"That Thing You Did" (an outage-induced pause)

Wuff--Long day, sprinkled with some internet outage. Happily, the internet connection just came back on, but I'm afraid I'm going to be a bit short with today's entry.

Let me pause the story of my shift from conservative evangelical Southern Baptist PK to gay United Methodist PK. Specifically, I want to take up a bit of my friend Sonja's challenge: I write about conservative evangelicals quite a bit, but do I ever share my insights with them?

I have, actually, in the past. I once wrote an article about evangelical "hell houses"--haunted house alternatives that instead of ghosts and monster feature scenes of temptation and hellish punishment (with of course the gospel message at the end). I saw a hell house in Tallahassee, FL, and that production formed the crux of my article. In that case, I did end up sharing a final(ish) draft with the youth pastor who created the hell house. He thought I had treated his point of view fairly.

I have no illusions, however, that my other work on, say, Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps would make any kind of impression on him or on his Westboro Baptist Church. They simply don't care what people outside of their enclave (i.e., reprobates) say about them. There are other evangelical figures whom I know I wouldn't even be able to speak to without radically altering my appearance and doing a lot of acting. One of my favorite fundamentalist pastors to listen to, for example, would kick me right out the door of his storefront church for my hippie-ish hair.

Nevertheless, I'd say that most conservative evangelicals would themselves find Phelps or other fundamentalists off-putting. I'm often surprised at the degree of fear that many progressives have of conservative Bible-believers, lumping them together with Phelps at his fire-breathing worst. I tell my friends about, for instance, attending an "ex-gay" conference this summer, and their jaws drop. "Did you have to go undercover? What happened when they found you out?" (no, I didn't need to go "undercover," and there was really no inquisitional search to weed out people not supportive of "reparative" ministries).

That said, I do wonder sometimes about the extent to which I as gay United Methodist could have any sway whatsoever on the average evangelical. I can deliver a paper to a room full of (mainly progressive) academics and be, I think, fairly persuasive in getting them to reconsider their impressions of evangelicalism. I'm not sure that I could do the reverse for a room full of not-so-progressive evangelicals (i.e., get them to reconsider progressives). The last time I gave a message to a large congregation of not-necessarily-progressives, several of them left the church (I'll write about that another day).

Encounters between gay United Methodists and conservative evangelicals (some of whom also identify as Methodist) are difficult, often solidifying the polar oppositions that distinguish them.

It strikes me, however, that perhaps someday I (or someone reading this) might have an opportunity to enact a non-polarizing intervention with a conservative evangelical who does or utters something I take to be offensive or unloving. A friend recently linked me to this video by Hip Hop Vlogger Joe Smooth, "How to Tell People They Sound Racist," and I've found it useful in thinking through how I might converse with a Christian whom I view as doing or saying unloving (sexist, homophobic, racist) things. . .

Of course, a conservative evangelical could easily appropriate the same tactic for use against me (and they do!): "That lifestyle you're living is unChristian."

Hm.

More tomorrow,

JF