Keeping the Unwelcome Mat Firmly in Place: Michael Sean Winters and Grant Gallicho Issue Reminders

So I already can't keep my mouth shut (and, yes, I am reading some recent news stories, despite my best intentions to focus on more ponderous matters this week): 

Text of Lutheran Bishop Chilstrom's Letter to Minnesota Catholic Bishops

Thanks to Terry Weldon at Queering the Church, I'm seeing that the day before I posted about the recent letter of Lutheran bishop Herbert Chilstrom to the Catholic bishops of Minnesota, Michael Bayly had published the text of Bishop Chilstrom's letter at his Progressive Catholic blog.

This is a valuable resource, which Michael makes more widely available through his outstanding blog.  And so I want to draw readers' attention to it.

Lutheran Bishop Invites Catholic Bishops of Minnesota to Be Good Shepherds

And as news of the suicide of another gay teen following years of school bullying breaks (building here on what I just posted), and while the U.S. Catholic bishops continue to keep their mouths decisively shut about this national disgrace, I take heart in a challenge that the former presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Herbert Chilstrom, has just issued to the Catholic bishops of Minnesota, as the latter group of gentlemen fight tooth and nail to enshrine anti-gay prejudice in their state's constitution.

Lutherans Modeling Different Attitude towards Gays: Listen, Learn, Include (Can Catholics Learn?)

Dennis Coday featured the following quote yesterday in his "Quote for the Day" column at National Catholic Reporter.  It's from a Rite of Reception used by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on 18 September to welcome three openly lesbian pastors to the ELCA roster of official clergy: 

Media Concerns Again: Gene Lyons on Media's Slippery Connection to Truth

And, finally today, as a gloss on my reflections about the shoddy role the mainstream media played in covering the recent ELCA assembly, I’d like to take note of an here article by Gene Lyons at Salon today.

It’s called “The Media Can’t Handle the Truth.”

I’m struck in particular by Gene Lyons’ final statements in this piece:

Long under siege for "liberal bias," media careerists now find themselves confronted with people they see as passionate amateurs. True, fearless scrappers like my friend Joe Conason have always been around, and somebody like Paul Krugman -- a world-class economist who doesn't care what, say, MSNBC's Chris Matthews thinks of him -- can be very annoying.

But what's really driving these jokers up the wall is economic and intellectual competition from the Internet: people with first-class minds and a passion for truth that some of them can barely remember.

And so I renew the appeal I made to readers of this blog in the Bilgrimage posting to which I link above, to help me hold the feet of the mainstream media to the fire, particularly re: the media’s continued misleading reporting on the churches and the gay community. After reading Christina Capecchi’s here erroneous statement that the ELCA lowered its bar for the vote on ministry by gays in monogamous relationships, I notified the New York Times that Capecchi’s report was incorrect.

I have yet to hear from the New York Times in response to my notice. And I remain very disturbed by the articles that Patrick Condon published for the Associated Press during the conference. The links above will remind readers of what I find problematic in his articles.

The media can and should do better. And if it takes constant stings from citizen bloggers to hold them accountable, then so be it: let the stings keep coming. We have everything to gain as a society when we force the media to report accurately and in depth, and everything to lose when we don’t hold the media accountable.

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.

When Two Thirds Is Too Little: The Mainstream Media and Right-Wing Puppet Masters Report on Lutherans and Gays

I wrote two days ago about the attempt of groups fighting against gay-welcoming attitudes in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America to play games with a vote that will take place today at the ELCA assembly meeting in Minneapolis. The vote is about whether the ELCA should permit churches and synods to call to ministry partnered clergy in committed same-sex relationships.

On Monday, opponents of this recommendation tried to change the ground rules for today’s vote. They fought to impose a supermajority, a two-thirds vote, rather than a simple majority, to pass this recommendation. Delegates to the ELCA assembly rejected this rule-changing maneuver by a vote of 57 to 43 percent.

As my posting noted, the Catholic News Agency, a right-wing news service connected to Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, published an article about this ELCA decision which proclaims that the Lutherans have established a “low threshold” for their vote on partnered gay ministers. CNA’s article states,

Supporters of the high threshold for passage said it was necessary to signal wide support for a major change in the church’s approach to homosexuality. About 43 percent of the 1,045 voting delegates supported the higher standard, the Associated Press says.

And, of course, it’s interesting to note that the preceding analysis of the vote does not take notice of the fact that while 43% of the vote was for changing the rules, 57% of the vote—a clear majority—was against changing the rules. Obviously, the CNA article does not want to note the majority vote because doing so undercuts the argument CNA wants to promote: that is, that the threshold for votes to welcome gay church members should constantly be shifted upwards, as support for inclusivity keeps growing both in church and society.

