LGBTQ+ – Red Letter Christians

Marriage, Sex, and Jesus

Jonathan D'Elia — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 10:00:04 +0000

Sometimes I’m hesitant to post my wedding anniversary celebrations on social media, fearing I may be sending the unintentional message of “See? We did it right. You should be like us.”

Living in the evangelical world. you learn quickly there’s a focus on “traditional family” roles. It’s also called “living out God’s ideal,” “God’s plan,” or – my favorite – having a “Biblical marriage.” In other words, evangelicals believe there is a preordained designed ideal of marriage and family. I was taught the dangers of single parenting, stay at home dads, divorce, and of course, same-sex marriage.

If you’ve never read the Bible, and if you listen to many Christians, you’d think that Christianity centers on sexual and gender identities and behaviors linked to those identities. You would think that Jesus’s main concern is for you to have traditional relationships in the model of Adam and Eve.

But if you ask any of these Christians what it means to be a follower of Jesus, they would respond with a completely different answer.

They would reply that a Christian is someone who believes or trusts in Jesus Christ, or that Jesus died and rose from the dead for them.

Or they might talk about the greatest commandment to love God and to love others.

Or they may mention possessing the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Or perhaps they’d point out the big three: faith, hope, and love — the greatest being love.

In fact, the mention of marital status, sexuality, and gender are astonishingly infrequent in the Gospels and letters of the New Testament.

But What Does Jesus Say?

When attempting to poke holes in the idea of life after death, a religious leader of a sect, which didn’t believe in the resurrection, asked Jesus about marriage after death. Jesus corrected him, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” With these words, Jesus was revealing that marriage was temporary, cultural, and of this world (Matthew 22:23-32).

One reason Christians focus so pointedly on traditional marriage is because of a statement Jesus makes in Matthew 19. He was asked about easy divorces (for men) which was instituted under Moses. This form of divorce, which benefited men and was oppressive to women in marriages that didn’t produce children, allowed the man to cast off the “barren” wife and get another with a simple written notice (Deut. 24:1). Jesus, always looking out for the weak and voiceless, condemned this practice. He explains they should follow the example of Adam and Eve — which precedes Moses — “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:8-9).

In this passage, Jesus is not creating a prohibition against same sex marriage, as many Christians mistakenly believe. He’s promoting fidelity and commitment — foundational elements of love — to combat the selfishness of a husband’s desire for an easy divorce. Jesus was asked about a loophole in the law, and Jesus closed it, pointing to the responsibility of love.

Paul

Paul addresses some debauched behaviors in his letters, admonishing the people of God to abstain from things like lying, gossip, greed, gluttony, and sexual immorality. From these passages, many have tried to prove that same sex acts and attractions are sin. They are called the clobber passages by some. Again, it is the selfishness, distractedness, and baseness to which Paul is referring. It is not the fact that it’s same-sex sexual behavior. Paul here is concerned that many are following the cravings of their bodies over following Jesus’s way of self-denial. For Paul, it was not so much about specifics — although he pointed some out to various congregations. It was about following the way of love.

Today, there are many believers and people in general that live quiet lives of love and imperfection. Some are in your church, fix your car, work alongside you, teach your children. And some are part of your family, simply pursuing the way of love and fidelity that Jesus, Paul, and other New Testament writers taught.

Some follow Jesus. Some don’t. Either way, the Christian way is to focus on the law of love, which transcends gender, sexuality, and marriage, no matter what you might hear from Christians today.

A High Churchman Feels the Spirit Moving

Dr. Ben Huelskamp — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:30:30 +0000

There was to be no clapping in church. No clapping during music. No clapping when a child was baptized. No clapping when an award was presented or when a couple was celebrating an anniversary. There was to be no clapping in church. Such was the decree handed down by the pastor of the Roman Catholic congregation in which I was raised. Lest one think our pastor was the stereotypical grumpy, curmudgeon of a priest, he was often jovial with a quick wit and strong sense of humor, but clapping was for the social hall or the school building.

While St. Benedict Roman Catholic Parish in Cambridge, OH, was not the highest of liturgical experiences, it maintained a decidedly somber nature during my childhood. Mass was meant to be reverent and well ordered, but not stuffy. Similar to the majority of American Roman Catholic congregations, congregants dressed well, but not in suits or dresses. Children were encouraged to be involved and they could even explore the sanctuary after mass. It was in the best sense of churches a community and it was the genesis of all my later liturgical involvement.

Throughout the course of my church activities in Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, UCC, Methodist, and nondenominational congregations, I’ve been drawn to liturgical cultures. The quintessential “smells and bells” and pageantry of finely executed Anglo-Catholic (Episcopalian) services gave me my first true sense of church and liturgy as an experience of the divine. The power and movement of Gospel music and powerful social gospel preaching gave me my second and different perspective of that divine. Even as I write this essay, liturgy is close to me physically and intellectually in the form of Cole Arthur Riley’s new book Black Liturgies, which is sitting on my desk.

Liturgy has not always been a source of strength, comfort, and divinity for me. During college I began to realize that I often put far too much importance on the mechanics of liturgy and missed what the liturgy was there to communicate. Even worse I stopped finding God in the liturgy as I became so engrossed in why the deacon was wearing a tunicle—the proper vestment of a sub-deacon—instead of a dalmatic or the order in which the crucifer should process relative to the torchbearers or other liturgical thoughts similar to debating how many angels can stand on a pin head. When the liturgy no longer conveys the presence and reality of God then the liturgy becomes a stale script of words and movements. Liturgies can fail the people and people can fail the liturgy. I was in the latter group.

At about this same time in my life, I wandered into Middle Collegiate Church in New York City having heard that it was a particularly progressive and uplifting congregation. I had been living and working just outside the city for a few months and had been exploring some of Manhattan’s well known Anglo-Catholic churches. Despite the beautiful buildings and the grand services, I left each church feeling increasingly displaced from the experience of church, community, and belonging. Granted, liturgy was only one aspect of that feeling of disconnection from church and church communities. In addition to showing me how Christianity could be different, how I could be loved by God in the fullness of my identities rather than in spite of them, Middle Church presented me with a liturgy that while lacking “smells and bells” was absolutely joyous and was responsive to the world outside the doors of the church building. It was there that I first felt the Spirit move.

I have had enough of an education and experience of various forms of Christianity to know that many people and many congregations talk about the Spirit far more than we ever did in Roman Catholic or Episcopal churches. I also have learned theological definitions for the Holy Spirit and where the Spirit fits in with the Trinity and salvation history. Yet, like many Christians, the Holy Spirit was something ethereal and far off. I couldn’t say I had ever felt the Spirit moving.

For many people who have experienced Middle Church, it is first a spiritual hospital, not to heal sinners from our sin, but to teach us that what has been called sin is not sin in the eyes of God. Particularly for those of us who are Queer, Middle taught us that we are not sin embodied in ourselves. The walls I had built up to true expressions of Christian liturgy and Christian community came tumbling down. I recognized that it wasn’t liturgy which had gotten in my way, but the manner in which I saw and understood that liturgy. Radically, I recognized that the Spirit had always been moving in my life.

