Progressive Coalitions and Facts of Life Strategies.

One takeaway from the otherwise disastrous (for LGBTQ+-inclusive folk) 2019 General Conference of the United Methodist Church: the anti-inclusion folk just plain out-strategized us progressives.

I'll leave to one side the possibility of improper shenanigans that may have helped traditionalists win the day. I have Thoughts and Feelings about that matter, but I'll save those for another day.

Even apart from any illegalities, though, it's undeniable that the traditionalists, mainly through mechanisms like the Wesley Covenant Association (WCA) or Good News do politics very, very well. They cultivate delegates, finesse legislation, and organize voting with a great deal of foresight and tactical sophistication. They think about who will speak for what motion/measure, what identity or rhetoric would prove most persuasive. They rank and promote slates of candidates and causes. They know how to discipline their coalition into adopting a following a strategy from above.

And it gets them results.

Now, progressives in the UMC such as the Reconciling Ministries Network strategize as well, as we in Louisiana did last week at Annual Conference. But left-leaning organizations generally prefer a "let 1,000 flowers bloom" approach. We value diversity and try (imperfectly) to avoid silencing or marginalizing minority perspectives. We encourage speaking and listening, even and especially when what we have to listen to involves criticism from below or from the margins.

Our diversity of backgrounds, identities, views, and causes makes the effort to organize around a single expression, a single strategy, painfully difficult. Who gets to speak right now? Who has to stay silent for that speaker to be heard? How can we translate the complexity of who we are into messages that compete well in an online attention economy? This is tricky and uncomfortable. We're hyper-aware of how focusing efforts for gay and lesbian inclusion, for example, can leave other sexualities (like bisexuality) conveniently on the back burner.

Issues get even more complicated the more intersectional we try to be. An ideal Church responds equally to racism, sexism, trans*phobia, homophobia, classism, ableism, and all the rest. But in reality it often feels like addressing one problem means sidelining concerns about others. The conversation veers awkwardly in to a matter of immediate priorities--which cause do we unify around right now?

And when each of these causes is a life-or-death matter, when each has a long history of being ignored or sidelined, when each is full of veteran activists and survivors who are just plain sick and tired of being put off--well, it's just a nasty, unhappy game where even winning can feel like defeat.

I'd like to think another way is possible, that we can find ways of celebrating partial victories (Louisiana Methodists elected a slate of delegates that comes close to matching state gender and racial demographics! We elected our first openly gay delegate!) even as we acknowledge exclusions and shortcomings (Methodists have yet to broach the subject of trans* people in Louisiana. Talking about systemic racism in any real way--as it pertains to Louisiana--seems verboten. And we're still split on questions of basic LGBTQ+ rights). 

 Call it a facts-of-life strategy: you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have...a survival ethos for long-term progressive activism? (Not just progressives; non-progressive movements practice something similar.) Certain questions then get critical: how much good do you need to keep going? How much bad can you take, and for how long?

"Make America Straight Again"

 All through this last weekend, my morning feed updated me about an event in Orlando, a "Make America Straight Again" conference. Scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shootings, this conference features a lineup of New Independent Fundamental Baptist ministers all giving livestreamed sermons about how gay people deserve the death penalty. It is a good thing, they preach, that LGBTQ+ people (whom they prefer to call f**gots) were murdered in the nightclub massacre. Here's the Rev. Stephen Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, reflecting on the Pulse massacre:

The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles. That’s who was a victim here, are a bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay?

Charming as vomit on a hot sidewalk.

As it turns out, Anderson isn't a new figure to me. As a researcher, I've long been fascinated with him. I've listened to hours of his recorded sermons (many of which my ever-patient partner also endured), watched countless videos by him, and wrote about him extensively in my book. There I focused mainly on his "soul-winning" technique. As demonstrated here, Anderson promotes an especially precise method for evangelical proselytization, and he explains it very clearly.

One doesn't have to look far into his extensive YouTube archive, however, to see that soul-winning is but one star in the constellation of his passions. There's many a discourse on the unique authority of the 1611 King James translation of scripture. There's his jeremiads on the evils of education beyond the home (even Bible colleges--especially Bible colleges--are forbidden). And as with any faith self-consciously more radical than its relative mainstream, there's many a video condemning flavors of fundamentalist Christianity ever-so-slightly divergent from Anderson's own, such as churches that doesn't baptize via full immersion or that use the New International Version.

