November 30, 2011 by Pastor Dan.

Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out is reporting tonight that Exodus international may be on the verge of collapse, for financial reasons—chiefly a bad real estate investment. The hidden story, apparently, is that this “ex gay” ministry has not been able to continue to raise funds effectively enough, and is struggling to repackage or re-brand itself.

In light of the continued shift of some mainline denominations toward full inclusion of sexual minorities, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada a few months ago, and the Presbyterian Church USA a few months before that, it would seem plausible that the donor base for the anti– and ex–gay organizations may be shrinking if not imploding. More and more people who still don’t really “approve” of gay/lesbian folks, are resigning themselves to the shift of contemporary culture, and are less committed to funding every effort to block civil rights or offer alternative psychiatric methods to erase same-gender sexual orientation.

The “ex-gay” movement, characterized by the derisive slogan “Pray Away the Gay” is especially troubled in that its anti–gay message clashes with the core Christian Gospel that proclaims the unconditional love of God for all people. Their only “yes but” to the open-hearted love of God in Christ is to continue to insist that being a sexual minority is a terrible, wicked sin. That view stuck, of course, for generations. But people today are wise enough to realize that 100 years ago, or 500 years ago, everything was a terrible wicked sin. People today see the honest lives of lesbian and gay couples, transgender individuals who are calmly and rationally asking for understanding, and bisexual persons who are “whoring after” both genders. They see ordinary people who have jobs, homes, relationships and contribute enormously to society. They see married same-sex couples in 6 states, and the U.S. military having opened itself to transparency and honesty with regard to the humanity and sexuality of its service personnel.

So characterizing lesbian/gay people as extraordinarily evil, or crying continually that we will all go to hell is about as convincing as a tattered old Fred Phelps sign and a cranky voice behind a megaphone. Fewer and fewer people pay attention.

Read Besen’s entire posting here: http://www.truthwinsout.org/pressreleases/2011/11/20563/ where he also has links to every fact or rumor he cites.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Doctrine, wingnuts, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Recovery, LGBT Christian, Ex-Gay | Print | No Comments »

June 2, 2011 by Pastor Dan.

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.

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, LGBT Christian, Doctrine, HIV and AIDS, Violence, Homophobia, Faith, Living by Grace, Recovery, Ministry, Spirituality, PRAYERS, History, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

May 4, 2011 by Pastor Dan.

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.

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

February 1, 2011 by Dan Hooper.

Associated Press is running an encouraging story today of new activism relating faith to the LGBT communities. Opening tomorrow in Minneapolis, the annual NGLTF conference will include working groups for people of color and people of faith in the movement for understanding and equality. NPR has the (print) story here. Also see: www.thetaskforce.org.

I am heartened to see that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is counted among the progressive denominations where the movement toward inclusivity and diversity means both ethnic/race issues and sexuality issues. As NPR notes, both the ELCA and the Episcopal Church now ordained openly gay pastors. Sadly, it did not mention that the United Church of Christ also does, and was the first protestant denomination to do so. (The ELCA is “in communion” with both the Episcopal Church and the UCC.)

People and cultures move at very different speeds, of course. We are all familiar with friends who grew up in a very conservative Christian environment —Baptist, Church of God or even Pentecostalists—who are resisting all conversations and studies which could lead to a more enlightened understanding of sexuality. the NPR story mentions a black gay activist who grew up in the Pentecostal fold who laments the distance or disconnect between the LGBT movement and the faith communities. Even more remote is the distance to Islam, as the NPR story notes.

At the bottom of this are the underlying assumptions that a life of faith—any faith—must be a life of conformity to a culturally-centered faith or belief system. That is tough even for Christians who primarily allegiance should be to following Jesus, not to following rules or social mores. Was not Jesus, after all, the ultimate role model for religious non-conformity?

I am living only one life, and I don’t have the opportunity to live two of them by different lights or guides and then compare notes. For better or worse, when I came to discern my sexuality, I decided to try to live the “me” I was dealt in life’s great card game, rather than to fake my life, live a lie, or destroy myself by alcohol, drugs or suicide. My life experience, as part of the LGBT movement, has deeply affected my faith. And while heterosexual conformist Christians may shudder at that thought, and where it might lead (the “slippery slope” of personal experiences and subjective theology), I am still faithful to the Christian faith and life.

