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Baptists are far from clear.

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

On the religious front, a “teachable moment” mysteriously opened up this last week in– of all places–the Southern Baptist Convention’s convention being held this year in Phoenix Arizona, when a coalition of representatives for the LGBT movement met for a half hour with the President of the SBC.

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Apparently the meeting was “entirely cordial,” but the Baptist President Bryant Wright didn’t budge from his fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out was there, as was Mitchell Gold and Brent Childers of Faith in America and Robin Lunn of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. The Baptist Press, quoted by Besen, indicates that Wright refused to budge, “saying that Scripture is clear on the issue.” (Any resemblance to Scientology’s use of the word “clear” is coincidental and irrelevant.)

Right there we have a great example of sheer posturing, since any serious theologian in the last 100 years has said that Scripture is not clear about what we now call homosexuality, because the Biblical writers didn’t have any understanding that homosexuality even existed.

(Other things that are “clear,” meaning that they’re in the Bible in black and white, but far from clear, include other sexual matters including polygamy and adultery, marriage and divorce, celibacy and even masturbation.

To his credit, Wright admitted to his own “incredible amount of sin,” and admitted that God loved everybody in the room with him (the homosexuals). But he attempted to mask his rigidity by saying “I hope you all would respect that we’re just seeking to follow Jesus.” Ahem, Mr. Wright: Jesus never condemned adulterers, healed the “boy” (lover) of the centurion, and had his own serious boyfriend, the “beloved disciple.” Sexual wrong-doing or even excess simply didn’t figure highly in Jesus’ message or ministry, but condemning self-righteousness did.

The only thing that is really clear is that the SBC is clear that it is unwilling to re-think its superficial, rigid, lock-step interpretation of theology on sexual matters—and a lot of other matters as well. In short, the SBC answer to the reality that different Christians have come to differing conclusions about human sexuality and homosexuality is that everybody else is wrong.

At least the Southern Baptists were cordial throughout, according to their own press corp. It is was a historic first for some significant gay spokespersons to actually sit face-to-face with an “enemy” leader.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Sex | 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 »

They don’t want my blood.

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

The news that the British ban on gay blood donation is being lifted is a mixed bag for us. The 365Gay.com story explains that the ban is being lifted because “the rule could be discriminatory and might breach equality legislation.”

My husband and I used to be serious blood donors (he more than I). When the AIDS pandemic hit and our blood was no longer wanted for fear we had HIV in our veins, we kept on donating for awhile by simply lying about never having sex with another male.

The truth was that we were entirely monogamous had had been for years, but that didn’t seem to matter to the rules governing the American Red Cross demand for our blood. It assumed that gay men were promiscuous or possibly had the virus, even at low levels, in our systems. America could not distinguish between monogamy and promiscuity.

Even now, the distinction in this British announcement is missing. According to journalist Andy Bloxham, “However, gay men will only be permitted to donate if they have not had sexual intercourse for a decade. Homosexuals who are or have recently been sexually active will continue to be barred from giving blood.”

Well I admit I have had sexual intercourse in the last decade. But the new policy apparently wouldn’t care that it has been with the same partner for the last three decades plus. And for the record, I have never had any STD in my lifetime. But I won’t be flying to Britain to be generous with my blood.

The real oddity of our own American blood policy (I haven’t looked into British law or policy) is that it seems to be crafted to give assurances to heterosexuals that they can’t get HIV from gay blood. Are we doing that for white supremacists to assure them they won’t ever be given a transfusion of African-American blood? Truthfully, assurances of purity really can’t be 100% ever.

Blood banks do not and cannot guarantee the purity of their blood supply. Although blood products are screened carefully, but HIV takes awhile to show itself in an infected person. You would think in the 30 years since this terrible pandemic began (June 1981) that blood-screening science would have improved as dramatically as the medicines to control HIV/AIDS.

Of greater concern is that America can’t seem to convince our youth that getting HIV/AIDS is a serious health problem, even while the older generations still fear getting it from blood transfusions. We have much work to do, for example, to educate people who engage in risky behavior. (Keep your eye on www.HollywoodRemembers.org).