But throughout all these concerns runs the recurrent theme of the reprobate sodomite. He loves to talk about how much he hates them. (God, he assures us, hates them too.) I'll decline to link to his many, many sermons about how awful we are. The quote I shared above gives the gist of it.

Such undiluted, acid hatred is rare to behold in non-parodied form. As a scholar of conservative evangelicalism, I have an academic interest in how unapologetically extreme Anderson is. But really, I think he exerts an odd pull for a lot of people. Listening to him, watching this guy preach sincerely and passionately about how gay folk like me are actually murderous, abusive sociopaths, I feel the same horrified curiosity I experience reading the prolapsing jaws of the marine bloodworm. I can't look away.

Anderson's aura of awful is both useful and dangerous.

Here's the useful part (and I qualify this with a warning that I think Anderson's words are better left unshared in most non-specialized contexts): he puts the average "I just believe what the Bible says" anti-gay argument to shame. Whenever I hear a conservative Methodist lecture about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, I think of Anderson and his friends. I don't mean that my traditionalist brothers and sisters are exactly like Anderson. They certainly aren't. I mean that Anderson is more fundamentalist, more literalist, than they are.

See, according to Anderson, the correct reading of Romans 1:26-27 ("For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions....") isn't (just) that homosexuality is condemned as a sin; it's that same-sex lust is the consequence for reprobates who have already abandoned God in their pride. Gays are by definition evil, dangerous people. Their love for their own gender isn't the cause but a symptom of their evilness. For Anderson et al., execution is the only just response. (They're careful to deny endorsing vigilante justice; the government, they aver, should institute to the death penalty for gays. Naturally, Anderson is not especially keen on the government being so proactive in other arenas of life.)

Now of course I don't agree with his interpretation any more than I endorse the mainstream conservative Christian reading. But, in terms of a literalist, "I just believe what the Bible says" hermeneutic, I can't help but see Anderson's reading as stronger. I admit I get a bit fed up sometimes with the "hate the sin/love the sinner" rhetoric I hear from mainstream anti-gay conservative Christians (though by and large I do not doubt their good intentions). There's part of me that finds Anderson's consistency and honesty refreshing. You can't have your cake and eat it too, he says. So awful is homosexuality, in Anderson's view, that you must hate the sinner as well as the sin.

The dangerous part of Anderson's trainwreck appeal is subtler. (I'm bracketing for now the obvious possibility that Anderson's rhetoric might inspire actual anti-LGBTQ violence. It might, and that's cause enough for some serious conversations about the spread of dangerous speech online. Anderson and his crew are going well beyond where Phelps ever went in terms of outlining and celebrating specific anti-gay violence scenarios.)

But even aside from that remote-but-real threat, the danger of self-avowed haters like Anderson lies in how easy they are to condemn. It's hard for me to imagine the average person hearing about Anderson's event and not recoiling in disgust. He casts himself so far beyond the Overton Window of mainstream discourse on homosexuality that he practically comes pre-demonized.

Unfortunately, though, his extreme example can give rhetorical cover to more mainstream anti-gay beliefs. Many pundits and pastors on the Christian right espouse policies that would in practice  criminalize LGBTQ+ lives. Yet they can point to the "Make America Straight Again" conference, cluck their tongues, and say, See? That's what hate looks like. We're preaching love. We just don't approve of lifestyles that stem from psychological and spiritual dysfunction... He hands them the "Well, compared to Steven Anderson, we're not so bad" excuse.

Anderson also gives those on the left a big, easy target to aim at. It's simple to condemn him. Anyone can do it. It requires little thought, zero reflection. It allows us give ourselves a round of back-patting see what an activist I am? kudos. Now, I like gold stars. Positive reinforcement plays a vital role in the longevity and success of social movements.

But affirming that it's shocking and offensive to celebrate the deaths of 50 young queer and queer-allied people represents a ludicrously low bar for decency. Hurdling that bar, for most people, just isn't a challenging or meaningful accomplishment.

