The Story of the Refusal of the Episcopal Cathedral in Orlando to Baptize the Son of a Gay Couple: My Reflections

For a variety of reasons, I've been following with some interest the story of the refusal of Anthony Clark, dean of the Episcopal cathedral in Orlando, St. Luke, to baptize the baby of a married gay couple, Rich and Eric McCaffrey. I first became aware of the story a few days ago when Faithful America sent out an email asking people to sign a petition calling on the bishop of the diocese, Greg Brewer, to assure that no priest in his diocese refuse baptism to a child on the basis of the sexual orientation of the parents. The petition states,

Struggle for Gay Welcome and Inclusion in United Methodist Churches: A Report from the Ground, Tampa, Florida

The struggle about justice and inclusion, about love and compassion for those who are made gay by God, is hardly confined to the Catholic church, by the way. For a gripping (and painful) report about this struggle within a single United Methodist congregation--Palma Ceia UMC in Tampa, Florida--read John Masters's recent posting at his Deep Something blog site. John has been a United Methodist for 54 years, and has been working patiently and assiduously in recent years to help his Palma Ceia church fashion a truly hospitable space for gay people seeking a church home.

Cooking to Save the Planet: Buttermilk Pie

A friend emailed me for my birthday and, among other things, told me that she particularly enjoys reading the food pieces I occasionally post here.  Since several other followers of this blog have told me the same, and because this is a friend I particularly esteem for reasons I'll explain in a moment, I thought I might share with you my aunt's recipe for buttermilk pie.  

In Higher Education News: Bethune-Cookman University President Trudie Kibbe Reed Resigns/Retires

In the world of higher education, a very strange story now coming out of Bethune-Cookman University in Florida: as Michael Stratford reports  in the Chronicle of Higher Education yesterday, the university president, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, has retired in the middle of the academic year.  At least, that appears to be the story.  But getting a clear picture of whether this is a resignation or a retirement or why it's taking place: that's another story altogether.

Walking the Walk: Values Education, In Memory of Stephanie Tubbs Jones

TGIF. One of those weeks (I feel sure many of us have them) when you ask, at the end, how you got through. No real reason for the despondency, and no major crises—just (but a big “just”!) the noonday devil, which for me, seems to prance all the more through the dog days of summer.

I was thinking earlier in the week of some of my methods of powering through, when spirit flags. Increasingly, I find spiritual sustenance less in scripture (in any of the officially sanctioned holy books of the world religions) than in things like poems.

Poems reach places inside that scripture can’t, sometimes. The words of holy books are so familiar, so overworn and overused, that they have lost their potent surprise. Their coinage has been so debased by those who sling them around like formulaic answers to complex questions or weapons to decapitate others with, that it’s hard not to read bibles some days without seeing the faces of those who debase their words—and being repulsed at the very thought that these words can be holy, misused as they are by some believers.

So I turn to poetry. Which condenses complex thought into few words. Words that evoke rather than dictate, that lead outward (to the natural world and the world of human community) or inward, to self-examination. Words that fire rather than cripple imagination, as so many scriptures do, given how they have been abused.

In times like this, I read (as if they are scripture: and they are) Rumi. Emily Dickinson. Mary Oliver. Rilke and Garcia Lorca. I do have to admit that reading Emily Dickinson often makes me ask, “What the hell did she just say?” Then I read the same poem again—and perhaps another time—and ask again, “Now what the hell did she just say?”

A wonderful e-friend of mine, the emerita dean of a Methodist seminary, who is also an ordained Presbyterian minister, sent me a clipping this week from the Christian Century, in which John M. Buchanan notes how psalm-like Mary Oliver’s poems are, in their minute observation of nature, where Oliver never fails to find revelatory possibility. It gave me heart to learn 1) that somehow my dog-day doldrums were evoking a thoughtful response in the heart of a friend with whom I haven’t really discussed them, and 2) that I’m not the only person in the world who sits down in a rocker early in the morning to read Mary Oliver side by side with a psalm from scripture.

(I also learn from Buchanan that, after the death of her partner of 40 years, Molly Malone Cook, Oliver published a collection of Cook’s photos. I have now added Our World to my must-read list).

And now for a continuation of yesterday’s end-of-week news summary, catching up on items about which I’ve previously blogged.

Continuing the Florida Story

Yesterday’s posting alludes to my reasons for following news from Florida with particular keenness. Besides seeking to work out the traumatic experiences we had in our period of work in Florida, and to integrate those into our professional and spiritual lives, Steve and I also have a house in Florida. Which we bought as a result of promises made to us by a devout Methodist who then broke those promises, and who has never sought to repair the breach of friendship and mere humanity she effected when she did this.

As an aside (but it’s not really an aside, is it?—it’s the marrow of gay life lived in the shadow of the churches), it strikes me as interesting that gay human beings are among the only people the churches feel no obligation to apologize to, when they abuse us. When they break promises to us. When they lie to us. When they lie about us. When they issue statements of “teachings” that they know full well will result in terrible suffering for gay human beings and anyone who loves us. When they make glib statements about justice, equality, and welcome, that obviously apply to everyone but us.

What’s going on with this dynamic, I wonder? I do have some ideas, lots of them . . . .

So, with a house in Florida, we follow Florida news. We don’t have any other choice, as responsible citizens and unwilling owners of Florida property.

Florida continues in the news as a battleground state for gay rights, in part, due to polls that indicate Florida may be shifting away from the Republicans and towards the Democrats in the upcoming elections, and in part, because, once again, vicious right-wing Christian special interest groups who have found it useful to demonize gays in previous elections, in order to bring out “Christian” voters for the Republican ticket, are trying to amend the Florida constitution to “protect” marriage.

A reflection of the keen interest with which many voters (including those of us in the gay community) are following Florida stories today is the choice of the Bilerico blog to add a Florida-specific blog to its site. The new blog is at http://florida.bilerico.com.

Today’s Florida Bilerico contains a wonderful posting by Bishop Mahee entitled “What Are Black Conservatives Conserving?” Mahee does an outstanding job of exposing the vicious politics of right-wing “Christians” who are now trying to exploit tensions between African Americans and gays in battleground states like Florida. She also calls onto the carpet those African Americans who are willing to participate in this politics of demonization and hatred. She asks,

When did we as Black folk get the revelation of homosexuality as the new sin and join forces with the same people who just yesterday wanted to keep their race pure and made intercultural marriages illegal? Now they come to our churches, developed in part because we could not even sit next to them in their churches, spewing more divisive politics.

Florida remains in the news as well because of a story about which I blogged some time ago—the attempt of David Davis, principal of Ponce de Leon High School, to outlaw any show of solidarity with gay people on the part of the school’s students (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/05/democracy-ongoing-battle-shifting-faces.html). Davis’s ban against solidarity extended even to a ban on display of rainbows, which, he maintains, lead students automatically to think of dirty sex.

The ACLU sued the school district on behalf of student Heather Gillman, who was specifically targeted by Principal Davis. At the end of July, Judge Richard Smoak of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of FL handed down an order in this case (see www.aclu.org/lgbt/youth/36150lgl20080724.html). Smoak finds that Davis engaged in a “witch hunt” and “relentless crusade” against gay students at the school, holding “morality assemblies” to try to enforce conformity to his own religiously based moral views about homosexuality. The ruling protects the rights of students to engage in free speech and assembly, even when a principal has peculiar religious views that contest this right in cases such as Gillman’s.

Subsequent news reports indicate that Davis has widespread support in Ponce de Leon (see http://florida.bilerico.com/2008/08/remember_the_anti-gay_florida_principle.php). Citizens interviewed about the controversy stress their religious views that homosexuality is morally wrong, and depict the community as gentle, peaceful, and Christian—that is, for those who aren’t openly gay, it would appear.

As I’ve noted before, Florida is clearly a place where churches like the United Methodist Church—which claims many influential adherents in Florida and has prestigious educational institutions there—have their work cut out (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/07/hate-crime-in-daytona-beach-continuing.html, http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/05/democracy-ongoing-battle-shifting-faces.html, http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/05/holy-conferencing-as-love-building.html). Something seems awry when a community sees itself as gentle, peaceful, and Christian, but targets a despised minority group in witch hunts and crusades.

