One block away from the Stonewall is Julius’, a lesser-known historic watering hole. Three years before the Stonewall riots, the LGBTQ advocacy organization the Mattachine Society held a “sip-in” to challenge New York State Liquor Authority’s prohibition on serving alcohol to LGBTQ people. Activists, pretty much all white men wearing suits and ties and followed by reporters and photographers from the local papers, entered Julius’, announced they were gay, and asked to be served drinks. (3) The iconic photo from that day is of the bartender holding his hand over a glass to physically block alcohol from being poured into it. Today, over fifty years later, that photograph hangs on the wall of Julius’.

As a resident of New York City and an LGBTQ advocate, I’ve inherited the benefits of the actions at Julius’ and Stonewall, including the ability to patronize both of these historic LGBTQ sites. After work, I regularly head to Julius’ because it features a grill, serving delicious burgers, hot dogs, and onion rings. The Stonewall has often been a setting for my personal advocacy. In 2011, I was crowded inside the Stonewall watching the televisions broadcasting the New York State legislature’s legalization of marriage equality. Later, through my work at GLAAD, I was on a planning team organizing a rally for the moment when the Supreme Court would release its decision to strike down or uphold the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8. One of the owners of the Stonewall was also on the planning call, telling us, “You can do it on the street in front of our place. Everyone just comes there anyway when historic LGBTQ moments happen.” Two years later, we organized another rally in front of the Stonewall after the Supreme Court ruled that marriage equality is a right under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. (4) 

The LGBTQ movement enjoyed successes and endured devastating setbacks in the years following the Julius’ sip-in and the Stonewall riots. While all this history was taking place, I was a child, closeted and dealing with bullying and rejection by my peers, oblivious to the struggles happening that would impact my future. Even though I’m an heir of the previous generations of the LGBTQ movement’s activism, I learned about Stonewall only after growing up, coming out, and getting involved in the LGBTQ movement for myself. I didn’t learn about Julius’ until after I moved to New York City, well into my personal history of activism.

USE OUR HISTORY TO BUILD OUR ADVOCACY 

Part of the experience of getting involved in advocacy is realizing that you missed the beginning of the struggle for justice.  We must recognize we have often taken for granted the benefits that have been passed down through others’ actions. I’ve often felt like I’m stepping into a movie that is two-thirds over, just getting to see the ending. I’m sometimes left with the feeling that the victories the LGBTQ community secured were not truly for me. They were for those who had gone before and experienced higher levels of discrimination at a time when our culture and laws were much less accepting and protective of the LGBTQ community. 

I wonder if that’s how previous generations of activists felt when they were finding ways to challenge injustice. Did the members of the Mattachine Society know that their legacy would include a photo of the sip-in hanging on the wall at Julius’ over fifty years later? Could they imagine Julius’ would be a setting for films and television series that tell the story of LGBTQ history, from Love Is Strange, to Pose, to Can You Ever Forgive Me? 

Go and Do Likewise: The Stonewall Inn and Julius’ are both LGBTQ historical venues in New York City. Research the history of the issue you are working on. Who have been the leaders? Where are some historical landmarks? If possible, visit those historic sites to study the history of the movement you are connected with. What you learn about the movement’s history will inform your work today.

Did the rioters at Stonewall imagine that future generations of LGBTQ people would continue to gather inside the bar in times of celebration and times of peril for the LGBTQ community? Did they know they were creating a historical legacy that would be passed down from generation to generation? Or were they simply trying to survive yet another instance of police and societal harassment, something LGBTQ people and people of color have continuously faced in different forms over the decades?  Did they think their circumstances were any more or less dire than what gender nonconforming, queer people of color had endured in the generations before them? 

What about us today? Do we realize that we are just as much a part of history as those people we’ve studied from generations past? Or do we think our lives are mundane compared to what previous generations had to endure? Even our churches can tend toward building communities that are safe and comfortable. But when we look around, we realize that we are living in extraordinary times and called to live out heroic lives, just like the judges and prophets of the Hebrew Scripture, the disciples of the New Testament, or the saints over the ages. None of them realized they were called to great things, and they had no idea that their stories, or at least versions of their stories, would live on after they were gone. They were simply doing what needed to be done in the moment. 

Each generation of biblical heroes, saints, and present-day advocates draws upon the previous generation’s accomplishments. The Bible is the ongoing story of the relationship between God and humanity, how that relationship grows and changes and evolves with each succeeding generation. We can see the thread that runs through each person, each psalm, each parable, and each action. If we pay attention, we can see that same thread running through our lives, calling us to step up in the same way as those before us. Paul even acknowledges as much in his Letter to the Corinthians, where he states, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (5) God uses our intergenerational efforts to build upon what has been passed along to us and prepare the next generation to take our work to heights we could never have imagined. 