When I left New York and moved on with my career and life, I continued carrying all that I learned at Middle Church with me. When I began working with LOVEboldly at the intersection of LGBTQIA+ identities and Christianity, I felt the Spirit moving in so much of my work. While I may not be as “Spirit-filled” as some of my friends and colleagues, the active presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit has carried be through particularly difficult moments in this work when it seems like our community is fighting battles on all fronts.

Several weeks ago, I preached a sermon at a church in Columbus, OH. While I might not always stay with exactly what I write, when I preach, I like to have my sermon fully written out and in front of me. This congregation, though, is made up of people whose backgrounds are in the charismatic and Pentecostal traditions and who were raised in environments where each Sunday the bulletin confessed that the length of the service would vary on the movement of the Spirit (for my fellow former Roman Catholics, that means how long the sermon and maybe the associated music would last). Instead of writing a full sermon, I wrote good notes and flagged certain sections in case I needed somewhere to go. When I stood up to preach, I prayed silently for the Spirit to guide me, and I felt the Spirit move. It was likely not my finest sermon and I definitely ended up a few degrees away from where I intended to end, but this sometimes-high churchman finally felt the Spirit move.

Church for ‘Nones’: Meet the Anti-dogma Spiritual Collectives Emerging Across the US

Kathryn Post — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 11:30:09 +0000

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in Religion News Service on December 20, 2023.

ATLANTA (RNS) — Twenty minutes outside downtown Atlanta, Vinings Lake sits along a humming thoroughfare connecting Veterans Memorial Highway to the affluent suburbs north of the city. With its white steeple and brick exterior, it could easily be mistaken for another Southern Baptist church adorning America’s Bible Belt.

But façade aside, the community no longer thinks of itself strictly as a church.

“We’re an ever-evolving spiritual collective,” the pastor, Cody Deese, said to those gathered in the dimly lit sanctuary on a rainy Sunday in early December. “If you’re a Christian, wonderful. If you’re post-Christian, wonderful.”

Vinings Lake is one of a handful of spiritual communities across the U.S. sprouting from the soil of the exvangelical and deconstruction movements. While their Sunday morning gatherings retain the basic structure of many Christian services — music, teachings, fellowship — these collectives reject dogma, prefer questions over answers and have no intention of converting anybody to anything. Here, LGBTQ inclusion is not up for debate, people of all and no faiths are welcome and Jesus can be a savior, a radical rabbi or a metaphor, depending on your spiritual inclination.

Though they are few, these communities are also emblematic of a larger groundswell of spiritual “nones” searching for new forms of ritual and belonging.

“There’s something reaching a critical mass,” said Kevin Miguel Garcia, spiritual coach and author of “What Makes You Bloom: Cultivating a Practice for Connecting With Your Divine Self.” “There’s a desire growing within people to figure out how to live meaningfully even without traditional structures. How do I live justly without baptizing myself into a faith? How do I love my neighbor, without having to proof text it with a Bible verse?”

In many ways, the evolution of Vinings Lake mirrors the spiritual path of its current pastor. Deese delivered his first sermon at age 16 and was groomed to follow the vocational footsteps of his father, a Southern Baptist pastor. But in his early 20s, he struggled to reconcile his notion of a loving God with the doctrine of hell.

Though his deconstruction journey was well underway, in 2006 Deese agreed to help his friend launch Vinings Lake, which began as a Southern Baptist church plant. In 2015 Deese was tapped to lead what had become a 700-person church. But by the end of the Trump administration, Deese’s LGBTQ-affirming theology and bold critiques of topics such as nationalism and capitalism had triggered an exodus of more than 500 people from the church. In 2021, Vinings Lake officially traded the label of “church” for “spiritual collective.”

“We knew there would be a cost. It’s not surprising for us,” said Deese. “You don’t step into the heart of the Bible Belt and try to create an ever-evolving spiritual collective, a progressive spiritual community, and expect there to be no resistance.”

Gradually, Vinings Lake began attracting newcomers such as Katie Mair. While working for an evangelical college ministry, Mair endured the death of a sibling and said she was spiritually abused by a leader in the organization she worked for. Believing in a God actively working for her good no longer felt possible, but Mair still longed for community. She found Vinings Lake by searching online for “progressive churches near me.”

Though certainty is more elusive at Vinings Lake, she said, her spirituality has never felt more authentic.

“I was never a whole person in evangelicalism,” said Mair. “I was always having to cut off part of me, or hide it, deny it or dress it up to look a little bit better.”

It’s common for folks at Vinings Lake to have stories of religious trauma or “church hurt.” Chelsea Carver, who leads the hospitality committee and identifies as a Christian, is no exception. She chose Vinings Lake in 2018 because the community made room for her tough questions, thanked her for listening to her gut and went out of its way to avoid drawing boundaries around who’s in and who’s out.

“Vinings Lake doesn’t tell me how to think. It gives me enough knowledge to struggle with it, and that’s what I love,” said Carver.

While some parishioners jokingly refer to Vinings Lake as a “unicorn church,” its story parallels that of a Miami community, Heartway. It, too, began as a Southern Baptist church plant whose pastor wrestled with concepts such as biblical inerrancy and opposition to LGBTQ leadership and marriage.

“Everything started to unravel for me rather quickly,” Heartway pastor Danny Prada told Religion News Service. “The challenge of that was still going up and preaching a sermon every Sunday, when on the inside I was doubting the legitimacy of the whole thing.”

Eventually, Prada shared his doubts with the congregation. “That ruffled some feathers,” Prada acknowledged. But Prada’s honesty slowly attracted exvangelicals, people who’d experienced religious trauma and even yogis and New Age spiritualists who found that Prada’s teachings resonated with them. In 2019, Heartway rebranded as a spiritual community.

“The focus is less on beliefs and dogma, whether conservative or progressive, and more about the experience, the practical spirituality,” said Prada.

That’s also the case for Aldea, another evangelical-church-turned-spiritual-community bound by values rather than beliefs.

“Our motto is ‘love, period,’” said Jake Haber, pastor of the Tucson, Arizona-based group. “We determine what these wisdom texts are saying through the lens of love, rather than determining what love means through the lens of a wisdom text.”

Because these communities were formed in reaction to evangelicalism, defining themselves by what they are, rather than what they are not, wasn’t always straightforward. In their early years, Heartway and Vinings Lake both struggled to avoid reinforcing the very binaries (in/out, right/wrong) they rejected initially.

“Sometimes exvangelicalis still hold very tight to their fundamentalism,” observed Felicia Murrell, an author and onetime teaching pastor at Vinings Lake. “They are still protesting. And there’s a place inside of them that needs everyone outside of them to believe what they believe.”

Instead of trying to win over their former evangelical peers to their version of spirituality, these groups have ultimately let go of the concept of conversion altogether. For them, doctrine, be it theologically conservative or progressive, is never prescriptive or a prerequisite.

“I stopped feeling the need to try and convince the Christians that they were wrong,” Prada said about Heartway.

Vinings Lake, Heartway and Aldea espouse values over doctrine, including commitments to inclusion and diversity, enacting social justice, seeking wisdom from a variety of religious and spiritual traditions, viewing Jesus as a model for spiritual living and honoring lived experience as sacred.