With its policy of non-discrimination against gay persons, with its stress on churches that have open doors, open minds, and open hearts, the United Methodist Church could make an important pastoral impact on Florida. And, since teaching people in a pluralistic democratic society to respect the fundamental rights of others is also clearly an educational challenge, the important United Methodist institutions of higher learning in Florida have the opportunity to make a significant educational contribution to the state by addressing these issues.

I’ve noted previously that the premier accrediting body for teacher-preparation programs, the National Council of Accreditation for Teacher Education (NCATE), has added to its accrediting expectations stipulations that teacher education programs must address issues of sexual orientation in the formation of prospective teachers, and that NCATE-accredited colleges must demonstrate respect for diversity around issues of sexual orientation in their institutional life (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/05/umc-university-senate-historic.html, http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/03/teaching-youth-not-to-hate.html). With its highly regarded universities in Florida and its Social Principles forbidding discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, the United Methodist Church can do much to address social divisions that are resulting in outright violence against gay and lesbian human beings in this state.

Once again, I call on Bishop Timothy Whitaker of the Florida United Methodist Conference to consider very seriously the ways in which his church and his educational institutions can address this important social issue in Florida. Silence is not sufficient.

Continuing the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) Story

Since I have also blogged previously (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/08/spin-spin-spin-citizen-blogging-and.html) about a story from Arkansas higher education that has attracted national attention—a controversy surrounding the current president of the University of Central Arkansas (UCA)—I want to update readers about the latest developments in this story.

Yesterday, our statewide free weekly Arkansas Times reported that the faculty senate at UCA has met to address the issues, which include allegations that UCA President Lu Hardin has acted imperiously as president, that he and his board of trustees inappropriately awarded him pay raises without sufficient public notice, and that Hardin has produced documents with the electronic signatures of vice-presidents who did not write or sign the documents (see www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2008/08/post_22.aspx#comments).

As an educator with a particular interest in values education, I’m most interested in two aspects of this story. As I noted in my previous posting about the story, higher education is driven these days all too often by numbers. It has become a numbers game, a game in which presidents who can produce higher figures (showing increasing numbers of students and increased revenue) are rewarded by boards of trustees.

Many boards of trustees in higher education today give the impression that the numbers game is all they care about. The ethical lapses, the moral corners-cutting of presidents, seem too often to be winked at, as long as the figures look good.

That is, until something breaks open—as has happened at UCA—and the underbelly of the numbers-driven institution begins to appear for public inspection.

As the lively discussion on the Arkansas Times blog to which I link above demonstrates, citizens are intently interested in the disparity between the values that institutions of higher learning profess, and the values they actually live. There is a strong awareness among the educated public that colleges and universities exist to serve the common good of civil society, by inculcating the core values needed for good citizenship in civil society.

Two aspects of the UCA story—and its dissection by citizen bloggers at the Arkansas Times website—interest me, therefore. One is the disservice boards of trustees do to the institutions they govern when they ignore the values questions and focus solely on the numbers game.

Trustees have an important responsibility to ask whether a president, in her or his leadership of a college, embodies and encourages the core values the institution seeks to teach students. Trustees have a weighty charge to look behind the veil of the numbers and see what is really going on at the institution they govern—not to mention whether the glowing figures presented to them are accurate and not cooked.

UCA has been booming: more students, more income, new this and that. Now the boom looks, well . . . otherwise . . . given what this story is revealing about apparent lapses of ethical and managerial responsibility on the part of the institution’s board of trustees.

The other aspect of the story that interests me is something I discuss above, when I look at the potential contribution of church-related institutions of higher learning in Florida, to that state’s cultural and political life. This is the significant role colleges play through teaching values.

In the social contract institutions of higher learning have traditionally made with the public at large in American society, values are right at the core of a liberal arts education. Within the framework of that social contract, it is impossible to claim to be educated unless one has been educated to understand and embody values. Among the core values that drive both our institutions of higher learning and society at large are concern for the common good, respect for diversity, understanding of and willingness to dialogue with those deemed other than ourselves, concern to reach out to those marginalized within the structures of participatory democracy—and, of course, those solid core values necessary for any society to function well, including fidelity to one’s word, fair play, a sense of justice, and so on.

When leaders of higher institutions—including presidents and governing boards—do not seem conspicuously to care about these core values, to embody them, to inculcate them throughout the curriculum (and the life) of the institutions they lead, then it is impossible to teach these values to students. We teach what we live, first and foremost.

UCA is a public institution. Citizens hold it to accountability because our tax dollars support it. We have a vested interest in seeing it fulfill its part of the social contract—educating students who respect and live core values essential to civil society—because our money translates into its mission.

Even though church-related colleges and universities do not rely wholly on public funding, they, too, benefit largely from tax dollars. And because American higher education is blessed with an abundance of faith-based colleges and universities, citizens have another reason to look to these institutions to fulfill their part of the social contract to produce values-oriented graduates. So many of our citizens are educated in these institutions, that we all suffer if these institutions fail to do their job.

Unfortunately, while public institutions are held legally accountable by state and federal laws to teach (and embody) core values such as respect for diversity, many church colleges and universities still seek to claim religiously-based exemption, when the particular form of diversity at stake is respect for gay and lesbian persons. In the interest of the common good, of building a viable participatory democracy, it seems to me imperative that church-affiliated colleges and universities no longer be permitted to engage in discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

How do we produce citizens who serve the common good and build a participatory democracy when we allow church-affiliated institutions of higher learning to betray such a core value of pluralistic society as respect for diversity? What happens at places like Ponce de Leon high school—and there are many such places throughout the nation—is an illustration of the kind of society we are building, when we do not inculcate the celebration of difference and otherness, across the board, through our educational institutions and in our churches.

And because I often carp, I want to end this posting with praise. I want to praise an outstanding citizen who demonstrates what we can accomplish when we reach across the barriers that separate us by race, religion, gender, sexual orientation.

This week, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the first African-American woman to represent Ohio in Congress, died suddenly. Though Jones was not a member of the LGBT community, gay internet news and blog sites are overflowing this week with statements of praise of Jones for her consistent stands in support of gay rights, and for her willingness to defend gay persons even when such support might have endangered her professional career and when it drew fire from other African Americans.

Stephanie Tubbs Jones was a great American, one who exemplified the core values of the civil society we claim we want. In her willingness to reach across social barriers, and in her concern to bring everybody to the table of participatory democracy, she has often reminded me of Mary McLeod Bethune. I hope (and believe) that she will be remembered with as much gratitude as Dr. Bethune is now remembered for her contributions to building a better society and living the values necessary to make democracy work.

Update on Churches of Main Street USA: Better Angels of Our Nature?

I talked and talked yesterday (and then talked some more). I’m tired of hearing my own voice, and I feel sure many of you must be, too.

Today, I want to shift gears and provide some tidbits from recent news stories that follow through on items about which I’ve previously posted on this blog.

One of my primary points in what I wrote yesterday is that, whether we like it or not, we are living through a civil war today, regarding where (or whether) to fit gay and lesbian human beings into our world. Into our social and our ecclesial worlds.

The right has made this an issue, and the battle is underway. As with any civil war, there is no option of standing on the sidelines and refusing to take a stand. Neutrality is an illusion, which benefits those with most power in the social or ecclesial worlds we inhabit.

Neutrality benefits those who want to target gay people, to use our lives as pawns in political games we cannot control. Church people who profess love while doing nothing and saying nothing to stop the spiritual violence being enacted by both many social and many ecclesial forces today are aiding, abetting, siding with, and doing the dirty work of those targeting gay human beings.

As the American Civil War began, Abraham Lincoln appealed to us to decide whether we want to listen to the better angels of nature, or to other angels that would continue pandering to the lowest instincts of humanity. In civil wars such as the one underway now in church and society about where (or whether) to fit gay human beings in, we can listen either to those better angels or to the others—to those who want to continue savage structures of demonization and exclusion of gay brothers and sisters, and of spiritual and physical violence towards gay human persons.

In the stories that follow, I leave it up to you to decide which angels are being heard by those who appear in the stories, and the churches they represent. The better angels of our nature? Or the other ones?

