Open Hands Vol 14 No 2 - A House Divided: Irreconcilable Differences?

Open Hands Vol 14 No 2 - A House Divided: Irreconcilable Differences?

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1998

Fall

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lrreconcilable Differences?
A Broken Body Breaks Bread
Gay and Catholic
Gay and Republican and Christian
Mammon’s Control of the Church
Matthew Shepard’s Martyrdom
Vol. 14 No. 2
Fall 1998
2 Open Hands
Vol. 14 No. 2 Fall 1998
Resources for Ministries Affirming
the Diversity of Human Sexuality
Open Hands is a resource for congregations
and individuals seeking to be in
ministry with lesbian, gay, and bisexual
persons. Each issue focuses on a specific
area of concern within the church.
Open Hands is published quarterly by
the Reconciling Congregation Program,
Inc. (United Methodist) in cooperation
with the Affirming Congregation Programme
(United Church of Canada),
the Association of Welcoming & Affirming
Baptists (American), the More Light
Churches Network (Presbyterian), the
Open & Affirming Ministries (Disciples
of Christ), the Open and Affirming
Program (United Church of Christ), and
the Reconciling in Christ Program
(Lutheran). Each of these programs is a
national network of local churches that
publicly affirm their ministry with the
whole family of God and welcome lesbian
and gay persons and their families
into their community of faith. These
seven programs—along with Supportive
Congregations (Brethren/Mennonite), and
Welcoming Congregations (Unitarian Universalist)—
offer hope that the church can
be a reconciled community.
Open Hands is published quarterly.
Subscription is $20 for four issues ($25
outside the U.S.). Single copies and back
issues are $6. Quantities of 10 or more,
$4 each.
Subscriptions, requests for advertising
rates, and other business correspondence
should be sent to:
Open Hands
3801 N. Keeler Avenue
Chicago, IL 60641
Phone: 773 / 736-5526
Fax: 773 / 736-5475
Member, The Associated Church Press
© 1998
Reconciling Congregation Program, Inc.
Open Hands is a registered trademark.
ISSN 0888-8833
Printed on recycled paper.
Publisher
Mark Bowman
Interim Editor
Chris Glaser
Designer
In Print—Jan Graves
With this issue, we warmly welcome the
Affirming Congregation Programme
of the United Church of Canada
as a full ecumenical partner of Open Hands.
A HOUSE DIVIDED
Irreconcilable Differences?
A House Divided 4
CHRIS GLASER
So what’s new? Where the lines should be drawn.
One Loaf, One Cup, One Body—While a Church Divided 5
AGNES NORFLEET
Common meal as common ground.
A Soul Divided—Rejecting a Gay Identity 8
JEFF MURPHY-HOLT
Meeting “WasGay” on line.
Can My Son Be Gay and Catholic? 9
Reconciling Teachings with Experience
CASEY LOPATA
A family undivided while practicing what the church preaches.
Can You Be Gay and Republican? 11
RICH TAFEL
As easily as being gay and Christian.
‘War of Ideas’—An Imbalance of Power 13
LEON HOWELL
The moneyed interests we’re up against in the Body of Christ
and the Body Politic.
Purchasing Power of the Press—An Example 14
EUGENE TESELLE
The long shadow cast by one churchman with money.
Call for Articles for Open Hands Summer 1999
CREATIVE CHAOS
Theme section: “Those who have turned the world upside down have come here also,”
the religious authorities told the political authorities regarding Christians (Acts 17).
How has the welcoming movement turned things upside down? What traditional
constructs of the church have we questioned or “undone”? How may the soil that we
have tilled—chaos—become fertile ground for creative thought and action?
Ministries section: We are seeking columns describing practical experience and suggestions
in the following areas: Welcoming Process, Connections (with other justice issues),
Worship, Outreach, Leadership, Health (those related to lesbians and gay men, such as
breast cancer and AIDS), Youth, Campus, Children. These brief articles may or may not
have to do with the theme.