How to translate these broad values to a congregational setting, though, isn’t self-evident, particularly when gatherings are populated by self-described religious mutts, with a full spectrum of opinions. Heartway has retained a seeker-sensitive model of worship music that incorporates the beats and electronic sounds of house music and hip-hop, while Aldea has opted for nonreligious music with spiritual themes from the likes of the Beatles or U2. At Vinings Lake, music is a low-key affair, with a person or two singing hymns or stripped-down songs about human flourishing.

While Deese typically grounds his teachings in the Bible (though it’s framed as a collection of inspired writings, not a list of answers), Haber’s talks are more based on the human experience than a particular text. All three pastors incorporate traditions beyond Christianity.

“Last weekend I was quoting the Tao Te Ching. Sometimes I quote the Bhagavad Gita. Other times I call different psychologists and philosophers that I bring into the conversation,” said Prada. “It’s an experiment, for sure.”

Shaped by their evangelical roots, these communities tend to adopt “low church” formats. Pastors wear sneakers, lobbies are equipped with coffee carafes and to-go cups, pulpits are rare and liturgies — where present — are minimal. At Vinings Lake, Communion is simply “the table”: a time during services where participants are invited to ingest the bread, gluten-free wafers, juice or wine displayed on a table in the center of the room. There’s little to no preamble and attendees can interpret the event however they wish.

“I find it really compelling that the night before Jesus was killed … he’s like, I have to get friends together,” Deese told RNS. “He gets his people together, even one that is going to betray him. And he sits at a table and raises up a glass, and the text says he gives thanks. For me, that ritual is the practice of gratitude once a week.”

Because of their experimental nature, some of the more granular details of these communities are still in flux. Without larger institutional scaffolding, what should safeguarding and accountability look like? How do you build student curricula based on spiritual values, not beliefs? The leadership takes different forms — Vinings Lake has a board of directors; Aldea has a leadership team; Prada described a group of “core leaders.” The financial and reputational costs associated with these communities — all of them reliant on attendees’ donations — also make them difficult to replicate. Churches wanting to try out similar models often risk losing congregants and severing ties with funders. These barriers can disincentivize people who already face hurdles in ministry from forming spiritual collectives of their own.

“I imagine that churches led by women, and churches led by people of color, particularly nondenominational churches that are no longer supported by a denomination, their budgets are already tapped,” said Murrell. So making polarizing statements, like becoming openly LGBTQ-affirming, she said, could “force the church to close its doors.”

Despite the obstacles to forming like-minded collectives, Prada, Haber and Deese said it feels like their communities are on the edge of a much larger spiritual shift. Haber pointed to the decline of traditional Christianity and growth of the spiritual “nones” — earlier this month, Pew Research released data showing 22% of Americans now identify as “spiritual but not religious.” Of that group, Pew found only 11% say they are involved in a religious community.

“There’s a huge migration of people, but there’s not yet a system and a structure to meet them,” said Haber. “This is our best attempt at creating something we think could really work in this world.”

Where the Wind Blows

Sophie Daubigney — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 10:30:25 +0000

Last Easter Sunday we had to hold our service in the park. I remember listening to the sermon with my bare hands sinking into the grass whist birds chirped overhead. I had felt grace before, but never so freely integrated in nature. As I listened to our pastor, I thought about Giovani Bellini’s masterpiece, St. Francis In Ecstasy. The fifteenth-century oil painting depicts a moment of natural serenity, much like my own experience in the grass. Bellini presents Francis as so overcome by the Lord that the patron saint of ecology kicks off his sandals to lean further into his own. The azure of the sky complements the earthy umbers jutting out beneath distant city walls. Bellini’s generous use of colour brings out the vividness of this revelation to intimate how pursuing faith can both be beautiful and yet so simple.

St. Francis in Ecstasy (c.1480)

Everything about that Easter morning seemed perfect but still something was holding me back from following in St. Francis’ enlightened footsteps. This was unusual of my regular experiences at church. Since I started to take faith more seriously five months ago, I have felt a similar sense of peace to the one etched in Francis’ expression. It is always on my walks home after Sunday service, when I am slowly seeping back into reality, that the world seems to grow that bit brighter; just like the colours in St. Francis.

So when my friend who I had confided to after the Easter service made me flip to Romans 7:10 which interrogates the speciousness of sin, the tightening in my stomach came as some surprise. This verse was written by Paul whose letter reads almost as a confession during his missionary travels. Paul here describes the challenge of wrestling between earthly desires and his soul by suggesting, that the very commandment [which he believed] was intended to bring life actually brought death.

All week I’d been feeling nervous about an upcoming date and this was how my friend was advising me. While I was well aware that sex before marriage was a deal-breaker in my ministry, I still had questions surrounding chaste intimate relationships. And what about queer chaste intimate relationships? Or was that going too far?

As we read Paul’s turmoil over sin, I began to sense that my friend wasn’t accepting of me going on this date. She said “it would pull me further away from God”. I didn’t know if she meant dating in general or the fact that I was a lesbian; or maybe both? I dared not ask.

Thoughts now spiralling, I quickly got on a call with another Christian friend to ask what she thought. I reckoned I ought to get more than one opinion on this issue since no one interpretation of scripture will ever be the same. I was sorely disappointed.

The advice from this friend (let’s call her Jane) was worse. Apparently being gay wasn’t sinful, but acting on those feelings was a no-go. “Sex within a heterosexual marriage is sanctified”, Jane said, “anything else is a sin”. Even same-sex emotional intimacy was discouraged at Jane’s own church (we worshipped at different branches) since the “temptation would just be too great”. Jane even mentioned there were a lot of gay people at her Anglican church and that they sometimes led in prayer. Her Christian community clearly didn’t condemn gay people, no, they just condemned gay acts.

I was totally stumped.

What was the point of being gay if you couldn’t actually be gay? I thought as I hung up. If I hadn’t been so shocked I would have asked if I could talk to those gay people at her church. She had made it sound all-so-simple, but what else did I expect from Jane’s own straight perspective? One thing was certain, I had not ploughed through early teenage angst only to cripple back into the closet of shame six years later. God would never want me to return to that.

Listening to Jane reminded me how privileged I am to live in the UK as a queer Christian woman. While I might not always get to hear what I want, I don’t need to worry so much about my physical safety and can distance myself from such views whenever I wish. Sadly this is not the reality of most people. In my country in Poland, where the government rules closely with the church, being openly gay is extremely dangerous. According to the Archishop of Kraków, “LGBT ideology” is a “rainbow plague” likened to Nazism. I remember going to Krakow’s Pride march of 2020 whilst visiting family and seeing the police protecting anti-gay protesters instead of those being discriminated against with outrageous slurs. Still, this didn’t diminish the sea of rainbow flags which enveloped the opposition’s dull black boards, completely drowning them out.

Sometimes it feels like religion has forgotten its own origins: there was once was a time when being a Christian was radical too. Even by today’s standards, Jesus himself would be a difficult figure to accept. To the then rigid hierarchies of Roman government and wealthy Pharisee priests, Jesus’ advocation for the inherent equality amongst all people no matter who they were or what they’d done did not sit so well. Love was at the forefront of everything Jesus taught. “If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love”, says Jesus, “I am nothing”.

Of course Jane’s Anglican views were not nearly as extreme as the outright homophobia I’d experienced in Poland, but still I wondered how constructive Jane’s beliefs were. I found I could no longer hide behind other people’s relationships with God. I now had to face what I believed in.

