Still (!) working on that dang editorial.
Nonetheless: I ran into a fascinating piece today, a manifesto by the Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong. Spong is well-known in progressive Christian circles (and reviled in conservative Christian circles) for books like Why Christianity Must Change or Die and Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. There he takes an unabashedly liberal view of some of the main tenets of Christian doctrine, challenging believers to relinquish views he considers fundamentalist, e.g., the Bible as inerrant, the narratives in scripture as literal histories, and the substitutionary atonement of Christ. He has been a particularly vocal advocate of GLBT inclusivity in church and society and bitter critic of faith-based rationales for denigrating GLBT people.
The manifesto ("A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!") continues this latter trend. Well--I say continues. Bishop Spong himself presents the manifest as a kind of final word on the subject, his "I will fight no more forever" statement.
A quote is in order:
"I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy."
He continues with further personal resolutions regarding not listening to debates, reading or listening to views "from the other side," or bothering to respond to them in person or in print. He mixes in other resolutions about dismissing those in breakaway factions of the Episcopal church (who are leaving to align themselves with other bodies in the Anglican Communion), ignoring religious leaders like the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury on matters relating to human sexuality, and--in a gutsy move--criticizing various "third-world" ministers who foster "killing prejudice" against GLBT people and get away with it by virtue of their origins.
The battle, he argues, is over. Inclusion is the way of the future, and the church can either get on board or move out of the way. Spong makes it clear that he views the topic of GLBT sexuality as closed, just as most of Christendom views questions of whether segregation is right or whether wives are their husbands' property as no longer debatable. He resolves, finally, to turn his energies and attention elsewhere.
A bold statement, to be sure.
I have questions, however, as to its purpose and ends...
More tomorrow,
JF
PS--100th post! Yay blog! (even though the last few posts have been quite slim).
Showing posts with label gay people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gay people. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Unity in the Body Of Christ: The Creech Trial, part I
This morning in church we sang one of my favorite hymns, "We Are One in the Spirit." For those who don't know, the lyrics are as follows:
We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
And we pray that our unity
May one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love, by our love
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love.
If you'll indulge me in a bit of old-school text analysis: the fascinating thing (one of the fascinating things) about this hymn is the tension it presents between the now and the not-yet, the present indicative and future subjunctive moods. We Christians are one in God, insists the hymn (four times, in fact), but we pray that our unity may one day be restored, implying that in fact such unity does not at present exist.
In this tension I find the truest and most poignant picture of temporal Christian community. We are one, but we are as yet disunited. I have even had occasion to see this paradox manifested in performance.
In the fall of 1999, the then-Rev. Jimmy Creech, a United Methodist minister in the Nebraska Conference, was tried before an ecclesiastical court for violating United Methodist prohibitions against performing a holy union ceremony for a same-sex couple. This was the second time he had been tried. The first time, the court refused to convict, insisting that the sections of the Book of Discipline (the authoritative rules for Methodist polity) regarding homosexuality were meant as recommendations rather than as full-fledged rules.
The UM General Conference subsequently established that those sections, a part of the Discipline known as the Social Principles, were in fact regulative. Furthermore, the Church added formal prohibitions against the performance of same-sex holy unions by its pastors or on its properties. Creech, in an act of civil-ecclesiastical disobedience, defied these rules by solemnizing the union of a lesbian couple. Members of the Nebraska conference filed charges, and Creech was brought to trial.
I had met Pastor Creech the summer before at a gathering of GLBT-affirmative Methodists. There he asked if I would attend the trial and devise/produce some sort of theatrical commentary or protest. Eager beaver that I was, I said "of course." The trial coincided with my first semester in graduate school (PhD program in Theatre History), during which time I took a a class called "Performance and Social Change." One of our projects required that we team with a local group or organization that used performance in the service of its social change mission. I chose the United Methodist Church.
I prepped my little street theatre protest, found a ride to Nebraska from one of the Twin Cities' many liberal-progressive UM churches, and arrived at Grand Island, NE, to find that my best-laid plans for dramatic commentary were upstaged by the larger drama that was the trial itself.