Contact with idea by April 15, 1999 Manuscript deadline: June 15, 1999
Chris Glaser, Phone/Fax 404/622-4222 or e-mail at ChrsGlaser@aol.com
991 Berne St. SE, Atlanta, GA 30316
Fall 1998 3
Program Coordinators
Mark Bowman
Reconciling Congregation
Program, Inc. (UMC)
3801 N. Keeler Avenue
Chicago, IL 60641
773/736-5526
www.rcp.org
Ron Coughlin
Affirming Congregation
Programme
(United Church of Canada)
P.O. Box 333, Station Q
Toronto, Ontario
CANADA M4T 2M5
416/466-1489
acpucc@aol.com
Ann B. Day
Open and Affirming
Program (UCC)
P.O. Box 403
Holden, MA 01520
508/856-9316
www.coalition.simplenet.com
Bob Gibeling
Reconciling in Christ
Program (Lutheran)
2466 Sharondale Drive
Atlanta, GA 30305
404/266-9615
www.lcna.org
Dick Lundy
More Light Churches
Network (PCUSA)
5525 Timber Lane
Excelsior, MN 55331
612/470-0093
http://www.mlcn.org
Brenda J. Moulton
Welcoming & Affirming
Baptists (ABC/USA)
P.O. Box 2596
Attleboro Falls, MA 02763
508/226-1945
http://users.aol.com/
wabaptists
Open & Affirming Minstries
(Disciples of Christ)
P.O. Box 44400
Indianapolis, IN 46244
http://pilot.msu.edu/user/
laceyj/
Editorial Advisory Committee
Vaughn Beckman, O&A
Howard Bess, W&A
Ann Marie Coleman, ONA
Bobbi Hargleroad, MLCN
Allen V. Harris, O&A
Tom Harshman, O&A
Dick Hasbany, MLCN
Alyson Huntly, ACP
Bonnie Kelly, ACP
Susan Laurie, RCP
Samuel E. Loliger, ONA
Tim Phillips, W&A
Lisa Ann Pierce, SCN
Caroline Presnell, RCP
Paul Santillán, RCP
Margarita Suaréz, ONA
Judith Hoch Wray, O&A
Stuart Wright, RIC
Movement News ..................................... 30
Welcoming Communities ....................... 30
Selected Resources .................................. 32
A Public Apology 15
GIL ALEXANDER-MOEGERLE
Co-founder of Focus on the Family confesses complicity.
Ecumenical Politeness Reconsidered 17
Transcending Denominational Divisions to Address Concerns of Justice
MARY E. HUNT
Miss Manners meets Ms. Justice.
A Soulforce Response 20
MEL WHITE
Responding non-violently to our opponents.
Thoughts on the L/G/B/T Religious Movement 21
MARK BOWMAN
Increasing our power and lift to overcome inertia and gravity.
Walking in the Moonlight 23
RITA NAKASHIMA BROCK
The challenge of faith: to live with ambiguity.
MINISTRIES
Outreach
In Memory of Matthew Shepard (1976-1998) 25
The Need to Pray Always and Not Lose Heart
CHRIS GLASER
Health
Discerning the Nearness of God 26
Lectio Divina and AIDS
PATRICIA HOFFMAN
Campus
From Jeffrey to Angels 27
Education for Gay/Lesbian Advocacy in a Theological Seminary
J. CY ROWELL
Connections
Homosexuality, European Churches, the Ecumenical 27
Movement, and the WCC Meeting in Harare
ROBERT C. LODWICK
SUSTAINING THE SPIRIT
Believers, Here We Gather 29
A NEW HYMN BY THOMAS J. RITTER
The artist-in-residence for this issue is Mary Callaway Logan, a United Methodist minister in
Atlanta, who uses art in spiritual direction in her Seeds of Light Studio by encouraging individuals
to visually express their spiritual autobiographies. For more information, contact her at 443
Sterling St. NE, Atlanta, GA 30307; 404/524-1427, ext. 4.