REMEMBER YOUR OWN CONVERSION MOMENTS 

Our calling to social justice work happens at a particular time and place for each of us. We cannot let timing—thoughts that we are too late—hold us back from acting. We cannot let our past inaction or even opposition to a particular justice movement prevent us from learning, growing, and speaking out and acting against injustice, even the past injustices in which we participated. Many of the most compelling social justice leaders have had their own “conversion moments” that stirred them out of complacency and into action. Or they may have had the realization that they were on the wrong side of an issue and changed their viewpoint completely. Our biblical heroes often have their own conversion moments. Consider Paul, a onetime persecutor of the followers of Jesus, who has his “road to Damascus” experience that turns him into a zealous defender of Jesus Christ. That experience drives him to join the early Christian movement, the very movement he had been violently persecuting. Paul is a latecomer to Christianity. He never meets Jesus or hears his teachings, nor does he witness his death and resurrection.

And yet Paul has the zeal of a convert, stepping into the Christian movement after so many others had suffered and even given their lives. Perhaps Paul feels regret at having been on the wrong side of history and feels a desire to make up for it. He uses his specific moment in history to his advantage, recognizing that he cannot change what came before him. Paul turns to arguing with his former colleagues, the Pharisees. He supports new worshipping communities beyond the scope of what had previously existed. 

Paul moves the Christian movement along, helping it evolve from the ragtag disciples who had direct experiences with Jesus into the church that generations have inherited, including us. 

I’ve been calling these social justice efforts “movements,” and the metaphor of a movement is apt. (6) None of us was present at the beginning of the movement toward justice, since it began when God spoke the heavens and earth into being. We enter into this movement when we join our actions to the collective actions of the cloud of witnesses who came before us. Eventually, we pass this movement along to the next generation. They will receive the gift of our advances and encounter new challenges that we never had to face.

REFLECTION AND ACTION 

Reflect: This chapter’s “Go and Do Likewise” asked you to start thinking about history. What’s the history behind the movement you are feeling called to support? 

Act: Spend some time researching who has worked on this  before you and who is working on it now. 

Reflect: How does your movement show up in Scripture?

Act: Find a Scripture passage that informs your advocacy  on a particular issue. (Trust me, this will come in handy  later.) 

Reflect: Why are you feeling called to this particular move ment at this particular time? 

Act: Write it down. 

Reflect: What do you hope happens as a result of your participation? 

Act: Write it down on that same piece of paper from the last question.

Content taken from The Everyday Advocate: Living Out Your Calling to Social Justice by Ross Murray, ©2023. Used by permission of Fortress Press.

(1)  “LGBTQIA+ Studies: A Resource Guide,” Library of Congress, accessed September 12, 2022, https://guides.loc.gov/lgbtq-studies/after-stonewall.
(2)  Barack Obama, “Presidential Proclamation—Establishment of the Stonewall National Monument,” National Archives and Records Administration, June 24, 2016, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/24/presidential-proclamation-establishment-stonewall-national-monument.
(3)  “The ‘Sip-In’ at Julius’ Bar in 1966,” National Parks Service, August 20, 2019, https://www.nps.gov/articles/julius-bar-1966.htm.
(4)  Krystyna Blokhina Gilkis, “Obergefell v. Hodges,” Legal Information Institute, September 2018, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obergefell_v._hodges.
(5)  1 Cor 3:6.
(6)  B. Zemsky and D. Mann, “Building Organizations in a Movement Moment,” Social Policy: Organizing for Social and Economic Justice 28, no. 3 (2008): 10–12, https://bethzemsky.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Building-organizations-in-a-movement-moment.pdf.

This is the question first and most frequently asked of us at The Naming Project. As a Christian youth ministry for LGBTQ youth to comfortably grow in faith and identity, we are well-positioned to help guide pastors and youth ministers with good intentions and want to be helpful, but don’t always know the right way to do it. 

The question about sleeping arrangements isn’t inherently a bad question. But it is one of many fundamental questions that consider LGBTQ youth as a logistical problem to be solved.

Logistical questions cannot be answered out of context. Instead, we need to address the mindset Christian leaders need to have when we are considering how our ministries can build a safe world for LGBTQ youth, and what implications that inclusion has for our congregations the wider world. 