If you are not convinced that headlines like this (and the games played by organizations like CNA) do not have a powerful effect, I’d suggest you google (using parentheses) the search terms “Lutherans,” “threshold,” and “Catholic News Agency,” and see how many pages of hits come up, with blogs and news services parroting the CNA headline—the vast majority of them right-wing blogs and right-wing religious news services.

Following my analysis of the game-playing of those seeking to change the ground rules for votes on gay-related issues at the ELCA assembly, I posted again about the assembly, noting the games that the mainstream media continue to play with such stories. I noted that the mainstream media’s coverage of the relationship of churches to gay people and gay lives tends to slant right, because heavily-funded right-wing think tanks that disseminate information about religious news to the mainstream media assure such a slant.

For those interested in that story of how the mainstream media continue to slant news about the churches and gay people to the right, what is now happening as the media report on yesterday’s ELCA vote on a document entitled “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” is fascinating. And enlightening. It proves the points I made in my two previous postings about the ELCA.

Because the “Human Sexuality” recommendation is a “social” statement, it required a two-thirds vote to pass, under ELCA assembly ground rules. And it did pass by two-thirds: 676 (66.67 percent) to 338 (33.33 percent).

But strangely enough, for those who just two days before had fought tooth and nail for a two-thirds supermajority requirement for today’s vote on partnered gay ministers, the two-thirds supermajority in the case of “Human Sexuality” is suddenly not enough. Reports are running like wildfire all over the internet that the Lutherans have changed their position on sexual ethics by a single vote.

And the mainstream media are colluding with this disinformation process.

Witness the headline of Religion News Service reporter Daniel Burke at Beliefnet yesterday: “Lutherans Approve Sexuality Statement by Razor Margin.” (On my conclusion that Beliefnet promotes a “centrist” perspective on gay issues and religion that is really skewed to the right, see my remarks here about closing my Beliefnet page when its founder Steven Waldman defended President Obama’s decision to invite Rick Warren to his inauguration.)

As reader nnmns points out in the thread of responses following Daniel Burke’s article about the “razor thin” margin by which the ELCA sexuality recommendation passed,

While a two-to-one margin may be just what's needed to pass it, calling it a razor thin margin is pretty misleading. But then this is RNS.

And the three to one margin against the conservative amendment is very encouraging.

And that’s absolutely on the mark. The news story here is that two-thirds of delegates to the ELCA assembly have just voted to pass the mildest of statements supporting the right of Lutherans to agree to disagree about the morality of gay relationships. To say that this recommendation passed by a razor-thin margin is misleading in the extreme.

In fact, I’d argue that it’s deliberately misleading. It obliterates noteworthy news that precisely what the right wing of the churches keep screaming for has just taken place. Lutherans have voted to adopt a more gay-welcoming stance not merely by a majority vote but by a supermajority vote.

But suddenly, when one church, the ELCA, produces just such a vote—a supermajority vote—in favor of a mild statement that Christian consciences may differ on this issue, a two-thirds vote is no longer enough. A supermajority vote is now a “razor-thin” margin—as if one solitary member of the church stood up and voted for this document, and now the whole church is saddled with it.

The point I’m making here is even more apparent when one looks at how the ELCA delegates handled a motion, prior to the vote on “Human Sexuality,” to amend the document with a statement condemning “the practice of homosexual erotic behavior as contrary to God’s intent.” The delegates rejected that proposal by a resounding three-to-one margin, as Burke reports. And that is what nnmns is getting at when she or he notes “the three to one margin against the conservative amendment.”

As Phil Soucy points out in his discussion of the two-thirds vote in favor of the “Human Sexuality” statement on the Goodsoil blog yesterday,

It was said that it was a close vote. Actually it wasn't. It was a vote in which the Social Statement received 2/3rds of the votes cast; that's not close.

But you wouldn’t know that, would you, if you relied on Daniel Burke’s “razor-thin margin” headline to frame the discussion? And that’s what these headlines about “razor-thin margins” and “low thresholds” are all about: attempts to frame the discussion so that people will not see how quickly and how decisively even church folks’ attitudes towards gay human beings are changing. Despite the game-playing of right-wing activist groups and the mainstream media’s collusion with that game-playing.

