Trump's Education Secretary DeVos Presents Commencement Address at Bethune-Cookman University: Things Do Not Go Well for Her

Mr. Trump's Secretary of Education (and right-wing Christian activist) Betsy DeVos was the commencement speaker yesterday at the historically black United Methodist university founded by Mary McLeod Bethune, Bethune-Cookman University. Things did not go well.

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.

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.

Health Care Reform and Blue Dog Profits: A Call to Share the Wealth

And as reports circulate about the funds now pouring into the coffers of those blue dog Democrats who are working hard to subvert a plan for universal health care in the United States, it occurs to me that those of us who promote access to basic, quality health care as a human right for all ought to publicize the names and contact information of these suddenly wealthy public servants.

Since I live in Representative Mike Ross's state and since he's featured in the story to which I link above, I'll help by publicizing his contact information. He can be mailed or called at 2436 Rayburn House Office Bldg., Washington, DC 20515 (1-800-223-2220; [202] 225-1314 Fax).

Rep. Ross's helpful website has a "How May I Help You?" section. So I feel sure that he will be interested in hearing from the millions of American families that cannot afford basic, quality health care, and, in particular, from those millions of families whose children are without access to basic health care.

If you're in that boat or care about those who are in that boat, perhaps you can join me in directing those families to Rep. Ross. He has a sudden windfall to help these families in need, and he appears eager to help.

His website tells us that he and his wife and children are "active members of the First United Methodist Church in Prescott [Arkansas]." That's important to know, for those of us looking for him to help, because the Social Principles of his United Methodist Church state (paragraph 162) that "health care is a basic right." And in 2001, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church adopted a resolution calling for universal health care in the United States.

So I feel sure that we can trust Rep. Ross's promise that he wants to help. I feel certain that he is preparing to use all that money now flowing into his coffers from the health care and health insurance industry to help the millions of Americans, including many, many poor children, without access to basic, quality health care.

Please contact him. He'll want to hear from you, and he has pledged to help.

Sunday Tidbits: Cyber Bullying and "Welcoming" Churches That Fail to Welcome

A few end-of-week tidbits for a Sunday posting:

Elizabeth Kaeton’s Telling Secrets blog had an excellent posting yesterday about cyber bullies and their frequent connections to the über right circles within some churches trying to block open discussion of issues like the churches’ refusal to welcome and affirm gay and lesbian persons.

Elizabeth Kaeton notes that though cyber bullying has predominantly been seen among children and teens, it is “becoming increasingly known and documented among adults,” and women and LGBT people are a common and preferred target of many adult cyber bullies. Based on research she has done about the phenomenon, Kaeton offers the following profile of the adult cyber bully:

▪ S/he delights in the negative attention gained from attacking others;

▪ S/he obtains intense gratification from the perception of control and power s/he gets from intimidating others;

▪ S/he is skilled at twisting words and phrases to turn arguments on their heads;

▪ His/her bullying is driven by internal aggression that may involve projection, false criticism, and patronizing sarcasm;

▪ S/he is not primary interested in contributing something of value to a conversation, but in controlling and, if possible, thwarting conversation of issues s/he does not wish to see discussed openly;

▪ S/he is adept at creating conflict where there previous was none by raising questions that are not so much about the pursuit of answers but more about casting doubt or calling into question the character and integrity of a person.

Elizabeth Kaeton’s analysis of how cyber bullies try to control and block open conversation of issues like the churches’ response to gay persons when those conversations move in directions the cyber bully considers taboo is illuminating. As I noted yesterday in my discussion of the provenance of the word “whine” in online political discussions, the real object of those representing the controlling center of social (and church) groups is not to foster careful, respectful discussion.

It’s the opposite: it’s to stop conversations the controlling center has sought to control, but has not succeeded at controlling. I’m particularly struck by Kaeton’s insight that, even when cyber bullies write copiously about their reasons for questioning the integrity of another poster or the feasibility of that poster’s proposals, the object is not to build, but to tear down.