Next Issue:
Why Be Specific In Our Welcome?
4 Open Hands
“And if a house is divided against
itself, that house will not be able
to stand,” Jesus told his detractors
(Mk 3:25). He said it in reply to an
accusation that he had cast out demonic
spirits by the power of Satan, and he
then condemned such blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit’s work (3:28-30).
Yet Jesus would later say of the disagreement
his gospel would bring to
households, “Do you think that I have
come to bring peace to the earth? No, I
tell you, but rather division! From now
on five in one household will be divided,
three against two and two against
three...” (Lk 12:51-52).
The church has been divided against
itself since the early days when Jewish
and Gentile Christians wrangled over
circumcision. One could say that divisions
of the church have served as much
as a sign of strength as of weakness. For
one thing, it offered a vitality of dialogue
required of any true religion, as
opposed to a cult that demands complete
conformity. For another, it offered
a collective and communal expression
of faith that, while shaped by Jesus’ and
the disciples’ teachings, took on its own
life that was more than the sum of its
parts, past or present. And for that reason,
it was capable of adapting to new
situations and new information just as
any living being might be, thus better
able to embrace more and more people,
even if that occured within differing
Christian traditions.
In the present time, there seems no
more divisive issue than homosexuality
in the church, though bisexuality
and transgendered issues are surfacing
more and more as “cutting edge” issues,
as the cliché with sacrificial overtones
goes. I believe, as do some of the contributors
to this issue of Open Hands,
that homosexuality serves as a kind of
Rorschach test of the true divisions that
our various denominations have lived
with more or less successfully in the
past: disagreements of theological understanding,
biblical interpretation, the
meaning of church membership and of
ordination.
Of course, in the past, often the way
the church survived was to divide up
into various traditions and denominations
and even sects. And though we
may lament such divisions of the Body
of Christ, “decentralizing” the church
allowed for still more people to remain
Christian. Many Christians today may
be wondering if we must divide again.
Of course, divisions are already in place,
with the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan
Community Churches embracing
l/g/b/t people whom other
denominations have abandoned or
rejected. And Open Hands represents
more than 850 welcoming congregations
and ministries that would collectively
represent an even larger church
body than UFMCC.
Yet the welcoming programs that
sponsor Open Hands have never been
about schism. We have always been
about dialogue and inclusiveness. The
term dialogue comes from root words
meaning literally “through the word,”
and implies finding a common ground
of belief and practice of the faith
through words and, for us, common
ground for people along the spectrums
of sexuality and gender within the
church. Our understanding of inclusiveness
has meant we have never required
the expulsion of our opponents in the
church in the way that they have sometimes
demanded our excommunication
or simply invited us to leave, blaspheming
against the work of the Holy Spirit
within us.
Dialogue, however, requires equity.
Whether our churches simply “agree to
disagree” or to carry on further “dialogue,”
l/g/b/t people remain second
class citizens, disabled by antigay polities
from equal access to the policymaking
or polity-interpreting church
courts. We remain “out” while others
are “in,” and, without equal opportunity
to communicate, effectively “excommunicated.”
Church historian Martin Marty has
said that churches are being skewed
more and more to the right, because,
when liberals come to power, they encourage
the continued participation of
conservatives; but when conservatives
come to power, they try to purge the
church of progressives (see Mary Hunt’s
article). That, plus the church’s basic
inertia (the tendency to keep doing
things the same old way) and the money
behind our opponents (see the articles
by Leon Howell and Gene TeSelle),
make our work feel like that of Sisyphus,
who perpetually rolled a stone to the
top of a hill only to have it roll down
again.
I once worked in a church that
prided itself on being inclusive. Then
one day a person began attending who
literally and persistently threatened individuals
in the congregation, causing
some to avoid church to avoid him.
Violence was feared, and when it came,
the elders accepted his offer not to return.
We lost three other members,
friends of his, because they felt we were
behaving in a noninclusive fashion. But
to be inclusive, we believed we had to
exclude this angry man.