As with ethnic and racial minorities, sexual minorities, and other marginalized people (think of those who have been bullied to death, for example) who have lived different lives from ours because of what life dealt to them, everyone needs to heard, everyone has a faith experience that, in some way, will enrich the faith of others.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Doctrine, Bullying, Ecumenical Issues, Fundamentalism, Spirituality, LGBT Christian, Recovery | Print | No Comments »

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 »

August 12, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”– Ecclesiastes 3:1.

And, this being mid-August, it is time in my part of the country to pick figs. We have an enormous old fig tree, and annually we have this tug-of-war, survival-of-the-fastest competition with the squirrels and the crows to see which of God’s creatures get to eat the figs. 

So—and this is especially for those of you who look at this blog from time to time and say, “this guy is a total wing nut!” —here is something quite off-topic:

Figs Baked in Liqueur  [adapted from www.inmamaskitchen.com]

• 15-20 ripe figs
•  ½ cup water 
• 1/3 cup Kirschwasser, Grand Marnier or whiskey
• 2-3 Tbsp. brown sugar
• ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
•  tsp. ground nutmeg

Wash figs and cut off stem end just enough to see the fig pulp inside the top. Arrange figs tightly in a baking dish sprayed with non-stick spray. Use more figs if you have can squeeze them in. Pour water and liqueur over figs. Dust with brown sugar.

Bake in a 350 oven for 30-40 minutes until flavors have mingled and alcohol has cooked out but figs have not disintegrated. Remove and dust the tops with cinnamon and nutmeg. To serve warm or cool spoon remaining syrup over figs in individual serving dishes.

Note: For those in recovery, you may of course omit the alcoholic ingredient, and experiment with any other flavoring desired.

—Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Recovery | Print | No Comments »

July 13, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

We had dinner last night with friends—a couple for whom I performed the marriage ceremony last summer. Although they have been together for something like 14 years, they will celebrate their first anniversary of legal marriage in a few weeks.

Of course we got to talking about the significance of the California Supreme Court’s decision to allow Proposition 8 to stand (therefore, same-sex marriages are not valid nor recognized) but affirming that Proposition 8 does not nullify the 18,000+ couples same-sex marriages in 2008 (therefore both valid and recognized).

Even if the Roman Catholic Church has eliminated Limbo as a place between heaven and hell, the California Supreme Court has recreated Limbo as the place to consign already-married same-sex couples.

And even while we’re watching the early skirmishes in federal court over both

Proposition 8 and DOMA, it looks as if the outcome of neither of those cases could possibly affect the 36,000 + of us who are legally marriage lesbian or gay couples. Limbo.

For some crazy reason, my mind ratcheted back to a conversation with another friend 25 years ago. He had come out to his (Lutheran) pastor in St. Louis, Missouri, and even though the man was kind and not harshly judgmental, his view was that there is no such thing as genuine love between two persons of the same gender. Only lust. Therefore, this pastor could argue that St. Paul’s condemnation of lust (Romans 1:24, tied to his condemnation of same-sex passion several verses later) could withstand any arguments from his own writings in 1 Corinthians 13 and elsewhere about the supremacy of love. Yes, the Bible upholds love and Christian ethics based on love, but since homosexual desire is merely lust, it is not entitled to any “loophole.” At least so goes the argument as I remember it being relayed to me.

Mostly I just shake my head in sadness that anti-gay critics will go to such lengths to rationalize their rejection of us and our different expression of love. Real speak: in the minds of some heterosexuals same-sex love couldn’t possible be love because they can’t imagine loving someone of the same sex. But call it lust and the necessary rationalizations fall neatly into place so that they reject lesbians and gay men.

According to www.dictionary.com:

lust

–noun

1. intense sexual desire or appetite.

2. uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite; lecherousness.

3. a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (usually fol. by for): a lust for power.