If we all have different interpretations of religion, I asked myself on the way home, how do you know if you’re in the “right”, because wasn’t that what faith was all about? How can anyone possibly discern sin from purity? And to judge others, especially when it comes to something already so complex like feelings, that also sounded way too unfair. I dreaded the prospect of having to choose between my queer identity and my faith; two aspects of me that were never going to change.

While I believe every word of the Bible is “God-breathed”, I accept a lot of its original meanings have been buried under layers of history and lost in translation. From what I have studied, I see my faith most explicitly in John 3:8. Here Jesus describes the Spirit as the wind which ‘blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, yet you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.’ To me the spirit of this passage softly resounds throughout Bellini’s painting where faith is shown to manifest both in the body as in nature. Just as a natural element flows of its own logic, Jesus tells us that ‘it is the same with the Spirit’. Nature and humans are not so distinct because both have been created in God’s image and this is exposed on Bellini’s canvas to suggest that faith need not concern itself with vague ideologies or outdated social codes. Instead, humanity is compelled to better understand our place in this world.

We’re all bound to make mistakes, whether we are religious or not. It’s foolish to think that by embracing faith, one is guaranteed a life of total faithfulness. No one is ever justified of bullying – to do so in the name of “God” is total hypocrisy. But just like any other relationship, getting to know God takes time. Instead of worrying about what might draw me from Him, I am now learning to focus on what will bring me closer. Perhaps I should have realised this all along, but a good relationship with God can only come from a good relationship with self.

The hardest thing is that although my ministry will show me love no matter what, being gay is still “outside of God’s design” according to their books. These people have been some of my closest friends and they will never be able to give me their blessing should I end up in a relationship with another woman. On the phone to Jane I’d croaked out if I was “unnatural” as Paul describes of homosexuals (gay and lesbian) further on in Romans. The silence on the other end of the line crackled with white noise.

“I wouldn’t call it “unnatural” but …”

It’s difficult to believe personal repression will lead one closer to God. In fact, studies have shown queer Christians are twice as likely to leave organised religion because of disapproval. I didn’t want that to happen to me. I hadn’t gone through months of spiritual awakening only to abandon fellowship altogether. Luckily, unlike my other queer friends, I didn’t need to deal with suspicious glances or nasty side comments during worship. I just needed to deal with God.

And I wish I could say that we always see eye to eye. I’m still getting to know His character, and something tells me it will take more than a lifetime to find out. Funnily enough, these doubts have only reaffirmed my belief. My faith is stronger now that it’s led me places I never thought I would go. Before I would have scoffed at the idea of going to a gay-friendly church, or even talking so openly about faith and sexuality like this. But I have decided to speak now because queer people of faith need more visibility. It’s always tricky to talk about tradition and ancient (sometimes outdated) scriptures alongside huge taboos like sexuality. But burying our heads in the sand will not bring any good. I know it didn’t for me.

It is not “unnatural” to live out as gay and still be Christian. I refuse to choose between these two enriching parts of my life. Just as I imagine St. Francis was before his revelation, I was also shut away in darkness. The skull sitting on his desk conveys the perfect memento mori, reminding us how much life we have yet to live with God. In my mind’s eye I see myself in Francis, possibly at his work station studying the Bible. I wonder what could have caused him to turn around? Perhaps it was a gust of wind. As the Spirit brushes the man’s shoulder, he gently rises and steps into the light. Neither one of us knew how we found ourselves on this path and I’m sure both of us were just as frightened. But I don’t believe God wants to stop our questioning. He just wants us to keep believing.

I Miss Going To Church

Mary Beth Unthank — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 10:00:26 +0000

I miss going to church.

That might come as a surprise to those who have followed my 3-year journey out of church in general and pastoral ministry in particular. Perhaps some will smirk and harumph, I knew it, confident both in their righteous place within an organized congregation and in my assured misery outside “the will of God.” I have heard all kinds of reactions when people learn my once-full-time-pastoring family no longer attends church, from the “don’t neglect the meeting together of the saints” chastisement, to the “I’ve been hurt too” simultaneous justification and dismissal of my complex reality, to the “hell yeah! Church is toxic!” celebrations of our exodus, intended to be encouraging but ultimately denying the pain of this transition.

The truth is much more complicated and messy than any of these responses could hope to contain. Indeed, church has not been a safe place for me for a long time. The restrictions were stifling, the standards overbearing, the pressures of being pastor’s wife requiring me to deny or hide my selfhood, my passions, and my convictions. The politics of church itself are nauseating, not to mention the enmeshment of evangelicalism in right-wing American politics that has created the heretic cult of Christian Nationalism. I couldn’t stay, and as much as I wanted the answer to be just attending another church, being on the outside has shown me many of the biggest problems are intrinsic to the institution as we know it. That’s not to say every church and/or pastor is problematic and to be avoided, but every church and/or pastor is complicit in the problems plaguing the Church as a whole. While there are those who recognize this truth, and some even actively work to dismantle harmful systems, the reality of doing this work from the inside is incomprehensibly exhausting and riddled with conflicts, nuance, and pain along the way.

There are plenty of things I definitely do not miss about going to church. I don’t miss wrangling my kids or other people’s to where they’re supposed to be, getting stopped in the halls by those feigning concern as an excuse to gossip, agonizing over room lists for youth retreats, or getting lectured by the building administrator on needing liability waivers for kids playing basketball in the church gym. I don’t miss trying to control my face when the charismatic worship leader changes keys in effort to rouse a despondent crowd, attempting to explain the denomination’s faulty theology to questioning teenagers without saying something that will make their parents leave the church, or even genuinely laughing when a parent/congregant/fellow pastor tells my husband he needs to control his wife (hahahahaha). To be frank, I don’t even miss the community of having a church to belong to, a small group to attend, or a Bible study to lead. Being a pastor’s wife (even when not leading, that is a role we live 24/7) meant I must always consider how my participation could affect others. That constant evaluation, relentless concern, inescapable self-editing led to suffocating anxiety, crippling fear of letting people down, and paralyzing imposter syndrome. While I’ve made progress in therapy, I don’t know that I’ll ever fully overcome my knee-jerk distrust of other Christians.

Honestly, what I miss is the certainty. I miss knowing what each weekend would hold, knowing who I would see and what they might say. I miss the steady rhythm of Sundays and Wednesdays, seasonal retreats and youth camps, kids’ Christmas plays and VBSes and pretending we’re not participating in pagan rituals with our Easter egg hunts and October “Fall Festivals” of costumes and candy. I miss the camaraderie of my childhood, back when McDonald’s had 29 cent hamburgers every Wednesday, so the youth group would go after church and buy out the whole kitchen. I miss the old Garcia’s restaurant where we would eat lunch with friends every Sunday, and the whole youth group getting in trouble when we were supposed to be setting up games at VBS but we just jumped on the inflatables before the kids got outside. I miss the days of our first youth pastoring job, when we would stay after church and play volleyball until way past dark or go to Sonic and make the staff hate us for being so loud at the patio tables. I miss retreats and late-night talks and funny stories and inappropriate jokes whispered between the leaders in hopes the pastor’s kid might not overhear and rat us out.