I wrote Made, Known, Loved: Developing LGBTQ-Inclusive Youth Ministry to help ministers answer these questions, but also to point to the larger values that we as Christians are called to uphold. The reality of LGBTQ youth provides us an opportunity and a mandate to protect those who are most vulnerable, but even for folks who are personally welcoming, it can be easy to fall into a trap of exclusion.

As I’m writing this, LGBTQ youth are facing attacks on their identity and existence. There are currently 108 anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures around the country. Of those, thirty-seven attempt to block transgender students from participating in high school athletics with their peers. Another twenty-five would punish doctors and parents who support their transgender children.  These bills ultimately make it less safe to be transgender, but also make it less safe for all of us.

Questions about sleeping arrangements at summer camp or on a church trip reinforce the false notion that LGBTQ youth are a danger and a threat, not the reality that they are the targets of harassment, bullying, and legal attacks. Everyone wants to feel safe when participating in ministry, including LGBTQ youth. No one wants to be housed where they fear harassment or intimidation. 

Instead, let’s spend our youth ministry effort thinking through questions about the safety and protection for those Jesus calls “the least of these.” 

Individually, how are we going to be a safe, respectful, and faithful presence in LGBTQ youth’s lives? What’s the best way to listen to what LGBTQ youth tell us about themselves, their identities, and their experiences? How can we faithfully keep confidence and let LGBTQ youth tell their own stories? Where are the dangers for LGBTQ youth in our church, and how do we keep LGBTQ youth safe?  

READ: A Starting Place for Relationship and Sex Education

Congregationally, do LGBTQ youth know our congregation as a safe place, one they can turn to if they need pastoral care, a refuge from a hostile environment, or solidarity? How are we an effective ministry for LGBTQ youth who may never darken our door? Can our congregation be an allied presence at school board meetings, city council meetings, Pride events, and other LGBTQ-themed moments? Will our presence be seen as proselytizing or a way to actually live out Jesus’ calling to stand with the oppressed?

Publicly, when should we raise our voice like a trumpet, like the prophet Isaiah. What anti- (and occasionally pro-) LGBTQ bills are being introduced in our city and state? What is a forceful, theological message about why legislative, educational, and physical attacks on LGBTQ people have no place in our society? 

When asking questions about ministry with LGBTQ youth, don’t just think of LGBTQ youth as a puzzle piece, figuring out where to fit them in. Think of them as a way to live out our calling to bring good news to the oppressed, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

However, The Good Place, a fast-moving comedy about ethics, philosophy, and the afterlife, has taken the content of my Lutheran ethics courses, given it a plot, and paired it with some hilarious jokes about human nature, farts, and pop culture.

I have enjoyed The Good Place since the beginning. The show is serial, rather than episodic, meaning the multiple plot twists and turns keep us on the edge of our seat. It’s structured like a drama, in the style of Breaking Bad or How to Get Away with Murder, but continues to keep you laughing at and cheering for the characters.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD. IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THE GOOD PLACE, START AT SEASON ONE. IT’S AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX. GO THERE NOW.

The premise of the show is that Eleanor (Kristen Bell) finds herself in heaven or “The Good Place,” because of the extraordinarily good things she did in her life — except she didn’t do any of the amazing things she’s being given credit for.

Eleanor first tries to conceal her true identity, while convincing her fellow recently-deceased soulmate, Chidi (William Jackson Harper), to teach her to be a good enough person to stay in the good place. Chidi is a professor of moral ethics from Senagal, providing a great device to explain what strand of philosophy will be explored in each episode. Over the course of the first two seasons, Chidi lays out the arguments of several philosophers (Aristotle, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Kant are all referenced) and ethical dilemmas (a whole episode explores “the trolley dilemma”).

Eleanor and Chidi are joined in the good place by socialite and philanthropist Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and an incredibly senseless bro, Jason (Manny Jacinto). Between the four characters, the audience sees not only a racially diverse set of companions, but also four completely different approaches and motivations to ethical (or unethical) behavior.

This is needed because the ultimate twist that needs to be shared (AGAIN…MAJOR SPOILER) is that while they believed they were in The Good Place, our humans are, in fact, in The Bad Place. Eleanor is the stereotypical self-centered person and was never going to get into The Good Place, which makes sense. However, we are left wondering why the others are stuck essentially in hell. Chidi, while brilliant at studying ethics, was constantly too crippled about making the wrong choice or causing unintentional harm to actually do anything good. Jason was too focused on immediate gratification and portrayed as too dumb to know what was going on anyway. And Tahani, the philanthropist, was too absorbed in the recognition she got from her charitable activity.