I still believe that donating blood is a worthy cause and that it saves lives. As a generous person, I would still donate blood, but they don’t want it. Even as the science of blood purity struggles to improve itself, I don’t see American homophobia declining rapidly enough or law and public policy keeping pace with the change of either. And although our national blood supply is amazingly safe, too much bigotry still seems to flow in America’s veins.

— Dan Hooper

Posted in Health, HIV and AIDS, Homophobia, International, Public Affairs, Sex | No Comments »

The Religious Reich’s moral pipe bomb.

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Well as March runs out, Wayne Besen never misses a thing of interest. He heads up Truth Wins Out, which he started to counter the “Truth Won Out” pray-away-the-gay movement. the graphic is from Besen’s site; you can read it more easily here.

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What is so transparent in the Harvard thing here is that Wallnau is trying to position his group or himself in the midst of the public discourse. Commentator Besen calls it red meat rhetoric.

And did we catch the “us who are Christians”? The phrase is not incorrect, but it’s opportunistic. Christians are not all of the same mind. Wallnau has no more moral authority to speak for “us who are Christians” than I do. He apparently wants Harvard University to bunch all LGBT people, abortion, all Muslims and “the financial collapse” in the same pot. “Ain’t it awful?” we used to say. Tsk, tsk.

Transparently, he positions the “us” opposite the “you”: “you remove God from public discourse.” Who is he speaking about here? You who? Obviously in his opportunistic world of us-and-them, the “us who are Christians” are meant to be opposed to the you” of “your homosexual activity, your abortion activity,” and “you” who “removed God from public discourse.”

Nobody has removed God from the public discourse. Almighty God, who is Play-Doh in the hands of demagogues, has never been more in the public discourse. As the partisan right wing tries to make everything there is into a political issue if it can benefit from it, the religious reich tries to make everything there is into a religious issue if it can benefit from it.

Certainly, there are issues of profound importance to America and to all human beings, which deserve public discourse, but which do not directly involve one or another religious view of God. Jesus was wise enough to distinguish between the things that belong to God and the things that belong to Caesar (state), Mark 12:17. There is a moral issue in the abortion debate, for example, that is not directly a religion issue, but Christians have differing views of the moral factors in anyone’s decision to have an abortion. And some people who differ profoundly on religion may be on the same side on abortion, for example.

Wallnau’s “baiting” over Islam is especially odious, because there are some of “us who are Christians” trying to promote serious and responsible dialogue with the adherents of Islam about our views of God, revelation, obedience, morality and peace. But to suggest that “You’ve got Islam invading the United States,” as Wallnau did last fall, is irresponsible and only brings more shame on Christians in America. Red meat rhetoric is the moral equivalent of a pipe bomb, and the religious reich doesn’t seem to give a rip about that.

Worse, these people are extremists even for religious wing-nuts. Besen quotes Rev. Bill Harmon, for example, who states that Leviticus requires “the penalty of death, bareness or excommunication” for adultery, etc. and “any sexual activity other than between husband and wife.” Not sure what bareness means to him, but Rev. Bill apparently hasn’t read the Song of Solomon, where erotic pleasure is beautifully described in some detail, and the lack of an actual marriage in the relationship is unmistakable. And, Rev. Bill, if you would check Matthew 1:18–21, you will see that when Joseph and Mary were betrothed, and he thought she must have committed adultery because she was pregnant, but he understood Leviticus to allow him to break the engagement quietly and not hurt Mary. If this was good enough for Joseph and Mary, why is Rev. Bill Harmon trying to incite the masses and beat the drum for the death penalty for any morality that doesn’t fit his personal preferences?

The quote from Dr. Pat Francis is pure “woo woo religion.” If he weren’t wasting his breath about “false religion” (in a nation which guarantees freedom of religion), maybe he could pay attention to James 1:27: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” In other words, do some actual good for people who carry heavy burdens, and practice self-discipline in the things you think are not right for you. If such people don’t believe in abortion, then don’t have one. If they don’t like homosexuals, then don’t be one. If they don’t like Islam, then don’t convert to Islam.