I miss the safety and convenience of believing wholeheartedly in the boxes I had created to understand the world, the lines church drew that made nice, neat sense for me but simultaneously excluded countless beloved children whom Jesus calls his own. While I wouldn’t choose to go back to ignorance and bigotry, I can’t deny that it was comfortable and easy for me: a white, American, educated, middle class, heterosexual, cisgendered woman in the Bible Belt. *eye roll*

So maybe it’s not so much that I miss going to church; what I really miss is the person I used to be who actually enjoyed it. That little girl had a safe, happy childhood, and that young woman made some really good memories throughout her twenties, but she had been sick and dying for years before I finally laid her to rest. She was suffocating in the asphyxiating conditions of membership to the country club of American evangelicalism, dyspneic beneath the weight of expectations, traditions, dogmas, inescapable “ways we’ve just always done it.” After years of arrhythmia – a stumbling, jumbling, back-and-forth between love for people and disdain for the church’s approach – her heart for the institution experienced cardiac arrest, and I finally stopped desperately administering CPR and let her go. She received no palliative treatments, no comforting anesthesia or end of life care. It was so sudden that for a while I wondered if it had really happened or if this was all just a dream from which I would soon wake, only to find myself serving and leading and loving in another, “different” kind of church. But denial is just the first stage of grief, and grieving is exactly what I have been doing.

I grieve for the woman that used to be so certain, used to know exactly who she was, exactly who God was, exactly what he wanted from us. (Yeah, THAT is long gone.) I grieve the lost sense of belonging in religious spaces; though occasionally I allow myself to stand on the fringes and indulge in certain practices from time to time – receiving ashes or attending a baptism or showing up to some church’s community event – I know I’m just passing through, and this is no longer my home. I grieve the death of our dream, the life and the ministry my husband and I always envisioned, that we worked so hard to build. We were and still are incredibly proud of our accomplishments in ministry, the safety we carefully curated for students and the authenticity of our leadership. We made plenty of mistakes, of course, but we never compromised our convictions, even when it cost us, and to be honest, a lot of pastors can’t say the same. But we didn’t know it would cost us our future and everything that we ever planned. We held space for all kinds of diversions and winding side roads and unexpected routes, but we never thought the destination would change. The life we have always known, always planned, worked so diligently to create is dead, and we are grieving. We grieve tremendously at the loss of friends we expected to survive the journey with us, but they have since parted ways. Perhaps that is for the best, that we all take our own paths without fear or shame, but we never for an instant thought we would be doing this alone. Call us naive, but there were some friends we really believed would be forever, and we grieve the loss of those relationships, those envisioned futures, those together dreams.

In spite of all that, maybe even because of it, I am so grateful for where we are right now. I’m not exactly sure where that is… It’s what the Bible both literally and metaphorically calls “the wilderness,” this liminal space in between the security of walled cities and established communities, where there are wild animals and treacherous cliffs and dangers both seen and unseen. We have left behind brick and mortar homes, easily traversed paved roads, convenience of access to both people and places that bring comfort in times of need. We are pulling a cart through muddy paths and across rocky slopes and fjording rivers hoping for the best. We get lost, wander without direction, and sometimes find ourselves circling back to the place we just left. We are living in tents now, and at times it feels like exile.

But the biblical wilderness is more than danger and wandering and fear. Wilderness is both where Jesus was tempted and where he retreated to pray. This is where Hagar was banished and where she met and named God; it’s where Elijah begged for death and where he saw Yahweh with his own eyes; it took Jacob face to face with his past mistakes and simultaneously brought forgiveness and healing. Indeed, wilderness may be frightening, but here salvation is found.

This space is vast, quiet, free from the distractions and expectations of city life. It’s like camping off-grid, with skies so clear you can see the Milky Way, where your breath is taken away by panoramic views rather than choked out by pollution of false doctrines. This is the stillness where you can experience the fragile beauty of a doe grazing with her fawns, see lions and gazelles drinking from different sides of the same watering hole, hear the swelling rush of a nearby spring after the rain. Wilderness can be frightening when all you’ve ever known is city life, but now that we’ve been here a while, it feels a lot more like freedom. It feels like connecting to nature and the God that lives in and through all of Creation. It feels like experiencing Holy Spirit not in the fire nor the wind but in the still small voice, a whisper I could never quite hear amidst the busyness and noise of church life.

Our church exodus was like a wrecking ball to what had been my slowly deconstructing faith. At times I feel like I’m standing amid the rubble of my former self, and it would be a lot easier to simply run away. But when I surrender to the wilderness, I see these rocks not as the byproduct of a disaster but rather the building blocks of something new. Here I find a field full of stones that, once cleared, can be used for a wall to protect the vineyard I plant inside. These broken pieces fit together in new ways to build a home not just for myself, but with many extra rooms to shelter others who wander until they find their way.

I no longer fear the dangers of life outside the establishment; now that I have learned the paths the animals follow, I can see that this place has always been a providential home for many – snakes and jackals and spiders that aren’t welcome in the pristine halls of civilization except when caged and controlled. I may be living in a tent for now, but through the mess of my deconstruction, God has provided the materials to build a safe haven for others who may not have those tools yet themselves. Maybe their time here is temporary, they just need a place to shelter and heal from the blisters and injuries they have sustained on their journey. Perhaps others will stay long enough to learn what they need to build their own homes elsewhere, and hopefully teach us their wisdom while they’re here. Together, we can map a way to safety for any and all who seek it.

There will be some with finely made carriages and strongly bred horses to carry them through this place between places, and they will pass right by without stopping: to those I wish well and am grateful they kept some distance as they hurried on their way. But for those who need us, for those who are staggering across wasteland without a blanket or water or a compass to guide them, we will always leave the light on and welcome them in. Because we know what it’s like to be desperate. And we know what it’s like to be found.

I do miss going to church. But I am certainly not alone.

Queer Joy of Belonging

Jenn Zatopek — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 10:30:41 +0000

On the first weekend in June, my partner and I served communion at our friendly LGBTQIA+ church and my heart touched the marvelous love of God in our beloved community. As a queer Christian, I took great joy in serving alongside my husband, he breaking the bread while I held the cup of salvation for anyone to receive this life-changing meal: tall drag queens and kindhearted lesbians, smiling trans folx and earnest allies, bashful children and beautiful gender non-binary friends, and dearly beloveds all across the beautiful queer spectrum, all welcomed into the loving arms of God, including my cherished queer self.

God calls me to queer joy because God isn’t ashamed of me, a Christian therapist who found God’s transforming love through meditation and community. As a native Texan who came of age in the early nineties, I was silenced from speaking about my bisexuality by my single dad and then-Christian therapist, which created a terrible pattern of self-abandonment, leading me to traverse the desert wastelands of toxic shame and fear. At the tender age of twenty, I converted to Christ and attended conservative churches, desperate to make friends and find community. Because I am straight-passing, I forged connections but was unable to be my authentic self, imbibing the lies that being queer is an abomination, something many of us heard over and over again. But then God showed up in an unexpected form: healing through Self-Compassion meditation.