4. ardent enthusiasm; zest; relish: an enviable lust for life.

5. Obsolete. a. pleasure or delight. b. desire; inclination; wish. 

–verb (used without object)

6. to have intense sexual desire.

7. to have a yearning or desire; have a strong or excessive craving (often fol. by for or after).

Thinking about my own life and my spouse of 33 years and that of our friends—spouses for 14 years— it seems ludicrous to dismiss these lifelong relationships as “lust.” Between us, we’ve lived through major life changes, serious illnesses and injuries, change or loss of jobs, the AIDS pandemic, elder care, financial catastrophes, and an awakening consciousness of our own mortality. We have been through what many couples go through, and whether you want to use the “love” word or not, in God’s truth these lives are about fidelity, trust, sacrifice, commitment and constancy. No, the word “lust” just doesn’t fit any of that.

Lust, it seems to me, is a distracting hunger for something you don’t have and would sure like to get. Lust applies more to a televangelist or a politician who takes strange measures to arrange for tricks or affairs–even the Jimmy Carter variety (see the Playboy interview, 1976). At its lower levels lust is an energizer that lures most of us in our youth to play the dating and mating game. We hunger for acceptance, touch, warmth, companionship, fun and flesh. Lust dims with age, if it is not completely extinguished by the reality of having to get up early in the morning and needing to get a decent night’s sleep.

Yes, lust can become a preoccupation, an obsession, that drives some people to make bad judgments, to “hike the Appalachian Trail” or for some tragic individuals to power a mid-life crisis speeding down the road, and maybe to crash into a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting. Yes, lust exists, but no, the gender of one’s life partner does not really have anything to do with it.

Back at the restaurant table last night, we got to reminiscing about our friends wedding last July. One of them got a little weepy remembering not so much the vows they exchanged as a couple, but the questions which I had asked the 100 guests.

“Families, friends, and all who are gathered here with Name and Name, will you support and care for them, sustain them in times of trouble, give thanks with them in times of joy, honor the bonds of their covenant, and affirm the love of God reflected in their life together? If so, answer, ‘We will.’

“And, in your many different paths of life, I ask each of you to reflect and to offer your pledge: will you promise to spread tolerance and acceptance, peace and goodwill among all people, so that you help to make the world safe for love, for diversity, for courage, and for commitment you witness here today? If so, answer, ‘We will.’”

It was the loud “We will!” responses that these men heard from their families and friends that brought some tears last night.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Gay Catechism, Sex, LGBT Christian, Recovery, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

April 12, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia, alleluia!

I don’t usually dwell on personal issues, but this is a brief follow-up from last week about Carl. Thanks to the intransigence of insurance plans, he was sent home on Easter Sunday right as we began our morning festival worship service. We are still working out the details of home health care and logistics.

I am so grateful to God that he walks, he talks, he is able to ambulate and feed himself, and his body is functioning somewhat normally ~except of course for the fact that he wears the steel, plastic and velcro equivalent of a body cast from his hips to his chin, and will live with those indignities and discomforts for probably 8 more weeks.

The discomforts are from no less than six broken bones, and as I peruse the lengthy print-out of his treatment record, I am finding more and more things from the analysis of his MRI that could mean additional fractures have occurred.

But he is living! And we shall always remember Easter as God’s sign that our own resurrection is in God’s hands!

And I am dazed again by the power of the blog! It was from reading my April 5 blog that a dear friend in Oregon learned about Carl, and contacted mutual friends that I had not yet been able to tell. Thank you, Sarah. And thank all of you who have lifted Carl’s spirits, fed him before he could feed himself, and brought entire florist’s and card shops to his side, and offered entire prayer books of faith on his behalf. God bless you all.

— Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in PRAYERS, Spirituality, Recovery | Print | 1 Comment »

January 5, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Do you remember the expression, “The Perfect is the enemy of the Good”?  People will never get Good stuff done if they are only satisfied with Perfect. The lust for Perfection makes us unsatisfied, even angry with what is Good.

I have seen this in people’s lives — in the search for that Perfect boyfriend or husband material, in endless shopping sprees, in home improvement projects that went 200% over budget, you name it.  Most of all I see it in how people treat people.