Following Up on The United Methodist Church Story

The following two stories are from the latest newsletter of the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) (www.rmnetwork.org/Flashnet_show.asp?FlashnetID=171#5).

The first story excerpts comments of Helen King, winner of this year’s RMN Hilton award, which is given annually to members of the RMN parents’ network for exemplary service to the RMN mission of inclusion. The award is given in honor of Rev. Bruce and Rev. Virginia Hilton, UMC ministers who worked for years (Rev. Bruce Hilton died this year) on behalf of justice and against racial, gender-based, and homophobic discrimination.

Helen King’s words are poignant. I hope the churches can hear these words, since they are words that thousands and thousands of churched family members of LGBT persons might say today. They are words both of pain and of hope—a hope that cannot be fulfilled until the churches first hear the pain and choose to stop inflicting it. In her acceptance speech at the Hilton banquet, Helen King stated:

I am a native of North Carolina and a life long Methodist raised in the Wesleyan culture of love, acceptance, nurture of faith that began in the cradle. I married the son of a Methodist minister and our son is a United Methodist minister. However, when our daughter came out to us 15 years ago, I knew instinctively that the United Methodist Church would be the last place that I could go for understanding. So for a year and a half, after a lifetime of active service in the church, my husband and I stopped attending church.

I knew instinctively that the United Methodist Church would be the last place that I could go for understanding. What a profound indictment of any church.

These are words that might be said about many churches today, in how they and their members treat gay and lesbian human beings and those who stand in solidarity with us.

Is this the future we want to build together, in church and society? Better angels? Or the other ones?

Helen King’s words are echoed by a Methodist minister in Texas, who also spoke at the RMN Hilton banquet this year. Like Helen King, Rev. Bill Taylor has found his life turned upside down due to his refusal to repudiate a gay son.

And those turning his life upside down are fellow Christians, those who kneel at the communion rail with him, who read scripture with him, who pray for an increase of charity right beside him in church. In his address to the Hilton banquet, Rev. Taylor noted his joy and his wife’s when they were sent by the United Methodist Church to minister in Conroe, Texas, after he had served on the Bishop’s Cabinet.

His ministry was successful beyond all his dreams: the church grew in membership; numbers of those attending church leapt; the church’s budget doubled and its debt dwindled.

And then, Rev. Taylor notes, “the wheels came off.” His oldest child, Dawson, told his parents that he is gay. On hearing this announcement, Rev. Dawson followed time-honored Wesleyan tradition: he took the matter to God in fervent prayer:

For a year I prayed fervently that God would change Dawson and make him “normal” – a heterosexual like his parents – or I asked God to change me to be fully accepting of him, his sexuality, and his life. My prayers were answered. Slowly, not even realizing that I was changing, I began to be accepting, not only of Dawson, but of all who are a part of the LGBT community.

And then things began to fall apart. Rev. Taylor and his wife began to taste the cup prepared for gay and lesbian persons by many Christians today. Rumors circulated in his congregation that he did not believe the bible. Gatherings at which he spoke became occasions for some church members to spy on him, to twist and circulate his words in malicious ways among his congregation.

As a result, he has experienced severe health problems and has asked for a sabbatical. But his hope and courage remain undaunted. As Rev. Taylor informs the RMN audience, “They may destroy my career, but not my soul. And the truth must be told. So it’s in that spirit that I share with you some of our story.”

Is this the future we want to build together, in church and society? Better angels? Or the other ones?

Following Up on the Catholic Church Story

As I noted in a previous posting, plans are underway to exhume John Henry Cardinal Newman from the grave he shares with his lifelong companion and fellow priest, Ambrose St. John. The ostensible reason the Vatican has given for this exhumation is to facilitate veneration of Newman as his cause of canonization is being considered by Rome.

Some advocates of gay and lesbian rights see a murkier motive in this action, however. As Bess Twiston Davies reported in the Times (London) this week, Peter Tatchell has accused the Vatican of engaging in “an act of moral vandalism” in overturning Newman’s explicitly stated final wishes, and separating him in death from St. John (www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4566639.ece). In Tatchell’s view, “The re-burial has only one aim in mind: to cover up Newman's homosexuality and to disavow his love for another man. It is an act of shameless dishonesty and personal betrayal by the gay-hating Catholic Church.”

A spokesperson for Catholic Action UK responds to Tatchell’s charges by stating that Tatchell’s position represents a typical “trick of homosexual activists.” Catholic Action UK is a right-wing political activist group that purports to represent “the” Catholic position on issues moral and political. Like its counterparts in the United States, it issues so-called Catholic voters’ guides urging Catholics to vote solely on the basis of a handful of “non-negotiable” issues including gay marriage and abortion. It has called for boycotts of the largest Catholic charity in the UK, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, and of Amnesty International. According to groups monitoring its political activities (including Catholics for a Free Choice), the organization has been less than forthcoming about its funding sources (see www.catholicsforchoice.org/topics/international/documents/2005catholicactiongroupfactsheet.pdf).

Where are the better angels in the preceding story, I wonder? Those of us who continue to claim some connection to the Catholic church—despite its clearly demonstrated record of spiritual violence towards its gay children at this point in history—have no choice except to try to discern, and to choose where we stand.

In another posting recently, I noted that the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s organization, recently came perilously close to endorsing the Republican presidential candidate at the international meeting of this organization in Québec. A news story that broke yesterday is that the Knights of Columbus have donated $1 million to groups supporting Proposition 8 in California—the proposition intended to overturn gay marriage in that state (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/08/prop-8-post.html).

To which angels of our nature are the good Knights appealing, I wonder? I have serious doubts about whether it's to the better angels.

Following Up on the Story of the Anglican Communion

In a number of postings, I have noted the adroit use by the right of the tactic of race-baiting in the Anglican communion, to try to drive a wedge between people of color in worldwide Anglicanism and supporters of LGBT human beings. Because this tactic has been highly successful in drumming up resistance to gay persons among some African Anglicans, I was heartened to read Daniel Burke’s “Raising Issues of Race in Anglican Rift” recently in the Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/08/AR2008080803256.htmla report).

Burke notes that eight African-American Episcopal bishops attended the recent Lambeth Conference, and spoke out eloquently against the attempt of right-wing groups to drive a racial wedge within the Anglican communion in order to further an anti-gay agenda. As Bishop Eugene T. Sutton of Maryland notes, it is ironic in the extreme that American Episcopalians now turning to Africa as a bulwark against gay rights have historically had almost no connection to African Americans in the U.S.: "It's something that I like to point out, the historical anomaly of dioceses that have nothing to do with the black community going all the way to Africa to make these relationships.”

Sutton notes that Episcopal groups in the U.S. turning to Africa to demonstrate their diversity, while working to exclude gay people from Episcopal churches, are “looking for black faces to give them legitimacy because they can't find them at home.” The African-American bishops at Lambeth also note that the abuse of Scripture by some Episcopalians to bash gay people brings to mind the use of the bible in previous eras to support slavery and racism.

Who stands with the better angels of our nature in the Anglican communion today?

Following Up on the Presbyterian Church Story

I blogged some time ago about the decision of Presbyterian General Assembly this past June to overturn that church’s ban against the ordination of openly gay ministry candidates. This decision must be ratified by two-thirds of the nation’s presbyteries, and various indicators suggest that it will not receive sufficient votes to be enacted—particularly among presbyteries of the South.

Meanwhile, I would like to share some heartening news from my own community. I’ve noted the protest by Westboro Baptist church at the funeral of Bill Gwatney this week. This funeral took place at Pulaski Heights Methodist church, near which I live.

On the day of Bill Gwatney’s funeral, as I drove in the direction of that church, I passed another church that also has the name Pulaski Heights—Pulaski Heights Presbyterian church. This is a church about which I know little, though its church hall is my voting precinct and a cousin of mine was once a member of this church.

When I passed the church, I noted a new banner across the columns that form the church’s porch. It stated in huge letters that the church is welcoming and affirming.