After the long decades of heartache and a brief stint in seminary, I found myself called by God to attend online mediation sessions through the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion. This seemingly incongruous call came during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and over time, I experienced the healing and relief I’d only dreamt about. Through training and practice, I learned how to be kind and loving to myself, which liberated me from the grief I carried for so long. The wide and deep waters of God’s amazing love (Ephesians 3:18) was a gift I finally experienced as true. God is not ashamed of me and celebrates my sexuality as something that is good, true, and beautiful.

God’s call to practice meditation has served me well, enhancing my queer joy as I have sat in stillness, allowing God’s love and delight to sing over me (Zephaniah 3:17). But it gave me something else–practicing meditation gave me the courage to do justice for our queer family beginning with myself and extending outward. Our family chose to join Galileo Church, part of the Disciples of Christ denomination, because they practice a radical form of open communion, which means anyone who wants to partake in the ritual is welcome to do so. There are no membership checks, no declarations of baptism, no hierarchies that might prevent others from giving and receiving the gifts of God which are for everyone. The only requirement for receiving the elements is a desire to belong, a true gift for our queer community who have been denied access to this sacred meal.

When our Pastor Katie Hays blessed the elements on the first weekend of Pride month, I heard the soothing songs of God’s love flow over us. She reminded us this practice of open communion gives us the gift of each other, putting us back together into our beloved queer community. Like many of my church friends, I found the strength to come home to myself, just as God has welcomed us all home at Galileo Church, giving me the courage to come out to my family and church friends last fall, my queer joy magnified. And as I gave communion to others, I leaned in close, weeping a little as I experienced another aspect of queer joy: we cannot heal alone. Seeing the vulnerable faces of friends desiring to receive what’s rightfully theirs was a balm to my spirit, an affirmation of God’s love and care for us. Offering communion in a mindful and self-compassionate way, I stayed soft and strong, looking my fellow friends in the eye and earnestly wishing them all the love and peace I’d come to know through the practice.

Later that evening, I mused to my husband about breaking down barriers and allowing everyone to give and receive communion as a way to open to God and each other. What would it be like if the Christian leaders who condemn the LGBTQIA+ community were to give and receive communion as we had that night at Galileo Church? What would it be like if those who call Christ their home were to give bread and wine to everyone else too, looking into the eyes of the people who come to eat this meal? I’d like to think that God’s love is strong enough to help them see and honor that we queers belong to God, the Imago Dei stamped indelibly on our souls, just like them.

But in the interim of the longing for that not-yet world, I will keep choosing queer joy, basking in the glow of being fully accepted by God and Christ as I am, just as all my beloved queer friends are (Romans 15:7). What a gift queer joy is! As we step into God’s magnificent love and acceptance found in beloved community and practice, we overflow with blessings–to ourselves, each other, and to the healing of this beautiful living world.

A Pride Month Lesson from Ted Lasso

Jon Mathieu — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 10:00:38 +0000

The hit show Ted Lasso recently concluded its third and final season on Apple TV+. I think the most valuable of the ambitious comedy’s accomplishments may be its image of non-toxic masculinity, lived out in community by the players, coaches, fans, and staff of the fictional soccer club AFC Richmond.

A show that confronts toxic masculinity must inevitably also address homophobia, for each is the other’s evil cousin. Both are tools of patriarchy, called upon because a system that intends to keep one gender identity in power over others is built upon the theory of gender essentialism. This theory posits that certain things are simply true of men and others of women (this schema doesn’t typically account for non-binary identities at all). It requires stereotypes, and when the masculine stereotypes go unchallenged—things like fearless bravado and emotional impassivity—we have what is often called toxic masculinity. But some of the stereotypes that make up this vision of masculinity are indeed very challenged by queer and genderqueer identities; in comes homophobia to disparage or erase these identities so that gender essentialism, and the patriarchal system it upholds, can survive.

In the final season of Ted Lasso, the team is beginning to gel into a community that rejects toxic masculinity. They have already embraced mental health therapy, confronted various forms of misogyny, and learned to respect the “unimportant” members of the team’s staff. This is no small feat for a men’s sports team (recall that the former US president’s brag about sexual assault was explained away as locker room talk). But the specter of potential homophobia looms as the club’s final hurdle, or in video game parlance, its final boss.

The show introduces this challenge just how you might expect: one of the members of the club (Colin) is gay but in the closet, unsure of if or when to come out to his teammates. The first player to learn of his sexuality is his best friend Isaac, who accidentally discovers sexual text messages from men on Colin’s phone. Isaac immediately becomes angry and standoffish toward his friend, and as a viewer we are left to wonder if he is simply being homophobic.

Eventually Colin stands up in the locker room and reveals the truth to his teammates. This scene is the club’s true faceoff with its final boss. Around the room, one after another of the footballers voices their support, culminating in an insistence that the players don’t care that he’s gay. They mean it in a good way: we won’t treat you differently than we did before, we won’t make fun of you, etc. And indeed, as they make this declaration, we can see the relief and reassurance on Colin’s face. The dragon, it would seem, has been slain.

But the show’s central figure and namesake, coach Ted Lasso, raises the team’s eyes to a new moral horizon. He tells a convoluted parable about a childhood friend who was a Denver Broncos fan in a town of Kansas City Chiefs supporters. The weakness of the analogy is part of the joke, but it still resonates with the team. Ted explains that when his friend came out as a Broncos fan, Ted’s message was “I don’t care that you’re a Broncos fan,” and he meant it in a good way: I will still be friends with you no matter what team you cheer for. But when the Broncos reached the Super Bowl two years in a row, that friend celebrated alone, without Ted’s friendship… because ultimately Ted was true to his words and didn’t care.

Returning from his memory to the question of Colin’s sexuality, Ted revises the team’s answer and says, “Colin, we don’t not care. We care very much. We care about who you are and what you must’ve been going through. From now on, you don’t have to go through it all by yourself.”

When I watched this scene, I was reminded of the various ways churches communicate to (or don’t) and care for (or don’t) their LGBTQ+ members. Of course there are those churches who guzzle the entire cocktail of patriarchy, gender essentialism, toxic masculinity, misogyny, and homophobic theology. This article is not meant for those churches. But what about the congregations making real efforts at hospitality, at inclusiveness, at solidarity?

In the worst case of these churches, there can be an unwillingness to even have a conversation. These churches may say “All are welcome,” but there is no visible statement of LGBTQ affirmation anywhere on their website, and for a new visitor, there is no way to determine if queer clergy, trans congregants, or same-sex weddings have a place in the community. This sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” protocol is very harmful (and it’s often just an attempt at a more palatable patriarchy). I don’t think we go too far to tell churches like this to do better.

But I wonder if many churches who are doing better could still learn something from this Ted Lasso locker room scene. A congregation might have an official label like “open and affirming,” but could the message to queer folks actually amount to “We don’t care that you’re lesbian or gay or bisexual or trans”? In other words, we won’t discriminate against you, and we won’t make sour faces at you when you walk in. But will we march with you? Will we write letters to our representatives to oppose legislation that harms you? Will we invite you to share the story of your faith and sexuality in our gathering?

It may be time for some churches to move from “We don’t care that you’re gay” to “We do care about your sexual identity—and we’re with you.”

I don’t have a list of 10 easy steps for how to center and celebrate queerness in your congregation. Sure, endeavor to have LGBTQ+ folks in leadership positions. Learn from queer theology together when you can. But I think the most important step is that we will all need to listen and listen well to those in our communities who are different from us.