This seems to be an endemic trait with gay men, especially. The image I have of the “best little boy in the world” is someone who grew up trying to be Perfect in order to be loved and accepted.  Even before we could understand why we wouldn’t be loved, why we might be rejected, we intuitively started striving to be Perfect.

And as we got older and began to suspect “it” at the deepest levels of our consciousness, we hoped maybe that if we were Perfect in every other way, somehow our variant sexuality could be overlooked or condoned.

(I use the term variant sexuality because it is non-judgmental.  I have spent too many years deflecting criticism of what others defined as deviant sexuality.  The denotation of “variant” and “deviant” is practically the same — meaning something that varies or deviates from a “norm.”  But the word “various” does not have the same connotation as “devious.”  But, hey!  Am I just searching for the Perfect adjective because of a lifelong habit of not being satisfied with a Good adjective?).

At some point maybe a dozen years back I began to try to unload this Perfectionism.  Was it an acquaintance who told me I was a Perfectionist?  And I argued, Perfectly of course, that I am not a Perfectionist.  It’s just that other people are all such slackers!  But like heavy baggage with no handles or wheels, I began to set down this Perfectionism.  I have just as much right to breathe the air on this planet as all other living beings.  I do not have to earn my right to be a live and be myself anymore than I have to “earn” God’s grace (which after all is defined as a “gift”).

As the years go by, of course, I’ve never gotten completely free of Perfectionism, mine or others’ stifling desire to be better, superior, ultimate.  As a friend recently said of the gay people in his congregation, “it’s never done until it’s overdone.”  I’ve gotten sucked into projects or jobs with other people who are obsessed with Perfectionism, and will bring the Good to a grinding halt if it can’t be Perfect.
Perfectionism seeps into relationships, I have found, when I do something Good (a good deed, a good job, a good time, or a good look) but my friend or spouse or co-worker almost subconsciously points out that it might have, or could have, or should have been done better.  And the words of a wise counselor of years ago come back to me:  Don’t “should” on people!

The Perfect devalues the Good. And the Perfect guy looks down his nose on Good guys. But since none of us is actually Perfect —not in God’s sight and not in one another’s finely -tuned tastes and sensibilities—we keep up a pretense of Perfection, or the pursuit of Perfection, which deep down is eating away at our humanity, eroding our self-esteem, and poisoning our friendships, intimate relationships and loyalties.

But shouldn’t we always strive to be “better” human beings?  I think that’s the Calvinist Sunday School lesson which so many little gay boys internalized like homophobia (and as gay men wind up pouring out of their memories on therapists’ couches).  Well, perhaps.  But maybe being a “better” human being would actually mean to better accept people for who they are (think:  Serenity Prayer), to better know my own limitations, and to make the world a better place just by getting Good stuff done in my life rather than being blocked by a desire for the Perfect.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Sex, Homophobia, Living by Grace, PRAYERS, Recovery, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

November 15, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

It seems that Christians are divided into two camps: the first are those that find a gracious God, who is kind and all-loving, merciful, forgiving, and who offers us—purely out of divine grace— life eternal.

And there are those other Christians who find a cranky and rigid deity who has issued divine, immutable commands, who disapproves of the overwhelming majority of human actions and endeavors, and who would certainly condemn everyone to an eternal hell of fire and suffering and pain and sorrow. [And what possible good is that, if in eternity it is already too late to change one’s actions and endeavors? What would be the point? Is it because God wants to see us pay for our sins and errors— committed over four or five or ten decades— forever? If that is the true God, then God is sadistic, and knowing that God would hardly convince me to come near!]

The use of the Bible as the inspired witness to God is out of balance, so that these two camps pick and choose from scripture to create and prop up an image of God to one extreme or the other.

Those who choose the loving God certainly enjoy the freedom and comfort of not feeling condemned or hated. They must certainly a “kind God” for selfish reasons. But it spills over in the generous and liberal attitude toward other people.

