Saturday-Afternoon Twitter Thread about Catholic Clericalism and Ministry to LGBTQ Persons

It would be wonderful if the Catholic clericalist understanding of ministry included the notion of mutuality. 1)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) July 1, 2017

Father Tony Flannery Speaks Out about Vatican Action Against Him

In what I just posted, I noted the current Vatican disciplining of Irish Redemptorist priest Tony Flannery. A week ago, Fr. Flannery published a statement about the Vatican's action against him in the Irish Times. It's entitled "Vatican's Demand for Silence is Too High a Price."

Catholic Diocese of Sacramento Defunds Homeless Ministry: Director Supports Marriage Equality and Is Pro-Choice

And finally this morning, in the religious-freedom-not-so-much category, yet another piece of evidence that, for the current leaders of the Catholic church, religious freedom means freedom and conscience for me and not for thee: as Cynthia Hubert reports in the Kansas City Star yesterday, the Catholic diocese of Sacramento has shut down its funding for a homeless agency, Francis House, because the agency's new director supports marriage equality and is pro-choice.

A Former Lutheran on the ELCA Decisions: Eric Reitan's Statement

As a counterpoint to my postings on the actions taken at the recent ELCA assembly (see especially here, and click labels ELCA and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America), I’d like to take note of an outstanding article that Religion Dispatches posted today. It's by Eric Reitan.

Reitan is a former Lutheran who left the ELCA for the United Church of Christ when he could no longer live with its stance on gays in ministry. Though his family has deep roots in the ELCA and his extended family “practically drips with Lutheran pastors,” Reitan could not accept the decision of the ELCA to turn gay Lutherans into

second-class citizens—invited to join the church but denied the right to pursue ordination (unless they submitted to a requirement of celibacy not imposed on straight clergy), and excluded from the only model of responsible sexuality that the church offers: the institution of marriage.

Note that, as someone with insider knowledge of the ELCA’s dealings with gay Lutherans, Reitan confirms the point I have persistently made about last week’s decisions—a point the mainstream media seem intent on missing spectacularly: the ELCA decisions are about justice. They’re about abolishing a caste system that turned gay Lutherans into second-class citizens.

Contrary to what Patrick Condon has published in his now widely distributed articles on the Lutheran decision to ordain “sexually active gays,” the ELCA prohibition of non-celibate Lutheran ministers did not extend to straight Lutherans in ministry. Only gay Lutherans seeking ministry positions were asked to choose lifelong celibacy as a prerequisite to ordination and to active ministry. Unmarried straight Lutherans seeking ordination and ministry positions have always had and will always have the option to marry.

And the ELCA decision about this is monumental, because the ELCA is not the only church that has created precisely this kind of two-tier, second-class system to handle the question of gays in ministry, now that more church members are coming out of the closet, and some of those are experiencing calls to ministry.

After battling within the ELCA for a number of years to gain justice for gay Lutherans, Eric Reitan and his wife could no longer stay in the ELCA. They felt worn out, spiritually dispossessed. They wanted a place to worship in which they would not be forced constantly to battle, and in which their gay brothers and sisters were fully affirmed. They left.

Before he did so, Reitan wrote a document he calls his “manifesto," explaining his family’s decision to move on. Reitan’s Religion Dispatches article excerpts portions of this powerful statement.

As I’ve done repeatedly on Bilgrimage, Reitan suggests that those who cite a meager handful of exegetically problematic scripture verses to condemn their gay brothers and sisters seem to be missing a very important point about the Jewish and Christian scriptures. This is that the moral vision of life they offer is normed above all by love. To use the scriptures as weapons to hurt, impair, and subjugate other human beings is to misuse them.

As Reitan notes,

Any sincere holistic reading of Scripture reveals a clear commitment to an ethic of love. As such, it seems utterly clear to me that we must reject any approach to Scripture that leads to the endorsement of teachings that marginalize some of God’s children, that contribute to suicidal depression in gay teens, that stifle compassion and inspire otherwise good people not to hear the anguished cry of their gay and lesbian neighbors. Traditional teachings about homosexuality do all of these things. If our approach to understanding Scripture and its authority leads to these teachings, then it violates the ethic of love, and hence is a profound violation of the spirit of Scripture itself.

And now Reitan has seen his church of origin move along that path, a path that makes sense to him, and the question facing him is whether he should go back. As he notes, one reason he might consider a return to the ELCA is that much work remains to be done in building bridges between Lutherans determined to move ahead on these issues, and those who remain anguished by the decisions the ELCA made last week.

Reitan notes that in his part of the country (he teaches in Oklahoma), it will be a long time before Lutheran congregations become comfortable with the presence of openly gay people and open gay couples in their midst. His recognition of what remains to be done makes him wonder whether he should return to his church of origin, now that this church has taken a step for which he battled long and hard before leaving the ELCA.

And that sounds to me like a fine reason for considering a return to the ELCA. The pressure will be intense in coming months to split the church and to punish it for its courage in taking the steps it has taken. It will certainly benefit from courageous, generous people working in the opposite direction.

Continued Media Bias in Reporting Lutheran Story: "Sexually Active" Gays and "Monogamous" Relationships

A point I’ve been stressing in my recent postings about the ELCA assembly is the active complicity of many in the media with the attempts of well-funded, highly placed interest groups to combat full equality for gay and lesbian persons (and see here).

I’m stressing this theme re: media coverage of the Lutheran assembly because the problem is growing worse, rather than better. And my sense is that it’s going to grow even worse. LGBT Americans and those who stand in solidarity with us need to recognize that many in the media have a vested interest in combating equality for gay Americans. The more we experience breakthroughs in churches like the ELCA, the stronger the push is going to be from the right, and from mainstream media that often willingly function as mouthpieces for the right. And we need to push back—hard.

Take a look at what happened in the wake of Friday’s ELCA decision to permit ministers in “publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships” to serve in Lutheran churches. The phrase I have just quoted occurs thirteen times in the brief, two-page recommendation that ELCA delegates approved last Friday.

And how have some in the mainstream media chosen to report about this decision and this carefully worded, easy-to-read, straightforward statement that most anyone can understand? Take a look at what AP reporter Patrick Condon did with this story.