But as to the “financial collapse,” they’re on their own. Jesus is opposed to serving both God and money anyway, according to Matthew 6:19 and 24. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,” says Jesus. “You cannot serve God and mammon” (money). I know, that won’t go over very well among the economic/political/religious right wing, but then they don’t pay close attention to the Bible anyway. I am sure the Social Transformation Conference will find a way around the teachings of Jesus and the Bible. Such people always have.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

　

　

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Family, Fundamentalism, Go figure!, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Sex, wingnuts | No Comments »

Different histories in moving forward.

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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

Separate drinking fountains for Christians?

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Last night at Bible study we turned the page to chapter 4 of John’s Gospel, the famed story of the Samaritan woman at the well, who had previously had five husbands and was now apparently intimate with a man who was not her husband. A lot of people have looked at this and supposed that Jesus turned a blind eye to sexual sin. That is hardly the case, but his answer to sexual wrong-doing is not condemnation but spiritual re-direction.

Nonetheless, the story is embedded in John’s Gospel to remind us that Jesus “stepped over the line” on a lot of issues or public propriety. Later he will stop the religious street mob from killing a woman who had been caught in adultery. He will intervene for a man who had been born blind and was supposed by the religious “groupthink” of the day to have either been a terrible sinner or his parents had been, for him to be punished with blindness. Repeatedly Jesus deflects the religious judgment of petty minds and points to a broader, more compassionate answer to human failings.

The sexual issue is not the first line in this story, however, that Jesus steps across. The first is that he even entered into the region of Samaria. In his time, Samaria was not part of the Jewish homeland. Its people accepted the authority of Moses, and the patriarch Jacob’s well was there on the edge of town. But to the Jews, Samaritans were considered half-breeds or outsiders whose bloodlines were far from pure, and whose religious practices were not “orthodox.”

Samaritans had come to accept this prejudice from the Jews, in a way not too different from how African-Americans accept that white Americans harbor a lot of prejudice today.

When Jesus enters Samaria (which he didn’t have to do except that he felt the necessity to go there for the sake of his mission), he stops at old Jacob’s well and he is thirsty. When a woman comes by to draw water, she accepts the prevail prejudices: that this Jewish man should not even be in Samaria, that this stranger would not approach a woman in public, and certainly that he would not ask her for a drink of water.

The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?”

The fact that Jesus has no bucket is significant for two reasons.  One is that he is talking about spirituality welling up from within one’s soul.  But the situation supposes that the woman could draw water and offer it to him to drink, either from the bucket or from a cup or ladle.  Except that “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.”  The underlying racism of this scene smacks us in the face. It was unthinkable to the Samaritan woman that a Jewish man would want to drink from her bucket or her cup when the two ethnic groups (with a common ancestor) shared nothing in common. The town well was the virtual equivalent of a drinking fountain in our culture.  It was expected and accepted that Jews and Samaritans would not share the same drinking fountain.

So it is not a stretch to see the racial tension in this story.  And it is not difficult to see that Jesus voluntarily steps over the line of common cultural prejudices:  he ignores the fact that men were not to approach women in public, that Jews were never to be involved with Samaritans (or worse, with Gentiles a.k.a. pagans), and especially that they would not share drinking implements. 

With a little prodding and study, Christians can at least “get it” that Jesus breaks down barriers, overlooks or overturns rules, customs, habits, prejudices.  What I do not get, however, is that if Jesus is Lord and he clearly shows that he is no respecter of race or ethnic prejudice, or gender prejudice, how and why can people who claim to follow Jesus (a.k.a. Christians) ever harbor prejudice based on gender or ethnicity (or many other prejudices which we harbor)?