My quarrel with those who pick and choose the angry God is that the stretch the biblical word not merely to make the wrath of God large, but also to accommodate a huge portion of their own anger toward other people.

It is tempting to see this wide spectrum of theological difference entirely on the basis of how one regards self and others, to recast or emphasize our view of God on how we first view ourselves and others.

Which God is genuine? Which God is the true God?   Step Three of the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps acknowledges a higher power: “[We] made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” I don’t quarrel with that, in principal, since it allows this program a lot of latitude for those of different faith traditions.  But when these faith traditions are increasingly dumbed–down to the degree of two extremes, which God does one believe in, and to which God does one turn one’s life over? If it is “God as we understood him,” but the understanding we have is of an angry, rigid God who hates humanity, then good luck on turning our lives over to God’s care.

As for me, I would rather put my faith in the God who understands me, rather than the other way around.  My understanding is not perfect.  God’s understand is.  When I read the scriptures, I find a God who knows my weakness, yet forgives; a God who patiently waits for me to come to my senses, a God who welcomes, heals, embraces, blesses, feeds, and gives the undeserved gift of eternal life. This God, says the Christian scriptures, is revealed most completely in the life and the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross.

So while, yes, we can find a lot of stuff in the Bible which speaks of God’s disappointment, scolding, warning and wrath, and which expects us to turn, repent, wake up, clean up our act, straighten up and fly right, and while we may strive with all our hearts to do that, God has the last word. And that “last word” is not laying down the law, but giving us the gospel.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

 [This was started many months ago ~ but in the light of the polarizing climate of Christian behavior in the November election over Proposition 8, it seems fitting to post it now.]

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

November 7, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I see first hand the results of the 12-Step ministry every time I meet someone in recovery from alcohol or drug addiction. As you probably know, Alcoholics Anonymous has been called the most important spiritual movement of the 20^th century. There is enormous transformative power in faith and solidarity to overcome addictions and its derivatives of loneliness, depression and powerlessness.

At the same time, I see first hand the power of addiction to keep addicts in its thrall. We have a man who has been visiting our church for months, who is semi-homeless and alcoholic. He admits he never met a beer he didn’t like, and he has been asking for money from members, and even taking coins out of our fountain, to save up for a quart. One Sunday afternoon he sat on the front porch directly in front of the church doors and got totally wasted.

I am still trying to reflect on the spiritual pain I feel after the passage of Proposition 8 in California, and make sense of why some people remain so rejecting, punitive and hateful toward gay and lesbian people. That’s when this analogy came to me.

Over the years, and especially in these most recent 5 months, I have seen first-hand the transformative power of honesty and love in and with the LGBT community. It begins with Step One: Coming Out to Self and Others. Sometimes, people who come out are summarily rejected, but as the years have gone by, more often I hear the stories of those whose lives took a decided turn for the better, with their families, friends, neighbors and even employers.

Two weeks ago I officiated for a wedding in which one of the grooms had come through a difficult period with his family after coming out. His aging parents at first rejected and disowned him. He is in recovery, by the way, and met his life partner—now husband—at an A.A. meeting.

It took time, but his entire family has come around. They accept him, and his loving relationship with his partner. And they all came from near and far to participate in their wedding ceremony, with his sisters and parents joyfully taking part in the final blessings.

People make enormous spiritual progress through honesty and love. It changes lives. This entire family, now united by marriage, has recaptured love and made enormous strides in spread understanding, goodwill and tolerance because of one son’s integrity and honesty. That is spiritual transformation.

Now we come to the political reality of LGBT people in a society which is wrenching back and forth between rights and no rights. The conservatives hotly and loudly call it a culture war. But I now see it from the positive side — the transformative power to change lives through love, honesty, integrity, patience and reconciliation. Some people — millions of them — “get it.” They have embraced the individuals they know among family, friends, neighbors or co-workers, they have ascended the learning curve about human sexuality, psychology, and civil rights, they have wrestled through the issues that made them uncomfortable, and they have grown spiritually.

