his successor now. Reuters reported last night that Crystal Cathedral Ministries has debts somewhere near $50 million (others say as high as $100 million)—$36 million of it in the mortgage for their glass box. Although it claims 20 million viewers for its broadcasts, Senior Minister Sheila Schuller Coleman presides over a congregation of a mere 3,000 members where revenues fell 27% in recent years. (Another source says 10,000 members; hmm?) The Daily News reports,

“Church spokesman John Charles said the church owes about $7.5 million to a host of vendors for services such as advertising and providing the use of live animals for Easter and Christmas services. The church was negotiating a payment plan with vendors but several chose to file lawsuits, the church said in a statement.”Financially, the Cathedral is rethinking the way it operates, according to Huffington Post, Now, the church is avoiding credit entirely and spends only the roughly $2 million it receives each month in donations and revenue, [Jim] Penner said. The church still hopes to pay all of the vendors back in full, he said. “What we’re doing now is we’re trying to walk what we preach, we’re paying cash for things as we go,” he said. [Penner is an assistant pastor and executive producer of the "Hour of Power."]But whatever the bankruptcy protection will mean, ego issues still get in the way. As the New York Times explained last July, Robert Schuller, Sr., finally re-retired at age 83, two years after he had kicked out his son, Robert Schuller Jr. that most said had been groomed to take over for his father. A family feud that should never have happened, except that both the Schuller family and the Christian kingdom that it built can’t conceive of their church without the Schuller name at the top. So daughter Sheila Schuller Coleman will finally be senior pastor, after a year of sharing the limelight with her father, and Robert Sr. remains as the chairman of the CC’s board of directors or consistory.The Los Angeles Times story has a more revealing look at this. While many say the CC’s troubles are due to the recession, two other factors also loom large. One is the conflict of leadership—the power and ego struggle at the top—and the other is the aging of the congregation. Will other mega-churches start to shrivel when the generation that enthusiastically built them up begin to age and die off?Pam’s House Blend (“An Online Magazine in the Reality-Based Community”), by the way, has posts about Schuller and the CC’s attitude about homosexuality. One of them this morning is worth putting here: by: willyed @ Tue Oct 19, 2010 at 09:06:39 AM CDT“Whatever happened… To churches where the pastor knew and had an actual personal relationship with everyone there?  Since salvation is a person matter that does not require a church, the reason you have church is to help people be good Christians and good people in general, to support them, and correct them when they stray from the path. How can this be accomplished in a giant stadium environment where nobody knows who you are. I suspect that if Christ was walking around today he would be horrified by these industrial worship centers.”Here’s my bottom line: using the terms “bishop” and “cathedral” always makes me chuckle when they are self-styled. Rev. Schuller Sr. decided his church was big enough to qualify as a “cathedral.” Rev. Eddie Long allows or encourages his people to call him “bishop.” The terms have a fairly precise meaning among Christians, but neither of these qualifies. A cathedral is where the bishop sits, or presides. A bishop is an overseer, a person in authority over many churches, not one stadium or giant glass box (a glass elephant?). But the very nature of these mega-ministries is that they are independent of all the rest of the Christian world. Schuller is nominally in the Reformed Church of America, but hardly answers to its guidance or authority. The RCA has no bishops and no cathedrals. I can’t help wondering, if the CC still has ties with the RCA, why no one in the parent denomination tried to put the brakes on the CC’s high-spending ways decades ago.And there is no central authority among Baptists churches: local congregation can set the standards for ordination and ministry. Another megachurch, Saddleback Church in southern Orange County, is also a Southern Baptist Convention church: its pastor Rick Warren answers to no one except the community he has built himself. There are differences between Southern Baptist and Missionary Baptist, mostly not of interest except to insiders, which you can sort out here.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, History, Ministry | No Comments »

A Sad Season for Teens

Monday, October 11th, 2010

Today is National Coming Out Day, and it’s no reason to celebrate this year. Gay teens are dying, and it would have been better by far if they could not be out until they were older and a little better to defend themselves or get away from the hostility of their teen peers or hateful parents.

The suicides of several gay youth in the last several weeks, because of relentless bullying they experience, causes me dismay and deep sadness.

It never seems to end. Fifteen years ago Leroy Aarons published his book Prayers for Bobby about a gay teen —harassed by his own fundamentalist mother about his sinfulness until he jumped off a freeway overpass to his death.

A few years ago, in the film The Bible Tells Me So, which traces the stories of five families trying to cope with the coming out of a gay child, one mother must also cope with the fact that her lack of acceptance of her daughter led to her daughter’s suicide.

If you’re really young and you know you are a sexual minority, where can you hide from the evil, the physical abuse, the taunting and bullying? When public schools have become such dangerous places, where can you run to? Is the church a refuge, where a lesbian or gay teen can feel safe? Not yet.