Like bullies in general, cyber bullies are all about tearing down, not building up. Like other bullies, they often lurk voyeuristically around a blog that has caught their eye because the blog in question is transgressing lines of control important to the cyber bully. Like bullies in general, cyber bullies take careful note of what their target says and does, often for an extended period of time, gathering information to be used when they decide to go on the attack.

Anything self-revelatory or self-referential a target may say on a blog can then become the basis of an attack in which the self-revelation or self-referential discourse is twisted to imply that the blogger is weak, limited, psychologically aberrant, unintelligent—what have you. It’s important to note, too, what Kaeton has to say about the groups typically targeted by cyber bullies.

They tend to be women and gays. Which says something in turn about the typical profile (the typical heterosexual male profile) of the cyber bully lurking voyeuristically around some blogs, watching for personal or self-revelatory information the blogger might share, while keeping his own identity completely masked, as he prepares to attack.

And, for a good discussion of where some churches are as they struggle with the question of whether gay and lesbian persons should be welcome in the Christian community, I recommend this recent thread at Matt Horan’s ReEmergent Church blog. This has to do with the current discussion of the place of gays and lesbians in the United Methodist church, about which I’ve blogged repeatedly.

And no, I’m not lurking around this discussion. I do not have the slightest interest in what interests bullies as they follow such a discussion: that is, to subvert it. I do not choose to contribute to the discussion primarily because I’m not United Methodist and I suspect I’d be considered an unwelcome intruder, if I leapt into it.

At the same time, I’ve been blunt about making a point I consider important for churches discussing welcome of LGBT persons to ponder today, as they continue to try to tell the world they are welcoming while they practice the opposite of welcome in the lives of LGBT persons. This is that if the churches are really serious about knowing whether they’re succeeding in welcoming gay and lesbian persons even as they shove us roughly away, they need to set up welcome spaces and forums in which to hear our voices. (See my comment about this in the comments thread of this recent posting.)

If they did this, I think they’d often hear a response that ought to embarrass and shame anyone in unwelcoming churches who still wants to posture as welcoming, affirming, loving, and kind. What the churches persistently do to gay and lesbian persons is the opposite. It is cruel, deceitful, unjust, and anti-salvific.

These are points prominent in the discussion to which I’m pointing here, on Matt Horan’s ReEmergent Church blog. Matt Horan was a delegate to the recent Annual Conference of the UMC of Florida. The conference took place at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach.

Horan voted for the “all means all” amendment. It did not pass. The Florida Annual Conference voted with its Old South brothers and sisters to uphold the exclusionist stance that the Methodist churches of the Old South took in the slave period, when they upheld slavery, and then in the period leading up to the abolition of legal segregation in the 1960s, during which they persistently fought for the right to continue excluding and discriminating against black members.

As I’ve noted previously (see here and here), it is ironic in the extreme that members of these United Methodist churches of the Old South now try to claim that they are fighting against the collapse of Methodist orthodoxy to cultural norms, as the culture moves towards acceptance of gay persons. The truth is the opposite: in fighting to exclude gay persons from their churches, a majority of Methodists of the South are upholding cruel and unjust cultural norms with which they have become comfortable, every bit as much as they upheld cruel and unjust cultural norms with which they were comfortable in the slave period and the period of legal segregation.

Homophobia is the new racism, and churches will one day have to repent of it as bitterly (and, frankly, often insincerely) as they now claim to repent of their previous institutional racism and support for slavery. In all these cases, we see churches doing something of which churches ought never to be proud: clinging to deep-seated cultural norms with which their members have become comfortable in the face of the gospel's call to conversion.

