Too Different?

Brief thoughts, I'm afraid, as I'm writing a research paper under deadline.

It's almost time, I think, for me to leave Steven Anderson and other God-as-hate-filled fundamentalists. As I've written, I do my best to delve into his theological worldview, to distinguish him from generic labels like "bigot" or "hater." Both are, I've argued, misleading. His hatred for the most part is ancillary to the bulk of his ministry and doctrine, most of which focus on what he understands as love for others. And to be sure, the fact that he spends most of his time on door-to-door evangelism--often a sweat-drenched, thankless task--bespeaks motivations far more complex and (dare I say) positive than those attributed to him by people who hear nothing more than his "Why I Hate Barack Obama" sermon.

But that sermon exists, certainly, and the rhetoric he expresses there and in many other sermons is from my perspective anathema to any configuration of Christianity. Anderson and I understand God quite differently; our first principles about God, the assumptions that shape how we pray, read, speak, and think about God--these are utterly different. I wonder, sometimes, whether even God is big enough to encompass us both. Anderson, of course, would say not. God is not, for Anderson, endlessly elastic in divine regard and mercy. As a gay person, I have strayed forever beyond the bounds of God's grace. Having hated God past the point of God's patience, I cannot be saved. To the extent that I claim to be a Christian, I'm simply lying.

Such extreme differences intrigue me even as they worry me. I've long been fascinated by how communities of various sorts determine insider/outsider status. It's a truism of scholars of community such as Anthony Cohen that no community includes everyone. In order for a community to exist as such, it must be able to point to people not included in that community. The performance of community, then, consists of twin gestures of inclusion and exclusion. Some (the French theorist Jacques Ranciere in particular) have suggested that politics is what occurs when someone on the outside of a community makes a play for occupying the inside of that community, changing the rules or conventions that have up until then governed insider/outsider distinctions.

To be sure, I am interested in politics so defined. But I'm also interested in how those on the inside of one community regard those who live outside of their community or who exist in a different community. Are these others merely different but not necessarily better or worse, as Lutherans might consider Methodists? Are these others mistaken (i.e., they should be part of my community, but they've unfortunately chosen otherwise)? Or are these others evil? Anderson's take on reprobation gives him a comfortable way to imagine others (well, some others) as totally evil and inhuman.

A related question: at what point do differences between members of a community become so great as to shatter the community? Schism, of course, is the key term here for churches and denominations. There is much nervous talk about schisms in mainline Protestant denominations of late. The Episcopal Church, for instance, faces considerable strain within its members here in the US and within the Anglican Communion at large, all due to its liberal attitudes toward GLBT people in the church. By ordaining the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop, the Episcopal Church set off ripples of local church splits and Anglican dissent. Archbishop Rowan Williams has urged the Episcopal Church not to ordain any more openly GLBT members lest relations within the church suffer more. It remains to be seen whether the Episcopal Church will remain connected to its Anglican siblings.

The United Methodist Church faces similar tensions over similar issues. Debates regularly flare up over how to regard GLBT people--should they be ordained? should they be married? most recently--should they even be members? I have participated in many national, state, and local meetings of Methodists riven by such questions. I of course am a strong partisan for inclusion, being a self-identified practicing homosexual (as the phrase goes) myself.

But I do my best, even there, to get into the theological heads of those who honestly and fully believe that I should not be a member equally with them in the UMC. I try, in other words, to regard my opponent as my neighbor.

I wish I could say that I succeed. It is easier, in a way, to wax neighborly about Steven Anderson. I don't know him from Adam, really. I can listen to him on my iPod--or not. I don't have any plans to meet him personally. We exist in utterly separate spheres. But my fellow/sister Methodists--them I cannot so easily ignore or dismiss. Reading conservative Methodist rhetoric, I sometimes hear echoes of Anderson's attitude--these people (i.e., GLBT people like me) are not merely different, not merely outsiders, but utterly reprobate--corrupt and intent on destroying us.

Of course--and I do not mean to suggest a tit-for-tat equality here--sometimes I find that GLBT supporters have similar attitudes regarding those who see little or no place for GLBT people in the church.

That's why it bugs me to consider someone who claims to be Christian as being so different as Anderson (or Phelps) from anything I recognize as Christian...

More tomorrow,

JF