In the Washington Post recently Debra Haffner, the Executive Director of the Religious Institute, reported a startling figure about gay teens:

“All of us have teens and young adults who are gay or lesbian in our congregations, many who are suffering in silence and are at risk. A study done by my colleagues at the Christian Community, found that 14% of teens in religious communities identify as something other than heterosexual. Almost nine in ten of them have not been open about their sexuality with clergy or other adult leaders in their faith communities. Almost half have not disclosed their sexual orientation to their parents. And nonheterosexual teens who regularly attend religious services were twice as likely as heterosexual teens to have seriously considered suicide. Our young people are dying because we are not speaking out for them.”The 14% figure startled me but doesn’t surprise me, since so many young people, who begin to discern they are “different” or “don’t fit in” with their peers—coming up in Christian households and churches—may be drawn to the genuine message of love and acceptance which the Christian faith has always proclaimed. Gay kids may be more likely to “stick around” seeking that love and acceptance when their heterosexual peers grow bored with the message because they don’t have the same self-doubt or self-esteem issues.Or maybe they used to. When I grew up, the Lutheran Church was so repressed that nobody talked about sex at all, period. I didn’t hear negative messages or positive ones, so I didn’t internalize any homophobia from my church. But today, it seems every evangelical pastor (not really, but it seems so) continually rants about homosexuality, and so the message of love and acceptance has qualifications, “fine print” that clearly excludes the teens who are bright enough to figure themselves out at an early age.Seth Walsh, 13, hung himself. Asher Brown shot himself in the head. Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington bridge into the Hudson. Tyler’s suicide cannot be attributed to bullying, even cyber-bullying, which figured into the tragic deaths of four other teens. Tyler was publicly shamed. But from the dark days decades back when homosexuals were considered a security risk because of the likelihood of blackmail—playing on the same dynamic of shame—bullying, intimidation, blackmail and shame have been almost one continuous spectrum from gray to black. For the love God, this must stop.The church of Jesus must stop promoting homophobia, and stop profiting by selling its own self-righteousness by being vehemently anti-gay. I am glad to say that more and more congregations are becoming open-hearted if not open-minded, realizing that while they may still have huge issues with homosexuality, it is not something for which any teenager should be driven to suicide.

However, as the welcoming movement grows in many Protestant denominations, for too many of them it is a very lame and generic welcome that now includes gay and lesbian people as long as there’s no real risk to the congregation. But there is some risk to openly saying that gay teens are welcome —not the least is the sense of “recruiting” the young to “the gay lifestyle.” The only way the church will get past that one is to work harder at educating their own members and the community around them that recruiting is a dangerous and cruel myth.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bullying, Coming Out, Ex-Gay, Fundamentalism, LGBT Rights, Ministry, Public Affairs | No Comments »

An internal conflict of values.

Friday, September 24th, 2010

Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.” – 1 Corinthians 13:5–7 [New English Bible]I do not like to gloat over other people’s sins, and yet the news keep putting them in front of my nose. They wind up in this blog for pretty much the same reason each time — not because another person’s failings make such delicious gossip, but because the people whose failings and egregious acts catch my eye are the ones who have claimed to be so sanctimonious. They have in fact been the enemies of the truth, especially in areas of sexual truth.

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“Bishop” Eddie Long in Atlanta is making news today not for pastoring an independent mega-church of 25,000 (hence his self-appointed status as bishop), and not for wearing expensive jewelry and claiming that God wants such wealth for his followers, but because of allegations from some young men in his congregation that he seduced them into sexual acts. As of this afternoon, four men have stepped forward, and I think each of them was 18 or younger at the time the sexual incidents took place. As of today, two lawsuits have been filed against him.

According to the Associated Press coverage, Long has preached against same-sex marriage and prodded his youth to be sexually responsible. If the allegations are true, the word hypocrisy comes to mind once again.

“Bishop Eddie Long’s boys’ academy guided teens through their “masculine journey” with lessons on financial discipline and sexual control, right down to a little card the students had to carry in their wallets reminding them why they shouldn’t have sex.”Long himself, though, has been accused of contradicting those virtues. The bishop — who’s been an outspoken opponent of gay marriage in the past — is being sued by two young men who attended the LongFellows Youth Academy and say Long used the program to groom them for sexual relationships.”I wrote this on February 2: “But what are the credentials of Christian ministers, period? Many well-known preachers have run through Bible colleges while others have advanced degrees. The procedure by which any particular local church, or national denomination, certifies one to be competent to lead Christian churches and to speak for God, are vastly different form place to place, denomination to denomination. The lack of a uniform high standard doesn’t merely allow the wing nuts to use the title “Reverend” with their name. It has also allowed unqualified people who are also sexual predators to gain access to the vulnerabilities of innocent people, and who are manipulators and thieves to help themselves to huge sums of money.”Okay.  I would guess that most conservative religious figures who rant and work against gay and lesbian people are not sexual hypocrites.  They probably are heterosexuals who live in stable heterosexual marriages. But there are a lot of prominent figures who keep popping into the news, and this is because of “contradicting the virtues” they publicly preach. Hypocrisy.

These particular religious leaders who turn out to be closeted homosexuals or bisexuals “on the down low” may feel compelled to preach the evangelical, right-wing party line about homosexuality, and preach it more loudly to keep the veil of respectability pulled taught over internal conflicts which are badly frayed.