Fighting Anderson is a bit like eating brightly colored candy. It's quick and thrilling, but doesn't give you much long-term nourishment in dismantling subtler forms of homo/bi/trans/queerphobia. It leaves institutional sexual and gender privilege systems largely unexamined. Homophobia instead becomes a relatively simple problem of a few individual bigots. Unapologetically antigay pundits exist. But factor these folk out of the equation and you still find yourself light years away from justice, liberty, and equality for LGBTQ+ people.


None of this stops me as an academic from finding Anderson and his views important and fascinating. But getting to the worthwhile questions about him, I think, means passing quickly through the standard, easy "ugh" most people (hopefully) feel when they hear about his conference.

More tomorrow,

JF

Not All Methodists at Baton Rouge Pride

So I went to pride yesterday to staff the table for the Reconciling United Methodists of the Capital Region at Baton Rouge Pride Fest. As I've been writing about, I had misgivings. Could I in good conscience recommend the United Methodist Church to LGBTQ+ folk and their allies? I've been leaning regretfully toward "not really."

Yet here I was, at a table in the noisy, packed convention space at the Baton Rouge River Center, attesting to how not-awful-for-gays we Methodists could be.

"Not All Methodists," in other words.I mean, "Not All Methodists" was literally the motto we promoted on our flyers:

I admit I cringed a little when I first read the title. "Not All Methodists" echoes that classic battle cry of privileged fragility: "Not all _____!" Not all men. Not all white people. Not all USAmerican citizens. Not all cisgenders. Not all native English speakers. Here's how such a phrase usually works:

1. Someone from a marginalized group offers a criticism of the power structures that keep privileged group in power. 
2. Representative of privileged group chimes in instantly with a yeah, but NOT ALL [PRIVILEGED GROUP MEMBERS], often with a tut-tut lecture to the marginalized person that they can't expect to win hearts and minds if they alienate their closest allies, how the criticism lacks civility or nuance, etc. 
3. Conversation becomes about the marginalized person's tone or tactics and how off-putting they are because NOT ALL [PRIVILEGED GROUP]. 
4. Marginalized person's critique gets forgotten, privileged group allies pat themselves on the back and lament that more marginalized people don't engage privileged groups.

Nevertheless, in this case I endorse the "not all Methodists" message. (I was after all involved in the conversations where we came up with that message.)

There's a difference between defensiveness and dissent. If I respond to a feminist attack on patriarchy with a not-all-men monologue about how not-privileged my male life has been, I'm derailing the message by attacking the messenger.

But if I'm a Methodist in Louisiana, post-February 2019, post-Annual Conference, asserting "not all Methodists" at Pride and in rainbow colors becomes a vital dissent from the denomination's predominant messages over the last few months. It's like responding to a sexist joke or racist remark with chilly, pointed silence or a call-out. It establishes distance from and criticism of the majority's stance.

Plus, I really like the written message on the card. We're in progress, not there yet, just like our nation. But know that we at least affirm you as beautiful and worthy of love just as you are.

My shift at the Pride table yesterday taught me the value of that message. I've not been to Baton Rouge Pride previously, not being a huge fan of noisy, crowded spaces. Noisy and crowded it was--but fun. I loved seeing people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and presentations decked out in rainbows (including but not limited to the trans* and bisexual flags). I loved seeing singles, couples, groups, and families (sooo many parents together with children!). I loved seeing racial diversity alongside all the other kinds (I was fearing a sea of whiteness). And everyone seemed happy. Kudos to the organizers for making the event such an open, accessible, and joyful celebration.

We were one of several church-related tables (shout-out to University Presbyterian, Metropolitan Community Church, Unitarian Universalist Church, St. Martin's Episcopal--others I may have missed!). Clergy from more liberal denominations performed a mass blessing of relationships. University Presbyterian showed off a board full of pictures of their LGBTQ+ couples getting married in their sanctuary, by their minister. That hurt a bit, being reminded of where the UMC is not.

But we Methodists had our own special draws. Our biggest attraction, to be honest, were the jolly ranchers, arrayed in a rainbow spectrum of flavors. Pride-goers' lust for jolly ranchers knows no bounds. Running a close second in popularity to the jolly ranchers, though, was the rainbow door display from St. John's UMC:

The doors say, "God's love is open to ALL!"