Patrick Condon chose to report the story with a headline stating, “Lutherans to Allow Sexually Active Gays as Clergy.” Condon uses the phrase that actually appears in the document—“lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships”—only once in his report, in a final sentence which follows a misleading statement (to which I will return in a moment) that the document permits gays in lifelong monogamous relationships to serve in ministry while straight ministers are required to abstain from sex outside marriage.

Because AP articles are routinely picked up by major media outlets all overt the world, Condon’s article—with its deliberately bias-provoking headline—has now popped up all over the world, including at ABC, Forbes, and New York Times, and—well, do a google search and you’ll see my point. Everywhere. As Condon and the AP no doubt intended.

I have already noted (here) Condon’s bias in reporting on the Lutheran assembly in my posting about the ELCA approval of its recommendation on sexual ethics. And I’m pleased to note that I’m not the only one tracking Condon’s bias as he reported on the ELCA assembly.

Drew Tatusko picks up on this story in an outstanding posting at his Notes from Off Center blog. As Tatusko notes, Condon’s headline plays the tired old game of reducing gay people and our lives to sex. Condon has taken a story about the decision of a major Protestant denomination to recognize ministers in “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships,” and has made that story a story about sex.

About malicious insinuations that gay people are sexual objects and promiscuous, sexually driven beings unable to sustain lifelong relationships. Condon’s presentation of the story—a presentation entirely framed by a headline that is intentionally meant to go right to the sexual angle—deliberately overlooks the decision of a major church to call to ministry people in lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships. It does so both to continue bias, and because telling that story would put the lie to Condon’s misleading conclusion that, while gay people in such relationships can now serve in ministry, straight people in ministry must choose celibacy.

They must choose celibacy, that is, along with gay ministry candidates not yet in monogamous relationships, because they are not yet married. These straight ministry candidates and ministers have not yet entered into publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous relationships. And they have an option that gay persons lack in most parts of the world: they have the choice to enter into such relationships legally and publicly. With full advantage of the law.*

As Drew Tatusko notes, Condon comes to this story with some telling baggage. Back in May 2008, a blogger named Phoenix Woman reported at the Firedoglake blog about Condon’s extremely biased and very twisted reporting on the role of a right-wing Minnesota blogger Michael Brodkorb in attacks on Al Franken. Brodkorb is former Research Director for the Minnesota Republican party.

As Phoenix Woman decisively demonstrates, Condon’s “puff piece” reporting on Brodkorb’s activities ignores the thick trail of financial connections leading from Brodkorb to people like Michelle Bachmann—an interesting thing to ignore in a report focusing on the activities of a blogger with “a long history as a paid political operative.” As Drew Tatusko points out (citing a Daily Kos story about the “sleazy links” between Condon and such paid right-wing political operatives), Condon’s silence about the financial trails that connect Brodkorb to powerful funding sources in the Republican party hardly indicates that he would be predisposed to treat stories about gay rights equably:

So, a misleading piece by a less than hospitable reporter who has a past of hanging with those who would likely oppose "sexually active gays." Wonder how Get Religion will spin this one.

Well, unfortunately, we don’t have to keep wondering about how Get Religion chose to use the Condon story about “sexually active gays” and Lutheran ministry. Today, a poster named Mollie at Get Religion chooses to summarize (and she does so woefully inadequately) and then dismiss Tatusko’s critique, while arguing that “the ELCA did vote to allow sexually active gays as clergy. And it’s kind of hard to ignore that major vote when that’s what the whole story is about.”

Mollie, by the way, had already posted a piece at Get Religion last week praising the choice of one brave reporter in a sea of liberal reporters to tell the ECLA story with “an anecdotal lede with someone opposed to changing the church’s teaching on whether clergy who are in same-sex relationships should be on the church roster.” That reporter? Why, Patrick Condon of the AP, of course.

Am I surprised to see such biased reporting on Terry Mattingly's Get Religion blog, which professes to be about offering more well-rounded, well-researched reporting on religion that “raise[s] some questions about coverage that we believe has some holes in it”? No. I’m not. No more surprised than I am to see the AP deliberately misreporting (and deliberately fomenting prejudice in) a major news story that has to do with the churches and gay persons—particularly when that story is one about a church’s decision to abolish policies that discriminated against gay persons.

I am saddened, though. And angry—angry that this biased reporting continues, when it so obviously biased. And when it is applauded by some of the most noxious right-wing blogs reporting today about religion and the gay community, who rightly see that they have friends in high places in mainstream media outlets like the AP.

And don’t even get me started on the choice of Washington Post reporter Jacqueline L. Salmon to report on the ELCA ministry decision with the following headline: “‘Monogamous’ Gays Can Serve in ELCA.” “Monogamous” in quotation marks? This is clearly not intended to highlight the term “monogamous” as a direct quote from the ELCA document.

It has another purpose altogether, a more sinister one. It is intended to cast aspersions on the ELCA’s use of the term “monogamous” to characterize publicly accountable, life-long same-sex relationships. And to trade in ugly old stereotypes about the inability of gay people to pursue such relationships successefully. It is equivalent to headlines in the mainstream media that still routinely speak about gay “marriage.”

It’s not hard to recognize Salmon’s bias when, just three days before, she reported “Lutherans to Vote on Sexually Active Gay Clergy.”

Such indefensible attempts of reporters supposedly pledged to objectivity to skew intra-ecclesial and society-wide conversations about justice for gay persons need to stop. And those of us who are gay, along with our supporters, need to stop putting up with this, and to demand accountability on the part of those who pay reporters’ salaries.

If readers of this blog can assist me in circulating information about these important matters and can help me call the media to accountability, I'll be very grateful.

*As someone who has spent much of his life studying in graduate theology and ministry programs, and later teaching in such programs, I find it astonishing that anyone really believes that ministers-to-be, whether gay or straight, are actually celibate, regardless of their religious tradition. In my experience, most ministry candidates are like other adults: sexual beings with complex lives that often include sexual activity and sexual relationships.