The discussion following Matt Horan’s posting is illuminating. Anyone interested in the games many churches have been playing with gay and lesbian lives for some time now, as they try to paint themselves as welcoming communities while they practice savage exclusion, would do well to read the discussion. Note the following arguments Florida Methodists who continue to uphold exclusion of gays and lesbians from Methodist churches put forward:

▪ Let the gays in, and you’d have to welcome Satanists(!).

▪ We’re doing it for the Africans. We’re defending black Methodists against the cultural imperialism of white Methodists in the developing world, who want to impose their cultural norms on people of color in the developing nations of the world.

▪ And perhaps most astonishing of all: It doesn’t matter to gays and lesbians, ultimately, if we tell them they are not welcome. It doesn’t matter because we are welcoming, no matter what we say about your right to join our church. “Having open hearts, minds, and doors doesn’t have to mean membership is open – and truthfully – in many respects – who cares?”

Astonishing, isn’t it? I don’t want you in my church. You cannot join my church. But you are welcome! You are welcome regardless of how you feel about being excluded, because I say I’m welcoming you! My heart, mind, and door are open to you, even though they’re, well, closed to you. Because I say that I am a welcoming person even when I slam the door in your face.

And don’t tell me you have a problem with my comparing you to a Satanist (or a pedophile, or that your marriage is akin to incest). Because there is no forum for you to tell me how you feel, anyway, since I refuse to admit you to my church—though you’re, of course, welcome. Because I say you are welcome, and it’s important for me to think I’m open and loving and welcoming, even when I am clearly the opposite.

Maddening, isn’t it? Maddening to deal with, hurtful in the extreme to live with. If UMC churches really want to know what we who are gay think about this “welcome,” please ask us. Please set up a form to hear our feedback. You might get an earful that calls into question—radical question—your pretensions to have open hearts, minds, and doors.

These attitudes and assertions, this ugly game-playing designed to bash gays while allowing the basher to paint himself as welcoming, have real-life consequences. It was in the Florida United Methodist church, at one of its “welcoming” institutions, that Steve and I had our last in a series of hard-knock experiences at the hands of “welcoming” churches.

Though we had been told that we would be welcome at a Methodist institution in Florida, welcome as a gay couple, when the Florida United Methodist church split over this issue on the very day we arrived in Florida, the welcome mat quickly disappeared. We found our lives turned upside down by ugly, discriminatory treatment in a Methodist workplace that had no prohibitions—none at all—against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. We were told that we were in a “caring community” whose behavior towards us was anything but caring.

I found myself without a job when I was terminated without having even having had my work evaluated by my Methodist supervisor, though I later discovered she considered a sneak review she performed by an outside evaluator—which I never even saw or had any chance to respond to—an evaluation. I discovered this information only when a document in which the supervisor made that claim about the evaluation fell into my hands. She never did me the courtesy of knowing she considered the review an evaluation, nor did she allow me to see it or answer its contents, even when she used it to destroy my livelihood.

Steve and I were told during our year of work at this Methodist institution that we might not take each other to doctors’ visits, and should arrive at our workplace in separate cars, though we had a single car to drive in our time at this “welcoming” United Methodist institution. We now live with great anxiety, trying to cover a second mortgage we took out when the leader of this Florida United Methodist institution invited us to work with her, promised us jobs to our retirement, and then turned against us as the statewide church began to fight about LGBT membership in Methodist churches, under the leadership of a bishop who is a leader in the anti-gay movement in the United Methodist church.

Welcoming, despite exclusion from membership? I don’t think so. Open minds and hearts and doors? No, I don’t believe that’s the case. Not based on my experience at this United Methodist institution.

Doing the Lord’s work? No. Because the Lord’s work is welcoming others! Churches that make the lives of gay people miserable in manifold ways, anytime we brush up against their open doors, can’t justifiably call themselves welcoming places or places that are modeling the love of Jesus for all.

Ask us, if you really want to know. We’ll tell you.