In Ted Lasso, Colin and Isaac get the chance to have one of these messy conversations. Isaac apologizes for his aloofness toward Colin and says he was hurt that Colin hadn’t trusted him enough to come out to him. Colin offers that he hadn’t withheld the news due to any trait in Isaac, but his own fears.

Later the two are playing video games and Colin says to his friend, “I love you, boyo.” Isaac (seemingly still dealing with some deep-seated and latent homophobia) flinches. “You can’t say it, can you?” Colin asks with a smile. Isaac pauses before replying, “No… but you know I do, yeah?”

Isaac is on a journey, and as he gives himself grace (and Colin does the same), it seems their friendship is back on the road to flourishing. Our churches might follow their lead.

But unlike Isaac, we can say it.

Overcoming Shame

Karen Keen — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 10:00:53 +0000

Shame is a common experience of marginalized people. Not surprisingly. It does a number on you when others look askance at what makes you different and pull away as a result. As a gay woman, I have struggled to overcome shame. No doubt, some say I should feel shame for my sexuality, and the fact that I do so must be a sure sign of guilt. Isn’t that why we say, “Shame on you!” Those words are designed to lower our heads, to convince us we have done something terribly wrong. But shame afflicts even the innocent.

Many sexual abuse survivors feel shame. In seminary, one of my professors relayed the story of a young woman who struggled to escape the shame she felt after surviving sexual assault. One of the Scriptural verses that helped her was, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9-10; NKJV; emphasis added). Only instead of confessing her own sin (she was the innocent victim), she confessed the sin of her perpetrator. For this young woman, Scripture promised something that repeated showers could not—a spiritual cleansing to wash away the shame. If we confess the sins of others, who have harmed us, surely God is faithful to cleanse us from their residual sin left clinging to our bodies and minds after an attack.

Nakedness leaves us unprotected. It reveals a part of ourselves that only a privileged few should have access to—our mother when we are young, a doctor ensuring our health, a lover with whom we share ourselves. The vulnerability of nakedness makes possible incredible intimacy and care. But it can also leave us exposed to threats—and the danger is not only physical. Throughout history and across cultures, one of the most common ways to degrade a person or people group has been to attack their sexuality and sexual heritage. “Your mother is a whore!” “F*ck you!” “Slut!” We can sexually assault people with words.

LGBTQ people are frequently the target of verbal sexual assaults, similar to the way Black people in America have been targeted. This shows up, not only in slurs, but also sophisticated propaganda. The 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, capitalized on the prejudices and irrational fears of white people by using a common degrading caricature of Black men as rapists. Similarly, Black women, including young girls, have often been slandered as inherently lustful and promiscuous. That such prejudice is articulated in sexual ways is not accidental. Sexual assault, whether physical or verbal, cuts to the core of our vulnerability as human beings. It’s a particularly damaging way to insult, humiliate, and dehumanize a person.

It’s no surprise, then, that LGBTQ people struggle to overcome shame. We, too, have been falsely caricatured as inherently predatory and promiscuous. To this day, I flinch at the sight of a rainbow flag or pink triangle. I grew up with these images juxtaposed with Religious Right vitriol. Such is the power of propaganda that I still struggle to separate these positive LGBTQ symbols from the slander that many Christians have long attached to them. I’m not the only one. Many straight people similarly experience the effects of anti-LGBTQ propaganda.

Sometimes when we are told, in so many words, that we are less human, we begin to live into that false identity. When our abusers tell us we are dirty, that there’s something inherently wrong with us, that it’s all our fault—sometimes we believe them. In his book, The Velvet Rage, psychologist Alan Downs, who is gay and frequently counsels gay men, writes about the impact of shame. He points out that LGBTQ people often compensate for their shame, rather than confront it. This leads to desperate and dysfunctional attempts to find validation, whether through becoming an over-achiever, repeated sexual encounters, or putting on a mask we believe others like better than our true self.

Shame almost killed me. In my 20s, I was filled with self-loathing and confusion about my predicament as a gay person. How could this happen to me? My Christian tradition had always said gay people are outside the church, God-haters who willfully choose a rebellious pursuit of excessive lusts. There was no understanding that someone could experience a different sexual development in the womb or be born with an atypical sexual orientation. I was sure God was as disgusted with me as the Church. In college, I walked along the road that lined my Baptist school and contemplated jumping in front of the next car. Over the years, I begged God to kill me to alleviate everyone of my intolerable presence.

A turning point came while reading Romans and a book by Jeff Van Vonderen called, Tired of Trying to Measure Up. Even though as a good Baptist kid I had read Romans more times than I can count, I didn’t really grasp that God’s love is unconditional. Comprehending the gospel created the first crack in a stronghold of shame. A tentative thrill rose up in my chest as the words of Scripture sank in: “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Rom 3:21-22; NIV). I could hardly believe it. God’s love is not based on measuring up? I was simply being invited to trust love? Waking up to the gospel pulled me out of the pit of self-loathing.

But even as God affirmed me, I still struggled with what other people thought of me. The verbal sexual assaults are everywhere in conservative Christian culture. In so many words, I hear people say, “You are a disappointment to God and to us.” “Your so-called love is disgusting.” “You make me uncomfortable.” The messages have come through deafening silence at the announcement of my marriage, lost friendships, refusals to allow my wife and I to stay the night at a home where I was once welcome, and limitations on ministry in former faith circles. I’ve even been asked to lie about my marriage “for the kids’ sake.” There’s something piercingly painful about knowing others view my dear wife, my home, as illegitimate. While we navigate the usual challenges of marriage (caring for an elderly parent, work-life balance, housekeeping preferences), we have the added stressor of facing active opposition to our covenantal bond.

Shame keeps us trapped in futile efforts to win acceptance from others. We are social creatures whose survival depends on community. When our community holds us at arms-length, it can be excruciating. Shame makes us want to pretend to be someone else. Sometimes I have downplayed my marital status on social media or with acquaintances, not wanting to alienate the evangelical world that raised me. I long for the people I come from to be proud of me. I want them to read my books and listen to the things I’ve learned along the way. I want them to take me seriously. But shame uses that quest for approval to contort us into someone we are not. So I strive to live in the Spirit’s freedom and affirmation, all the while holding my hand out to those who are unsure they want to take it.

I’ll close with this: dear LGBTQ loved ones, God did not create you only for you to hide in shame. Let us confess the sins of those who are ashamed of us, their verbal sexual assaults, and their emotional distancing. For God is faithful and just to cleanse our hearts and minds of the unrighteousness inflicted upon us. When we dare to declare with the psalmist, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” we prophesy to the world a divine truth about our bodies: “Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are” (1 Cor 1:26-28). To worldly eyes, LGBTQ people are foolish, weak, and despised, but to God we are made for a purpose.

Paul says that God intentionally chooses the lowly so that boasters who rely only on their own wisdom or strength will know they need God too (vv. 29-31). LGBTQ Christ-followers are evangelists to the arrogant, reassuring them that they are also loved unconditionally. Self-righteous Christians no longer have to pretend, puffing and strutting to prove themselves to God or anyone else. All those who strive can find rest among the lowly. Among the LGBTQ. For even our Savior is “lowly in heart” (Matt 11:29). And there’s nothing shameful about that.