Displayed on one of our main roads, the installation got tons of comments like, "Oh, yeah! I saw that! It's such a great message! That's you all?" I had nothing to do with the doors' creation, and St. John's isn't my church (shout out to St. John's Love is Love class and to Rev. Lane Cotton Winn!). But it made me proud to be Methodist.

So many people stopped to tell us how much it meant to them that we were there. Several of these were Methodists or former Methodists. A drag queen from Austin touched base with us to see how our Annual Conference fared in electing progressive delegates. An elderly couple shared how they left us for the MCC years ago but were happy to see us there. An ordained deacon from one of the conservative Texas conferences wept as she told us of hiding out for years before moving to Louisiana.

The faith of these people humbles me. It reminds me (thank you, Holy Spirit) that I'm not alone in struggling with how to be (or not be) Methodist.

And finally there was the incredible witness of other Reconciling Methodists who staffed the table with me or dropped by to say hi. I'm blessed to be surrounded by such support in my local church and my local Reconciling group, and I'm glad Pride helped me to see that.

I still go back and forth, high and low, with my moods regarding  the UMC. But this was a good day.

Yeah, But: the Relativity of Inclusion

This is the "yeah, but" to yesterday's post.

There I wrestled with the fact that, although pro-LGBTQ+ inclusion forces (progressives and centrists) made some significant progress at last week's  Louisiana Methodist Annual Conference, the Conference--and the Church--remains an unhappy mix of inclusion and exclusion when it comes to non-straight and non-cis folk. I decided, reluctantly, that I cannot in good conscience invite an LGBTQ+ seeker to my church so long as something as fundamental as their full inclusion in the church (i.e., able to be ordained, able to be married) remains in question. "Try the Presbyterians," I said.

Yeah, but.

Inclusion and exclusion are relative positions on a dynamic spectrum. I surprised a conservative-leaning pastor this last week, for instance, when I described my local church as "purple" rather than blue (liberal) or red (conservative). In his mind, University UMC in Baton Rouge is a bastion of progressive Methodism. To be sure, many of us in that church are quite progressive. I have never felt anything but welcome and loved. But not everyone at University thinks that way. We have a mix of pro-inclusion folks, not-so-pro-inclusion folks, and lots of people in the middle.

Compared to a Reconciling congregation (Rayne Memorial in New Orleans, for instance), our purple centrism marks us as conservative. University UMC chooses not to adopt a formal, "We want to see the Discipline changed to ordain and marry LGBTQ+ people" stance. Doing so, we've determined, just wouldn't reflect where a significant portion of our membership is right now on this issue. And, for better or worse, we're not pressing inclusivity as a definitive topic. We're not obligating our membership to choose.

I know other Methodists in other Conferences and Jurisdictions for whom UUMC's centrism  constitutes an intolerable concession to bigotry. They base their argument in work like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." (If you've not read it in a while, I urge you to stop and look at it; it's amazing.) There King calls out white moderate ministers who cluck their tongues at the Civil Rights Movement's activism. These ministers, many of whom considered themselves allies in the cause of racial justice, nevertheless urged King to back off, quiet down, not make so many (white) people upset. Speaking truth to power, King excoriates their fence-sitting. He carefully, patiently explains his movement's tactics, grounding them in history, scripture, and philosophy. Then he writes this:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I would hope that no Methodist in 2019 looks back at King's activism and thinks, If only he had been a bit more patient and not forced this issue... I would hope that everyone recognizes how moderates' passive, "well, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle" equivocation perpetuated the evil of segregation.

For progressive Methodists, LGBTQ+ inclusion today parallels (not exactly, of course) anti-segregation and racial justice measures of the mid-twentieth century. Moderation is no virtue in the face of active injustice. Not choosing to act is itself an action. They're correct. I suspect that, if there is Methodism twenty or fifty years down the line, those future Methodists will look back on the Church's struggles over LGBTQ+ inclusion with a similar chagrin that we today feel about previous generations' failure to line up behind King's movement.* It's in this spirit, hearing the criticisms of my Methodist siblings from progressive Conferences, that I reluctantly decline to recommend my church to LGBTQ+ people right now.

That said...