I am personally not enthused about the decision of churches to focus obsessively on the sexual activities of ministry candidates, whether gay or straight. In my view, regulations that promote such obsessive scrutiny of the personal lives of ministry candidates are likely to foment witch hunts that do no one any good, including the churches intent on supervising the sexual lives of ministers and ministry candidates.

This does not mean that I oppose holding clergy and ministry candidates to accountability in this and other areas. What it does mean is that the qualifications of people to serve in ministry ought to rest on broader criteria, including the quality of their relationships, their commitment and fidelity in relationships, and so forth. Not just on when and how and with whom they have slept.

And it goes without saying that I am speaking here of adult relationships. The question of clergy abuse of minors is another matter altogether.

If churches want to formulate and then enforce criteria supervising the sexual lives of ministers, married or otherwise, I do strongly support making those criteria apply across the board, to both straight and gay persons. That is not how these criteria have usually functioned in the churches, and as my previous posting today notes, prohibitions against gay clergy who do not vow lifelong celibacy were enacted in many churches only recently, with the specific intent of targeting gay people and making gay people second-class citizens in churches.

If those prohibitions had excluded monogamous straight people in life-long public relationships from engaging in ministry, and if they had just been abolished, I wonder if Condon would have written a headline shouting, "Lutherans to Allow Sexually Active Straights as Clergy"? Or would he perhaps think it not only inappropriate, but also silly, to focus attention on the sexual lives and sexual activities of heterosexual adults (reporters as well as ministers) in life-long, monogamous, publicly accountable relationships?

The Lutherans Come Through: Why the ELCA Decision Matters

As many of you know, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America voted on Friday to remove impediments to ministry for gay church members living in committed long-term relationships. Openly gay ministers who commit themselves to celibacy have been permitted to serve for some time now in ELCA churches.

Predictably, almost all mainstream media coverage of this historic ELCA decision has overlooked the fact that the ELCA—and most mainline Protestant churches—created a second-tier, second-class system for gays in ministry only recently, and only after those churches began to face the fact that some gays in ministry would no longer remain in the closet as it became increasingly possible to come out in the culture at large.

In many churches, as gays in ministry became open (we have always been there, always ministering; the question is now whether we can be open about our presence in the churches and the ministry), churches responded by relegating gay ministers and ministry candidates to second-class status. Many churches added to their disciplinary regulations statements that gays choosing to enter the ministry had to do something not demanded of straight people entering ministry. We were asked to choose lifelong celibacy before we could serve in ministry.

This historical background, and the clear injustice of a two-tier system that relegates one group of human beings to second-class citizenship, are unfortunately nowhere to be found in most mainstream media coverage of what has happened in the ELCA this week. The mainstream media are predictably parroting the religious and political right in treating the ELCA decision as yet another concession to a gay pressure lobby demanding “special rights” in the churches, or as yet another sign that some churches are abandoning orthodoxy and the bible to condone immoral lifestyles.

What is overlooked in that kind of coverage, of course, is how very recently the longstanding “tradition” the churches are “abandoning” actually is. And what is significantly overlooked is that the choice to abolish a discriminatory two-tier system of qualifications for ministry is about justice and fairness—that is to say, it’s about choosing rather than abandoning core moral values.

Why should this story matter to LGBT citizens, regardless of their views about religion? And why should it matter to those who stand in solidarity with us, and to Americans in general, with our historical commitment to create a society in which equality and justice are core values? My e-friends Terry Weldon at Queering the Church, Colleen Kochivar-Baker at Enlightened Catholicism, and Michael Bayly at Wild Reed have all written (here and here and here) outstanding wrap-up commentary on the ELCA decision in the last two days. I offer the following remarks as complementary observations that echo their conclusions.

Why should the ELCA decision matter to all of us? In my view, it should matter because

1) it demonstrates that there is a powerful trend moving in the direction of full equality for LGBT persons in church and society; 2) what the churches do matters; 3) the ELCA decision will make it harder to scapegoat the Episcopal Church; and 4) the ELCA decision has important real-life practical consequences for LGBT persons.

▪ The ELCA decision demonstrates that there is a powerful trend moving in the direction of full equality for LGBT persons in church and society.

The attempt to combat full equality for LGBT persons in both church and society is well-funded and supported by strong, highly placed interest groups who have the ear of the media, and who still largely determine mainstream media representation of the relationship between churches and the gay community. Despite the money these groups have spent and continue to spend to keep equality for LGBT persons at bay, there is an even more powerful impulse towards justice running through many churches and in society at large.

That impulse demonstrates the validity of Martin Luther King’s observation that, while the arc of the moral universe may be long, it bends toward justice. What is at work in churches like the ELCA—despite the huge amounts of money, the string-pulling, the lies and underhanded maneuvers of the political and religious right—is justice. And when faith communities place themselves on the side of justice and move along that moral arc, they can be forces to reckon with.

Within a short space of time, the Episcopal Church USA chose to move against well-nigh determinative forces both within its own communion and in the culture at large, to do exactly what the ELCA has just done: to strike down barriers to ministry by gay persons that were created exclusively for openly gay ministers, and which did not apply to straight ministers. Shortly after that, the Quakers opened the door to same-sex marriage, noting that their religious body could not refuse to recognize God’s presence and God’s work in gay people and gay relationships.

The ELCA joins a trend in what it has just chosen to do. And that trend will now become more powerful, though not ineluctable, since the opposition will grow more vociferous in direct proportion to the movement of some churches along the moral arc of justice. What the ELCA chose to do in the face of fierce opposition will give hope to those within the Presbyterian and Methodist churches working for justice. But it will also give renewed determination to those opposing justice for LGBT persons in those churches, who will step up their battle against full inclusion of gays in their churches—with the mainstream media’s complicity.

▪ What the churches do matters.

Whether we like it or not, or whether we agree with their influence or not, communities of faith—churches, in particular, in the American context—continue powerfully to inform social attitudes about LGBT persons. This is precisely why the religious and political right are so fiercely determined to paint church decisions to treat gay persons with mere human decency and to accord gay persons equality and justice as abandonment of the gospel. When that whip can no longer be used to beat gay people and our families and friends—when the churches themselves take the whip out of the hands of the religious-political right—the battle to stigmatize gay people and use us as despised objects in unholy political games will largely have been lost.