Virginia Foxx as a Representative of Catholic Values: Porcine Moral Reasoning

In a posting several days ago (here), I noted that when I look at the gap between what George W. Bush did in setting a system of torture in place, and what the United Methodist Church teaches about issues of justice and peace, I am deeply troubled. I also noted the discrepancy between what the United Methodist Church teaches about homophobia and heterosexism, and the behavior of some of its own institutions and members.

I ended that posting by noting that as I call on my Methodist brothers and sisters to hold their co-religionists accountable for the gap between their rhetoric and the reality of many Methodist lives, I also pledge myself to hold my Catholic brothers and sisters similarly accountable.

This posting is about Catholic accountability. Today on the floor of the U.S. House, North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx, a Catholic, stated that the claim that Matthew Shepard was killed because he was gay is a "hoax" (here).

Catholic mother and grandmother Virginia Foxx made this statement while Matthew Shepard's mother sat in the House gallery listening. As Michael Rowe notes in the Huffington Post article to which I have just linked,

I'd like to imagine the feelings of Judy Shepard as the hate crimes bill named after her murdered son passed the House in the presence of the woman whose contribution to the passage of that law was to attempt to besmirch his memory with ugly distortions.

But judging by Congresswoman Foxx's preposterous comments earlier in the day, I doubt she felt much besides a peevish sense that her side lost one more battle in what they like to call "the culture war." I rather suspect that calling bigotry and hate by their proper names is still news in Mrs. Foxx's private, personal, dark corner of North Carolina, where it's clearly still a cold October night in Laramie in 1998.

Virginia Foxx exemplifies what the American Catholic tradition has become in its most "morally porcine" variants, to use another of Rowe's phrases: willing to lie in order to defend "moral" points; eager to defend hate and violence when these are practiced against our "enemies"; and gleefully capable of claiming to defend family values while attacking someone else's children, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles.

It matters to me that Virginia Foxx is Catholic, and, as a Catholic, is capable of making such an atrociously false and morally obtuse statement about Matthew Shepard's murder. It matters even more that she defends hate while claiming to represent my religious community and its values. In just about every way I can think of, Virginia Foxx's consistent defense of big business and militarism, and her attacks on gay and lesbian persons, represent the antithesis of authentic Catholic values.

More Light: Presbytery of Arkansas Votes Against Ordination Discrimination

Here's a bit of local news that deserves national attention: last Saturday (21 February), the Presbytery of Arkansas voted by a large majority to approve a change to the constitution of the Presbyterian Church USA that would permit the ordination of openly gay people. The vote was 116 in favor and 64 against.

At its General Assembly last June, the Presbyterian Church USA (to which churches of the Presbytery of Arkansas belong) passed a resolution calling for a change to Paragraph G-6.0106b of the denomination's Book of Order. This paragraph requires ordained officeholders to "live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness."

The amendment passed at General Assembly eliminates that language and says, instead, that ordained officers would "pledge themselves to live lives obedient to Jesus Christ" and would "declare their fidelity to the standards of the Church." In order to change the Book of Order, two-thirds of the church's presbyteries have to approve this amendment.

The presbyteries of many Southern states (and some Midwestern areas) have historically resisted this change. And, true to form, presbyteries in states like Virginia and Alabama have voted the amendment down--as well as in south Arkansas, where Presbyterian churches belong to the Presbytery of the Pines, which also comprises Presbyterian churches in north Louisiana.

The vote of the Presbytery of Arkansas, to which churches of central and northern Arkansas belong, is surprising many observers. I can't say I am all that surprised. There has been a quiet revolution going on for some years among many Presbyterians in this part of the state, in which these thoughtful and well-educated folks are sifting through the arguments advanced against ordaining openly gay church members, and finding them insufficient. And downright discriminatory.

Though the media and right-wing mavens would like for us to think that the discriminatory language in the Presbyterian Book of Order has the force of longstanding tradition, it was placed in the Book of Order only in 1997. Anti-gay legislation like this in the Presbyterian and United Methodist churches is a recent phenomenon. It represents the attempt of right-wing political operatives in groups like the Institute on Religion and Democracy to split these mainline denominations by politicizing the discussion of gay human beings and gay lives.