As every church should be, no questions asked, if it hopes to be any kind of church at all—any kind of church that can appeal to Jesus as its originator. Since this story is right in my own back yard, I’ll answer the question about which angels I believe this church is reflecting: the church’s decision to advertise itself as a welcoming and affirming church reflects the better angels of its congregation’s nature, and of the churches of Main Street USA in general.

And at a very personal level, I'd like to add the following observation. Vis-a-vis the churches, we in America are all consumers. We choose our church communities based on their ability to meet our needs, just as consumers of material goods shop among various purveyors of those goods to find the most effective suppliers. Key among those needs when we look for a church home are affirmation, acceptance, support, community, and access to spiritual resources. These are what church is all about, when it truly acts as church.

I grew up, as it were, between the Methodist and the Presbyterian church in question. Both are a block from my grandmother's house, which was the center of my life from infancy up to the death of the last family member who lived in that house, a few years ago.

I know the Methodist church particularly well, because it has a vibrant community that was very helpful to Steve and me as we provided care for my mother in the final years of her life. The church sponsors an eldercare respite program.

Given the choice today, however, I would not ever attend a service in that Methodist church willingly, though I have been encouraged by friends who go there to accompany them. Why?

The answer is starkly simple. It's one churches need to hear, if they want to attract religious "consumers."

For me, the "brand" of Methodism will now forever be tainted by Steve's and my horrific experiences at a United Methodist university in Florida, under the pastoral supervision of Bishop Timothy Whitaker. What we experienced there was outright discrimination of the most vicious sort, discrimination premised on our sexual orientation.

Bishop Whitaker has strong reason to know this. The United Methodist ministers who sit on the board of the university in question have strong reason to know this.

Yet, to my knowledge, not a single one of these men of the cloth has raised any critical question about the violation of United Methodist principles in how Steve and I were treated. The president of the university in question has strong ties to the United Methodist church, at an institutional level. (S)he has been allowed to represent herself/himself as the better angel of this ugly story, and Steve and me as fallen angels--though the facts demonstrate otherwise. (S)he has even been rewarded by the church through an honorific appointment after what (s)he did to us. What this president did was done with the active complicity of an ordained Methodist minister who is a retired president* of a seminary.

I have seen nothing, heard nothing, which indicates that any minister on the board of the university in question has challenged that minister's extremely unethical and savage behavior to two employees of a Methodist university with which he is associated, who were vilified solely due to their sexual orientation.

I hope that the churches of Main Street USA can understand: this is how it is. Kick people in the teeth, and you will not attract them to your church. Treat them like human refuse, and never apologize or ask forgiveness, and you will not convince them to listen to your preaching. How can they hear, when they are kicked to the gutter and treated as garbage?

I am now as alienated from the Methodist church by my experiences at this university in Florida as I am from my own Catholic church, due to my very similar experiences with my church.

But I will definitely consider going to the Presbyterian church I have identified. I will definitely send donations to it. I have friends who have been inviting me to their Presbyterian churches, and I intend to show my gratitude to the church near me for its courageous action, by attending its services in the future.

No church is perfect. I do not expect perfection from any church. What I do expect is simple, mere humanity, mere honesty, just treatment, bread rather than stones. That is what anyone expects from any church that seeks to appeal to the better angels of our natures. Just as I would not return to a restaurant or a shop in which I receive discourteous or disrespectful treatment, unless the establishment in question addressed my critical concerns and apologized for its lack of service, I will not go to churches that preach about better angels but do not live the message they preach.

I know of and am deeply impressed by many Methodists, and I do not wish to do these good people an injustice. Even so, given Steve's and my experiences at a Methodist institution--and, above all, the total lack of any Methodist pastoral response to us in and following those responses--I completely understand lifelong Methodist Helen King's statement, I knew instinctively that the United Methodist Church would be the last place that I could go for understanding.

Yes. That is my judgment, too, based on my experiences with the Methodist church, just as it is my judgment about my own Catholic church based on my eerily similar experiences with my own church.

We are ineluctably affected, by better or for worse, by our experiences with any community, whether it be a workplace or a church. And we choose to affiliate with that community based on those experiences. It's as simple as that, in the consumer society we inhabit . . . .

*In several previous postings, I have referred to this gentleman as the retired dean of a seminary. I was incorrect in doing so. My research has led me to realize that he was president of the seminary from which he retired.

The Divine Order Argument Unmasked: More Evidence from Florida

Sometimes, blogworld reality seems realer than reality itself.

Case in point: just yesterday, I blogged at length (I know: I blab) about how Protestant evangelicals today eager for ammunition to use against gay human beings are intent on adopting Catholic natural law rhetoric about the divine ordering of sexuality. Never mind that natural law theology is fundamentally antithetical to the traditions now using it, or that their pick-and-choose adoption of it conspicuously ignores draconian implications that go beyond the anti-homosexual—e.g., its prohibition of the use of artificial contraception or its claim that every act of masturbation is intrinsically evil and more seriously sinful than rape, which has, at least, procreative possibility.

And never mind that significant theological work has been done for generations now by Catholic theologians critiquing the biologism of natural-law theology as it is applied to human sexuality—the implication that the morality of human sexual behavior should be judged solely by the crude standard of animal procreation, as if sexual intimacy plays no other role in human relationships. Never mind, as well, that the vast majority of Catholics in the developed part of the globe solidly reject Catholic natural-law teaching about human sexuality.

And, above all, never mind that churches which have historically emphasized scripture are now importing into their theology and preaching a theological tradition whose roots are philosophical, and not scriptural.

Despite all these weighty pause-and-think considerations about the current craze for divine-order rhetoric in Protestant churches fixated (as is the Catholic church) on vilifying and excluding their gay brothers and sisters, I argued yesterday (and in previous postings) that there’s a growing ecumenical consensus that the most useful weapon Christians have in their current arsenal to continue denying human rights to gay people is the claim that both the bible and natural law clearly demonstrate that there’s a divine order for creation, whose very heart and center is all about male-female complementarity.

As I noted yesterday, underlying this divine order rhetoric, with its claim that the churches alone stand today in the way of the total decay of Western Christian civilization once gay marriage is accepted, is a nasty implication that according equal rights to gay human beings will undermine both the divine order of things, and the social order as well. As evidence, I cited an excerpt from an essay of Florida United Methodist Bishop Timothy Whitaker, in which he claims that the “whole teaching of Scripture” supports the conclusion that Christians have been provided a “revelation of the divine order for the sexual life of human beings.”

My posting notes as well Bishop Whitaker’s statement that “the Church should adhere to this divine order rather than accommodate to ideas and practices acceptable in Western societies.” The church, that is, provides a bulwark against godless secularism, as secularism erodes the core values and core institutions of Western Christian society. The church alone points to a divine order Western culture is intent on casting off, with no thought of the dire consequences that will ensue if divine order is overturned, particularly in the realm of gender and marriage: Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark what discord follows!

I said all this yesterday. And today, I land on the Good As You blogsite, only to find the following quotation from John Stemberger, an Orlando attorney who is the former political director for the Florida Republican party, and the current president of the Florida affiliate of Focus on the Family, the Florida Family Policy Counsel/Florida Family Action (see
www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2008/08/florida-for-pre.html). This organization is leading the current fight to amend the Florida constitution to ban gay marriage. Stemberger states:

The church is the only remaining institution in society that stands as a beacon of hope; and as salt and light to preserve a decaying and lost culture. Same sex marriage is not inevitable. The church of Jesus Christ can hold the line to protect this human institution. If Florida pastors will take a stand for God’s design in human relationships – and lead their people to vote ‘Yes on 2’ – we can and we will prevail.*

Good As You notes, “Of all of the national campaigns to pass an anti-gay amendment, the Florida one has undoubtedly been the most unapologetically Christian in its basis.” To substantiate this claim, this blog cites (in addition to Stemberger's statement above) a video produced by the Florida Yes2Marriage group, which informs the voters of the state (Christians, Jews, Muslims, people of no faith or many diverse faiths) that “He created them male and female . . .lGod’s design” (see www.yes2marriage.org).