▪ The ELCA decision will make it harder to scapegoat the Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church has taken quite a beating for its decision to ordain Gene Robinson and its recent decision to abolish barriers to ministry for those who are openly gay. Because of these decisions, the Episcopal Church has attracted the maleficent attention of strong, highly placed interest groups who have the ear of the media and who are intent on representing the Episcopal Church as the sole, marginal ecclesial representative of a handful of believers' capitulation to immorality.

Because it has taken courageous steps in the direction of justice, the Episcopal Church has been subject to relentless attack from the right (and in the mainstream media), with claims that it has uniquely and single-handedly departed from an orthodoxy all other churches cherish. Claims have been made that the Episcopal Church has doomed itself by doing what is right, when it comes to justice and equality for gay persons.

These slanders will be harder to sustain now that both the Quakers and the Lutherans have followed suit. The Lutherans are particularly important as a symbolic group, since they represent the Protestant impulse itself in the popular imagination. They are the “original” Protestants, if you will. Their decision will reverberate through many other churches, and will help put the lie to defamatory statements about the Episcopal Church in right-wing media outlets and in the mainstream media. The right and the media will now have to admit that those trying to depict the bible, Christianity, and orthodoxy as all about patriarchy and homophobia have an increasingly steep climb as they try to make that argument.

▪ Most of all, the ELCA decision has important real-life practical consequences for LGBT persons.

Whenever churches create or support discriminatory two-tiered systems that relegate one group of human beings to second-class status on the basis of inborn traits over which those human beings have no control, people suffer. Real people. Real people with real hearts, real lives, and real bodies. Who live someplace in the world.

Those turned into second-class citizens suffer when they experience such injustice. Their families and friends suffer.

The churches have caused (and, in some cases, continue to cause) manifold suffering among gay persons. One of the reasons I began this blog and continue blogging here through thick and thin, whether I feel like writing or not, is because I myself and a life partner whom I dearly love have experienced that unique, exceedingly painful form of suffering the churches impose on the lives of gay persons. Just because we are gay.

When churches create a second-class system for a select group of persons, they lay the groundwork for treating those persons—even within the house of God and within church-owned institutions—cruelly, unjustly, and capriciously. Because we are theologians and have been called to that particular teaching ministry within the churches, but because we also happen to be gay, a couple, and unwilling to apologize for this, Steve and I have experienced life-altering discrimination within church-owned institutions.

I have chronicled some (but not all) of those experiences on this blog. I won’t repeat those chronicles here. What we say about our experience could equally well be said about many other gay believers, with a few alterations depending on the unique circumstances within which those persons live.

It’s time for this cruelty done in the name of God and in the house of God to stop. It’s time for churches and church institutions to stop firing people solely because we are gay, to stop making gay people’s lives living nightmares when we work hard, achieve much, but cannot keep jobs because of who we are, to stop making us feel as if life itself is a burden because we are out of work and have no way to contribute and to give, to stop placing us outside health-care systems because we are unemployed, even as the churches themselves proclaim that they want to see everyone having access to health care.

One of the persistent refrains of some delegates who spoke against the ELCA decision to abolish unjust barriers to ministry for partnered gays is that abolishing those barriers would create suffering for these delegates, their churches, and their families. I can appreciate the struggles of Christians who have become convinced that orthodoxy hinges on keeping the gays at bay as many of their fellow Christians move along the arc of justice. I can appreciate that, when one's theological imagination has been shaped by such erroneous presuppositions, it is difficult to move in new directions.

What baffles me, however, is the apparent blindness of those same Christians to the considerable suffering they have been inflicting for years on their brothers and sisters who happen to be gay and lesbian. We who are gay or lesbian have gone to church meeting after church meeting like the recent ELCA meeting, had our hearts broken, and have been expected to go home and mourn and let the church go about its business without hearing of our pain. Where were those brothers and sisters then, as they expected us to walk away in silence, bearing our pain?

That expectation is not adequate for those who follow the gospel. It is not a Christ-like expectation. As the ELCA social statement on human sexuality notes, though Christians may validly disagree about the morality of homosexuality, it is impossible to call ourselves Christian—and to profess to be church—when we do not welcome, affirm, and love everyone. Regardless. Because God makes everyone.

The ELCA decision will make a world of difference to many LGBT Christians, in many churches, who continue to experience unjust and cruel treatment within their churches. It will also make a significant practical difference in society itself, since what the churches do in this arena has important reverberations throughout society.

When the churches choose to untie cords used to bind selected groups of people and lift yokes used to keep those people in painful subjugation (Isaiah 58:6-8, Matthew 11:30), what a light can sometimes shine forth in the world. And that light will be fearsome perhaps only to those who, for whatever reason, prefer darkness to light.

Lutherans Play Fair: ELCA Rejects Supermajority Maneuver for Vote on Gay Ministers

Some fascinating developments are taking place these days at the churchwide assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). The meeting is happening right now in Minneapolis.

Monday night, ELCA delegates defeated a motion that would have required a two-thirds majority to pass a resolution permitting openly gay clergy in partnered relationships to serve ELCA congregations. The motion to require a supermajority rather than a simple majority to pass this resolution was defeated by a vote of 57 to 43 percent (and see here).

What I want to say about this vote links to what I wrote several weeks ago about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s new procedural rules for changing the mind of churches about gay issues. As I noted in my postings commenting on those rules (here and here), Rowan Williams’s procedural rules for changing the church’s moral mind about homosexuality effectively create insuperable obstacles for those who think the Anglican church can and should reassess its views about homosexuality.

Rowan Williams now holds (a departure from his previous position) that the scriptures are unambiguous in their condemnation of homosexuality, and that the church has always and universally condemned homosexuality. He proposes that the church can change its mind about gay people and gay lives only as a result of ongoing study, more dialogue, and, finally, widespread consensus supporting such a change.