And, for more evidence of that game-playing in mainstream media reports of the ELCA story, take a look at Christina Capecchi’s article in today’s New York Times. Capecchi, who appears to be a freelance journalist in St. Paul, states,

The church has taken two steps this week that make the approval of gay clergy members seem more likely. It voted Monday to lower the portion of convention votes required to pass policy from two-thirds to a simple majority. On Wednesday, it approved a social statement calling on Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregations to “welcome, care for, and support same-gender couples.” The social statement, which required a two-thirds majority, passed by one vote, stunning delegates.

There's that “passed by one vote” statement again. When the vote that passed this recommendation was 676.

And, even more disturbing: unless my information about the ground rules for the ELCA votes this week is wrong (and I hope some readers will correct me if I am wrong),* Capecchi is simply flatly wrong in what she reports here. Delegates did not vote Monday “to lower the portion of convention votes required to pass policy from two-thirds to a simple majority.” They voted against a resolution to change the rules that would have created an unprecedented higher threshold for today’s vote—when all votes in the past to deny ordination of gay clergy or acceptance of partnered gay clergy in long-term committed relationships have required a simple majority vote.

There’s a world of difference between what actually happened at the ELCA assembly on Monday, and what Capecchi is reporting. And the two reports create a world of difference in how this discussion is being framed.

A newspaper of the stature of the New York Times ought to understand that difference. And assure correct, fair reporting—even about gay people and gay lives, and how the churches deal with us.

*See the first link in this posting for my documentation regarding what took place at the ELCA assembly on Monday. If any readers of this posting feel inclined to help me bring the mistakes in Capecchi's article to the attention of New York Times editors, I would not be opposed to such assistance—or to assistance at calling Beliefnet to accountability for its continued tendency to slant coverage of gay-related issues to the right.

A Mighty Wind: Lutherans Vote for a Welcoming Church in the Midst of a Storm

I blogged yesterday about the assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America now taking place in Minneapolis. My posting focused on the story of what happened at Monday evening’s gathering.

As I noted, one recommendation before the ELCA assembly would allow individual churches and synods to call gay members in partnered relationships to ministry. On Monday, those opposed to that recommendation sought to impose a supermajority requirement when the recommendation is voted on tomorrow—a requirement that it pass by a two-thirds vote rather than a simple majority.

My posting notes that ELCA assembly delegates would vote on the ministry recommendation and another, a “social” recommendation entitled “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” on Friday. As I noted, because it is a social recommendation, the latter proposal requires a two-thirds vote to pass.

It turns out the vote on “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” actually took place yesterday. And the recommendation passed—by a vote of 676 (66.67 percent) to 338 (33.33 percent). I’m indebted to Elizabeth Kaeton’s Telling Secrets blog for the information that the vote occurred last evening.

As the ELCA news site’s summary of the story notes, prior to the vote on the recommendation, members opposed to it sought to pass an amendment that would have replaced the document’s recognition that some Lutherans conscientiously support church recognition of lifelong monogamous same-sex relationships with a statement condemning the “practice of homosexual erotic behavior as contrary to God's intent.”

What “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” has to say about lifelong committed same-sex relationships is actually very middle-of-the-road (chapter IV, pp. 14-19, lines 588-675). The statement recognizes that Lutheran consciences have come to different conclusions about the morality of same-sex relationships, and that there is room in the ELCA for both those who support and those who reject same-gender relationships and marriage. Where the church is and must be united, if it is true to the gospel, the document notes, is in opposing hatred and discrimination against LGBT persons:

While Lutherans hold various convictions regarding lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships, this church is united on many critical issues. It opposes all forms of verbal or physical harassment and assault based on sexual orientation. It supports legislation and policies to protect civil rights and to prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and public services. It called upon congregations and members to welcome, care for, and support same-gender couples and their families, and to advocate for their legal protection.

As the document also notes, the church recognizes that “it has a pastoral responsibility to all children of God.” This includes those who are gay or lesbian. The church invites these children of God to avail themselves of grace and pastoral care. These insights—that churches must “welcome, care for, and support” same-gender persons and their families, that churches have a pastoral responsibility to such people, and that churches must offer grace and pastoral care to LGBT persons, are grounded in “the foundational Lutheran understanding that the baptized are called to discern God’s love in service to the neighbor.”

Christians may differ in their conscientious assessment of the morality of gay sexuality and gay people’s relationships. Christians may not waver, however, in what is “foundational” to the Christian life, and in what constitutes a Christian church: churches are called to welcome, affirm, love, reach out, offer grace, do what families everywhere do—make room for everyone, even when one family member bickers with another or disappoints everyone else.