I take heart in the fact that many Presbyterians are moving courageously against discrimination in their church life, and are combating the influence of right-wing political pressure groups like IRD. Paragraph G-6.0106b is inherently discriminatory. There never has been a tradition of examining non-gay candidates for ordination in the way gay candidates have been examined in recent years--a tradition of inquiring into the most intimate details of their lives, to assure that they were celibate as a prerequisite to their ordination.

And note that the requirement to remain in celibacy as a precondition to ordination affects gay clergy very differently than it does straight ones. As the present language of the Book of Order makes very plain, a single straight person who is ordained may then go on to marry. But a single gay person who is ordained is expected to live in celibacy for the rest of his or her life. No provision is made for recognizing gay unions ( see here).

This is arbitrary. And it is cruel. Kudos for the Presbyterian citizens of my state (well, at least of the central and northern parts of Arkansas) for recognizing the arbitrariness and cruelty of the stipulations the Book of Order places on gay lives, in its current wording, and for voting to change things. Perhaps one of the surprising effects of the overt racism expressed by many Arkansans in the last federal election, and of our shameful vote to deny gay citizens the right to adopt their own children, will be to make thinking, ethical citizens begin to work harder against prejudice in their back yard.

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.

Kudos to Hillary: Equality as a Moral Imperative

We all want an America defined by deep and meaningful equality, from civil rights to labor rights, from women’s rights to gay rights … from ending discrimination to promoting unionization, to providing help for the most important job there is: caring for our families.

Hillary Clinton’s speech endorsing Barack Obama today was a class act.

Commentators are already noting that a passion sometimes absent from her campaign speeches came through in the latter part of the speech, when she made the statements above.

Re: gay rights, I encourage Mrs. Clinton to use her influence now to press her United Methodist Church and the institutions it sponsors to put into practice—and not merely talk about—its Social Principles. In this church that has such disproportionate influence in Main Street USA, there is much work to do be done to deal with the ugly prejudice that manifested itself again at the latest General Conference.

Were you listening, bishops of the United Methodist Church? Were you listening, good layfolks in the United Methodist Church? Deep and meaningful equality: not lip-service equality, not equality that is printed on pieces of paper but violated in your institutional practice.

Deep and meaningful equality for gay human beings: equality is a moral imperative.

An Open Letter to Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker (#3)

Dear Bishop Whitaker,

Having given you my testimony, and, in particular, having sketched the ways in which Methodism informs my religious commitments and value judgments, today I would like to offer a response to your essay of 13 July 2006 entitled “The Church and Homosexuality.”

Thank you for having placed this essay on the website of the Florida UMC Conference at www.flumc2.org/page.asp?PKValue=967, and for having invited responses to it. I understand that the essay arises, in part, out of what occurred at the 2006 Florida statewide UMC conference assembly.

Interestingly enough, that conference ended the very day Dr. Schafer and I arrived in Florida to take positions at a United Methodist college under your pastoral jurisdiction, and on whose board of trustees you serve. Though the fact that we are openly gay and living in a longstanding committed relationship was discussed by your college’s board prior to our coming to this college, and though the board approved our hire, we were not told of the bitter conflict that emerged in the Florida UMC just at the time of our arrival to serve at your college.

If I understand correctly, this conflict centered around a controversy in Virginia, in which an openly gay man asked to join a United Methodist church and was turned away by its pastor. He was told he was not welcome. Interestingly enough, I happen to have a personal connection to this story, in that a cousin of mine is married to a close relative of the person around whom this controversy centered, and I know of the man’s experiences from that context.

From what I learned after it became evident to Dr. Schafer and me that

, your 2006 statewide conference ended with bitter divisions in the Florida UMC church. If I am informed correctly, those divisions were over the question of whether openly gay and lesbian believers can be welcomed by Methodist churches.