A stance is moderate only in comparison to a viable progressive alternative. And while in Minneapolis or Los Angeles my local church's stance would seem hopelessly backward, in Baton Rouge we are pretty open and affirming. And compared to the rest of Louisiana (save New Orleans), we are, well, kind of a bastion of progressivism. If I'm gay and growing up in rural Louisiana, likely (exceptions of course exist) the only taste I have of LGBTQ+-inclusive Christianity is online. My status quo is that homosexuality is unthinkably sinful, something that big-city folk deal with and that any right-thinking Christian...doesn't think about at all except to go, yuck!

When I first became aware of my sexuality (late bloomer that I was), I was in my freshman year at Oklahoma City University. Having grown up in a series of rural churches (Baptist and Methodist) I had no context for a gay-inclusive faith. I had no model for thinking about myself as gay and Christian. Had it not been for Epworth United Methodist just down the street--a Reconciling congregation--I don't know what I would have done.

There are no Reconciling congregations in Baton Rouge and precious few in Louisiana. If I'm an LGBTQ+ Methodist, a freshman at LSU (or Southern, or BR Community College) wondering how I can reconcile my faith and my sexuality or gender identity, where do I go? I'm not going to find a full, open, 100% progressive Methodist church in town. But. I could do worse than University UMC. Or St. John's, or First Methodist, or the Wesley center (I'm sure there are others I'm missing).

And what if I'm LGBTQ+ in Bogalusa? Crowley? Sikes? Or what if I'm cis/straight but curious about how we should treat folk who aren't? In some of those towns, even the most traditionalist/conservative Methodist congregation would likely be a better choice than, say, an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church.

Dismissing congregations that fail to meet the progressive gold standard, in other words, leaves a whole host of people with no real way to navigate their lives and faith. More than a little bit of urban privilege, I recognize, informs my high-and-mighty "I can't recommend us" stance.

That doesn't mean I can happily recommend the UMC to LGBTQ+ folk right now. But I can--I must--be sensitive to individual context and story. For someone in need of a safe, familiar, Methodist harbor, my church may just play a part in holding that person to life and faith. That person can then decide for themselves about whether they're up for the challenge a purple church.

The Presbyterians are, after all, right next door.

 *I note, of course, that many white Methodists did support King wholeheartedly. I also note that there are a number of injustices today that we as Christians--me included--have resigned ourselves to accepting. The future is going to judge us harshly for our inaction and faux-moderation about mass incarceration, systemic racism/sexism, poverty, immigration, and global warming. God have mercy on us.

Pride Day after the Louisiana Annual Conference 2019, or Two Cheers and an Apology

Baton Rouge Pride celebrations are tomorrow (Saturday). I've signed up to staff the Reconciling (LGBTQ+ affirming) table there.

I'm wondering what I can ethically say there to the people at Pride.

Here's the raw results from the Louisiana Annual Conference this week:

• Andrew Smith's petition to denounce the passage of the Traditional Plan had a robust debate but failed to pass with a narrow 340-360 vote.
• Four of the eight elected lay delegates to the 2020 General Conference (1 of 3), Jurisdictional Conference (2 of 3), and alternate (1 of 2) were people who align with progressive or centrist views.
• Seven of the eight elected clergy delegates were identified as progressive/centrist (the lone non-progressive is an alternate).
• In terms of race and gender, the elected delegation represents an impressively representative cross-section of Methodists. One of these, Adam Philley, is (I believe) our first out gay delegate (an alternate).

For Louisiana Methodism, these are amazing outcomes, a cause for celebration.

Such a victory bespeaks hard work and careful planning. Spurred by dismay at the 2019 General Conference's support for the Traditional Plan, progressives and centrists in Louisiana organized a "Big Tent Coalition." We strategized, politicked, coordinated, and prayed our Wesleyan butts off. To all the people who labored behind the scenes and in public fora to bring this about--Katie, John C., Brandon, Adam, Mickie, Marissa, Jay, Andrew, Karli, Marty, Juan, Lane, Donnie, Laura, Jen R., Jen S., Buzzy, all our delegates, all who spoke and advocated for us, each person who checked in with me and hugged me and cried with me, everyone I'm forgetting or haven't mentioned by name--I can't possibly thank you enough.

So, yes, I'm happy. Three cheers.

Well...two.

Why? As thrilling as these victories are for those of us eye-deep in Louisiana Annual Conference politics, our witness to the world beyond the Church--and to LGBTQ+ folk--remains broken.