This church trial had sent ripples throughout the UMC. Conservatives, fearing a decline of biblical standards, pushed for Creech to be punished, his ordination stripped. Liberals, of course, wanted to see Creech's role as pro-inclusion activist validated, perhaps through the court's rendering of a "no verdict" verdict or a hung jury. The trial as media event attracted reporters, gawkers, and activists from around the country. The Rev. Fred Phelps was there with his small band of sign-wielders ("God Hates Fags," "UMC=Fag Church," etc.). Other sign-bearers set up displays next to him (verses from Leviticus), though they declared that they had nothing to do with Phelps's display.
The event also marked one of the first public displays by Soulforce, a pro-inclusion ecumenical group founded by the Rev. Mel White. White had been a former activist/ghostwriter for the religious right working closely with Jerry Falwell. He subsequently defected, becoming a minister in the GLBT-affirming Metropolitan Community Church. Soulforce sought to use nonviolent protest techniques to advocate within various Christian denominations for LGBT inclusion and nondiscrimination. "Stop Spiritual Violence," read their T-shirts. Soulforce planned (and implemented) a mass-arrest, first blocking the doors of the church with their bodies and then being peacefully led away by a police officer to be booked and fined--all arranged in advance with the police in question (standard nonviolent protest technique). Close to one hundred Soulforce volunteers, all wearing "Stop Spiritual Violence" T-shirts spent the morning standing in line to be booked at a makeshift processing table staffed by local police officers. They sang civil rights-era standards ("We Shall Overcome," etc.)
Already, then, anything theatrical I could do paled in comparison with the multiple and conflicting performances happening all around me.
The biggest performance of all, though, took place within the Methodist Church assigned to host the trial itself. It was there, most of all, that I saw firsthand the unity/division tension I value in the "We Are One" hymn.
More tomorrow,
JF
We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
And we pray that our unity
May one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love, by our love
And they'll know we are Christians
By our love.
If you'll indulge me in a bit of old-school text analysis: the fascinating thing (one of the fascinating things) about this hymn is the tension it presents between the now and the not-yet, the present indicative and future subjunctive moods. We Christians are one in God, insists the hymn (four times, in fact), but we pray that our unity may one day be restored, implying that in fact such unity does not at present exist.
In this tension I find the truest and most poignant picture of temporal Christian community. We are one, but we are as yet disunited. I have even had occasion to see this paradox manifested in performance.
In the fall of 1999, the then-Rev. Jimmy Creech, a United Methodist minister in the Nebraska Conference, was tried before an ecclesiastical court for violating United Methodist prohibitions against performing a holy union ceremony for a same-sex couple. This was the second time he had been tried. The first time, the court refused to convict, insisting that the sections of the Book of Discipline (the authoritative rules for Methodist polity) regarding homosexuality were meant as recommendations rather than as full-fledged rules.
The UM General Conference subsequently established that those sections, a part of the Discipline known as the Social Principles, were in fact regulative. Furthermore, the Church added formal prohibitions against the performance of same-sex holy unions by its pastors or on its properties. Creech, in an act of civil-ecclesiastical disobedience, defied these rules by solemnizing the union of a lesbian couple. Members of the Nebraska conference filed charges, and Creech was brought to trial.
I had met Pastor Creech the summer before at a gathering of GLBT-affirmative Methodists. There he asked if I would attend the trial and devise/produce some sort of theatrical commentary or protest. Eager beaver that I was, I said "of course." The trial coincided with my first semester in graduate school (PhD program in Theatre History), during which time I took a a class called "Performance and Social Change." One of our projects required that we team with a local group or organization that used performance in the service of its social change mission. I chose the United Methodist Church.
I prepped my little street theatre protest, found a ride to Nebraska from one of the Twin Cities' many liberal-progressive UM churches, and arrived at Grand Island, NE, to find that my best-laid plans for dramatic commentary were upstaged by the larger drama that was the trial itself.
This church trial had sent ripples throughout the UMC. Conservatives, fearing a decline of biblical standards, pushed for Creech to be punished, his ordination stripped. Liberals, of course, wanted to see Creech's role as pro-inclusion activist validated, perhaps through the court's rendering of a "no verdict" verdict or a hung jury. The trial as media event attracted reporters, gawkers, and activists from around the country. The Rev. Fred Phelps was there with his small band of sign-wielders ("God Hates Fags," "UMC=Fag Church," etc.). Other sign-bearers set up displays next to him (verses from Leviticus), though they declared that they had nothing to do with Phelps's display.