Your essay responds to this question by providing an overview and defense of the current position of the UMC that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian faith. At the same time, your essay makes a plausible and thoughtful argument for reasoned, inclusive dialogue about the church’s response to gay and lesbian human beings. Your essay ends with a warning about what might happen if the United Methodist Church revised its current prohibition against the “practice” of homosexuality or the ordination of (openly) gay and lesbian persons or blessing of gay unions. You state,

If The United Methodist Church changes its basic position on homosexuality, then it will be making a move toward modern Western culture, but against a historic and global ecumenical consensus. Some would justify this move as the prophetic action of a church in the vanguard of enlightenment. However, the fact is that such a move would change the way The United Methodist Church would be viewed by the rest of the ecumenical Christian community, which, by a vast majority, adheres to the traditional teaching of Christianity. It is not far-fetched to envision the rest of the Christian community viewing The United Methodist Church as a “culture church” that would have some historic connection to the Christian faith and community, but that had wandered away from the substance of the Christian tradition in order to offer a Christian interpretation of the ideas and values of its culture. One could even imagine a future ecumenical council to which United Methodists might be allowed to send official observers, but in which we would not be allowed to participate with vote because of our status as “culture Christians.”

Finally, what is needed now is an environment in the church for a calm consideration of all of the complex issues in this debate, civil discourse, responsible theological reflection, and above all, prayer for discernment of the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

Your argument regarding the dangers of becoming a “culture church” is provocative. As you may be aware, since you participated in the process by which I was hired at your college, my doctoral dissertation was a study of a social gospel theologian, Shailer Mathews, who was accused by neo-orthodox theologians such as the Niebuhrs of having been a culture-Protestant.

My reading of Mathews’s theology convinces me that this charge is inaccurate. In my view, in Matthews’s work, the social gospel exhibits far more critical acumen about culture than its neo-orthodox critics gave it credit for having. I wrote a dissertation that was published as a book entitled Shailer Mathews’s Lives of Jesus to study Mathews’s social gospel theology. The dissertation concludes that the charge that Mathews was a culture-Protestant is not accurate.

My work on this topic was preceded and informed by a master’s thesis that studied the early roots of Methodism. Given my family’s historic ties to Methodism and the way these informed my own religious upbringing, I wanted to research and understand how Methodism dealt with questions of social justice from its inception among the working classes of the British Isles.

That research flowed naturally into my study of the social gospel. In my Christian journey, the Methodist strand in my family’s background has led to a constant concern to see the churches do justice. I see Jesus as one who always reached beyond barriers in his society that defined some human beings as less human than others, that defined some human beings as more deserving of power and privilege than others. In my reading of the gospels, Jesus constantly transgresses social and religious lines that define one group as the righteous and the other as the unrighteous.

My concern to see the churches challenge social norms permitting some people to be treated as less human than others led me out of my childhood church, the Southern Baptist church of my paternal grandmother, and into the Catholic church when I was a teen. My decision to join the Catholic church had everything to do with the fact that my family’s church was deeply entrenched in the system of segregation. Our church found itself unable to speak a prophetic word against racism during the Civil Rights struggle, because to do so would require costly grace. The Catholic church in my south Arkansas town attracted me because it was the sole “white” church in our town in which black and white Christians were worshiping together in the mid-1960s.

Watching the feeble foot-dragging responses of almost all white churches in Arkansas to the historic Civil Rights movement led me as an adolescent to conclude that churches often take their cue from culture, particularly when there is a price to be paid for speaking courageously against injustice. This experience, coupled with the strands in my family history that pointed to different possibilities in which churches move against and not with currents of injustice in their social context, led me to my calling as a theologian.