There you have it in a nutshell: the divine order rhetoric, totally removed from any meaningful theological or even religious context, subordinated to an ugly political use—gay bashing. This is what the entire argument moves towards, in essays like Bishop Whitaker’s. This is what the claim that there is a divine order stamped onto creation by (a male) God, in which men and women have complementary roles (men rule; women submit) ultimately means. This is what it ultimately means when the same churchmen who identify that divine order for the rest of us (Christians, Jews, Muslims, people of no faith or many diverse faiths) add to their claim that their (male) God has stamped creation with divine order the further, and equally untenable, claim that scripture clearly mirrors God’s intent for human sexuality: one man, one woman, married for life.

And this is what it means when the churches claim to be the final bastion of civilization, as godless secularism erodes the institutions on which society is founded: everyone in society must submit to the men who rule the churches, or else: “The church is the only remaining institution in society that stands as a beacon of hope; and as salt and light to preserve a decaying and lost culture . . . . The church of Jesus Christ can hold the line to protect this human institution.”

Never mind that marriage is both a religious and a civil institution. And never mind that a healthy democratic society respects a pluralism of beliefs, and tolerates various ways of living one’s life, as long as those ways can clearly be demonstrated not to harm others or the body politic. The churches will rule, when it comes to gay marriage. The men who rule the churches will rule society as well as the churches, will save poor lost Western culture from itself, as they “hold the line” to protect us against ourselves.

If further evidence is needed to show the merit of my arguments of the past several days , I’d also like to draw readers’ attention to a posting by Waldo Lydecker today
(http://waldolydeckersjournal.blogspot.com/2008/08/change-and-decay-is-all-i-see-change.html). Lydecker notes that the groups opposing gay marriage do all they can to disguise what they really oppose (gay persons, gay rights), while advancing spurious arguments that accepting gay marriage will lead to the total dismantling of Western civilization. He links to a discussion of this issue at the Moderate Voice blog, in which Russell Shorto of the New York Times reports on the hysterical social-decay argument that religious conservatives are seeking to use today to “hold the line” against gay human beings (http://themoderatevoice.com/society/homosexuality/21733/what%E2%80%99s-their-real-problem-with-gay-marriage-it%E2%80%99s-the-gay-part). Shorto states,

At its essence, then, the Christian conservative thinking about gay marriage runs this way. Homosexuality is not an innate, biological condition but a disease in society. Marriage is the healthy root of society. To put the two together is thus willfully to introduce disease to that root. It is society willing self-destruction, which is itself a symptom of a wider societal disease, that of secularism.**

Given the abundant evidence of what the divine order argument is really about, when it gets applied to the political and social sphere (power; control; demonization; exclusion), one can only raise one’s eyebrows when church leaders who freely promote this rhetoric say, as they do so, that “support justice for homosexuals in civil society and hospitality toward all homosexual persons.”

Really? I don’t think so. Not as long as you’re gleefully handing weapons to those who are doing all they can to “hold the line” against the people you claim to love.


*The Good As You blog is citing www.floridabaptistwitness.com/9172.article.
** Citing “What’s Their Real Problem with Gay Marriage (It’s the Gay Part),” www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/magazine/19ANTIGAY.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.

Untune That String: Hidden Assumptions of the Divine Order Argument about Sex

I continue to ponder that strange intrusion of Catholic natural-law thought about divine ordering of sexuality into contemporary Protestant teaching about sex. As I have noted in previous postings, it is fascinating to observe leaders of churches that have historically stood aloof from Catholic doctrine and practice eagerly grafting onto their theological traditions today a rather mystifying intrusion into those traditions: namely, the Catholic natural-law based theology of human sexuality, with its strong emphasis on the “ordering” of sexuality to procreation (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/08/catholic-bible-thumping-and-protestant.html, http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/04/churchs-one-foundation-homosexuality.html).

As an example of such grotesque grafting of natural-law thought onto traditions antithetical to natural-law theology, I’ve cited essays written by the United Methodist of Florida, Timothy Whitaker, who chaired this year’s UMC General Assembly discussion of homosexuality. Bishop Whitaker is widely regarded in Methodist circles as a leading opponent of attempts to make Methodist teaching about gay and lesbian persons more welcoming, inclusive, and affirming. As I note in previous postings, when Rev. Karen Dammann of the Pacific-Northwest UMC conference was permitted to remain in ministry in 2004 after having made her sexual orientation and committed gay relationship public, Bishop Whitaker wrote a strong critique of the church decision that allowed her to continue in ministry. That critique states,

Those who support the Church’s position believe that the prohibitions against homosexual practice in Scripture and tradition should be placed in the context of the whole teaching of Scripture which affirms that the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman and celibacy in singleness are the revelation of the divine order for the sexual life of human beings. They believe that the Church should adhere to this divine order rather than accommodate to ideas and practices acceptable in Western societies. They support justice for homosexuals in civil society and hospitality toward all homosexual persons, but they believe that the public teaching and moral guidance of the Church about human sexuality should be faithful to the witness of Scripture and consistent with the teaching of the transcultural historic and global Christian community
(www.flumc.org/bishop_whitaker/dammann_statement.htm; emphasis added).

Bishop Whitaker repeats the assertion about the divine ordering of human sexuality in a recent essay about what it means to live the Christian life (www.flumc.info/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000049/004993.htm). This essay speaks of the “ordering of sexuality” as one of the non-negotiables of Christian discipleship.

These are merely examples of a much wider field of discourse found throughout the Protestant world today.* The discourse of divine ordering of human sexuality, with the attendant claim that the “whole teaching of Scripture” affirms such divinely revealed order and the implication that the churches are bulwarks against social chaos insofar as they uphold a divine order that has existed from the beginning of the world, runs everywhere through Protestant rhetoric about sexual life today.

Also implicit (and, indeed, often quite explicit) in these claims that God has revealed in both nature and Scripture a divine plan to order human sexuality are claims that this divine order requires us to regard men and women as ordered to complementarity, as complementary not merely in the biological sense, but in the roles the divine plan for human sexuality requires each gender to play (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/08/male-female-complementarity-and-bogus.html). And, it goes without saying, the roles that male church leaders (and, yes, their female cheerleaders, too) find etched into the divine law of nature and the sacred law of scripture require men to rule and women to submit.

It’s all so neat. It’s all so obvious. Why can’t those who reject this game plan hardwired into the human psyche just see it, admit that it’s there for all of us to see and follow? Why can’t those who rebel against this most fundamental dictate of God for happy and prosperous human life recognize that such rebellion will result in upheaval in every institution of Christian society—not to mention, in such disruptions of weather that sexually permissive areas of the world will be wiped from the earth through “natural” disasters?

The men who rule us: it’s so clear to them. And what’s clear to them ought to be obvious to everyone else, since they stand at the top of the pyramid looking out over the vast disarray of creation, noting the breaks in the dykes of divine order, shouting down to us below about those breaks and the disorder they portend for us all.

As I ponder the scenario (albeit from the bottom of the pyramid, where the feet on my shoulders inconveniently distract me from thinking as clearly as the owners of the feet above do), I wonder how biblically based theologies like Methodist theology have managed to get from the scriptures to the natural law concept of the divine order of human sexuality. When even Catholic theologians have always admitted that it’s well-nigh impossible to combine natural law thinking and the scriptures—they are two entirely different discourse fields, two entirely different ways of looking at the world, with different originating imaginations—how can Protestant church leaders be so supremely confident today, as Bishop Timothy Whitaker is, that the whole teaching of Scripture points to an absolute and consistent revelation of the divine order for the sexual life of human beings?

As I noted a day or so ago in my critique of the similar (and the similarity is not surprising; it’s telling) assertions of Cardinal Walter Kasper to the Anglican Lambeth Conference, no, it does not (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/08/catholic-bible-thumping-and-protestant.html). The whole teaching of scripture decidedly does not constitute or contain some kind of consistent revelation of the divine order for the sexual life of human beings.

Focus on the term “order” alone, and you step into a minefield of exegetical problems that illustrates the difficulty of wringing the philosophical concept of divine order out of scripture texts. The first such problem is that the term is almost entirely absent from the thinking of those who wrote both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. It is a philosophical term derived from Greek and Roman philosophy. Order is a concept that simply did not engage the imagination of the Jewish and Christian biblical authors as it did Graeco-Roman philosophers.