The bottom line is that in all of his teaching—whether with words or by example—Jesus did everything to show his disciples that we must get over our sense of privilege and entitlement.  Until Christians really and fully “get” this, and admit to their own foolish and evil ways in being racist or sexist, etc., they will not get why homophobia is also completely wrong for Christians.  Clearly, there is no way to rationalize away our sense of entitlement or privilege if we follow Jesus, because he will not go there. If we are seeking the path of entitlement or privilege sustained by prejudice, bigotry and hatred, we have taken a different path than the one Jesus is on, and we are no longer his disciples.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, Homophobia, Sex | No Comments »

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

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Counter reformation: you can have the CORE.

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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

Three cheers for change.

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

I got an e-mail a few days ago, a “Special Edition” from the interfaith Religious Institute based in Westport, Connecticut. Yes, we’ve been saying that human sexuality and homosexuality have been balkanizing America and preoccupying both religious and secular organizations and institutions. At least this crowd has decided not to be reactive but proactive in pressing for sexual health and sexual justice.

The e-mail announces the release of a new report, Sexuality and Religion 2020: Goals for the Next Decade, in an audio press conference. Rev. Debra Hafner was joined at this audio news conference by “the esteemed religious historian, Dr. Martin Marty; the director of women’s ministry for the National Council of Churches, the Rev. Ann Tiemeyer; and the president of the National Council of Jewish Women, Nancy Ratzan (left to right below).

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(Dr. Marty’s presence is notable to me because I can remember less than a few decades ago when he was saying some pretty homophobic things and wishing that “the love that dare not speak its name” would just learn to be quiet. No, I can’t find that actual quote — I think I have it in paper files somewhere, because it was uttered by Marty before everything in the cosmos was on line. But the homophobia and the name of Martin Marty stuck in my consciousness. Thank God he has grown on this issue like millions of others.)

Here is an excerpt of the e-mail announcing the 51-page Report:

The report opens with a new vision: By the year 2020, all faith communities will be sexually healthy, just and prophetic. It goes on to outline 10 goals for the next 10 years that will help to achieve that vision. The goals, listed below, are fully articulated in the report. They call on religious leaders and institutions to

  • break the silence around sexuality in congregations and faith communities;
  • improve ministerial training in sexuality issues;
  • provide better pastoral care on sexuality-related issues and sexuality education for youth and adults;
  • forge multifaith coalitions to promote sexual health and justice;
  • become more effective advocates for sexuality education, sexual and reproductive health, and the full inclusion of women and LGBT persons;
  • include sexuality in movements addressing poverty, the environment and other social justice concerns; and
  • mobilize people of faith to advocate for an increased commitment to sexual health, education and justice in religious communities.

Whether the goals are even slightly realistic and attainable is anyone’s guess. But remember that ten years ago Bill Clinton was President, there were twin towers in New York City, gay marriage wasn’t legal anywhere in the United States, Proposition 22 was not yet on the books in California, and Lawrence v. Texas had not reached the Supreme Court (Bowers v. Hardwick was still the supreme sexual law of the land concerning same-gender consensual acts). In 2000, the Roman Catholic Church and its insurance underwriters were still billions of dollars ahead, before the onslaught of lawsuits and settlements of priestly sexual abuse. So in terms of the movement we’re a part of, a decade may see a lifetime of change.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, HIV and AIDS, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Ministry, Public Affairs, Sex | No Comments »

Know your wingnuts.

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

from  http://www.streetprophets.com/tag/LGBT :

 Criminalizing GLBTs: the “Christian” thing to do?

Fri Feb 12, 2010 at 12:35:59 PM PST

Recently there has been a spate of commentary from the loony wing of the Christian right, calling for the criminalization of homosexuality in this country.

Item: Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council said that gays should be imprisoned.

“I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided,” said Sprigg. “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”

“So we should outlaw gay behavior?” asked [MSNBC’s Chris] Matthews again.

Yes,” said Sprigg.

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For a second bit of coverage on this, see FRC’s Sprigg Wants To See Homosexuality Criminalized on the Right Wing Watch.