In all my years as a gay activist in
the church, I’ve never disputed the
church’s right to define its boundaries
in terms of belief and behavior. What I
have disputed is where those boundaries
should be drawn. Does the church
really want to include someone who is
intolerant of l/g/b/t
people at the expense
of excluding l/g/b/t
people? Or wouldn’t
it be more Christ-like
to be intolerant of intolerance?
Fall 1998 5
We are a church in great pain
and conflict, and everyone
here today knows it. We are
a church divided, in Greater Atlanta
Presbytery, and in our denomination.
During the course of this meeting we
will take a vote that will show how divided
we are. On the surface of things
the division appears to be about human
sexuality, particularly homosexuality,
and church leadership. But below the
surface the division is even deeper than
that. We are divided by different understandings
of biblical interpretation,
and Reformed theology; and by how we
understand human sin and God’s grace.
We are a church divided and the pain
of our division runs deep. No matter
how the vote goes today, not one person
will go home a winner, because
about half of us will go home feeling
defeated, and when one part of the body
suffers, we all suffer together.
Parallels with Corinth
The similarities between the church
in Corinth and the church today are
surprisingly real. Corinth was, like Atlanta,
an international city. It was a large
commercial port and trading center between
East and West, a big city with big
city benefits and problems— renown for
its commerce, industry, wealth, luxury
and immorality. Many came to the city
for work with the military, in government
service, and because of business
with foreign traders. Business was dominated
by an upper class of mostly Italians,
and there was an influx of Greeks,
Asians, and Jews who comprised a
lower, working class.
The eighteen months that Paul was
in Corinth was sufficient time to begin
several house churches, but not time
enough to provide stability for such a
diverse community of believers. All this
diversity gave rise to conflict and tension
which is evident in Paul’s letter to
the church in Corinth.
There were differing opinions about
matters of human sexuality. Some had
quit sleeping with their own spouses
because of their commitment to Christ,
while another was living with his
father’s wife. Some thought they should
break completely with the past, refusing
meat that had been offered to idols,
but others had no problem with that,
after all, meat is meat. There were divisions
about displaying the gifts of the
Spirit in worship, about the role of
women in the church, about freedom
and communal responsibility, about the
meaning of the resurrection.1 No wonder
they wrote to Paul and said, “Help!”
A Division of the House
Paul wrote back, and in the center of
the letter he gets to the heart of the
matter (see 1 Cor 11:17-34). The Words
of Institution of the Lord’s Supper are
usually lifted out of this biblical context,
and we lose sight of their impact.
Paul is saying to a church he founded
and a people he loved, “When you
come together, there are divisions
among you, and this is not the Lord’s
Supper which you eat.”
The central problem that Paul is addressing
at Corinth is not a problem of
sacramental theology. Rather it is a
problem of social relations within a
divided community. Remember the
church met in people’s homes. Archeological
study of houses from this period
has shown that the dining room of a
typical villa could accommodate about
nine or ten persons who would recline
at table for the meal. Other guests would
have to sit or stand in the atrium which
might have provided space for thirty to
forty people. The host of such a gathering
would invite a small elite group to
dine in the dining room, while lowerstatus
members of the church would be
placed in the larger space outside. The
higher-status guests in the dining room
would be served better food and wine
than the others.
A number of surviving writings from
this period testify to this custom. Roman
scholar Pliny the Younger, describes
his experience of dining as a
guest in someone’s home saying: “The
best dishes were set in front of the host
himself and a select few, and cheap
scraps of food before the rest of the company.
He had even put the wine into
tiny little flasks, divided into three
This sermon was delivered
during the opening Communion service of a meeting
of Greater Atlanta Presbytery, February 28, 1998, that was to vote on
whether to relax the denomination’s policy that essentially prohibits ordination of
lesbians and gay men. A few specific references have been removed to universalize this article.
We are a church in great pain and conflict,
and everyone here today knows it.
We are a church divided...