No one in the show is actually a good person. They are all broken and sinful, and whatever good deeds they did in the world were overwhelmed by selfish behavior, corrupt motivations, and harm caused to those around them, intentionally or unintentionally.

The show repeatedly claims that the portrayal of the afterlife in the show is not attached to any specific religion, but tends to borrow bits and pieces from each. This is asserted in the very first episode, where I felt they got closest to Lutheran theology.

In this particular episode that caught my attention, our four humans are back on earth. They don’t know it, but they must attempt to redo their lives to earn their way into heaven. Two celestial creatures, Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet (D’Arcy Carden), try to steer them to do enough good deeds to save themselves from damnation. But after Michael and Janet are caught plotting to make the humans “do good,” they confess and explain the whole system. They also admit that, by knowledge of how the afterlife system works, now even their good works are corrupted by improper motivation. No longer is the good they do in the world for the good of the neighbor, but rather, it is only to earn their way into heaven.

Now, for the first time, our humans are condemned, they know they are condemned, and they also know there is nothing they can do to earn their own salvation.

Sound familiar? Maybe from a confession that many of us recite on Sunday mornings:

Most merciful God
we confess
that we are in bondage to sin
and cannot free ourselves.
We have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you
with our whole heart;
we have not loved
our neighbors as ourselves.
For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us.
Forgive us, renew us, and lead us,
so that we may delight in your will
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your holy name.
Amen

Martin Luther is a lot like the humans in The Good Place. Luther existed in a religious world where salvation was understood in a similar sort of “point” system that would earn one a place in heaven. The teaching of the Roman Catholic Church viewed sin as demerits, which could be overcome with “good works”: prayers, acts of charity, veneration, and pilgrimages. At the time of Luther, the Roman Catholic Church even sold “indulgences,” which could erase sins from one’s afterlife ledger.

Luther, like our humans, also came to the realization that nothing he did would ever be enough to earn his way into heaven. He confessed his sins so constantly that he exhausted his confessor with his agony over every thought and doubt that crept into his head. Even his good actions were corrupted by his motivation, which was fear of a judgmental God.

Luther found himself at the same point that the humans do in The Good Place. When they figure out that their fate is sealed, the four humans split up, each dealing with the news in different ways. In the course of their plotlines, they demonstrate various strands of ethical reasoning. Perhaps a little on the nose, Chidi gives a classroom lecture, outlining virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology with images of his fellow humans acting out the philosophy he’s explaining to his students, ending with his personal philosophical mood of nihilism.

At the conclusion, the four humans reunite with Michael and Janet. Eleanor perfectly describes their situation. They are already condemned to hell. Nothing they do can save themselves, but they are still alive and they can…try.

Try.

Eleanor recognizes that, even while they are condemned, they can do something. Maybe that something is nothing more than a warning and redirection for others. Maybe it’s something with more ripple effects that they cannot see. They can continue to do good in the world, even if that good doesn’t benefit them personally.

That’s where we leave this episode, with trying. Not bad, but there was one component that was missing to make this a truly Lutheran episode: grace. Eleanor and the others haven’t ended up at the same conclusion that Martin Luther did. Luther found that his actions couldn’t get him into heaven, but that was still possible — but only through God’s action. God’s grace, which was only a gift from God rather than a reward, was enough to bring us into heaven and be with God forever.

And yet, because of that grace, Luther still “tried,” just like Eleanor. Being freed from the trap of good works and motivations meant that good actions are only good because the actions themselves are good and that they help people. Eleanor found that freedom through condemnation, while Luther found it through grace.

One final note. “Trying” is imperfect. Trying means that our good actions may not be as good as we intended. It means that we can still get caught up in the sin and trappings of this life. Trying is not succeeding.

Martin Luther was brilliant in some ways, but he was also rude, sided with power when it helped him advance his cause, and instructed violence against Jewish people. The Nazis used his anti-Semitic writings to support the campaign of genocide. While he “tried,” he sometimes got it very, very wrong.

Back in The Good Place, our humans remain condemned, at least for the moment. But one of the best things about a serial television series is that it allows for progress, setbacks, and character development. As the show progresses, our humans and their celestial guides may veer in and out of various theologies and philosophies, eventually landing who knows where.

I want our characters to succeed, and I want them — and us — to recognize the grace that has been gifted to us. Perhaps eventually, we’ll get to see our humans in the good place, not because of anything they did, but because they have been given the gift of grace. Until then, I’ll keep enjoying the show, looking for little nods to Lutheran theology.