This calling has framed my entire approach to academic life. I have brought the concern to do justice, to critique injustice, and to form communities of solidarity resisting injustice to all of my academic work, including my work as an academic dean at one United Methodist college and then as an academic vice-president at another United Methodist college—your Florida college (now a university).

Given this academic, theological, and faith commitment running through my life as a teacher, scholar, and administrator, I read the history of the United Methodist church and its relationship to gay and lesbian human beings quite differently than you do in your 2006 essay. It is, of course, crucial to acknowledge that I read this history differently as well because I am gay, and have paid a price for being gay and honest about my life. I have paid that price particularly in Christian institutions. Since you are a heterosexual male, I would suggest that you may read Methodist history and teachings through a different optic, even if you share my commitment to social justice.

I would like respectfully to ask you to consider what happens when one takes the paragraph I cite above from your essay “The Church and Homosexuality,” and substitutes the word “slavery” for “homosexuality” in the first sentence. The sentence reads, “If The United Methodist Church changes its basic position on homosexuality, then it will be making a move toward modern Western culture, but against a historic and global ecumenical consensus.”

You are aware, are you not, that there was a time in Christian history—and a time not so very long ago, in terms of history—in which the Methodist church and the vast majority of churches taught that slavery is not only compatible with Christian practice and with scripture, but is mandated by scripture? When some Christians began to challenge that deeply entrenched cultural presupposition and the use of the bible to justify cultural norms supporting slavery, most white Christians in the American South—including most Methodists—bitterly resisted the critique of their traditional support of slavery as a distortion of the scripture.

In fact, many white Southern theologians prior to the Civil War charged churches in the North with having succumbed to culture, in challenging the longstanding practice of slavery within Christianity and the use of the bible to legitimate slavery. These theologians saw the churches of the American South as the sole bastions of orthodoxy in a world determined to alter the historic faith.

And they were right, insofar as their argument was based on the fact that slavery had always been taken for granted in Christianity, for some 1800 years, and had been approved by the churches. These theologians and churchmen resisting the historic shift to abolition of slavery were right insofar as they noted that the scriptures had been used throughout Christian history to justify slavery.

The churches of the American South have had a strange penchant, have they not, for defending the “historic faith” even when that faith includes practices that society, acting under impulses of justice, has gradually begun to recognize as unjust? We white Christians of the South defended slavery to the bitter end. When slavery was abolished, we then made a mighty noise about women’s suffrage and women’s rights.

Substitute those terms for “homosexuality” in your paragraph above, and again, I think you will see that the case you are making is precisely the wrong way around: rather than capitulating to culture in its defense of slavery, and then misogyny, and then segregation, and now heterosexist patriarchy, the churches have been captive to culture in defending these insupportable social practices. They have had to revise their support of unjust practices, to whose injustice they have been blind, insofar as prophetic movements within the churches themselves, acting in solidarity with secular movements for justice, have pushed and prodded the churches to reconsider their defense of the indefensible.

I am sorry to have to tell you this, but mainstream American churches already are—to a great extent—“culture churches.” It is captivity to culture that they must combat in ceasing to discriminate against gay and lesbian persons. Our churches often have a lamentable tendency to follow culture in justice-oriented directions only after culture has moved to accord civil rights to disenfranchised groups. Rather than leading the way, our churches all too often echo and support culture—and, in particular, cultural injustice—until necessary, justice-oriented cultural changes force the churches to take a belated look at their unjust practices and presuppositions.

To say that, in according full human status to gay and lesbian persons, the United Methodist Church would be in danger of becoming a “culture church” is to fracture logic, to twist sociological data so that they say precisely they opposite of what they actually say. The sordid reality is, Bishop Whitaker, that in a culture in which prejudice against gay and lesbian persons is still normative (though this is gradually shifting), the church pays no price at all in refusing to defend gay and lesbian persons against injustice. It is the path of cheap grace, rather than costly grace, to continue to discriminate against gay and lesbian persons in the name of the gospel.