6 Open Hands
categories. One lot was intended for
himself and for us, another for his lesser
friends (all his friends were graded) and
the third for his and our freedmen.”2
This was the sort of hospitality that
was being provided to the church by
the wealthier Corinthian Christians. As
patrons of the community hosting the
gatherings, they were continuing to
observe these class distinctions even
when the Lord’s Supper was being
served. Paul regards such practices—
however “normal” in respectable Corinthian
culture— as an outrage. He does
not deny the right of the more prosperous
to eat and drink however they like
in their own homes, but he insists that
the church’s common meal should symbolize
the unity of the community
through equitable sharing of food and
drink.
You who are rich are coming early and
eating all the food, and getting drunk. The
poor, who are day laborers and have less
control over their time, arrive late from
work and when they arrive—there is no
food left; they are going away hungry!
You are not making room for one another
at the table, Paul is saying to the
church. This kind of meal is hardly communal,
much less the Lord’s Supper! In
the church there is no hierarchy of status.
The solemnity of the Words of Institution
handed down from Jesus to Paul
to us is a sharp contrast to the firstcome-
first-served, me-in-you-out, kind
of revelry described as characteristic of
the Corinthian church. It was while he
was being betrayed that our Lord Jesus
took bread, and when he had given
thanks, he broke it. In the divisiveness
of the Corinthian church, the sacrament
of the Lord’s Supper affirms a new covenant,
and invites a new kind of community.
A Surplus of Scholars and
a Deficit of Peacemakers
Garrison Keillor, one of America’s
great storytellers, once told
about two brothers who live in Lake
Wobegon. They were members of a tiny
fundamentalist bunch known as the
Sanctified Brethren. There was in this
group a spirit of self-righteousness
among certain elders that defied peacemaking.
They were, Keillor tells, “Given
to disputing small points of doctrine
that to them seemed the very fulcrum
of the faith. We were cursed with a surplus
of scholars and a deficit of peacemakers,
and so we tended to be split
into factions.”
When he was a boy, a dispute arose
between two men: Brother William
Miller and Brother James Johnson, but
of course they dragged others into it,
too. Uncle Al had family and friends on
both sides, and it broke Al’s heart to see
these brothers become enemies. So one
fine August day, Uncle Al tried to
make peace between them, to restore
the love that had been lost. He arranged
for them to meet at his and
Aunt Flo’s house one Sunday, a few
Millers and a few Johnsons, not to discuss
their difference in doctrine, but
simply to enjoy a dinner of Aunt Flo’s
famous fried chicken.
It took weeks to arrange, but finally
the two groups of brothers arrived—in
separate cars, of course. Gaunt, flintyeyed,
thin-lipped men in dark suits
came into the house and sat in awesome
silence until the call to dinner.They
trooped into the dining room around
the long table that had been extended
with two leaves so they wouldn’t have
to sit close.
“House of Bread”
God tells us, “Out of Bethlehem (“house of bread”)
I will call my Beloved.”
“We are all God’s bread, and the church is a
community of bread of all kinds and shapes. When
I began to make the steeple ‘splitting,’ my husband
said, ‘It looks like a highway.’ I wonder,
where will all of us go, on that highway?”
Mary Callaway Logan
Fall 1998 7
Now, prayer was a delicate matter.
Brethren were known to use even prayer
before a meal as a platform, and so
Uncle Al, the peacemaker, concerned
lest one brother take prayer and beat
the others over the head with it, said,
“Let us bow our heads in silent prayer,
giving thanks for the meal.” They
bowed their heads and closed their eyes
and—a long time passed. The old clock
ticked on the bureau. A cat walked in
and meowed and left. A child snickered.
Cars went by. There were dry sniffs and
clearings.
Soon it was clear that neither side
wanted to stop before the other. They
were seeing who could pray the longest.
Brother Miller peeked through his
fingers at Brother Johnson, who was
earnestly engaged in silent communion
with the Lord, who agreed with him on
so many things. So Brother Miller dove
back into prayer, too. Uncle Al finally
said, “AMEN” to offer them a way out
of the deadlock. He even said it again,
“AMEN,” but it was no use. It was becoming
the longest table grace in history.