As the conversation turned to current events, I threw out a phrase I tend to deploy when discussing terrible news, or broken relationships, or when things don’t work out the way they should: “It’s a broken, sinful world.”

He quickly took umbrage to the phrase. “I don’t believe in sin,” he responded.

“What do you mean, you don’t believe in sin?” I asked. “We were just talking about the messed up state of the world.”

“Well, for so long, the idea of ‘sin’ has been thrown in my face for being gay that I think that the idea of sin really holds us back as a movement,” he explained.

On one level, I understood what he was talking about. Those of us working in the LGBTQ movement, and especially working at the intersection of faith and LGBTQ advocacy, have long had to deal with the “sin issue.”

LGBTQ oppression sits on a three-legged stool. One leg is the idea that being LGBTQ is criminal. The second is being LGBTQ is a sickness. The third is that it is a sin. In most of U.S. culture, thank goodness, the first two have been overcome, as fewer and fewer people subscribe to those beliefs. However, plenty of people still hold to the idea that being LGBTQ, or acting LGBTQ is still a sin.

In response to a lifetime of being told that his sexual orientation was a sin, my colleague decided that the best notion was to rid himself (and presumably me) of the notion of sin altogether.

But I can’t do that.

I do vehemently reject the idea that being LGBTQ is a sin. I believe that LGBTQ people are created by God, known by God, and loved by God, just as they are. They are meant to live out their lives as fully and richly as possible. Being or acting LGBTQ is not inherenly sinful, nor the root of our sin.

READ: Why I Stand with the LGBTQ Community

However, I do think that sin is pervasive, embedded into our human culture. It’s systemic, such a part of the air we breathe that we cannot recognize how we harm other people, God’s creation, or even, on occasion, ourselves. It manifests itself in systemic racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, and all those ways we push ourselves up at the expense of others, even when, and perhaps especially when we don’t realize we are doing it.

Paradoxically, while we are in sin, we are still doing incredible things in the world. For many of us, we give money to charity that helps make the world a better place in real and tangible ways. We volunteer. We try to be good people and treat people the way that we want to be treated. But it’s never enough. Whatever good I do in this world, it isn’t going to eradicate the problems we face here. Whatever good we do, isn’t going to overcome the sin baked into our world.

Even with all the good that we may be doing, we face a brutal reality. If we are really honest, we know we don’t always act in just and righteous ways. Just by simply living our lives, as comfortable as they are, we continue to contribute to systems of racism, sexism, discrimination, oppression, homophobia, etc.

I have spent my whole career working for social justice-oriented organizations. I really do believe my work makes the world a better place. But I also realize when, and perhaps especially when we are trying to be social justice advocates, we exhibit the very behavior, or sin, we deplore.

Within our work to make the world a better place, we can posture ourselves to ensure we get the credit for our work. We withhold information so that we can be the hero. Sometimes, we work for the preservation of our infrastructure more than increase the impact our work has on this world we live in. I often, somewhat euphemistically, call this phenomenon, “movement politics.” When I really feel like preaching, I quote the apostle Paul, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

Everything I see around me — and within me — reinforces my belief in Martin Luther’s “Bondage of the Will.” Luther emphatically declared that we, as humans, can never work out our own salvation for ourselves. We will continually fail, even when, or especially when, we believe we are doing good in the world. Our good works cannot be purely altruistic, just as they cannot curry favor with God.

Some might find that realization completely depressing. For the Christian, what’s the point of doing any good in the world if we cannot secure our place in the afterlife with it? For the not-quite-as-Christian-but-still-a-do-gooder, it’s easy to get bogged down in the pettiness and posturing and “movement politics” and see it corrupting any good they do in the world.

Personally, I find “bondage of the will” incredibly freeing. I won’t be driven to inaction under the fear of imperfection. As a Christian, I can be free to do good work in the world, imperfectly, knowing that what I do is for the benefit of others — and not for me.

I know that I won’t always be the perfect advocate or ally. There will be times when I fail to think intersectionally, when I step on someone else’s work, or abuse the privilege I have.

When that happens, I pray I’ll be issued a gentle (or not-so-gentle) course correction. It doesn’t stop me from trying.

In short, I will still sin. We all will. Nothing safeguards us from falling short of the ideals we’ve set for ourselves, and we continue to live in a broken, sinful world. But sin does not and should not prevent us from striving to do, and actually achieving, some good in this world.