But there are millions of others, led by religious power blocks, who think they are fighting a war. What they are fighting is their own addiction to hatred, to power and money, and to control. They are drunk on their own illusions of politics, race, money, marriage, and God. They would rather destroy relationships through estrangement and disowning those who are close them (every family in America is not that far away from someone who is lesbian or gay), than to grow spiritually through listening, patience, understanding, empathy, and love.

It is ironic that those on the reactionary side of things call this a culture war, when it is obviously a spiritual struggle they do not wish to face. I am betting my life on the ultimate triumph of love and reconciliation. And I apply my faith to this struggle, remembering the words of Jesus when people of power and bigotry crucified him: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

But in the meantime we have to continue to struggle for rights and for understanding with those who as yet have no interest in the spiritual transformation that could be theirs. Drunk with homophobia, they will not even take the first steps to understand. It is sad when they bring their drunkenness right to the front doors of the church.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Homophobia, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Recovery, Spirituality, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

October 2, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

“Dear friends, marriage is a legal relationship which is one of the foundations of community and society. It is, therefore, a public and civil relationship which expects all other people to honor and respect it, as our Supreme Court has now fully recognized. Marriage is also a spiritual relationship—a covenant of heart and soul, and a shelter for love and intimacy.”

These are bittersweet days as a church pastor. I know I could be spending more time fighting this stupid Proposition 8, which has too good a chance of passing on November 4 thanks to the hateful lies of the “religious reich.” But I am actually still swamped arranging for the marriages of lesbian couples and gay male couples. I have at least five arranged for this month.

They come in all sorts, sizes and shapes. A dedicated, loving lesbian couple, both of them active Roman Catholics, who can hardly approach their priest about getting married! An older male couple who wanted to secure their legal rights before a planned move out of state. A black and white couple, both of them in recovery. Thank God! A Christian–Jewish couple, who met at an A.A. meeting. Thank God again! And the sister of one of them is apparently coming all the way from Jerusalem to attend her brother’s wedding.

“God bless you and guide you in your faithful commitment to one another. God defend you and shelter you in your tender love for one another. God uphold you in all life’s challenges, and shower you with all life’s rewards, that you always find strength and delight in each other, and grow in love until your life’s end.”

I speak kindly to them about their plan to marry, and reassure them that both God and the community stands with them. We pick out readings, prayers, blessings and vows. And I recommend my new “custom” this past summer, of including the signing of the marriage license as the last ritual act during the ceremony itself. Why? Because we can! And so that the importance of this legal right is not lost on any of their guests, inviting their applause and approval of the really important reason they are coming to a same-gender wedding—just before they all get into a party spirit at the reception and forget how significant that license is.

But I am not getting enough time to volunteer in the “No on Prop 8″ campaign. At least I am reassured, during this proposition fight, that the California Attorney General’s office has already issued a legal opinion that, even in Proposition 8 passes, the marriages being done right now will remain valid. How much do we want to bet that will get litigated anyway? . . .

I started writing this weeks ago, but was interrupted. That marriage of the older couple has come and passed. When the arrived at the church door, the younger man was pushing his partner in a wheel chair. (Thank God our building entrances are completely step-free!) They wanted a very simple civil ceremony. But when it came time to exchange their vows, it took on a sacred character anyway. In order to hold hands and look at one another, the younger man simply knelt down on the floor next to the wheel chair.

“I (Name), take you (Name), to be my husband; to have and to hold from this day forward, in joy and in sorrow, I plenty and in want, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live.  This is my solemn promise.”

How can anyone argue that this kind of love and commitment are not valid or should not be recognized in the state of California?  I will continue to officiate over weddings big and small, modest or grand, as part of my campaign to defeat bigotry and homophobia.

“With confidence in the blessing of Almighty God, and by the authority given me by the State of California, I pronounce you spouses for life.”

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in LGBT Christian, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Recovery, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

January 12, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I just learned this morning of the death of someone I’d been trying to get closer to.  He died apparently of a drug overdose after a drug binge—depressed?—that had cost him his job.

This news has triggered a lot of shock in me, and I found myself questioning our mutual friend hard, as if it were not possible, or somehow the news was not true.