In fact, in some key respects, the Jewish and Christian scriptures constitute stringent critiques of the Graeco-Roman philosophical concept of order. The prophets set themselves against all oh-so-assured theologies of divine order that divinized the way things are—and that gave divine status to those who benefited from how things were arranged. And whereas Jesus never speaks of divine order—which is to say, of the philosophical concept on which the men who rule us want to hinge the future of the church today—he talks constantly about the reign of God.

That was a social order in which the “divine order” proclaimed by the men who ruled in his day was to be turned upside down. Jesus’s vision of how human beings should live together if God ruled the world was anything but orderly. It was anything but a prop for the social imagination imposed by those at the top of his society.

In the reign of God, the last are first. The poor take precedence over the wealthy. Those who are sated will be turned from the table so that the hungry may eat. The path to power in the reign of God is to renounce all power. Exercising leadership in the reign of God is choosing to serve all, and, in particular, to kneel before and wash the feet of the humblest.

Divine order? If Jesus ever even dreamed of such a concept, he clearly did so to stand it on its head. And for that reason, he was crucified. The Roman authorities put him to death because they feared the revolutionary potential of a teaching that undercut all their assertions about how the world had to be ordered, if civilization were to continue. Jesus’s central act to proclaim the intrusion of God’s reign into history—his shockingly disorienting choice to sit at table with sinners and share their food, thus taking on their contaminated status—was considered an act of social defiance that, if practiced more widely, would turn the whole world upside down. He had to be stopped, this preacher and practicer of intrusive social disorder that proclaimed God’s inclusive love for everyone, and God’s preferential love for those most excluded from the benefits of the order that structured their society.

Viewed against the framework of what is central to Jesus’s teaching and life, the concept of divine order proclaimed so confidently by the churchmen who rule us today is curious, indeed. How can anyone read the Jewish and Christian scriptures and come away convinced that God has set up a divine order that just conveniently happens to be dispensed by (and benefits) those who find such divine order stamped all over creation and inscribed in their holy books?

Note what is really going on in the attempt of churchmen today to use the concept of divine order to regulate the sexual lives of others. At its heart, the argument that there is a divine order for human sexuality inbuilt in creation and affirmed by scripture is an argument that human sexuality is volatile, dangerous, inherently transgressive, and will destroy society if it is not regulated.

That is to say, the argument about a divine order for human sexuality goes hand in hand with arguments (sometimes implied, sometimes stated outright) about the need for the churches to maintain social order. Or else. Let women get out of hand, and see what happens then. Let people control their reproductive destinies, and imagine what chaos will ensue. Let gays “affirm” themselves and “marry,” and everything we hold most sacred will surely stream down the same gutters out of which the gays have climbed into the light of day.

Shakespeare knew the argument. He heard the same tune sung in his day—only, then, the question was what would happen if the hierarchical social system of Elizabethan England, symbolized by monarchy, should be toppled. As has Ulysses say in Troilus and Cressida,

Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe.

Untune that string, and hark, what discord follows! This is an old, old argument used persistently throughout history by those with all power in their hands, when that power is threatened. This is the ultimate logic of the divine order argument about human sexuality. This is the warning within the warning, when the churchmen who rule us preach about the unthinkability of allowing gay persons to imagine that they have a place within the divine order established by God for creation: a place equal to that of their heterosexual brothers and sisters.

The entire argument is based on hidden assumptions about the discord that will follow, about the social chaos that will occur, if natural law is violated (that is, if the church-defined and church-enforced natural law is violated). The entire argument is based, as well, on hidden assumptions about who should define divine order, who spots it more clearly than the rest of us, who interprets it for us, who owns the books in which the concept is spelled out. The entire argument depends on hidden assumptions about who should remain at the top of the scheme of divine order that God (the male God, the Father God) has set into place, which is dispensed and protected by the churches under the leadership of the men ruling them.

If the men who rule churches really want to engage human sexuality as an energy, to find its “place” in human society, perhaps they would be better advised to stop imagining it as a chaotic, dangerous, dark, destructive energy that they are called to curb for the good of society, and to begin thinking of it as the engendering center of creativity. Perhaps a more convincing theology of human sexuality could be built around the concept that erotic energy is inherently disorderly in a good way, a way that has powerful potential to fuel creative movements for constructive change.

But to go down that theological road would require that the churchmen who rule us submit their own power and privilege to re-examination and re-negotiation. It would require opening the conversation to those these churchmen insist on treating as dangerous Others. It would require that, as they open the conversation, they bring to the table precisely those against whom their theology of a divine ordering of human sexuality has been used as a powerful weapon: women and gay persons.

And I just don’t see the men ruling the churches ready to take that step today. Do you? It is easier to pretend we have all the answers when the question itself presupposes that the world may be a bigger place than we can control, a place in which our supremacy may not be assured by nature or God, if we examine it honestly.

*A disclaimer: as previous postings on this blog have noted, I underwent a life-changing experience rooted in homophobia at an institution under Bishop Whitaker's pastoral supervision in Florida. Because I have sought to understand and deal with this painful life experience, I have had no choice except to try to understand and deal with the theology that justified the treatment I received. This has led me to examine Bishop Whitaker's work, to try to understand how churchmen can continue to state that they deplore homophobic discrimination while they oppose equal rights for (and equal treatment) of gay employees in institutions under their supervision. Bishop Whitaker is far from the only churchman today to whom such questions should be placed. I do not intend to be unfair in singling him out. But the effect of one of his instititutions on my own life has given me no choice except to seek to understand and deal with what that institution did to my partner and me. When injustice is done to us, those who are implicated in the injustice inevitably become part of the prism through which we seek to understand and deal with questions of injustice thereafter.

Catholic Bible Thumping and Protestant Divine Order: The Men Who Rule Us, re: Gay Human Beings

I’ve been mulling over the address Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, gave on 30 July at the Lambeth Conference. To be specific, I’m intrigued by Kasper’s insistence that the Anglican communion toe the Roman line and condemn homosexuality.

Most of all, I’m intrigued by the theological basis of Kasper’s argument. Kasper told the Anglican audience, “This teaching [i.e., the catechetical teaching about homosexuality as intrinsically disordered] is founded in the Old and New Testament and the fidelity to scripture and to Apostolic tradition is absolute."

I’m bowled over by Kasper’s assertion that the catechetical teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered is founded in the Old and New Testament and the fidelity to scripture and to Apostolic tradition is absolute. Kasper was once a highly regarded theologian—that is, he was so regarded prior to his ascendancy to power in Rome, after which his career as a theologian took a direction similar to that of his compatriot and colleague Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. After both men rose to high positions in the Vatican, their theology began to lose its critical (honest) edge and to become a tool serving the power and control interests of Rome.

As a theologian, Kasper knows better, I suspect. He knows full well that to claim that the Catholic teaching about homosexuality is founded in the scriptures and is absolute is absolute balderdash. The Catholic approach to the question of homosexuality has never stressed the scriptures.

It has avoided that stress for a number of reasons. In the first place, Catholic sexual ethics are founded in an Aristotelian philosophical presupposition that human sexuality is “ordered” to procreation, and that all human beings can determine this through natural law. Aristotelian philosophy, as received and reinterpreted by neo-Scholastic theology, is the basis of the Catholic teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered—not the scriptures.

Catholic theology (and the magisterium) have also historically shied away from a scripture-based approach to homosexuality because within the Catholic tradition, there is a strong recognition that the scriptures alone do not yield a clear, consistent sexual ethic. Catholic theology has always wedded scripture to tradition; it has always insisted that the scriptures must be read within the context of a tradition handed down within the community of faith, which shapes how we hear and interpret the Word of God.

And this insistence is sane, when the question is how the scriptures treat homosexuality. When Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) came out with his 1986 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,” a significant number of Catholic theologians criticized that pastoral letter’s attempt to base the teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered on scripture. It was this pastoral letter that first gave a high profile to the term “intrinsic disorder” in Catholic teaching about homosexuality.