Lately I’ve been digging up a lot on other wingnuts, such as David Blankenhorn, Arthur Abba Goldberg, Rick Santorum, Hak-Shing William (“Bill”) Tam—and the usual suspects (Dobson, Robertson, Phelps, etc.). Sprigg is new to me—I don’t actually enjoy reading every word that issues from the Family Research Council mouth. FRC is an instrument of James Dobson and his religio-political apocalyptarians, after all.

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But research is indispensable if you’re going to blog, and the more thorough I try to be in online research, the more amazed and dismayed I feel. We think we had a movement going (the so-called Homosexual Agenda), but there is an equal and opposite (hopefully no more than equal) movement of hate-filled, power-lusting, fear-mongering, pseudo-Christian money magnets out there who have more interlocking corporate directorates than a Lego kit and an Agenda which would take us back to burning faggots at the stake if they got their way.

Bottom line is we absolutely have to pay attention because these wing nuts, at every level of our society, are trying to twist public policy in their direction. If they have their way, the future will not include us, nor would it be safe for young LGBTQ kids who are just discerning their orientation, gender and self-esteem in the world.

Be afraid. And then be motivated. Be the change you want to see in the world, not the change that Sprigg, Dobson, Phelps and their more extremist friends are trying to put into place.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Sex, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

Lack of credentials, lack of accountability.

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

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

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

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

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

I sent Mr. Neil the following e-mail:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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

One screwball after another.

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Why didn’t I think of it? Queerty, who is more than a little irreverent over LGBT things, is still working on why the Chinese evangelical Christian known as Hak-Shing William Tam wants to get out of the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial (Proposition 8). Could it be that as a defense witness he is doing more damage to the defense of Prop 8 than their already-weak case can stand?

Why Does William Tam Want Out of Perry? Because His ‘Sex With Kids’ Claim Is Hurting the DefenseHak-Shing William (“Bill”) Tam, who has, hilariously, so far not been granted his request to leave the Perry Prop 8 lawsuit, which he volunteered to join as an intervenor, became the star of yesterday’s courtroom when his public letter to Chinese-Americans church groups — arguing gay marriage was only a stepping stone in the radical homosexual agenda to get to the ultimate goal of legalizing sex with children — was presented.

And if California didn’t pass Prop 8? Then “other states would fall into Satan’s hands,” the letter read, as footage of Tam giving a deposition last month played for the court.

David Thompson, representing the defendants ProtectMarriage.com, argued that Tam wasn’t part of the official Prop 8 campaign, and thus his letter wasn’t valid to attach homophobic animus to the case. You know, notwithstanding that ProtectMarriage.com handily added Tam to the list of five defendants- intervenors in Perry.

Oh, so it’s Tam’s ridiculous characterization of the gay agenda that has the defendants looking to remove him? Got it.

Forty-eight days before the election, Tam sent this letter, according to Queerty, to Chinese -American Christians. It is utterly amazing. Dear Friends:This November, San Francisco voters will vote on a ballot to “legalize prostitution”. This is put forth by the SF city government, which is under the rule of homosexuals. They lose no time in pushing the gay agenda — after legalizing same-sex marriage, they want to legalize prostitution. What will be next? On their agenda list is: legalize having sex with children. I hope we all wake up now and really work to pass Prop 8. We have only 48 days left. Even if you have church building projects, mission projects, concert projects, etc, please consider postponing them and put all the church man/woman power to work on Prop 8. We can’t lose this critical battle. If we lose, this will very likely happen……

1. Same-Sex marriage will be a permanent law in California. One by one, other states would fall into Satan’s hand.

2. Every child, when growing up, would fantasize marrying someone of the same sex. More children would become homosexuals. Even if our children is safe, our grandchildren may not. What about our children’s grandchildren?

3. Gay activists would target the big churches and request to be married by their pastors. If the church refuse, they would sue the church. Even if they know they may not win, they would still sue because they have a big army of lawyers from ACLU who would work for free. They know a prolonged law suit would cripple the church. They had sued the California government many times before. They sue until they win. They would not be afraid to sue a church. The church would have to spend lots of money in defending the case. The court fight would be long and the congregation would be discouraged and leave — how long are they willing to shoulder the law suit costs. The church may give in and accept them, their membership would grow and take over the church. Then a righteous pastor would have to leave. Such scenarios have happened in Scandinavian countries. At that time, churches would keep quiet, hoping that they won’t be picked as the next target.