The event also marked one of the first public displays by Soulforce, a pro-inclusion ecumenical group founded by the Rev. Mel White. White had been a former activist/ghostwriter for the religious right working closely with Jerry Falwell. He subsequently defected, becoming a minister in the GLBT-affirming Metropolitan Community Church. Soulforce sought to use nonviolent protest techniques to advocate within various Christian denominations for LGBT inclusion and nondiscrimination. "Stop Spiritual Violence," read their T-shirts. Soulforce planned (and implemented) a mass-arrest, first blocking the doors of the church with their bodies and then being peacefully led away by a police officer to be booked and fined--all arranged in advance with the police in question (standard nonviolent protest technique). Close to one hundred Soulforce volunteers, all wearing "Stop Spiritual Violence" T-shirts spent the morning standing in line to be booked at a makeshift processing table staffed by local police officers. They sang civil rights-era standards ("We Shall Overcome," etc.)
Already, then, anything theatrical I could do paled in comparison with the multiple and conflicting performances happening all around me.
The biggest performance of all, though, took place within the Methodist Church assigned to host the trial itself. It was there, most of all, that I saw firsthand the unity/division tension I value in the "We Are One" hymn.
More tomorrow,
JF
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Gays, Steven Anderson, and Fred Phelps
Why, if the Rev. Steven Anderson espouses such an overtly hateful message, do I bother listening to hour after hour of his sermons? I use hateful in a technical sense--Anderson himself claims divine hatred of reprobate evildoers as an intrinsic characteristic of God. It is only an act of love, Pastor Anderson says, for him to point out the truth that God does not love everyone. God delights in the suffering of the evil, a group that for Anderson includes (but is not limited to) serial killers, child rapists, abortionists, and homosexuals.
In fact, it was Anderson's particular fixation on homosexuals ("queers," as he often likes to refer to us) that first drew me to him. His sermons popped up on my iTunes as I searched for anti-gay preaching. And there in one of his many sermons that mention homosexuals was a version of his take on reprobation. Reading Romans 1 literally (and in the King James Version), Anderson notes that such people began not as people with an erotic attraction to the same sex but as apostates, people pridefully turned away from God. As punishment for their apostasy, God gives them up to sinful, beastial desires, i.e., homosexuality.
Thus, in stark contrast to most conservative evangelical stances on homosexuality, Anderson defines gay people (and lesbians) in terms of the list of evils outlined in Romans 1:29-31: "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." In other words, Anderson argues that scripture "proves" that anyone who is homosexual is effectively an antisocial, anti-God, lying, merciless murderer. He has proudly claimed the label "homophobic." Who wouldn't, he asks, be frightened of such psychopaths? Gays are for Anderson the reprobates par excellence.
This hard-line stance seems to link him to another infamous anti-gay pastor, the Rev. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church, known for his congregation's high-visibility protests of funerals of AIDS victims and Iraqi war veterans (among others) and for their central motto, "God Hates Fags." I have written about Phelps's particular brand of anti-gay rhetoric elsewhere. Phelps shares with Anderson a theology of reprobation. Like Anderson, Phelps views homosexuals ("fags" is his preferred term) as lower than animals and worthy of the death penalty. All of his church's actions against members of the military (e.g., "Thank God for 9-11" signs at war veterans' funerals) are motivated from his conviction that God is punishing the USA, that God in fact hates the USA, chiefly though not exclusively for refusing to apply the death penalty to homosexuals. Again like Anderson, Phelps repudiates any vigilantism. Indeed, his congregation is scrupulously law-abiding, knowing local, state, and federal free speech codes backwards and forwards.
Despite their similarities, however, it would be a mistake to lump Anderson and Phelps into the same theological basket. Unlike Anderson, Phelps subscribes to a kind of hyper-Calvinism in which God loves only the Elect (mainly: Phelps and the members of his church), hating with a holy hatred everyone else. He and his crew call on sinners to repent, which Anderson considers heretical (repentance not being for Anderson a part of the salvific process).
Most importantly however, Phelps and his congregation are simply not interested in the efficacy of their demonstrations, if by efficacy you mean winning converts to Christ. Drawing again on his strict interpretation of Calvinist doctrine, Phelps views salvation as entirely the work of Christ. The elect have already been chosen and have already been saved. They and they alone will repent of their sins and believe on Christ, and they will do so regardless of what Phelps and his followers do. Evangelism as such is a nonstarter with them. Their demonstrations aren't interested in winning converts; they are instead God's finger of accusation, pointing toward a world that has in its reprobation rejected God.