But if I am loving toward others, and do not “gloat over” their sins, yet delight in the truth, how should I or any other thoughtful LGBT Christian react to this? (It would be easy to ignore; Georgia is a long way from Los Angeles.) What is truth, spiritually, when it can be manipulated by respectable appearances? When it can be “handled” through publicists and attorneys? When it can be explained away, as Ted Haggard tried to do when his homosexual hypocrisy was exposed?

Most important, as I raised on February 2, is the palpable lack of accountability in many “indynondy” (yes, I coined this for independent non-denominational) churches the first slip on the slippery slope of truth?

 Long is not the first indynondy pastor who has lived lavishly without the financial accountability of a parent denomination or a genuine bishop overseeing what the congregation and its leaders are up to.

The bigger problem—obfuscating the truth—is when clergy found and cultivate a personality cult. Rev. Long must have some strong personality traits to take a congregation from a few hundred to 25,000 in two decades. But when you have a significant following which hangs on your magnetic personality, then almost anything you seek to do will get an enthusiastic “yes” out of your fan club. After all, you built your congregation out of those who admire or are drawn to your personality.

But this is where truth becomes difficult to discern. Long’s parishioners who really support him are now questioning what is the real truth of his personality. charges of hypocrisy is only one facet of these questions. It is one thing to set high values and then fail to achieve them, such as preaching generosity and then being greedy. It is quite another to preach heterosexuality and sexual responsibility and then live a secret life. That is more than mere hypocrisy, it is a Lie. Who is the real Rev. Eddie Long?

One AP news story quotes someone from Long’s church:

“I wish the bishop would come out and make a comment and speak to us,” said Lance Robertson, a longtime church member. “We want to hear from him. I think the world wants to hear from him. Right now, in the court of public opinion, it does not look good.”

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in "The Closet", Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Ministry, Public Affairs | No Comments »

Oh my God, when?

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

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.

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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

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Faith, Health, LGBT Christian, Ministry, Public Affairs | No Comments »

Faithful discernment in reactionary times.

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

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.

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

Counting on both visibility and invisibility.

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Diane Silver at 365Gay.com has a good perspective on the coming U.S. Census: “Get Counted! Why the Census is crucial to Gays.”

The article quotes Jaime Grant, the director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.  “Without data, you have no community portrait, and without a portrait, you have no needs, you have no identity, you have no funding. The census has always had a civil rights component to it,” says Grant.

The LGBTQ community has its share of disagreements, and the Census is no exception. We know it can be to our advantage to be more visible. I remember paying attention ten years ago that our household could mark the form indicating we were unmarried partners, and still mark us both as being male.

Silver points out that the Census Bureau did not tabulate the data, beginning in 1990, which would have revealed a portrait of some of America’s lesbian/gay households. Outside entities, including the Policy Institute, dug out the story from the raw data.

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Credo Action is pushing a campaign to “Queer the Census” and if you identify yourself to them, you get a free sticker (Wow!—bumper, or back-pack?). Their web site says they’ve given away 29,940 stickers so far.

So why doesn’t the Census Bureau gather more information about LGBTQ households? There are two obvious reasons. Silver only mentions one: Congress has control of the Census. Although it is mandated in the U.S. Constitution, what data are gathered every ten years is tightly controlled by law and therefore by politics. At present there is no plan to add questions to the 2020 form about gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.

But the other reason that data is not gathered nor processed is that LGBTQ people have an ambivalent attitude about being visible. We like being out and proud when it is cool or advantageous to be out and proud. But we also like to evade detection when that is advantageous. We are sometimes evasive about describing or naming our significant relationships, for example. We deflect questions or avoid situations where we might have to leave a paper trail (a legal trail) about our lives.

Much of this is closetedness, but it is not enough for all of us to prod each other to “come out” and be counted. As a community, we still have reason to be fearful to identify ourselves as lesbian/gay/etc., as individuals, if the present openness of our society could possibly turn more negative and punitive again.

And we’re aware that coming out is usually a multi-part process that has to go on for a long time: first to a few trusted friends, and maybe family, employer, neighbors. But in public records?

It is often said that none of us are free until we are all free, and so it can be argued that none of us can truly be “out” until we’re all “out.” But with the constant rants and manipulations of the Religious Reich and the well-funded social conservatives/reactionaries at all levels of politics, it could be dangerous if the social, legal and political reforms we’ve made since 1969 were reversed.

How do you go back into a closet, if there are documents in publicly records in which you’ve identified yourself as lesbian or gay or transgender?

Personally, I threw my hat in the ring for the liberalizing trend and permanent change decades ago, but it was not without misgivings. When I accepted the call (job offer) to serve my church as an openly gay/partnered Pastor, and the story hit the Associated Press and the internet, I knew there was no turning back.

But I am very aware that not everyone has moved in that same direction of being permanently and irrevocably out, at least at the same place. So the Census Bureau forms will probably not change to fully and completely include us and count us until the LGBTQ people in this nation are overwhelmingly ready to take all the risks in order to claim all the rights.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Coming Out, LGBT Rights, Ministry, Public Affairs | No Comments »

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

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

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

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