You’d think that would be self-evident, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately, it’s not. Take a look at the thread of reader comments appended to Jeff Strickler’s Star-Tribune report about the ELCA vote yesterday, and you’ll come across one remark after another echoing reader “hansen1234”:

I'm constantly amazed at the lengths people will go to in order to get where they are not wanted or welcome simply to get there because they are not wanted or welcome. Choose another denomination and move on. The opponents of this will.

Why do you gays and lesbians keep wanting to go where you are not welcome, and where you know you are not welcome? Move on. Find another church. Go where you’re wanted, someplace like the Episcopal church, which, as everyone knows, is falling apart because it has opened its arms to you.

There’s nothing new in these comments—in the ugly use of the Episcopal church as a whipping boy in arguments about welcoming gays and lesbians, in the ugly insinuation that gays and lesbians should not be welcome in Christian churches. Anyone who follows these discussions on blogs and in the mainstream media will be thoroughly familiar with these maleficent suggestions by now.

What is striking about such observations, though, is how spectacularly they miss a point that believers in Christ cannot miss, without doing a fundamental injustice to everything he stood for. In contrast to “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” many Christians appear willing to argue that churches can be churches and can call themselves Christian, even when they deliberately, intentionally exclude a whole set of God’s children. When they deliberately and intentionally set out to make a whole group of God’s children not welcome but thoroughly unwelcome.

How has it come to this, I wonder? How can the churches of the United States have failed so dismally in their catechetical obligation to teach people what church, Christ, gospel, is all about?

Part of the answer to that question, surely, is that many churches have not effectively challenged the persistent tendency of the mainstream media to represent church welcome of gay and lesbian persons as the abandonment of orthodoxy and morality. As I’ve noted again and again on this blog, that message is deeply embedded in mainstream media reporting on religion and gay issues. It’s embedded there because deep-pocket right-wing funding groups have bought that story. They pay for the “religion experts” who continue to convey homophobic poison to the media.

So it’s not surprising to discover that the popular understanding of these issues is decisively molded by media messages that, after all, command far more power, when it comes to transmitting messages that shape our consciousness, than churches do—even in the lives of committed churchgoers. And in this light, it’s fascinating to note what the media are doing with the fact that yesterday’s ELCA deliberations coincided with turbulent weather in Minneapolis.

Again, this is a sneaky but powerful little subtext that media reports almost always exploit, when churches or social groups move towards greater acceptance of gay and lesbian persons. Not long after same-sex marriage began in California, I noticed reports cropping up in the AP about “unprecedented” lightning strikes in that state, and devastating wildfires said to have been caused by those lightning strikes.

And—as though the two are designed to work in perfect tandem—immediately right-wing Christian blogs picked up the story and ran with it. God punishes California for gay marriage! Here’s what you can expect when you disobey God. Thunderbolts and flames! Even the secular media sees a pattern.

You get the drift.

Given how this apocalyptic subtext adopted from the Christian right informs mainstream media accounts of gay issues, I wasn’t surprised to discover this morning that the AP story about last evening’s ELCA vote talks about—you guessed it—storms that blew through Minneapolis yesterday. Patrick Condon’s AP report, which is now being picked up (as gospel truth) by mainstream media outlets across the nation, concludes with a note about how severe storms passed through Minneapolis as the delegates debated, damaging the steeple of a Lutheran church across the street, and how a few “jokes” were made about God’s wrath.

And, predictably, the right-wing Christian blogs are already running with the story. John Piper’s account cites an unnamed source who was “an eyewitness” but who also apparently “drove down to see the damage” that had occurred before he arrived on the scene as an “eyewitness.” In breathless real-time detail, the “eyewitness” spills the beans about what he “saw.” Never seen anything like it; baffled the experts; right in the city; Minneapolis.

Curious. It’s coming downtown. 2 P.M. ELCA convention schedule says discussion of the statement on human sexuality, which is about “whether practicing homosexuality is a behavior that should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry,” is to begin at 2 P.M.

The first buildings the curious, misshapen tornado heads to are . . . the convention center and a Lutheran church! Well, you see where this “eyewitness account” by someone who doesn’t even know what was being discussed at the ELCA assembly and is apparently recounting what he saw post-factum as a real-time “eyewitness” story, is headed:

Jesus Christ controls the wind, including all tornados [sic]. . . . Conclusion: The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin.