Since at least February, the United Methodist Church's loudest message to the world has been this: we don't want gay people here. Yeah, I get that's not literally what our Book of Discipline says. Yes, I understand--truly, I do--that this message runs counter to the intentions of most people who supported the Traditional Plan. But the fact remains that the take-away for most people who've heard anything about the UMC boils down to two points: (1) we voted against LGBTQ+ inclusion, and (2) we may split over this issue.

Back when I blogged here regularly--about a decade ago--I wrote a lot about David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons's 2007 book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity . . . and Why It Matters. Researchers with the evangelical-aligned Barna Group, Kinnaman and Lyons conducted a series of surveys with younger folk to pin down what they thought about Christianity.

Two findings stay with me after all these years. First, most young adults who don't go to church aren't "unchurched"; they're de-churched. They have had some experience going to church, usually because their parents made them. And then they fell away when they hit late adolescence and early adulthood. Something about church failed to hold them--or even repelled them. The authors' other major finding: when asked what words they link to "Christian," survey respondents' top three answers were, in decreasing order, anti-homosexual, hypocritical, and judgmental.

Reflect on that for a moment. At least in 2007, at least according to these researchers, the major impression most young people have of Christianity is that they disapprove of homosexuality.

I would love to say that in 2019 the atmosphere has changed. I'd love to think that Christians, or at least Methodists, are best known for helping the poor, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God. I see evidence of those priorities in my local church. I saw evidence of them in the lives and work of Louisiana Methodists this week.

But I can't blame casual observers for looking at the results of our major meetings--including the 2019 Louisiana Annual Conference--and getting the impression that we're fixated on debating and condemning homosexuality.

Tomorrow, as I staff the Methodist table at Pride, I wish I could tell attendees that impression was wrong. I wish I could point to a strong statement from our Annual Conference that we in Louisiana care more about doing no harm, doing good, and staying in love with God than we do about stressing--again, as if the world were not already convinced--that Methodists think homosexuality is bad.

But that's just not where we are. We're a reflection of the nearly 50/50 split on Andrew Smith's petition: divided. Mixed. Purple, not red or blue. And part of me loves the fact that we're so deeply conflicted, so diverse. Part of me loves that we're the church of George W. Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton. I love it because that's our nation. Our church reflects where the country as a whole is on so many issues. Our messy mix empowers us to model love for one another in the midst of disagreement, to be the community about which the world says, See how they love one another?

That's part of why I as a gay Methodist stay in the UMC. I feel called to be part of that witness. If I wanted to be in a Church whose membership perfectly reflected my beliefs, I'd be Episcopal or Lutheran or UCC (all fabulous churches). I'd probably live somewhere other than Louisiana. For now, though, I'm committed to my spiritual home, asking daily how I may serve here. In this know I stand with many LGBTQ+ Methodist siblings as well as countless Methodist allies. Together we hope and pray, work and weep for a holy transformation of hearts and minds.

But before that blessed day comes, there's tomorrow. There's me at a table at Baton Rouge Pride representing the United Methodist Church. There's me talking a non-Methodist LGBTQ+ person  looking to connect or reconnect with a Christian faith community. What do I say?

So many queer folk have been hurt by the churches of their childhoods--denounced, shunned, or excommunicated. When people like that ask me if my church is safe--my local church but also the UMC as a whole--they're asking if they will be spared the kind of rejection they're used to receiving from Christians. Now, I'm comfortable affirming that most congregations in Louisiana would never condone abuse toward an LGBTQ+ person. Even under the Traditional Plan, Methodists are enjoined not to reject lesbian and gay laity.

Nevertheless, Methodists continually reaffirm rules and doctrinal statements that install sharp cutoffs on that acceptance. "Sure, you're welcome to come," we say, "but just keep in mind that your sexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Also? If you feel called to ordained ministry or want to be married in our Church, forget about it." It's We love you, BUT... To me, and to most LGBTQ+ folk, that attitude just seems, well, anti-homosexual, hypocritical, and judgmental. And, like it or not, those beliefs manifest at every level, even in the local congregation I love.

As a gay Methodist, I can see the purple tensions that underlie our conflicted stance. I can appreciate the Church as a work in process and sometimes even draw strength and meaning from that struggle. I can sense and participate in the long-ball game of moving the UMC away from such stances. I have committed myself to a discipline of patience and forbearance with my mixed community (whether I'm successful at that discipline is an entirely other matter).