If your church is sued, don’t expect others to help your church. You would be in the battle alone, and chances are you would lose. If that happens, whatever nice building your church have built now would become meaningless.

In order not to let this happen, we better team up at the current battle to defeat same-sex marriage. Collectively, we have a chance to win. Right now, each church sacrifice a little. For 48 days, delay your projects, put your resources ($ and manpower) into Prop 8. We’d have great power if we pool our resources together. Let’s win this battle. After victory, your congregation would be energized and go back to the original projects with joy and cheer. They may want to give more and build a bigger building to thank God. Our God would be pleased and bless us more. But if we lose, our congregation would lose heart. They might not want to work as hard. Our opponents would be overjoyed. They would do more and change more laws so as to persecute us easier. Churchs would have a much much harder time to survive. We would be collecting offerings to fight law suits instead of building new buildings. I pray that day would not come. The choice is yours. Talk to the leaders of your church. Your actions would change the history in either direction.

Thanks for your efforts,

Bill Tam

Traditional Family Coalition

lyonandmartinwedding.jpg

June 16, 2008, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon became the first lesbian couple to wed legally in California. (Heterosexual) San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom looks on from behind the camera. Who would have guessed that these women, who were together for more than half a century, really wanted to have sex with children?

What can I possibly do to dismantle the right wing’s flaky case any more?

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Go figure!, History, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Public Affairs, Sex, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Good news, religious lunacy.

Monday, November 30th, 2009

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

Report: Homosexuality no factor in abusive priests 

by The Associated Press • 11.18.2009 9:22am EST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deeply flawed at the core.

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

My friend Steve writes/rants about the latest ecclesiastical saber-rattling:

Hey, it’s Thursday, so the Lutherans must be forming yet another break-away denomination. Did you see the LA Times today? A little piece from AP that the CORE group is moving ahead more rapidly than they had originally anticipated in the formation of a new denomination for those unhappy with the direction of the ELCA. [Good background article from Associated Press here]

Well, need I say it? What will their foundational docs look like: “We are the church that thinks homosexuality is a sin.” So much for the solid rock of faith. E gads.

AND what a phenomenal WASTE of resources…to put all that energy into leaving and forming something “new” (which is, in actuality, a rehash of something very OLD…can you say “Missouri?”) What good could be done with all those resources!

Oh, and so much for the “bound conscience.” These folks, apparently, were never bound to anything but their own dogmatism. As soon as they didn’t get their way, they decided to take their marbles and go home. OK, bye!

SO…maybe NOW the ELCA will be able to move into God’s future, unencumbered by these folks. There’s a vision you can hang your hat on!

End of rant (for now).

My thoughts (which I will one day express just a tad more completely): the church that is held together merely by habit and antipathy to someone else’s sex life is deeply flawed. May God bless them. They need it. – DH

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

Lasting Peace: the Unsplit Life

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The institutional and the theological high ground.

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

This summer has been a tipping point for the ELCA, the largest of the Lutheran churchbodies in the United States. Somehow, while many observers weren’t paying much attention, but the Holy Spirit was near, this largely Midwestern-based Protestant church slipped from the conservative column to the liberal. Its actions in Assembly a month ago in Minneapolis are still being weighed and measured for significance.

Yesterday, Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson (who is also the President of the Lutheran World Federation) issued a “pastoral letter” on the tipping point — what he thinks about how Lutherans should feel about the major change in the ELCA’s view of same-gender relationships and lesbian/gay clergy.

For review, there was no official prior policy against same-gender relationships. No Lutheran pastor has been defrocked or disciplined by the ELCA for officiating at a lesbian wedding. Not so for the Presbyterians and the Methodists, who have drawn their line in the sand way to the right of the Lutherans.