Then Aunt Flo slid her chair back,
rose, went into the kitchen, and brought
out the food they were competing to
see who could be more thankful for. She
set the hot dishes before them. In that
moment, a kind of pointed, poignant
truth settled among them and they
could hardly bear it. Tears ran down
Brother Johnson’s face. His eyes were
clamped shut, and tears streamed down.
A meal awaits us all this morning.
lt will not deaden the pain we are experiencing as a
church divided, but it has the power to melt our stony hearts.
With their eyes closed, the smell of fried chicken and gravy
made those men into boys again.
lt was years ago, they were fighting, and a mother’s voice from on high said,
‘You boys stop it and get in here and have your dinners. Now. l mean it.’
And so was Brother Miller weeping.
Keillor observes, “It’s true what they
say, that smell is the key that unlocks
our deepest memories. With their eyes
closed, the smell of fried chicken and
gravy made those men into boys again.
It was years ago, they were fighting, and
a mother’s voice from on high said, ‘You
boys stop it and get in here and have
your dinners. Now. I mean it.’ The
blessed cornmeal crust and rapturous
gravy brought the memory to mind.
And the stony hearts of two giants
melted. They raised their heads and
filled their plates and slowly peace was
made over that glorious meal.”3
A Meal to Meld Our Hearts
I am a part of a group of ministers in
this presbytery who share a meal together
once a month. This group was
convened just over a year ago before
we had a similar vote. There are ten
of us in it now. We serve different
churches, large and small, urban, suburban,
small town. What brought us
together in the first place was our differences.
We were, a year ago, evenly
divided on the issues before us again
today. Each month we gather in one of
our churches, we have lunch, we talk,
we laugh, we cry, we pray together. We
call ourselves Common Ground.
Part of me can’t stand these lunches
because of our divisions. Sometimes
when I go it takes me about a week to
get over. My husband has reminded me
that many evenings after one of these
meetings I come home exasperated and
exclaim, “I don’t understand why they
don’t think like I do!” But we keep getting
back together. Out of our understanding
of scripture and deep convictions,
some of our group come to this
vote feeling very strongly that homosexual
persons should not hold leadership
positions in the church. Some of
us, including myself, count among our
richest blessings the colleagues we have
in ministry, ministers, elders, deacons,
friends, who are homosexual. In over a
year of meetings, we have not changed
our minds. We are still divided on this
issue. But something important has
happened. In the midst of our conflict
and painful division, we have, by the
grace of God, made room for one another
at the table.
A meal awaits us all this morning. It
will not deaden the pain we are experiencing
as a church divided, but it has
the power to melt our stony hearts.
When the tops are taken off those trays
a fragrance is going to fill the air. And
for a moment, by Christ’s body broken
for us, we will share
one loaf, one cup,
and become one
body.
Agnes W. Norfleet is
the pastor of North
Decatur Presbyterian
Church.
Notes
1Fred B. Craddock, “Preaching to Corinthians,”
Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and
Theology, April, 1990, p. 160.
2Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation
Commentary. Louisville: John Knox
Press, 1997, p. 192 ff.
3Garrison Keillor, “Brethren”, Leaving Home,
p 161.
8 Open Hands
Not long ago, I had a discussion
with a young man in an Internet
chatroom named Ron (not
his real name). His sign-on name,
“WasGay,” captured my attention, and
I could not resist the urge to talk with
him about it. By using this name, he
was proclaiming to have once been “sexually
broken”—or, homosexual— but had
been “repaired by the grace of God
through Jesus.” While he was claiming
to have been saved from eternal damnation,
I sensed a sad and solitary soul
deeply buried under an elaborate pretense.
He struck me as perhaps the loneliest
person I had ever encountered.