As my postings about Rowan Williams’ procedural rules argue, these rules are a formula for stasis. They set the bar so impossibly high that the church will not ever revise its teaching about gay people and gay lives, no matter how strong the calls for change are within church and society. These rules lock the church into an endless round of futile discussion, debate, and study of issues about which most people have long since made up their mind, and regarding which they want the church to make an unambiguous, clear statement. One way or the other.

The rules also overlook the historical evidence about how churches change their moral mind (and the fact that churches have often changed their moral mind after holding an unambiguous position on a moral matter for centuries). Churches shift their moral consensus only when groups, both within and outside churches, catch sight of a new way of viewing things that is more consistent with the fundamental values of Christianity, and then begin to pressure (and shame) the church into admitting that its traditional stance belies its core values—and central aspects of scriptural teaching.

Churches don’t change their moral minds as a result of majority votes. They certainly don’t change their moral minds as a result of supermajority votes. The requirement that a church shift its understanding of a moral issue (and of the lives of those affected by that issue) on the basis of majority votes—let alone supermajority votes—implicitly places power in the hands of those who already wield power, and who usually have a vested interest at keeping change at bay.

I have been sensitized lately to the mechanisms by which churches continue to keep gay people and gay lives in a holding pen through manipulation of procedural roles by a book I’ve mentioned previously on this thread. This is Grif Stockley’s study of the history of race relations in Arkansas, Ruled by Race.

Stockley’s picture of what happened in Arkansas (and throughout the South) in the Jim Crow period is horrifying. It is a reminder of how procedural rules and the ballot box can be used—often systematically and ruthlessly—to reduce entire groups of people to the status of despised objects.

As Stockley notes, with emancipation and Reconstruction, African-American citizens of Arkansas began to vote and to serve in public office. Even as Reconstruction ended, some white citizens worked with black citizens to develop a “fusion politics” (p. 92) that continued to open doors for black enfranchisement and public service, though those doors were not so numerous following the end of Reconstruction as they had been just after emancipation.

And then all doors slammed shut—decisively and violently. All over the South, African-American citizens entered a long nightmare of disenfranchisement and violence that was totally dependent on legal enactments pushed through state legislatures by white majorities, which were then upheld by courts as the will of the majority. In 1891, election “reforms” were enacted that used literacy tests in draconian ways to disenfranchise large numbers of black voters (p. 125).

Then, when black voters could no longer vote because of the 1891 “reforms,” legislatures passed a poll-tax amendment that further disenfranchised some black voters who had passed the bar of the literacy test (ibid.). The predictable outcome of these political machinations by a white majority intent on returning African-American citizens to quasi-servitude was violence. As Stockley notes, “Suddenly it was open season on Arkansas blacks” (p. 127) and by 1892, lynchings peaked both in the South and the nation at large (pp. 117, 126)—and they continued well into the 1930s in many places.

Deprive people of the power to vote; manipulate a political system so that, if their vote has the power to change things (lynchings were worst in black-majority counties in Arkansas), a vote is not permitted: violent repression is the only possible next step, particularly when those people have tasted liberation and know things can be otherwise. And that repression (with carefully crafted acts of violence) will go on as long as a “majority” has the right to make the rules, bend them to keep itself in power, and turn for support to courts and legislators that happen to be—you guessed it—the same folks as those who constitute the “majority.”

And now segue back to what has just taken place at the ELCA assembly. On Friday, delegates will vote on a task-force recommendation that, if it passes, will permit individual ELCA churches and synods to recognize and support lifelong committed gay relationships, and to call to ministry those living in such relationships.

As Phil Soucy notes on the Goodsoil Central blog, on Friday, delegates will vote on both this recommendation and another on human sexuality, which discusses the theological basis for the current ELCA understanding of that topic. Since the latter recommendation—the Social Statement on Human Sexuality—is what the ELCA calls a “social” statement, it requires a two-thirds majority to pass. It does so because that is one of the procedural rules of ELCA assemblies vis-à-vis social statements.

The ministry recommendation is not a social statement, and requires only a simple majority to pass. So some delegates who are opposed to this recommendation—that is, to the acceptance of openly gay clergy in lifelong committed same-sex relationships—proposed a change in the rules. They wanted not a simple majority vote but a supermajority vote to be applied to this recommendation, in order for it to pass.

It was that change in the rules that the ELCA delegates defeated by a 57-43 percent vote on Monday evening. When the bishop of the Allegheny Synod, Gregory Pile, proposed that the ministry issue is so “serious” that it requires a supermajority vote, Ronald Pittman, a delegate of the Oregon Synod, noted in response that previous votes to bar openly gay candidates from ministry had required only a majority vote, not a supermajority.

In other words, as long as those opposed to changes in the ELCA’s position about gay people and gay lives had a clear and predictable majority, a simple majority was fine. When they appear to be losing turf to their opponents, suddenly these issues require a new, higher bar, in order for change to be considered: they require a supermajority.

Which is in itself a fascinating admission—a very telling one—on the part of many of those in the churches who oppose opening the doors to gay people and gay lives. For ever so long, we’ve been told that the will of the majority needs to hold sway and rule, that it’s all about respecting what the majority wants.

Now that a shift is occurring in society at large and within the churches, such that those opposed to full inclusion of gay people and gay lives in the churches are beginning to be in the minority, suddenly these issues become “serious” and demand a supermajority if we intend to entertain change. In light of that societal (and ecclesial)* shift, it’s fascinating to read the headlines of Archbishop Chaput’s influential Catholic News Agency reporting on the ELCA vote: CNA is reporting that the Lutherans have now established a “low threshold” for changes in their stance on gays in ministry.

A majority vote is now a low threshold? In whose universe and on what planet, I wonder? As Michael Bayly insightfully notes on his Wild Reed blog, Catholics could stand to learn something of value about catholicity from watching our Lutheran brothers and sisters engaging in dialogue at this ELCA assembly.

As Emily Eastwood of Lutherans Concerned points out (here and here), this procedural vote does not necessarily presage a majority vote on behalf of the ministry recommendation. Even so, it’s an important vote to note for two reasons.