Costly grace, the kind of grace that would motivate the churches to stand up and to speak out at all cost, would (and we all know this, do we not?) threaten the pocketbook of mainstream churches. As during the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s, when I saw wealthy churchgoers with power in the business community and local government threaten pastors who condemned racism, today, any church speaking out against oppression of gay and lesbian persons is likely to risk loss of donations.

As an example, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, lavishly funded by foundations headed by several extremely wealthy neo-conservative Americans, has specifically targeted the United Methodist Church and several other mainstream churches, to try to prevent those churches from highlighting the social principles in their historic faith statements. It is no secret that the IRD has adroitly used prejudice against gay and lesbian persons—which is to say, it has used gay and lesbian human beings—to drive political wedges into the hearts of mainstream churches, to pit Methodist against Methodist, Presbyterian against Presbyterian, and Episcopalian against Episcopalian.

When these churches and their leaders speak out against unjust, discriminatory treatment of gay and lesbian persons, they pay a high price. They lose funding from wealthy interest groups. They also court highly-funded media attacks sponsored by these groups. You yourself may know this well, since the IRD has frequently reprinted some of your articles and sermons on its websites and other websites that it funds.

Much is at stake here, Bishop Whitaker, and I respectfully ask that you and other United Methodists listen more carefully to the voices of gay and lesbian believers who ask to talk with you about precisely what is at stake. To know the mechanisms of injustice in society at large (and in your own institutions), you must first and foremost ask to hear the voices of those who experience injustice. Only then will your deliberations about issues such as homosexuality be fully informed, and only then will your voice be credible.

Your essay ends with a call for calm consideration, civil discourse, responsible theological reflection, and prayer for discernment regarding the churches and their stance towards gay and lesbian persons. I second this call.

But how is it to happen when you do not even permit openly gay persons to address your assemblies? How can any discourse really be civil, when those being defined by a Christian group are not even brought to the table, but are treated as objects to be talked about while they are given no voice in the discussion?

Does your “responsible theological reflection” in the United Methodist churches include openly gay and lesbian theologians? Are these theologians invited to your General Conferences? If not, how can your words be anything more than rhetoric?

Above all, how can your conversations be inclusive (and thus fully representative of the richness of your tradition and fully open to God’s voice in all the people of God) when your institutions still sometimes make it impossible for openly gay and lesbian persons to have job security, to do productive work, to use their gifts while being forthright about their lives?

It was an experience of harsh exclusion, of punitive behavior that continues to the present.

As you prepare for General Conference, please refamiliarize yourself with what happened to Dr. Schafer and me when we responded to the invitation of the president

We did so at great cost to ourselves, because we believed that we could make a difference. Your president told us that we would be welcome and were needed, and that we would have secure jobs up to our retirement. Though we are in our late fifties and had to make sacrifices to come to your college, we stepped forth in faith and accepted the invitation. We were repaid for our sacrifice with brutally unjust and deeply hurtful treatment that was entirely premised on prejudice.

To my knowledge, neither you nor any other minister on the board of this United Methodist University

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/03/open-letter-to-united-methodist-church.html.

Can the United Methodist Church maintain that it is a prophetic church standing for historic Christian values when it participates in and covers over such atrocious injustice? Can the United Methodist Church stand against any injustice in society, when it permits any of its institutions and their leaders to behave this way towards any marginalized group?

Much hinges on the church’s willingness to give careful consideration to the testimony of gay and lesbian believers, even when we must tell painful stories of discrimination against us by church institutions. You live in a state in which violence against gay and lesbian persons has begun, in some areas, to reach epidemic proportions.

Can the United Methodist churches of Florida stand against this violence, can they offer healing and redemption to their communities, if they engage in homophobic discrimination that is intimately related to homophobic violence? I cannot imagine John Wesley encouraging the church to ignore these social needs. Nor can I imagine him standing on the side of discrimination within the institutions of his own church.