Ron did not divulge much about his
family history, but it was obvious that
he came from a family with strong fundamentalist
roots. Clearly he had been
abused emotionally, which is not uncommon
among fundamentalists. He
had been asked to die to his true self.
Because I was not Ron’s counselor, I
did not have to be impartial and unbiased.
I took great pains to treat him respectfully,
but I was angry at what had
been done to him, and what he had
done to himself: Ron had been robbed
of his spirit and told that it had no value.
He had allowed himself to be convinced
that God’s love is conditional, and he
was certain that he had to somehow
“change” in order to receive eternal salvation.
He was so sure of this, in fact,
that he was eager to prove to everyone
that he had changed and was now “worthy.”
He was suppressing and trying to
leave behind the very soul of who he
was, seeing it as something not only
detachable, but evil.
By pretending to be something he is
not, Ron was buying what he thinks
salvation is, not from God, but from
those around him. Unfortunately, their
God is one of retribution and fear, nothing
like the loving God whose help we
ask to “accept the things we cannot
change, and the wisdom to know the
difference.” Saying one “doesn’t agree”
with homosexuality is like saying one
doesn’t agree with rain. According to
both the American Psychological Association
and American Medical Association,
it is now considered an ethical violation
to try to change a person’s sexual
orientation through counseling.
Many people, who cannot conform
to society’s biases, resort to pretending
that they do— in effect, ceasing to exist
as themselves. Ron effectively chose to
cease to exist as one who is free to think
and feel and reason and come to his
own conclusions, thereby having his
own unique relationship with God. And
what is suicide, but choosing not to live
under the circumstances with which
you have been given? What else is it
called but suicide when he feels he cannot
go on living the way he is? Is it living
when one believes that he is unworthy
of love and acceptance from God
and others unless he can somehow be
something other than what he is, and
if he can’t, pretend to be? Jesus came to
give life, not take it away.
When a fellow “chatroomer” asked
me what I thought of WasGay’s proclamation
of being “sexually healed” and
if I thought I could learn from his “courageous”
example, I responded that
since gay people have pretended to be
“straight” almost from the beginning
of time I could see nothing miraculous
about it. While talking with Ron, in fact,
I realized that indeed I had been there
myself, posturing myself as an “ex-gay,”
or at least, a “non-gay.” I would daresay
anyone who is lesbian or gay is an “exex-
gay” in this regard; we have all come
from a period of denial in our lives
when we felt we had to pretend and
tried to be something other than our
true selves, something that society
’
would find more acceptable. While denying
ourselves, we tried to be “just like
everyone else”— to be what we were expected
to be, regardless of the truth.
Ron may have fooled many of those
he spoke to that night. I was not among
them. Having been there myself, I could
see only too clearly his loneliness and
longing for approval and validation. It
was as if he was trying to say, “See? I
have done this wonderful thing. Aren’t
you proud of me now?” Unable to love
himself, he was looking for someone
to love him, still. In spite of the fact that
Ron had made this major and miraculous
conversion in his life for the sake
of those around him, he still felt unloved
and unworthy. Ironically, Ron
showed up later in a gay and lesbian
chatroom instead of one of the Christian
chatrooms where we had met.
My discussion with Ron ended when
I spoke ironically of the good fortune
of knowing God’s “requirements”
about sexuality. Isn’t it fortunate, I
asked him, that Christians can be so
confident that they are not wrong about
any of this?
He did not respond. ▼
Jeff Murphy-Holt (left) is a graduate student
completing a master’s degree in counseling
psychology. He and his partner,
Michael, are active members of Kairos
United Methodist Church in Kansas City,
the first Reconciling Congregation in Missouri.
Fall 1998 9
Can Jim be gay and Catholic?
That became the big question
for me after I got over the initial
shock and confusion of learning our
son is gay. While Mary Ellen (my wife
and Jim’s mother) rode the emotional
guilt/doubt/grief roller coaster typified
in many stories about parents’ journeys,
I logically stepped my way through the
theological mine field. That’s what you
do when you’re a theology junkie
(Vatican documents are beach reading)
and nearly fall off the thinker side of
those thinker-versus-feeler scales.