First, the attempt to change the rules after years of simple majority votes were used to exclude openly gay ministry candidates in the ELCA provides a striking illustration of how procedural rules—and plain old Machiavellian treachery—have long been used in deliberations of church assemblies to stack the deck against those who call for decent treatment of gay and lesbian human beings. It’s time for those fighting against full inclusion of gays and lesbians to stop employing deceitful procedural tricks (and arguments) to support their cause. They are undermining the moral persuasiveness of their cause.

Second, the vote indicates that increasing numbers of Christians are becoming fed up with those deceitful tricks, and want open, respectful dialogue in their churches—not political maneuvers to keep dialogue at bay. I take heart from the ELCA vote, and I tip my hat to my Lutheran brothers and sisters for insisting that, whatever the outcome of this battle happens to be, it will at least be fought honorably and in the light.

Meanwhile (and as a counterpoint to this story), there’s the situation of the United Methodist Church. As a good friend of mine, an ordained minister and theologian with a foot in both the Presbyterian and the United Methodist Church emailed me to say this week, the UMC is actually moving backwards, when it comes to gay people and gay lives. I share that perception, and this development concerns me because 1) it’s at such variance with the Wesleyan tradition and the history of Methodism, and 2) Methodists exert great influence in American culture because they are the church of Main Street USA. As go Methodists, so goes the nation.

The homepage of the well-funded right-wing Institute on Religion and Democracy has a scrolling headline right now which is crowing that the Methodists have just defeated a “gay-related” membership policy. This links to an article by Daniel Burke at Christianity Today which notes that 27 of 44 UMC regional conferences rejected an amendment that would have prevented individual churches from denying membership to people simply because they are gay.

That amendment, which would have declared that membership in Methodist churches is open to "all persons, upon taking vows declaring the Christian faith, and relationship in Jesus Christ," was approved by delegates to last year’s UMC General Conference. Approval of it required a two-thirds vote by annual conferences. Of those annual conferences using the supermajority mechanism to continue telling gay people we are not welcome in Methodist churches, the large majority are in Southern states.

The same states that bent every rule possible in the 19th century to disenfranchise black voters and return African-American citizens to quasi-servitude. I’d like to encourage my Methodist brothers and sisters to take a good look at what just happened among their Lutheran brothers and sisters. Perhaps we can all learn valuable lessons from what the ELCA did on Monday evening.

* 61% of ELCA clergy recently reported to pollsters that they think the churches have a moral obligation to work for full inclusion of LGBT people in society.

Disinformation, Speaking Truth to Power, and the Ministry of Blogging

I have noted previously, valued friends, that I want to avoid focusing this blog on political discussion per se. As my profile statement indicates, I’m primarily interested in the intersection of religion and politics—in religious discourse that feeds into political discourse. As a theologian, I long ago committed myself (or, rather, I got committed by tidal waves in my own life beyond my control) to doing theology from an “interested” position—from the standpoint of any person or group reduced to non-person status by power structures beyond that person’s control). With such a focus, I cannot ever do theology while dispensing with social and political critique.

And vice versa: in American culture, for anyone interested in politics, it’s impossible to avoid theology. We are a nation with the soul of a church. Religious discourse permeates our public discourse.

The current election contests have been laden with religious rhetoric, from the impassioned discussion of the political role of the black church in the person of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to more subdued (but nonetheless critically important) analysis of the absolutely noxious ideas of zany televangelists whose influence reaches right into the center of our political (and socioeconomic) power structures. Though the Pat Robertsons, Parsleys, and Hagees may have waning power, they remain powerful nonetheless—and dangerous, because their preaching is tainted with toxic prejudice of one sort or another.

As I say, I do not want to make this blog overtly political. At the same time, because it focuses on the interface between religion and social change, there is no way around politics, particularly for those of us living in the United States.

All this as prelude: yesterday, for the first time in this presidential campaign, I received an email about which I’ve been reading on the internet. I imagine that variants of this email are circulating everywhere. It is interesting to me that the release of the email (or its transmission to me, at least) was timed to correspond with the announcement of Mr. Obama’s nomination victory.

The email contains an unbelievable spate of lies about Obama. It develops an elaborate conspiracy theory about how Islamic fundamentalists have planned his rise to power ever since 9/11—how he is being placed in the White House to clench the Muslim takeover of our nation.

You and I, cherished companions on the Way, know that this analysis is balderdash. It’s a pack of lies—and not subtle ones. It’s one gross lie.

We have the critical acumen to look at the story being recounted to us and to note the obvious disconnect with reality: the fact that Mr. Obama is a Christian and not a Muslim, for instance. We know immediately that the email is an ugly attempt to manipulate our consciousness, as if we are gullible fools who will open our mouths and swallow the bitter medicine of untruth anytime an authority figure offers it to us.

But you and I are not the whole world. And that worries me—not because we have superior knowledge or intellects, but because we go to the trouble of informing ourselves. Those transmitting these lies by techniques of mass communication count on many readers of their poisoned emails to swallow the medicine. Such emails are part of a disinformation campaign that is only now gearing up for its full push, now that Mr. Obama has the nomination.

The same day that I got this email, I noticed the blog threads of the Arkansas statewide “liberal” weekly, Arkansas Times, being inundated with postings. These, too, were obviously timed to correspond to the announcement that Mr. Obama had won the nomination. They, too, are full of venom and lies. Some posters purport to be Hillary Clinton supporters outraged at the selection of Mr. Obama, and determined to vote for Mr. McCain. Others—who have usernames echoing those of the “Hillary supporters—are Republicans gloating that the Democratic party has just flushed its chances of an election win down the tubes.

In both cases, the tactic is so childish, so obvious—to you and me. It is a divide-and-conquer tactic. It is a disinformation tactic, one that willingly employs lies, and willingly does so even in the name of God. We see this clearly. Many others do not, and those spreading the disinformation count on those others to believe what they are told.

In American politics, we are now on the verge of a disinformation campaign the likes of which we have not seen at any previous point in our history. The dissemination of lies will make adroit use of the internet. This will be a campaign of disinformation as opposed to misinformation.

Misinformation is what happens when we have not done sufficient research to confirm the truth of a story we are told, or when our sources are flawed but we do not know this. Disinformation is what happens when puppet masters like Adolph Hitler deliberately, cynically, with full knowledge of what they are doing, plant hateful lies in the consciousness of people to control what those people do.