He had a lot going for him, which makes this seem like a total failure of hope and grace. He was a Christian, knew his Bible well, was confident and enthusiastic about both his work and his children (although divorced), and knew the 12 Steps of recovery. He had come with a good friend to our Bible studies on numerous occasions, was affable and stable.

Something completely eclipsed my friend’s path to recovery, however, and snatched his life away.

And sadly—as so often happens—he shut others out when he was in his greatest need and hitting bottom in his greatest depression. I have learned that he refused to go into a detox and rehab facility, and was found dead in his home days later.

As a Christian teacher and Pastor, I feel a huge sense of defeat that I never got or found the right opening or opportunity to get closer to this man. Could I have played a role in redemption for him? Would I ever have been the one he might have called when he hit a low point in life?

It strikes me how often religion plays such a feeble role in the recovery and redemption of human life. Yes, he knew the Scriptures and could quote them as well as may lay people. But what happened? Where had the Christian faith let him down so that in successive moments of poor judgement and discouragement evil forces could pull him completely under?

The pull, and the destruction, of addiction is real and powerful. These are the demons of our times, and they are legion. Thanks to the law of supply and demand, they remain quite plentiful and available in our country. Drugs and alcohol are costly but not so prohibitive as to make anyone avoid them because of money. In any big city, drugs are especially easy to get.

What is not easy to come by is an absolutely confidence in God’s redemption and grace. This seems to be in short supply– and those who have it cannot always successfully reach those who long for it or need it the most.

And the recovery process is not for wimps. The Twelve Steps are not twelve wishes. They are hard, even demanding work. They require our attention over the long haul—for an entire lifetime—in order to grow in the spiritual strength that nothing can shake or damage or pull under.

As much as I feel defeat in this dark moment, my defeat tells me not to give up or become cynical. My effort—and all of our effort—is critically needed somewhere out there to chase the evil demons of life away, and to be a steady, reliable, unshakable friend for those who lose their nerve or their way. Probably more than anything, we need “street smarts” to understand the demons and to recognize their power.

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September 28, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

In any conversation about fundamentalism, it is easy to argue about or make fun of their strict beliefs and manners: Biblical literalism, punitive rejection of sin and sinners (”hate the sin, beat up the sinner”), the dramatics of being born again and again, the political clout and cozy relationship with the Republican party, etc.

What is less often talked about openly is pain. Especially, the pain for those who have been raised in Christian sects or fundamentalist denominations who cannot stand the pain any longer. They suffer an enormous spiritual dissonance, often cannot make another Christian home, and go through a protracted period of depression, anger, etc. They have been abused as truthfully as Catholic children have been abused by predatory pedophiles in that church.

Only in the last few years have I really had to “face the music” with recovering fundamentalists. A number of gay men, especially, who have been curious enough about our ministry have trusted us enough to draw near. Some have stayed around; two in particular now refer to their former religion or former church in a tone of relief. Others cannot seem to snap out of the spell they have been put under, an after the initial curiosity has worn off, they disappear.

But where to? Back into the fundamentalist fold, the arms of a dysfunctional community that will eventually smother or strangle them spiritually?

David L. Rattigan runs a blog and a web site, www.leavingfundamentalism.org that has some very helpful material. Rattigan claims now to be a liberal Christian, and discloses his personal pilgrimage into and out of charismatic Christianity here. His pain included intellectual dishonesty, the lack of ability to spiritually perform what others expected or demanded (speaking in tongues, healings, prophesying), and the legalism and judgmentalism of fundamentalist Pentecostalism.

In one of his humorous writings, “I was wrong: God admits defeat and changes policy,” Rattigan parodies the supposed retreat of God from grace and forgiveness in Christ as a failed experiment over the last two thousand years, in the form of a news release about a fundamental change in Divine policy.

Excited seminary undergraduates in Louisville took to the streets yesterday afternoon to throw stones at passing sinners in celebration of the surprise decision. “This is a historic day,” a young sophomore told us proudly as he ducked to avoid a flying rock, apparently aimed at a transsexual standing a few yards away.