You have to wonder why people keep bothering with this tripe, why they keep bending over backwards to find some untoward weather event, any untoward weather event, and then try to correlate it to acceptance of gay and lesbian persons—when thousands of unfortunate weather events are happening every day across the globe, which surely have nothing at all to do with acceptance of homosexuality, and which strike the righteous as well as the unrighteous.

And you have to wonder why people are willing to open the bible-says can of worms when it comes to such events, since that can of worms only serves to demonstrate even more conclusively than ever just how fatuous their highly “biblical” arguments against loving and accepting gay people, which strain the gnat to let the camel through, really are. You can make just about anything you want of the bible. And you can find just about anything you want to find in the bible.

As Nancy Kraft’s Inside Nancy’s Noodle blog notes, if we’re going to run around looking for bible texts to correlate the weather with the ELCA vote yesterday, why not pick the very apropos story of Pentecost from the book of Acts, which says (Acts 2:1-4) that following Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, his followers were all gathered together in one place, when “a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven,” and they were all filled with the Spirit.

As Nancy Kraft notes,

Or maybe it was like the rush of a mighty wind on the Day of Pentecost, because after we were all sequestered in the meeting room because of the tornado, the direction of the conversation that seemed so stuck seemed to come together. Not too long after that, when we did our little happy dance, celebrating the passage of a statement of our church that includes and affirms the experience of people in same gender relationships for the first time in our history, we looked outside... and the sun was shining.

When you read other, non-theological AP stories about that same “curious” storm of “misshapen” winds that baffled weather experts and headed right for a Lutheran church and the convention center, you have to wonder about why these folks keep bothering with this malicious meteorological augury that’s all about whipping gay folks, not about loving God or revering the real meaning and core values of the scriptures.

As those reports indicate, this weather system ripped up buildings, uprooted trees, and overturned vehicles all over the Midwest. Were all those who experienced damage Lutherans? Were they all Lutherans of the decadent gay-loving variety, being sent a warning by the Jesus who controls the weather?

There were tornadoes yesterday evening in Davenport and Stanley, Iowa, and in Mankato and Hastings, Minnesota, as well as in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. In addition to that Lutheran church and the Lutheran assembly to which the “curious” “misshapen” storm headed, at least 40 houses in Minneapolis suffered damage. Schools were chewed up, windows in businesses blew out.

Were all those folks Lutheran? Were they Lutherans of the gay-loving variety? Or does the Jesus who controls the storms just get a little careless sometimes and mess up the lives and property of a few righteous folks as he conjures storms to punish the wicked?

Why don't you fellows just stop with the mean-spirited meteorological-theological mumbo-jumbo? Because in all likelihood, a storm is going to head your way one of these days: the weather has a way of affecting everyone, and you're not exempt. And when it does, and if it causes you grief, you may have forfeited your right to concern by your malicious attempt to blame bad weather on love.

And maybe, all things considered, the folks you've worked so hard to sensitize to the God-storm correlation will one of these days conclude that God sent that storm yesterday to shake the churches up a little bit, because they need shaking when they choose hate over love and exclusion over welcome. The bad weather didn't deter the delegates from voting, after all, and it didn't stop them from voting for what churches have to affirm: that all are welcome and all are wanted.

And then when it was all over they shared bread and wine. And they sang and danced a bit. As Christians are wont to do, when they gather and let the Spirit move them.

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.

Demonization, Distraction, the Rise of Fascism, and the Shameful Silence of Bishops

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation, appeared on MSNBC’s “Hardball” Friday to address remarks made by Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann earlier on the same program (www.alternet.org/blogs/video/103600). Bachmann’s observations got a lot of press this weekend.

As many news sites reported, Bachmann stated her concern that Barack Obama has “anti-American views,” and called on the media to investigate “anti-American liberals” in Congress. Various news commentators have compared Bachmann’s call for a congressional witch hunt with the platform of Joseph McCarthy.

I find Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s critique of Michelle Bachmann illuminating. It intersects with the analysis I have been developing of the proliferation of hate rhetoric in this nation and the implications of such rhetoric for our future, if it goes unchallenged.

The preceding Alternet citation links to a video of Vanden Heuvel talking to Chris Matthews on the "Hardball" program. Here’s a transcript of selected remarks from her response to Michelle Bachmann:

I fear for my country. I think what we just heard was a congresswoman channeling Joe McCarthy, channeling a politics of fear and loathing and demonization and division and distraction. Not a single issue mentioned. This is a politics at a moment of extreme economic pain in this country that is incendiary, that is so debased that I’m kind of almost having a hard time breathing, because I think it’s very scary. . . . .