If this campaign of disinformation succeeds (and it may do so: who thought Hitler would triumph, when he first entered the German political scene?), our democracy will be so impaired that it will, in my view, effectively cease to function. We are passing through a perilous moment in the development of the American democratic experiment, when truth-tellers can already be silenced by those with enough economic clout or access to legal power to shut the mouths of the truth-teller. The Bill of Rights has been very nearly gutted by the current administration.

If the campaign of disinformation now gearing up for full-throttle activity wins the day, participatory democracy will be over and done with. The dream of a Mary McLeod Bethune or a Martin Luther King, Jr., of a society in which everyone is invited to the table, in which those with wealth and power have no more entitlement to a voice in the dialogue that constitutes participatory democracy than the poor and powerless: that dream will end.

And what will churches do?

What are churches doing, already? As a theologian, I must keep pressing that question. It is my vocation to do so, and I have been given the gift of education so that I may put my theological training to use by teaching in every venue possible—and, above all, by using my voice on behalf of those whose voices are being stopped up by the power mongers of their social (and ecclesial) worlds.

What are the churches doing? As my posting yesterday notes, racism is alive and well in our society. So what are the churches doing? Clearly, not enough.

In a nation with the soul of a church, a nation where large numbers of people go each week to church and hear the Word of God broken like bread in sermons, in a nation where each Sunday, church members hear preachers point out the connections between God’s Word and how we live our daily lives, why does racism continue to have such a stranglehold on the American imagination?

If the churches are doing their business, why is racism alive and well among us?

What will the churches do, as the disinformation campaign gears up? Not enough, I must sadly conclude. Not nearly enough. Indeed, many of those swallowing the bitter medicine of disinformation will be church members. Indeed, not a few of those purveying the poison will be church members themselves, as well as pastors and leaders of churches.

In fact, one of the posters on the threads at Arkansas Times yesterday is, I have reason to believe, the pastor of a church. If not, he is, according to his own profession, an ardent churchgoer who has posted again and again about how acceptance of gay persons will cause our nation to burn in hell.

After the announcement that Mr. Obama has the nomination, he posted that the white house is not the black house . . . .

And so to blogs, the power of blogs, the necessity of blogs to counter disinformation campaigns: blogs as ministry. A few days ago, I posted a comment on a blog recommended by this blog, one I mentioned yesterday in my note of thanks to various blogs that have been linking to mine. This is the “Clerical Whispers” blog.

The webmaster for this site is an Irish priest who recently announced that he will be making a visit to Rome—one of the ad limina kind of visits that some bishops and priests are required to make to Rome periodically (as well as on occasions when the Vatican “invites” them to discuss issues).

When this priest, whose blog name is Sotto Voce, posted about his trip to Rome, a number of bloggers posted messages of support for the work he does on his blog. I did so, as well, noting that he is pioneering a new form of ministry within the Christian churches—a ministry of spreading information to which people desperately need access in a world in which disinformation campaigns are so active, so powerful, and so well-funded.

Those of us who do theology within a Catholic context know very well the mechanisms of censorship. We have watched it practiced again and again in our own lifetime, with prominent theologians. My own dissertation director, a Jesuit, has been silenced by Rome, forbidden to teach, told what he may or may not say in writing.

The Catholic church excels at censorship. It has had centuries of practice at the art of silencing troublesome voices. My church, after all (and horrific to admit), invented the Inquisition.

Because of its history of censorship and the power it once wielded to censor free speech, the Catholic church is crucially concerned today about the spread of the internet, and about the wide development of blogging. How does one censor the free speech of countless bloggers around the globe, who may or may not be ordained, people over whom the church has no institutional control other than the threat of excommunication?

Many of these issues have been coming to a head recently in English-speaking areas of the Catholic church, including Australia, Canada, and the U.S. They are coming to a head because of the publication of the book Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church, published recently by retired bishop Geoffrey Robinson in Australia.

Bishop Robinson is now traveling through Canada and the U.S. to talk about the need for reform in the Catholic church. He calls for a democratization of the structures of the church that, in his view, would go a long way towards resolving the horrible problem of clerical abuse of minors, which is rooted in abuse of authority by the ordained members of the church.

Because of his views, Bishop Robinson is being hounded by those seeking to silence him. Bishops in both the U.S. and Canada have tried to forbid him to speak in their dioceses. His brother bishops in Australia have issued a mass condemnation of his book, though a few courageous bishops in that nation have publicly defended him and his right of free speech. The organization Voice of the Faithful has, by contrast, presented Bishop Robinson with an award for his valuable ministry to the gospel.

The attempt to silence Bishop Robinson has extended to the blog world, where those supporting the bishop often find themselves bullied and attacked by other bloggers, whose goal is clearly to shut down the conversation. There have been behind-the-scenes maneuvers to shut down blogs dedicated to pursuing this conversation—ineffectual attempts, given the right of bloggers to free speech, insofar as we do not violate the ethics codes of our blogsites, engage in illegal behavior, or fail to adhere to other legal covenants we may have made regarding what we say and publish.

I am discussing the case of Bishop Robinson at length because I want to make a point—one intimately related to the analysis with which I began, to the disinformation campaign now underway in the American political arena. Blogging can be—of this I am more and more convinced—an extremely valuable ministry within the Christian church.

Bloggers have the ability to counter disinformation by seeking and telling the truth. Bloggers have the possibility to speak truth to power, when disinformation is emanating from either social or ecclesial power centers and has behind it all the economic clout and force of those who occupy such power centers.

Bloggers have the ability to participate in what the Jewish tradition calls the healing of the world—the fundamental vocation for one who walks the Jewish way of faith. Telling the truth, especially when lies are being used to oppress and marginalize others, heals social wounds. Telling the truth places on the table information about the humanity of despised Others whose dehumanization and demonization serves the interest of power centers of church and society. With information at our fingertips, we can spot when we are being manipulated, lied to, used to deepen the wounds of the world and the despised of the earth. With information, we can engage in the ministry of healing.