But there was an official policy against rostering (ordaining, commissioning or hiring) out lesbian and gay clergy who are in same-gender relationships.

And there was no policy to forbid gay or lesbian persons from being clergy if they promised to be celibate forever, although the defacto rule is that any congregation that blanched at the thought of a homosexual pastor with a same-sex spouse would have blanched at the thought of a celibate homosexual pastor, too.

You can read Hanson’s pastoral letter on my other web site where I store bigger documents. In it, he takes the institutional high ground, and at times is almost eloquent in reminding the denomination that we have a mission to accomplish and we are only hurting ourselves and our mission if we get into a schism over lesbian/gay clergy.

For the record, the schism will proceed as previously scheduled. Hanson’s letter is not likely to convince anybody to change their mind. But the schism will be small—perhaps 100–200 congregations may bolt, out of a total of nearly 10,000 congregations.

But it still hurts when people we thought understood the Gospel as well as Lutherans do decide to say “we’re out of here,” like where Paul says, “the eye cannot say to the hand, `I have no need of you.’” (1 Corinthians 12:14–27)

Hanson reminds the church that Lutherans have always deftly distinguished Law and Gospel, what he says Martin Luther called “the highest art among Christians.” To make this important distinction and apply each appropriately is in fact nothing less than interpreting the Scriptures rather than shooting them from a gun at a social issue.

My turn: Hanson speaks in generalities, but I would have been a bit more specific, in reminding the whole church that heterosexuality is neither Law nor Gospel. The Christian Church long ago gave up trying to make “be fruitful and multiply” into a commandment that must be obeyed by all believers in Jesus. Heterosexual love, or sexual expression, or even reproduction, cannot be commandments, as Jesus and Paul both made clear.

But neither is heterosexuality Gospel. No one will be saved or redeemed or put on God’s right side by heterosexuality. No one earns a heavenly mansion by virtue of heterosexual behavior. We are saved by grace (Romans 3:23–24; Ephesians 2:4), regardless of Paul’s curious take on women being saved by bearing children. He even says, in 1 Corinthians 7:16, that a woman or man might save the unbelieving spouse —salvation by marriage?  But his broadest theme, over and over, is that we are saved by grace alone.  Sex, sexual orientation, sexual expression, are not part of the equation at all.

I have continued to say this wherever possible: the ELCA’s ~ or the Episcopal Church’s ~ action to open its doors and its ministry fully to LGBT people is not a departure from traditional or correct Christian doctrine because human sexuality, in all of its perplexing diversity, is not part of Christian doctrine. Christian doctrine is about Jesus Christ and what he has done. It is not about us and what we have done, whether sublime or perverse. No one, whether Jew or Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, heterosexual or homosexual, “has a leg up” before God.

Yes, I know the conservative rant to the contrary. But it is a hopeless stretch to insist that any one or another specific sexual behavior is a sin which disqualifies one from God’s love – and yes, you can find Bible verses to attempt to so insist – because there are other Bible verses that blow that thesis away!  Jesus said “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37); and “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life” (John 6:47).  There is just no extra credit for being heterosexual.  There are millions of people of faith out there who are not heterosexual. They have come to Jesus and they believe in his message of hope and grace. Regardless of what a congregation or an entire churchbody may say, Jesus will not drive them away, but because they have put their faith in God’s grace through Jesus Christ, they have eternal life.

Moreover, since no one is without sin (Romans 3:23), no one, including no heterosexual has the right to cast the first stone.

No one has the right to judge.

No one.

Just say No, when homophobic people start to rant that they are now being driven out of the church. No, they are walking away all by themselves.  They are doing, or preparing to do, what millions of LGBT Christians have not done, even when our churches would not welcome us if we were open. We remained faithful to Christ and to his church. Now we rejoice that the ELCA is being faithful to us. If others cannot accept that, perhaps they never did understand the Gospel after all.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in "The Closet", Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, ELCA, Faith, Gay Catechism, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, Ministry, Sex | 1 Comment »

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