But I cannot ethically ask an LGBTQ+ person to join me in that commitment. I cannot recommend the Church I love to my LGBTQ+ siblings--even after the wonderful, hard-won, immensely encouraging victories we saw this week. To evangelize, to invite someone into my church in the hopes of making them a disciple, is to make a promise: Your Creator loves you as you are, and we will strive to embody God's love in our welcome to you. I lack faith in that promise, which hinders my evangelism.

My message this Pride day may thus be rather less proud than I would wish. As our Bishop modeled in her phenomenal Episcopal Address, all I can do is apologize to the LGBTQ+ community and promise that we're trying to do better, to be better. This message I give at the same time as I hold hope and thanks for the progress we've made this last week.

So, to my Big Tent Coalition friends: thank you so much. The Spirit of God is moving!

But, to everyone else, and especially to LGBTQ+ people:

I'm so sorry.

I'm so, so sorry.

We're working on it, really we are, as hard as we can.

For now, though, maybe try the Presbyterians next door.

Gut Checks about Gay Debates and Women's Ordination

One of the tensest moments at the Louisiana Methodist Annual Conference came up on Tuesday during a debate about "Petition One." This petition, written by brave layperson Andrew Smith, called for the Louisiana Conference to denounce the passage of the Traditional Plan, to apologize to LGBTQ+ people (and their friends, family, and the Church as a whole) for the harm the plan did, and to reaffirm opposition to injustice and oppression.

Our "Big Tent" coalition of progressive and centrist folk prepped like mad to ensure the petition got a thorough hearing and a fair vote. We knew some traditionalist-minded folk would move to "postpone indefinitely" this petition (effectively killing it). Thanks to the brilliance of Rev. Donnie Wilkinson, we responded with what amounts to a "postpone definitely" motion that (according to fine print rules in subparagraph X of codicil Y of paragraph Z) superseded the kill motion.

Then we had a debate. Mikie AndrePont and Adam Philley had been preparing for just such a time as this. Each gave poignant, superbly crafted, and deeply moving stories of their own struggles with exclusion. Traditionalist voices responded with Expected Gambit #1: "But Scripture Says..." Andrew's petition contained a "Whereas" clause that nodded to the fact that it's hard to justify the Traditional Plan's fixation on homosexuality with the Bible, as scripture contains few references to same-sex behavior at all and zero references to a modern understanding of sexuality. All true.

Still, the mention of scripture opened a door to speakers to bring up once more the "clobber passages" as well as the fact--also true enough, technically--that little in scripture seems to affirm long-term, sexual, same-gender relationships. (Of course, little in scripture explicitly affirms abolishing slavery, fighting sexism, or using the internet, but whatevs.) Responses to the clobber passages--and responses to those responses--circulate regularly in this struggle.

I'm not a fan of this particular debate, or of any debate involving verse-by-verse interpretive differences. It's a rabbit hole traversed largely by people already convinced of the rightness of their interpretation. Everyone usually knows each other's responses already.

As the debate was playing out, though, I got a blast of déjà vu. In the rhetoric of the traditionalists I heard echoes of arguments my mother and other women in the Southern Baptist Church endured--and still endure-- they defend their call to ordained ministry as pastors.

As it happens, the NPR show 1A had a segment about the Southern Baptist debate about women's ordiantion yesterday. I listened to it as I drove back to Baton Rouge. Host Joshua Johnson invited onto his show two (male) SBC pastors, each of whom staked out different interpretive territory about how this or that scripture passage restricts the role of women or not. Their debate had the same rabbit-hole, we've-all-heard-these-arguments-before feel as the UMC's homosexuality debate. It's tiring and not especially productive.

The episode's best moment, though, came from Johnson's other guest, the Rev. Dr. Jerusha Matson Neal, professor of homiletics and ordained American Baptist minister. Her response to the debate, I thought, captures about as well as anyone could my view of the debate about the clobber passages and about sexuality in scripture generally. The show lacks a formal transcript, so I type a bit of her response here:

One of the most interesting books for me in the New Testament is the book of Acts because there you see an early Christian community doing its best to discern, with new data on the ground, how to interpret texts that they thought they knew. They thought they understood: black and white, clear codes. What's in, what's out, what's allowed,  what's clean, what's unclean, all of it. And here they were having to rethink because of the evidence of the Spirit on the ground, that perhaps their interpretation of those texts was incorrect. And so I would not simply say yes, scripture interprets scripture. But I also think that the Holy Spirit, the Living God, helps us interpret scripture, given what God is presently doing.