I think Barack Obama’s going to win, and he’s going to have a lot of work, because there is an extremism unleashed in this nation which you’ve just heard on this program which could lead to violence and hatred and toxicity. And against the backdrop of the great depression we’re living through could lead, and I don’t use this word lightly, to a kind of American fascism which is against the great values of this nation and which people like that are fomenting.

And again—I have to say this, at the risk of beating a drum that others grow tired of hearing—as the politics of division foments hatred that, in the view of sober political analysts, could well lead to violence, the pro-life bishops of the American Catholic church remain silent.

Fear. Loathing. Demonization. Division. Distraction. Extremism. Violence. Hatred. American fascism. Backdrop of extreme economic pain.

Hard words. But the realities to which they point are hard. Just as they were as the Nazis rose to power in Germany and Austria. And the German and Austrian bishops remained silent.

And as these harsh realities begin to cast dark shadows across our national political life, the same bishops who claim to stand for life as the ultimate value not only keep their mouths shut about the spike of hatred and the violence to which it threatens to lead. They not only remain silent.

They actually tell us to side with those fomenting the hatred.

Shame. What shame they are bringing on their heads these days, the U.S. Catholic “pastoral” “leaders.”

+ + + + +

While the U.S. Catholic bishops remain silent—as a body—except when individual bishops choose to speak out on behalf of “the” “pro-life” party whose top leaders are fanning the flames of hate, one of their brother bishops in the Lutheran tradition has chosen to speak out.

Last Thursday, Mark Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, issued a pastoral letter to the ELCA (www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Office-of-the-Presiding-Bishop/Messages-and-Statements.aspx). This letter calls for the presidential candidates to stop personal attacks and focus on the issues that concern all of us, chief among which is the economic crisis that disproportionatey affects the marginal.

Bishop Hanson encourages Lutheran voters to recall the core values of the ELCA social statement “The Church in Society.” That document focuses on building a humane society held together by a notion of the common good that crosses ethnic, racial, class, and gender lines. It states,

Jesus frees Christians to serve others and to walk with people who are hungry, forgotten, oppressed, and despised. The example of Jesus invites Christians to see people near and far away, people of all races, classes and cultures, friends and strangers, allies and enemies as their "neighbor."

The ELCA encourages church members to “be critical when groups of people are inadequately represented in political processes and decisions that affect their lives.”

One would like to think that Lutheran churches and bishops have learned an important lesson from the silence of Christian pastoral leaders when extremist forces, using hate rhetoric and tactics of demonization, distraction, and division, seized control of Germany in the 1920s at a time of economic crisis. I have no choice except to see Bishop Hanson’s pastoral letter in that historic light.

And, of course, that same historic perspective makes the continued silence of the U.S. bishops—as a body—and the choice of many individual bishops to endorse “the” “pro-life” party yet again, even more shameful. If history teaches us anything, it teaches us how much is at stake, when people of faith keep their mouths shut as forces of hatred, division, and demonization gain control at a moment of economic crisis.

When the need for words that place Christians on the side of love and not hate is so great, silence is even more shameful that it usually is, when love needs to be emphasized, and not hatred.

"Camp Out": Churches and LGBT Youth

This weekend Steve and I watched “Camp Out,” a 2006 documentary by Kirk Marcolina and Larry Grimaldi. The film tracks the experiences of a group of upper Midwestern gay and lesbian teens at a summer camp sponsored by the ELCA—the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

I found the documentary fascinating; I recommend it to anyone working with adolescents. At the same time, I found aspects of the story disturbing. I’ve spent the weekend trying to put my finger on what bothered me about this movie.

On the one hand, it is absolutely wonderful that any church is providing a safe space to teens coming to terms with their sexual identities—a sanctuary in which to learn to accept and celebrate themselves, a secure space in which to ask questions, including religious ones, about their lives and futures, an untroubled place in which to form bonds with other youth who share experiences similar to theirs.

Because my current situation removes me from the young adults with whom I interacted in college teaching (and, in fact, I haven’t ever taught at the high-school level), I have to stretch myself to remember what growing up is like. The film began with brief biographical vignettes focusing on several of the teens who took part in the summer camp.

In almost all of these, the young woman or man interviewed speaks of having come out of the closet in early adolescence—at the age of 13 or 14. To me, that’s unimaginably young. It’s unimaginably young to have a firm grasp of something so decisive to one’s personhood as one’s sexual orientation.

And yet the data are there, and they’re solid: early adolescents, even children, now have an inkling of being gay or lesbian. The age at which such awareness breaks through, and at which youth begin struggling with questions of sexual orientation, is younger and younger. It’s far younger than it was when I was growing up.