Anderson, as I've noted, rejects Calvinism as an extra-Biblical (and therefore evil) doctrine. He and his church devote nearly all of their resources to evangelistic outreach, knocking on doors and spreading the gospel systematically. Unlike Phelps, Anderson is passionately interested in winning souls. When soul-winning, he exchanges his fire-breathing rhetoric for a calm, friendly demeanor. The church services and Bible studies in which he waxes theological are not themselves evangelical instruments aimed at the unsaved. Church is meant primarily for the faithful, to help them grow and become more well-equipped as disciples.
It is most likely that Anderson and Phelps would, if made aware of each other, find deep fault with each others' theologies even as they share a strikingly anti-gay stance. I am fascinated, however, by how these two pastors in different ways live into the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.
More tomorrow,
JF
In fact, it was Anderson's particular fixation on homosexuals ("queers," as he often likes to refer to us) that first drew me to him. His sermons popped up on my iTunes as I searched for anti-gay preaching. And there in one of his many sermons that mention homosexuals was a version of his take on reprobation. Reading Romans 1 literally (and in the King James Version), Anderson notes that such people began not as people with an erotic attraction to the same sex but as apostates, people pridefully turned away from God. As punishment for their apostasy, God gives them up to sinful, beastial desires, i.e., homosexuality.
Thus, in stark contrast to most conservative evangelical stances on homosexuality, Anderson defines gay people (and lesbians) in terms of the list of evils outlined in Romans 1:29-31: "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." In other words, Anderson argues that scripture "proves" that anyone who is homosexual is effectively an antisocial, anti-God, lying, merciless murderer. He has proudly claimed the label "homophobic." Who wouldn't, he asks, be frightened of such psychopaths? Gays are for Anderson the reprobates par excellence.
This hard-line stance seems to link him to another infamous anti-gay pastor, the Rev. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church, known for his congregation's high-visibility protests of funerals of AIDS victims and Iraqi war veterans (among others) and for their central motto, "God Hates Fags." I have written about Phelps's particular brand of anti-gay rhetoric elsewhere. Phelps shares with Anderson a theology of reprobation. Like Anderson, Phelps views homosexuals ("fags" is his preferred term) as lower than animals and worthy of the death penalty. All of his church's actions against members of the military (e.g., "Thank God for 9-11" signs at war veterans' funerals) are motivated from his conviction that God is punishing the USA, that God in fact hates the USA, chiefly though not exclusively for refusing to apply the death penalty to homosexuals. Again like Anderson, Phelps repudiates any vigilantism. Indeed, his congregation is scrupulously law-abiding, knowing local, state, and federal free speech codes backwards and forwards.
Despite their similarities, however, it would be a mistake to lump Anderson and Phelps into the same theological basket. Unlike Anderson, Phelps subscribes to a kind of hyper-Calvinism in which God loves only the Elect (mainly: Phelps and the members of his church), hating with a holy hatred everyone else. He and his crew call on sinners to repent, which Anderson considers heretical (repentance not being for Anderson a part of the salvific process).
Most importantly however, Phelps and his congregation are simply not interested in the efficacy of their demonstrations, if by efficacy you mean winning converts to Christ. Drawing again on his strict interpretation of Calvinist doctrine, Phelps views salvation as entirely the work of Christ. The elect have already been chosen and have already been saved. They and they alone will repent of their sins and believe on Christ, and they will do so regardless of what Phelps and his followers do. Evangelism as such is a nonstarter with them. Their demonstrations aren't interested in winning converts; they are instead God's finger of accusation, pointing toward a world that has in its reprobation rejected God.
Anderson, as I've noted, rejects Calvinism as an extra-Biblical (and therefore evil) doctrine. He and his church devote nearly all of their resources to evangelistic outreach, knocking on doors and spreading the gospel systematically. Unlike Phelps, Anderson is passionately interested in winning souls. When soul-winning, he exchanges his fire-breathing rhetoric for a calm, friendly demeanor. The church services and Bible studies in which he waxes theological are not themselves evangelical instruments aimed at the unsaved. Church is meant primarily for the faithful, to help them grow and become more well-equipped as disciples.
It is most likely that Anderson and Phelps would, if made aware of each other, find deep fault with each others' theologies even as they share a strikingly anti-gay stance. I am fascinated, however, by how these two pastors in different ways live into the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.
More tomorrow,
JF
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