Just as the term “intrinsic disorder” is an innovation on the tradition—the introduction of a new term to the traditional discussion of homosexuality, an innovation that has dangerous consequences, in that it suggests that the nature of gay human beings is disordered—the way Ratzinger used scripture in his 1986 letter is also innovative, theologians have maintained. Essentially, though Ratzinger’s letter seeks to argue that there is a strong and consistent scriptural basis for condemning homosexuality, the letter tacks scriptural quotations onto the traditional natural-law argument that sex is ordered to procreation. Ratzinger uses bible verses as proof texts for philosophical and theological positions that he has already arrived at without recourse to the scriptures.

Theologians analyzing Ratzinger’s 1986 letter noted that it did not attempt a careful exegesis of the biblical proof texts appended to the natural-law argument. Ratzinger did not try to understand the original meaning of the handful of proof texts that Christians cite to condemn homosexuality; he did not seek to place these texts in their historical context. In ripping them out of their original historical context and prescinding from careful exegetical analysis of the texts, he weakens his argument that scripture provides some kind of consistent and clear condemnation of homosexual persons and their behavior.

I assume that, as a theologian and a powerful Vatican figure, Cardinal Kasper knows these critiques of Ratzinger’s 1986 attempt to ground Catholic teaching that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered in claims about scripture as the source of an absolute, consistent, and clear condemnation of homosexuality. If Cardinal Kasper is aware of this widely held critique of Ratzinger’s 1986 letter, then I wonder why he would think it feasible or wise even to weigh in on a highly controversial theological point that demands much more discussion, as he also weighed into the politics of another religious communion. I have some reflections on these points, which I’ll offer after I examine some of the reasons a large number of theologians today reject the attempt to ground an anti-homosexual ethic on scripture.

The Jewish and Christian scriptures are highly problematic documents for anyone seeking seriously to maintain that “the bible” condemns homosexuality. They are problematic for the following reasons:

▪ The issue of "homosexuality" is hardly ever mentioned in either the Jewish or Christian scriptures.* The texts to which those trying to ground condemnation of gay human beings in the bible point are a tiny handful of texts within a huge body of sacred literature that has much more central focal points.

Given the almost total lack of any interest in the question of homosexuality in either the Jewish or the Christian scriptures, one cannot but be amazed at the attempt of many Christians today to make this issue the issue on which the entire tradition stands or falls. Given the very strong, clear, consistent emphasis of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures on the theme of practical compassion as the very heart and center of authentic religion—do justice, love God, walk humbly with your God—one has to be even more amazed at the certainty of those Christians today for whom homosexuality is the issue that they are on the right track.

When one looks at this certainty in light of the central focus of Judaism and Christianity—practical compassion—one recognizes that something is seriously awry today, in Christian thinking and Christian practice. On the basis of a tiny handful of texts that do not reflect the central preoccupation of the scriptures stated in text after text, how can Christians be so certain that they have the right to propose what is not compassionate at all: the demonization and exclusion of gay human beings as the key task of the churches at this point in history?

▪ The tiny handful of texts on which some Christians today seek to ground the condemnation of gay human beings and their committed relationships is exegetically problematic in the extreme. Every text from both Jewish and Christian scriptures cited to “prove” that homosexuality is wrong is exegetically problematic. Not a single one is clear. The exegetical work done on these texts for some time now shows overwhelmingly that the texts do not provide a clear and consistent basis—a strong foundation—for what is now the central thrust of many Christians across the globe: demonizing and excluding their gay brothers and sisters.

▪ It is self-evident that this handful of exegetically problematic texts cannot be about what contemporary people know as homosexuality, because the psychological concept of innate same-sex attraction and the term used to identify it (that is, “homosexuality”) were not even possible within the historical contexts in which the Jewish and Christian scriptures were written. The recognition of psychologists that some people throughout history and in every culture find themselves predisposed from birth to a more or less consistent lifelong attraction to members of their own sex did not happen until the latter part of the 19th century. At that time, psychological researchers who began to document and study the transhistorical, crosscultural phenomenon of lifelong same-sex attraction coined a term, “homosexuality,” to describe the phenomenon they were studying.

The scriptures could not speak of a phenomenon of which the biblical writers had not even dreamed, when they wrote the canonical texts. The scriptures could not condemn homosexuality when not only the concept, but a term to describe it, was totally unknown to the biblical writers. Anyone who thinks that the bible is concerned with the phenomenon of homosexuality is retrojecting a late-19th century and 20th-century term and psychological insight into the scriptures.

▪ Jesus—whose life and teaching provide the definitive window through which Christians are to view everything—never once mentions homosexuality. Jesus is completely silent about the issue that, for many Christians today, is the defining issue for all Christians, the issue on which the churches will stand or fall.

Jesus is not silent, by contrast, about practical compassion, love, justice, concern for the least among us. Jesus is not silent about refraining from throwing the first stone, eating with outcasts, being judged by the measure we use to judge others. Jesus is not silent about the matters of practical compassion that form the very heart and center of Judaism and of Christianity.

▪ Throughout the history of the church, the scriptures have been read as if they absolutely, definitively, clearly, and consistently bless practices that Christians have, in time, recognized as immoral. Christians have been absolutely certain that the bible consistently and clearly speaks of the need for men to dominate women. The bible has been used to justify “holy” wars throughout history. For millennia, the scriptures were read as endorsing slavery. I grew up in a culture in which the bible’s defense of segregation, and of the right of white people to demean people of color, was taken for granted, and was preached about in churches. The ugly antisemitism that resulted in such atrocious events in the 20th century has biblical roots. It is grounded on the claim of many Christians throughout history that the Christian scriptures condemn the entire Jewish people as deicides.

The scriptures have been cruelly misused time and again throughout history. I once asked a class of undergraduate theology students if they thought that it is possible to formulate a norm by which we can determine when the scriptures are being misused. A thoughtful student from a conservative Catholic family raised her hand and said, “The scriptures are being misused when they are being used to hurt anyone.”

I can think of few better answers to this question.

As I have said, I suspect that Cardinal Kasper knows all that I have just written. I am a mere layperson, and a failed theologian, at that. He’s a cleric, a cardinal, an accomplished theologian who walks the halls of power.

If the good cardinal does know how shaky the scriptures are as a foundation for a pan-Christian affirmation today that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered, why did he trouble himself to pitch the biblical argument to his Anglican confreres as he sought to line them up behind the pope at Lambeth? In my view, the answer to that question is rather obvious—and it’s also rather ugly.

The men who rule us in the churches today are willing to grasp at straws—and even to distort and mute the primary emphasis of the Judaeo-Christian scriptures, which is the call to practical compassion—to assure their continued dominance within the churches. The cross-communion alliance Kasper is promoting is not really about preserving the church from the heresy of welcoming gay persons and their committed relationships.

It’s about preserving the domination of males within the governing structures of the churches. The scriptures do consistently condemn homosexuality—that is, the scriptures that belong to the men who rule us, the scriptures they claim the unilateral right to interpret for us, to preach to us, to use against us (and to justify their own power). Their scriptures condemn gay people, because it is in the interests of those who wield power in the churches to maintain their dominance and control of women and men they regard as feminine. It is in their interest to select instrumentally useful issues to shore up the bogus “natural order” which they maintain is essential if the churches and civilization are to perdure—the order in which they will always find themselves on top.

Not only are Catholic leaders today willing to buy into theological stances alien to Catholic tradition—e.g., the claim that the scriptures provide an absolute foundation for condemning homosexuality as intrinsically disordered—in order to safeguard anti-gay teaching, but the men who rule in the Protestant churches also appear just as intent to adopt Catholic theological positions antithetical to the theological roots of their own traditions for the same reason. On both sides of the fence, the men who rule the churches seem intent to discover any ammunition they can find, at hand, no matter how outré or far-fetched, when questions about "traditional" anti-gay teaching threaten to call into question their right to rule.

Recently, the United Methodist bishop of Florida Timothy Whitaker published an essay about why one should be a Christian. The essay is to be found on the website of the Florida United Methodist Conference (www.flumc.info/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000049/004993.htm). The essay notes that central to the Christian worldview are presuppositions about the “ordering of sexuality.”