And as I think about the differences, I’m aware that this disparity in my generation’s experience of coming out and that of the current generation of youth has everything to do with information. There’s simply far more information available today to youth about sexuality in general, about the presence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons in the human community.

But this information—the prisms it provides for someone questioning her/his sexual identity at an early age to frame her/his experience—does not necessarily make the coming out process simpler for youth today. It can, in fact, do the opposite.

When an early adolescent begins to recognize that her attractions are not “normal,” and has a name to affix to these alternative attractions, the burden of coming to terms with the recognition can be well-nigh impossible to shoulder. It is one thing to sense at an early age that one is not “right” in the eyes of mainstream society. It is quite another thing to have a specific name to apply to the non-normative aspects of one’s personhood, and to learn that this name makes one a despised object in the eyes of one’s peers.

And this is a recognition that contemporary LGBT youth come to at ever earlier ages, just as they come to the recognition of their sexual orientations at earlier and early ages: I’m speaking of the recognition that one’s orientation is despised. Just as gay and lesbian youth today have access to a much deeper pool of information about sexual orientation than previous generations have had, so do their peers.

And those peers can use the information to torment, to cut the questioning youth out of the herd and attack him, to exclude and punish. They can and they do.

In such a world, it’s imperative that the churches do something. It’s imperative that they do something for these youth. And it is profoundly disturbing that, for the most part, churches are doing absolutely nothing.

At worst, they are reinforcing the attacks by encouraging these youth to seek reparative therapy or to “repent.” At best, they observe a stony silence that murders the hearts and souls of youth needing to talk about their struggle for identity every bit as much as any adolescent needs such dialogue to form a healthy adult identity.

So I’m bowled over—as a gay adult, an educator, a believer, I’m profoundly grateful—that the ELCA has provided a venue for gay youth to examine and celebrate their sexual identities. This is a ministry all churches ought to beproviding today. But it is a ministry that, to their everlasting shame, hardly any actually provide.

As one of the camp leaders, Rev. Jay Wiesner, who is himself openly gay, says at one point in the film, pastors who have a heart for these youth are sick and tired of seeing gay youth try to kill themselves. Rev. Wiesner says he is passionate about ministry to gay youth because he does not want to see another gay teen commit suicide—not a single one more.

One of the most moving scenes in the documentary captures an evening fireside gathering at which the youth sing a hymn called “Sanctuary.” I have to admit I don’t know the song, though the film suggests it’s popular in churches today.

The lyrics speak of both church and the indvidual believer as sanctuary. As the group of gay and lesbian teens gathers singing this song, one breaks into tears. She weeps bitterly while clinging to her friends, who comfort and minister to her in her sorrow.

It is impossible to witness this scene without thinking painfully of how gay and lesbian teens (of how gay and lesbian persons in general) struggle to claim any place at all in a church that calls itself sanctuary for all wounded children of God. It is not possible to witness this young woman’s intense grief without recognizing how savage are the wounds inflicted by church and society on gay youth—of the struggle of gay youth to feel any sense of self-worth, any sense of belonging, above all, in the church context, any affirmation at all from the church that they can be sanctuaries for the divine presence, precisely as they are. As gay or lesbian human beings.

In my recollection of the film, the preceding scene coalesces with another to form an inspirational diptych that is as central to the theme of sanctuary as is the scene I’ve just recounted. The second scene is a clip from the ordination of Rev. Wiesner to the Lutheran ministry in 2004.

As I compiled this blog entry, I discovered that there’s actually a website devoted to remembering this ground-breaking ordination: “The Extraordinary Ordination of Jay Alan Wiesner” at http://bethanyrev.home.att.net. As the website materials and “Camp Out” emphasize, the choice of Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis to ordain an openly gay ministry candidate in 2004 was, indeed, extraordinary. This action contravened ELCA polity of the time; that polity forbade the ordination of an openly gay man who did not commit himself to lifelong chastity.

Not only was the choice of the church to ordain Pastor Wiesner extraordinary, but the ordination ceremony itself was equally exceptional. As the pastors gathered to lay hands on the ministry candidate surrounded him, the entire congregation got up and participated in the laying on of hands. To someone such as I, someone frequently disappointed by the churches’ inability to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches today—particularly in the powerful voices of suffering brothers and sisters who stand outside church doors asking for bread when they have been given stones—the scene was engrossing. It brings tears to my eyes.