Above all, blogging is (particularly for educator-theologians such as me) a new and potentially very effective way of carrying on the teaching ministry of the churches. Though we are a nation with the soul of a church, we Americans, we are abysmally ignorant, when it comes to religion and religious ideas. Many of us are fixated at the level a grade-school religious education, when it comes to religious ideas. Many of us have not advanced even to adolescence in our knowledge or understanding of religious issues.

This makes us sitting ducks for those who want to use religion to manipulate our political choices. It is critically important that the churches support and not undermine the ministry of blogging, insofar as this ministry exposes churchgoers to religious ideas and information that counter hateful disinformation campaigns.

As the disinformation campaign rolls out in this election process, it will be interesting to see how the churches react—and, in particular, how they react to the attempt of bloggers to keep accurate information about religion and its intersection with politics in the mind of the public. E.J. Dionne’s book Souled Out, which I’ve cited repeatedly on this blog, suggests that the political alliances of Christians are now cross-denominational.

People with right-wing political ideas and agendas have made common cause with those who have similar agendas and ideas, across denominational lines. There are very powerful Catholic theological-political movements that have joined forces with similar movements within Protestant evangelical churches, despite the differing theologies of these churches. The same may be said for progressive movements in the political and religious spheres.

A corollary of Dionne’s analysis is that the attempt to censor the speaking of truth to power within one religious context may easily spill over into other religious contexts. Even when Catholic bishops and Episcopal bishops or Methodist bishops have widely divergent theologies, they may well make common cause with each other in seeking to control unfettered critical analysis of theological and political ideas within churches other than their own—insofar as these power figures within various churches have bought into socially regressive agendas, and want to use religious ideas to support their attacks on progressive movements.

Blogging will play an increasingly vital role in our political sphere, and, in particular, in the vexed terrain in which volatile religious and political ideas come together. If the power centers who wish to suppress free speech today and to spread disinformation are not successful, blogging will—of this I am sure—one day become a significant ministry within churches that seek to explore the everyday applications of religious belief.

The Sounds of Silence

“I have never heard a sermon that offered wisdom as to how a gay man should live his life in a faithful Christian manner. All I have heard is silence, or when there was something other than silence, the words have been condemning" ~ Rev. Paul Capetz.

Presbyterian News Service for Jan. 28 carries an interesting article by Duane Sweep, entitled "Twin Cities' Presbytery Restores Capetz' Ordination (www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2008/08063.htm).

The story concerns a Presbyterian (PC USA) minister Paul Capetz, who renounced his ordination in 2000 after the PC USA added to its Book of Discipline a 1997 statement requiring ordained ministers to practice “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and woman or chastity in singleness.”

As many commentators noted at the time the policy was implemented, it was primarily aimed at lesbian and gay ministers living with partners--that is, lesbian-gay ministers who potentially might reveal their sexual orientation to the public, rather than living silent, closeted lives. Commentators in the Presbyterian church and other churches that have adopted similar policies note that they tend to be used almost exclusively to weed out openly gay-lesbian ministers. Straight (or straight-identifying) ministers who are unmarried are not normally subjected to such stringent scrutiny re: their "celibacy" as are lesbian-gay ones.

Capetz recently decided to ask for reinstatement to ordination, on the ground that the implied "vow of celibacy" that the PC USA requires of non-married clergy represents a theology of "works righteousness" antithetical to Reformed theology. His appeal was upheld on Jan. 26 by the presbytery of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

What strikes me in Capetz's testimony to the presbytery, as reported in the article cited above, is the pronounced theme of calling and witness running through it. Capetz reports that it was the church which, from childhood forward, nurtured his life of faith. It was within the church that, as a young man, he discovered a strong sense of vocation, a calling to follow in Jesus's footsteps and minister to his flock.

And it was the same church--the church that had nurtured him and provided a context within which he heard the calling to ministry--that then attacked him when he sought to integrate the experience of being gay with his vocation. It was that church that told him to live in silence about his very personhood, or incur penalties.

It is out of this painful exclusion that Capetz addresses his experience (and that of other openly gay-lesbian believers) in the church: either silence or condemnation; either the injunction (tacit or spoken) to remain hidden, defined the shameful member of the family who is never spoken of, or direct assaults on his personhood, from the very community that nurtured his faith and vocation.

Capetz's testimony strikes me powerfully, because his story could be mine. It is also the story of countless other LGBT members of Christian communities around the world, whose entire experience of grace and vocation is framed by our natures, by who we are, by what we have experienced as LGBT children of God. We experience the divine as LGBT persons. We cannot experience God in any other way. To ask us to deny our natures or pretend to be who we are not is to ask us to forfeit the experience of a God who comes to each person just as that person is....We experience God through the mediating structures of our own personhood, of our personalities, predispositions, our unique way of being in the world.

The ultimate cruelty of the churches' assault on us as LGBT persons--specifically and precisely because we are LGBT--is the churches' denial that we lead graced lives. In telling us that our nature is malformed, or that our love is inauthentic, the churches tell us that we have no witness of grace to offer the Christian community.

Yet the powerful testimony of LGBT Christians everywhere--there is a veritable cloud of witnesses--repudiates the validity of the church's judgment of us. Not only can we live lives of grace, vocational lives within the Christian community, we do live such lives.

To their shame, the churches are unable to recognize this. The loss is surely the churches' loss. In behaving so savagely, by excluding LGBT members who refuse to live in quiet shame, not only do churches undercut their claims to be church: the family of God in which everyone is welcome. In behaving thus, the churches also diminish the significance of their many ministries to heal, make whole, right the wrongs of society.

The churches cannot stand to claim for love, inclusion, healing, and justice, when they conspicuously deny those ideals by their shameful treatment of their gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered members.

Silence is never an adequate response to persons in need of love, affirmation, and healing. The Jewish and Christian scriptures show prophets and holy people, as well as Jesus, consistently reaching out to anyone in need, to speak words of healing and consolation. God is forever speaking....

A church that employs silence as a way of avoiding speaking words of healing and blessing to one group of human beings can hardly speak effective words of healing and blessing to others. Silence is an indefensible response on the part of churches to anyone in need.

Between silence and condemnation: this is not a place in which human beings can live and thrive.