In a previous posting on this blog (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/04/churchs-one-foundation-homosexuality.html), I critiqued Bishop Whitaker’s statement about the case of Rev. Karen Dammann. Rev. Dammann is an openly lesbian United Methodist minister whose case caused controversy in the United Methodist Church in 2004. As my reflections on Bishop Whitaker’s statement about the Dammann case note, the bishop places great emphasis on what he sees as the “revelation of the divine order for the sexual life of human beings.”**

As my posting about Bishop Whitaker’s Dammann statement suggests, this language about divine order is curious within an evangelical context. It imports into that context language and philosophical concepts central to the Catholic sexual ethic, but absent from Protestant thought about sexual morality until recently, when the Protestant tradition began to select some (but far from all) aspects of Catholic natural law theology it found useful to combat welcome and inclusion of gay members.

To what should we attribute the meeting of the minds of the men who rule us in the churches today—their willingness to cross traditional confessional boundaries and adopt theological ideas from each other’s traditions, in order to hold the line against their gay brothers and sisters? Growing ecumenism?

I don’t think so. Frankly, I think that, in the last analysis, this is all about power—stinky power, power over others, corrupt power that willingly distorts both scripture and tradition to assure the continued dominance of heterosexual males within the power structures of the church. It is, after all, their tradition and their scripture. It is they who talk to us about the meaning of the bible; when they have the power to do so (and they decidedly do), they will do all they can to shut down the conversation, to demonize and exclude those of us with critical perspectives.

And it behooves us those of us who are the merely preached to (and preached down to), rather than those doing the preaching (and defining and demonizing and excluding) to remember that.

*On my reasons for placing the word "homosexuality" in quotation marks here, see third point in my list of arguments re: scripture.

**On the leading role Bishop Whitaker played in the 2008 United Methodist General Assembly's decision to uphold its current teaching that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian discipleship, and on Bishop Whitaker as one of the leaders of the movement to resist more welcoming and inclusive stances towards gay people in the UMC, see my blog posting "We Are All Care of One Another" at http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/05/we-are-all-care-of-one-another.html.

Hate Crime in Daytona Beach: The Continuing Pertinence of Mary McLeod Bethune

News of a horrible hate crime in Daytona Beach. According to Mark I. Johnson and Seth Robbins, “Driver Charged with Hate Crime after Bicyclist Run Down,” yesterday Thomas Darryl Cosby was charged with a hate crime after he deliberately ran down an African-American woman the day before (www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD02EAST071608.htm). Simply because she is black.

The allegation is that, Monday evening, Cosby ran his sedan off the street in Daytona Beach, careening into Mekeda Cato, who suffered a badly broken leg and internal injuries. His car then crashed, at which point, Cosby emerged from it, inciting bystanders to racial violence and shouting that African Americans should be returned to Africa.

This story catches my attention for a number of reasons. First, it’s a story illustrating the violence to which minority communities are still all too frequently subjected. And when such events occur, news coverage is often spotty and localized. We all, as part of the body politic, need to listen more carefully to the stories told by members of various minority communities about violence to which they are subjected, simply because they belong to a marginalized group.

Second, Steve and I lived for over a year in Port Orange, which happens to be where Mr. Cosby also lives. In fact, we own a house there, one we have been unable to sell, since we acquired it as a result of promises made to us that were revoked after we made the crucial decision to put ourselves in debt by purchasing the house.

So I feel a certain personal connection with this story. We often biked along the sidewalks of this city and neighboring ones, including Daytona Beach.

Third, as readers of this blog know, I have a very strong interest in the life and work of that important 20th-century African-American educator, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. Dr. Bethune founded a college in Daytona Beach, now known as Bethune-Cookman University.

As various postings on this blog have noted, Dr. Bethune developed a powerful pedagogical theory underscoring the links between education and participatory democracy. As did Bayard Rustin, the African-American Quaker thinker-activist whose work I have also cited frequently, Dr. Bethune considered American democracy unfinished business.

Both of these prophetic black leaders noted that democracy is an ideal that has not yet been fully realized. Both maintained that democracy will be realized—will be extended, will move from ideal to real—as the body politic recognizes that some groups within our society are disenfranchised and must be brought to the table.

Both Dr. Bethune and Bayard Rustin stressed the need for safe spaces in which marginal communities can come together with the mainstream community for dialogue, interaction, and development of a vision of the common good that will serve the needs of all. Dr. Bethune built such town-gown meetings into the educational philosophy and practice of the college she founded.

In these meetings, Dr. Bethune modeled the kind of inclusivity that she challenged American democracy to develop. Dr. Bethune’s town-gown meetings gave no privileged place to any group. In a time and place in which whites were expected to occupy seats of honor and blacks to sit at the back of the room, Dr. Bethune opened her doors to everyone, with the provision that people sit where they could find seating.

By eradicating preferential seating—a radical act in the time and place in which she lived—Mary McLeod Bethune demonstrated to her community what participatory democracy is all about: it’s about bringing everyone to the table, providing an equal place for everyone, and listening respectfully to everyone across lines that divide us. Dr. Bethune’s town-gown meetings abolished the lines that divide, at least for the space of the meeting itself.

In the leadership team she developed for her college, Dr. Bethune also sought to model such inclusivity and such abolition of racial lines. Dr. Bethune’s leadership team deliberately brought together people from across racial lines. She stressed the need for her students to be taught by people from all racial backgrounds, from all walks of life, since they would be functioning in a pluralistic society.

As the story from Daytona Beach that begins this posting illustrates, Florida still struggles, along with the rest of the nation, to build participatory democracy. Racial divisions remain strong in Daytona Beach, and in many parts of Florida.

As I have noted before, Bishop Timothy Whitaker, bishop of the Florida United Methodist Conference which sponsors Bethune-Cookman University, has a premier chance today to develop a model that would put into practice the recent UMC General Conference’s challenge to Methodists to educate themselves and others about discrimination. The university founded by Mary McLeod Bethune, which is under Bishop Whitaker’s pastoral jurisdiction, offers a rich opportunity for Bishop Whitaker and Florida Methodists to develop workshops and educational programs that explore marginalization and its effects in Florida communities.

With the heritage bequeathed by its founder, Bethune-Cookman University can continue to play a significant role in modeling participatory democracy and in educating for participatory democracy both locally and internationally. The recent decision of the United Methodist Church to place the current president of Bethune-Cookman University, Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed, on its University Senate is another opportunity for Dr. Bethune's university to demonstrate to the church at large what Dr. Bethune’s legacy means in practice. Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed is a distinguished African-American educator and a Methodist leader. Her placement on this important Methodist university body holds much promise to bring the legacy of Dr. Bethune into a wider community.

As the story of Mr. Cosby’s horrific assault on Ms. Cato indicates, we have much work to do—and Florida has much work to do—to overcome violence against minorities in our communities. What better way to begin the process than by following the path set before us by Mary McLeod Bethune—by developing safe spaces to bring various communities together for dialogue; by developing inclusive structures of educational leadership that model the kind of inclusivity we seek to teach students; and by moving our churches’ rhetoric about social healing beyond the rhetorical level to actual practice?

And, it goes without saying, such new models of educational leadership in church-sponsored colleges and universities absolutely have to deal with questions of marginalization due to sexual orientation. I’m reminded of this crucial need in Florida by a recent email I received from Chuck Wolfe, president of Victory Fund, a Florida political organization committed to pursuing rights for the LGBT community in Florida.

The email I received begins by stating,

Not every state with a big LGBT community is friendly to LGBT rights. Take Florida – where it’s still legal to fire employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity alone. Gays and lesbians also can’t adopt, and committed same-sex couples have zero partnership rights.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that Florida is the largest state to have never elected an openly LGBT state legislator.

There’s work to do in Florida. I’m pleased that the school founded by Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune is on the scene, continuing to embody the ideals of Dr. Bethune. I encourage Bishop Whitaker and Dr. Trudie Kibbe Reed to continue developing Dr. Bethune’s educational model for a local community in which the need is obviously so acute. With the historic first represented by Mr. Obama's bid for the presidency, we have a chance today for a renewed dialogue about race (and other forms of marginalization) in American democracy. Institutions like Bethune-Cookman University, with the rich legacy of Mary McLeod Bethune, have a singular opportunity to contribute to this dialogue.