Obviously, this is a film I loved. I loved it because I celebrate the commitment of at least one church to live the church’s mission of providing a safe space to everyone in the world. I celebrate the commitment of one church to hear the Spirit speaking through the needs of LGBT youth today, and to offer sanctuary to these precious human beings who are so obviously in need of this particular ministry.

So what is the “on the other hand” that picks up on my train of thought in the second and third paragraphs of this posting? That’s harder for me to put my finger on. Obviously, part of what bothers me profoundly in this story is something I’ve already alluded to—the stolid refusal of churches to recognize the needs of LGBT youth, a refusal that has, as Rev. Wiesner rightly notes, life-and-death consequences for some gay youth.

How churches can think they are being church at all—in the most essential sense of that word—when they either shut out or remain silent about the gay and lesbian youth knocking at their doors, or about anyone in need knocking at their doors, is beyond me. I just don’t get it. I won’t ever get it.

But there’s more to my discomfort. That more has to do, I think, with the puerile way churches engage in youth ministry, period—ministry to both straight and (all too rarely) gay youth. Too much of the religious rhetoric in this film—the “official” rhetoric of ministers and counselors—was, frankly, cringeworthy. Amidst difficult adolescent struggles, youth, both gay and straight, are asking the churches for solid food. What the churches all too often offer is pablum, predigested sentimentality and wispy, vacuous theology.

I do recognize that it’s important to tailor religious (and other) messages to people’s maturity level. I’m not an expert in youth ministry, and I challenge myself, when I watch a film like “Camp Out,” to remember that some of the exercises that might strike me as a tad on the childish side may be effective ways of dealing with adolescents.

At the same time, I heard the youth in this film asking for more when they spoke outside the earshot of adults: for intellectually challenging and personally stimulating information, responses, dialogue sessions. All too often, they received, instead, canned, formulaic religious responses and encouragement to engage in meaningless diversionary rituals.

Why does this trouble me so profoundly? Both because it demonstrates the church’s inability to listen carefully to what a segment of its population—adolescents—really need, and because it suggests to me that churches in general are frozen in a kind of adolescence, in American culture. Working at church-owned universities, I’ve seen time and again how superficial ministerial initiatives to the young are—but also how superficial the church is in responding to all kinds of needs of the society in which it lives.

I have sat through session after session—particularly in United Methodist settings, but in Catholic ones, too—in which we sang, passed little notes with covenantal promises around, picked up special rocks and dropped them into bowls along with those promises. And nothing changed. Because the rituals were empty and meaningless, exercises in making us feel good when all of us knew darned well that they meant nothing and would change nothing.

Because those mounting these exercises in futility don’t intend for the exercises in futility to mean anything or to change anything. When the retreat is over, the same power will reside in the same hands (at the top, in the hands of the grossly overpaid church-affiliated administrator who makes life-and-death decisions about the lives of personnel under him or her, with no recourse at all to those little slips of covenant promises or those little rocks in the bowl). In retreats of this ilk, we knew not only that any covenant promises any of us made to one another meant not a hill of beans in the dog-eat-dog world of professional life: we also knew that the church-protected administrator at the top of the heap was perfectly capable of taking what we wrote on those slips of paper and using it against us, if we were not careful. With no regard at all for the covenant promises she or he had made in the retreat context.

Church needs to mean more. It needs to offer more. A big part of what youth in general are struggling through in adolescence—and gay youth in particular—is the recognition that adults are all too often phony, empty, hypocritical, ill-informed and yet oh so certain of what we think we know. For the church to offer these youth slips of paper to pin on crosses and burn them, fake baptisms in a lake to remind them of their official baptism, stones to pick up and put at the foot of the cross, is just insulting—as it is insulting for the same churches to offer those who work in their employ the same nonsensical smarm at retreats.

People—adolescents included—are hungry for authentic human encounter, in which those meeting each other at, say, a retreat, are encouraged and helped to let the guard down, to speak from the heart. People are hungry for meaningful dialogue about theological and moral issues, not insipid inspirational pap. People want to know that having something to do with church makes a real difference and not a pretend difference in every aspect of their lives, their economic and professional lives included. People want church and church-sponsored institutions to be safe places, sanctuary—not to promise sanctuary when they have absolutely no intention of offering it.

That’s my grousing about this movie. I love the fact that this particular church group is offering sanctuary for LGBT youth. I can’t overstate my praise for this courageous decision. At the same time, I’d very much like to see the offerings of churches in general to youth in general broadened and deepened. I’d like to see them be meaningful. And real.

I’d like to see churches be meaningful and real, for a change.