One of the questions that was asked to me--I was speaking to a room of about fifty women who were discerning whether to come to seminary or not, many of whom were in denominations where their call to preach, their call to leadership was dismissed or diminished in some way. And one of them said, well can you please explain what should I say when someone asks, "Why should the church ordain women?" My answer was not that submission is bad or that somehow we kind of have to "follow the culture" or something like that. My answer was because God is calling women!

And if God is calling women, we have this whole room full of people who are feeling God's calling in their lives. There has to be a gut check in us which says perhaps we have interpreted these scriptures incorrectly. Perhaps we need to be responding to what the current need is on the ground and how this is getting lived out in communities. 

I love that gut check. What do you do when the authority of the written word smacks into the reality of the Spirit's movement? It's a gut check, a rich phrase that suggests some uncomfortable combination of Is this right? and What the heck did I eat?

Eventually, the Conference voted the petition down The tally was 360-340, which for Louisiana was amazing but which for LGBTQ+ folk was still dispiriting. More on that later.

But perhaps that petition, like Andrew's petition and Adam's and Mickie's stories, was less about winning a point and more about provoking a gut check in the conference.

I like that: the movement of the Spirit experienced less as divine breath and more as, well, holy gas, a tummy rumbling of productive discomfort. Something's changing in the church. We're checking our guts.

Tense Love at the Louisiana Annual Conference 2019

Long time, no post.

I've just gotten back from the 2019 Louisiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in Shreveport, LA. Most Annual Conference meetings are a combination of dull procedure, happy fellowship, and occasionally tense votes.

This year, "tense votes" was practically the conference theme.

The actual theme was love. "All you need is love," we sang nervously, anticipating the next vote, the next motion, the next speech.

Some 800 clergy, laity, and assorted staff gathered for the first time in the wake of February's Special Called Session of the General Conference (i.e., the quadrennial global meeting of the UMC). That session was a rare, desperate, emergency measure to resolve intransigent debates about homosexuality in the church. Rejecting the carefully vetted "One Church" plan, delegates narrowly approved the "Traditional Plan," a hodgepodge of alterations to the Book of Discipline that reaffirmed and redoubled stances against homosexuality. Penalties became more severe, surveillance and inquisition more invasive. News media everywhere reported how the Church had delivered a strong message: homosexuality=yucky. 

For many of us, especially LGBTQ+ folk and their allies, that outcome constituted a shock on par with the 2016 US Presidential election.We're still reeling.

My own reeling has turned into heavy involvement with national, state, and local conversations about What To Do Next. Secret gatherings. Whats App strategizing. Zoom meetings. Constant texting. Politicking at Aaron Sorkin movie script levels. Plans within plans within plans.

It's been all-consuming, a heart-soul-body-mind ordeal, exhausting, incredibly complicated, and nearly impossible to explain to non-Methodists. I liken it to waking up from some fugue in which you experience an entire lifetime in full, vivid detail, only to snap back and it's only been three seconds later to everyone else and they're staring at you funny and you're like, "No, see, I had grandchildren..."

In a way, the strategizing sessions--and Annual Conference itself--become one of the few places where everyone else got it. Everyone there is living that same fugue life. No funny looks, no strained explanations. Just hugs and "how ya doin'?" inquiries from people who have earned the right to ask that question and expect an honest response.

I've met so many amazing people across the state and nation I'd never have encountered were my Church not on the verge of shattering into a million little Wesleyan shards.

And what makes it church, in part, is how we salt all of these processes, all this tension, with reminders of Why We're Here, living this Game of Thrones-ish version of Methodism. We touch. We embrace. We pray.

We pause to support, to reflect, or even just to hum along to an old pop song repurposed as a hymn.  

All you need is love. Love is all you need. 

In the tension, the tune's comfort becomes a challenge: make love all you need. Need only love.

Can strategy be an act of love?