The greatest pain I have witnessed is in the lesbian/gay, bisexual and transgender community. Millions of us at some point in our early lives dug more deeply into our faith traditions, trying to (a) conform to other people’s expectations of goodness and uprightness; (b) find God’s promised love and limitless blessings; and (c) seek release from our feelings of inadequacy, shame, and sinful sexual inclinations.

But what we found was that we could never conform enough to other people’s views of holiness or perfection, that we were not released from our innate sexual orientation no matter how hard we tried/prayed/repented/abstained/hated ourselves, and that fundamentalist legalism always withheld or blocked God’s promised love and blessings. Others put conditions on God’s love that — if we only could hear the Gospel itself in all its clarity — God does not put on love, forgiveness and grace.

Maybe the only way in which the Gospel will ever be heard in this world is if Christians stop trying to booby-trap the compassion and love of God. (Rattigan now chuckles about fundamentalist warnings of “greasy grace” and “easy believism.”) The bottom line: Christ will come to any and all, out of his goodness and grace—if only we will get out of the way and stop trying to inflict pain on others in order to goad them to come to him.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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September 26, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

A professor at PLTS years ago said that “integrity means your whole life is made from one piece of cloth.” His thought stuck with me. I suppose because at that particular moment I was living a double life: a Lutheran seminary student struggling to keep up with graduate studies and two part-time jobs, and a lonely, emerging gay man trying to understand myself. Looking back at the two lives I was living, I really needed to know what happened that put me in such straits.

If life should be “knit from one piece of cloth,” it is not to be a patchwork of whatever scraps we have on hand, to put our so-called lives together.

Easier said than done. How does one put together a life? It is not like, at the outset, we can design the kind of human being we intend to become. Infants are 100% dependent upon adults. Children are impressionable. I was impressionable as a tot. So were you. Life impressed us, but it was the life we were actually living that made the dents, the impressions, day after day, not the life that we shoulda/coulda/woulda lived.

Some people can honestly blame their parents, their dysfunctional environments and upbringing and catastrophic experiences that warped them, twisted them or shaped them into what they are as adults. But many of us blame, to some degree, just because it’s a way of blowing off or deflecting self-criticism. “It was my hard, unforgiving dad. It was my alcoholic mother. They made me screwed up.” Yada yada ya.

The truth is that all of us have many opportunities for mid-course corrections. We have many chances to look inside and see if we are the people we wanted to be, or the people that we could be if we’d stop making excuses for our own failures or weaknesses.

Then we can blame the culture, if we need to blame something. Our times and our culture do not encourage reflection or inner maturity of any kind. In our culture, we are merely “customers” or “consumers” (to those who have something to sell to us), we are “constituents” or voters (to politicians who have something to sell to us), we are “unchurched” or “prospects” (to preachers who have something to sell to us), and we are “clients” (to lawyers, estate planners and undertakers who have something to sell to us). I could have a lot of fun playing out those metaphors even more.  The culture as a whole is trying very hard to get control of impressionable people, if we allow it to define us.

But the point is we can’t look to pop culture, celebrities, the media, elected officials, or even most religious gurus to help us define ourselves, re-invent ourselves or even understand who we really are inside. We have to look to ourselves.

I quoted Jesus (from John 3:7) a couple of days ago: “Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” Spiritual re-birth is the process of starting over from the inside out, so that our lives have the integrity we cannot have otherwise.

Spiritual growth is a uniquely personal thing. Not private. Not lonely: We don’t go it alone, because after all the Spirit of God is with us in the process of spiritual growth. The indwelling spirit works within and upon our own spirits to re-form us (reform us), to re-weave our lives as if from one piece of cloth.

But spiritual growth is personal and unique for each of us. It is the one thing about life for which we must accept full responsibility. If we have outlived the failures and the foibles of our parents, our upbringing and all the damage that adolescent peers have inflicted on us, we still have this incredible opportunity before us, like an open door, to change. To become. To grow. To seek integrity and to live it out.

God is with us. I am not talking about religious practices and customs. I am talking about deeply personal and interior growth, in that place in the human heart where God really dwells and works with us to become the people we are meant to be. You can do it. God help you.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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