Statement on the Church of Uganda’s support for Anti-Homosexuality Act | The Archbishop of Canterbury

Shane Claiborne — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 13:53:10 +0000

Recently Uganda has passed legislation known as “The Anti-Homosexuality Act,” that penalizes same sex relationships. It was already a crime to be gay in Uganda, but this new law extends excessive punishment to include life in prison and the possibility of the death penalty in some cases. Some US leaders have chimed in to support these laws. Clearly, Red Letter Christians stands firmly and passionately against these laws in Uganda or any other place in the world. We are also deeply encouraged by the statement made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who is a dear friend and collaborator. It’s not just what he said but how he said it that is important. He first reached out personally to the Primate of Uganda, Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba, to express is grief and to ask for dialogue. He also issued this statement which sounds like Jesus. Thank you brother for your love and courage. -Shane

Editor’s Note: The following statement was first published on June 9, 2023 on The Archbishop of Canterbury website.

Archbishop’s Statement on the Church of Uganda

09/06/2023

“I have recently written to my brother in Christ, the Primate of Uganda, Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba, to express my grief and dismay at the Church of Uganda’s support for the Anti-Homosexuality Act. I make this public statement with sorrow, and with continuing prayers for reconciliation between our churches and across the Anglican Communion. I am deeply aware of the history of colonial rule in Uganda, so heroically resisted by its people. But this is not about imposing Western values on our Ugandan Anglican sisters and brothers. It is about reminding them of the commitments we have made as Anglicans to treat every person with the care and respect they deserve as children of God.

“Within the Anglican Communion we continue to disagree over matters of sexuality, but in our commitment to God-given human dignity we must be united. I have reminded Archbishop Kaziimba that Anglicans around the world have long been united in our opposition to the criminalisation of homosexuality and LGBTQ people. Supporting such legislation is a fundamental departure from our commitment to uphold the freedom and dignity of all people. There is no justification for any province of the Anglican Communion to support such laws: not in our resolutions, not in our teachings, and not in the Gospel we share.

“The Church of Uganda, like many Anglican provinces, holds to the traditional Christian teaching on sexuality and marriage set out in Resolution i.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference. That resolution also expressed a commitment to minister pastorally and sensitively to all – regardless of sexual orientation – and to condemn homophobia. I have said to Archbishop Kaziimba that I am unable to see how the Church of Uganda’s support for the Anti-Homosexuality Act is consistent with its many statements in support of Resolution i.10.

“More recently, at the 2016 Primates Meeting in Canterbury, the Primates of the Anglican Communion “condemned homophobic prejudice and violence and resolved to work together to offer pastoral care and loving service irrespective of sexual orientation.” We affirmed that this conviction arises out of our discipleship of Jesus Christ. We also “reaffirmed our rejection of criminal sanctions against same-sex attracted people” – and stated that “God’s love for every human being is the same, regardless of their sexuality, and that the church should never by its actions give any other impression.”

“These statements and commitments are the common mind of the Anglican Communion on the essential dignity and value of every person. I therefore urge Archbishop Kaziimba and the Church of Uganda – a country and church I love dearly, and to which I owe so much – to reconsider their support for this legislation and reject the criminalisation of LGBTQ people. I also call on my brothers in Christ, the leadership of GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), to make explicitly and publicly clear that the criminalisation of LGBTQ people is something that no Anglican province can support: that must be stated unequivocally.

“As disciples of Jesus Christ we are called to honour the image of God in every person, and I pray for Anglicans to be uncompromising and united in this calling.”

Searching for Jesus During Pride Month

Dr. Ben Huelskamp — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 10:00:08 +0000

In a season of sharp partisan division, much of it centered on sensationalized depictions of the LGBTQIA+ community, particularly transgender people and drag performers, June 1 marked the beginning of Pride Month. Pride is about celebrations, marches, festivals, and representation of a dynamic community that has often been relegated into the shadows. But Pride is also about activism, acting up against oppressive, reactionary pieces of legislation, and indeed, Pride has its roots in riots. As a Queer Christian who organizes and equips Christians for LGBTQIA+ belonging and flourishing, I’m often asked to identify where Christians are during Pride Month. But the better question is where is Jesus during Pride Month?

After centuries of misrepresentation and white washing, American Christians largely imagine a Jesus who is white with flowing brown hair and a chiseled jaw line—not for nothing, this image of Jesus looks a lot like Jonathan Van Ness, but I digress. Christian nationalism is recreating Jesus in the model of white supremacy. The reality of the Jesus story is being replaced by a sterilized ideal of the white nationalist man. Who is this Jesus? He’s a man possessing all the marks of a man who leads, fights for family values, and protects women by controlling as much of their lives as possible. He values life from conception to death. He hates LGBTQIA+ people and believes there are only two genders. He wants to build a wall at the southern border, because illegal immigration is a serious issue to safety and the job prospects of Americans. He supports tax cuts for the rich because they create jobs. He decries social services for the poor because it makes people lazy. The Christian nationalist Jesus knows that best way for free people to protect themselves is by keeping guns readily available. This Jesus shouts at people marching in Pride parades. In short, this Jesus wants to make America great again.

The Bible, however, depicts Jesus as a person of first-century Palestine, brown skinned and poor. His immediate family lives in a collective community which travels together and supports each other. Shortly after his birth, Jesus becomes a refugee and migrant fleeing persecution by King Herod. While sacred scripture doesn’t provide a complete view, his upbringing seems happy and fulfilling. He’s loved and he’s taught to show love. He grows up knowing about the dominant, governing culture (Roman) as well as his own marginalized culture. He lives as a homeless, iterant minister in a region with diverse and conflicting religious groups. Ultimately, he becomes a victim of an occupying force terrified of dissension and is put to death in a gruesome and public manner.

We don’t need to “Queer” Jesus or read him through a Queer lens, because Jesus is already a Queer character. He is socially transgressive and liberatory. He puts into practice the message he preaches and centers the voices of the marginalized. Our search for Jesus during Pride Month shouldn’t be in the hollow prayers of people pushing destructive bills through state legislatures or in the people claiming Christianity while they spew hate at Pride festivals. We will find Jesus in the Pride parades, among drag queens maintaining an uniquely Queer art form, and at festival booths set up by churches trying to better welcome and include the LGBTQIA+ community. Jesus can be found among the families fleeing states where it is no longer tenable to be transgender and he can relate with their struggle because once his own family fled violence.

The Biblical Jesus and the Christian nationalist Jesus look nothing like each other. One is focused on community while the other is obsessed with control and power. One hungers for liberation while the other thirsts to further oppress the marginalized. One brings truth while the other offers sweet lies presented as hope. The reality of Jesus—the Jesus we find during Pride Month and beyond—is a person and a force who has never stopped working. We Queer Christians can find Jesus among us building community, in front of us demanding action, and around us standing between us and those who would wish us or do us harm. That’s where Jesus is during Pride Month and every month.

Author: Dr. Ben Huelskamp is the Executive Director of LOVEboldly (www.loveboldly.net), an organization working to create spaces where LGBTQIA+ people can flourish in Christianity. You can find out more about his projects on his website (www.benhuelskamp.com).