“Dad, I’m gay.” Those words from
Jim were unthinkable for me. All I could
say was, “Are you sure?” I didn’t know
any gay people (so I thought). I knew
virtually nothing about homosexuality.
And my vague understanding of
church teaching was: homosexuality
was wrong. Period. So wrong—you
couldn’t even talk about it. Like osmosis,
this silence surrounding homosexuality
seeped into my consciousness and
left me with the notion that no sin was
worse than homosexuality. As a thinker,
I was forced to bring some rationality
to this irrational belief, and to the feelings
that were there, though unacknowledged.
I had to know: Can Jim
be gay and be Catholic?
My first logical step was to think back
to the day when I decided whether I was
going to be homosexual or heterosexual.
I never made such a decision,
nor did Jim, nor anyone else I’ve talked
with about this. And I discovered that
church documents support the unchosen,
fixed nature of sexual orientation.
The U.S. Bishops refer to “those
persons for whom homosexuality is a permanent,
seemingly irreversible sexual orientation,”
1 and their Committee on
Marriage and Family says, “Generally,
homosexual orientation is experienced as
a given, not as something freely chosen.”2
Learning that Jim didn’t choose his
homosexuality was a giant first step for
me. But, I wondered, “Why does Jim
have this orientation?” I readily dismissed
a 19th century theory that said
homosexuality was caused by the habitual
drinking of English tea and the
pernicious influence of Italian opera!
How ill-informed we’ve been! Yet that’s
understandable, considering that scientists
didn’t start studying this concept
until the mid 1800’s, and the Catholic
church didn’t officially acknowledge
sexual orientation until 1975.
“OK, that helps,” I thought. But I
was sure my next step was going to be
into quicksand! Is homosexuality a sin?
Surprise! The Vatican unequivocally
states: “The particular inclination of a
homosexual person is not a sin.”3 Of
course! A homosexual orientation can’t
be a sin if it’s not a choice. In fact,
church teaching says sexuality is a gift,
and “Sexual identity helps to define the
unique persons we are, and one component
of our sexual identity is sexual orientation.”
4
But what about what these feelings
might lead to? What about homogenital
acts? As I expected, the Vatican says: “It
is only in the marital relationship that the
use of the sexual faculty can be morally
good.”5 And the U.S. Bishops say: “Homosexual
activity…as distinguished from homosexual
orientation, is morally wrong.”
But, they continue: “Like heterosexual
persons, homosexuals are called to give
witness to chastity, avoiding, with God’s
grace, behavior which is wrong for them,
just as nonmarital sexual relations are
wrong for heterosexuals.”6 Whoa! What
hit me, probably because I’m heterosexual,
is the part that says: “just as
nonmarital sexual relations are wrong
for heterosexuals.”
This tells me if Jim has sexual relations
outside of marriage, he violates
church-established moral norms; just
like my heterosexual son Andy, if he has
sexual relations outside of marriage; just
like my married daughter, Linda, if she
uses artificial birth control; and just like
me if I masturbate.
OK, but logically I thought: “Since
church law restricts marriage to a man
and woman, doesn’t this mean homogenital
behavior is always a sin?” Well,
the Vatican says: “In fact, circumstances
may exist, or may have existed in the past,
which would reduce or remove the culpability
of the individual [engaged in homosexual
activity]…in a given instance.”7
Wow! The Vatican says homogenital
acts are not necessarily always a sin! I
recalled the old Baltimore Catechism—
three things are necessary for mortal sin:
1) the thought, desire, word, action or
omission must be seriously wrong 2) the
person must know it’s seriously wrong,
and 3) the person must fully consent to
it. And only God knows how knowledgeable
and how free we really are.
Along with all this I learned the
church recommends a pastoral approach.
For example, a Vatican theologian
and author of one of its documents,
in a newspaper interview, said:
“When one is dealing with people who are
so predominately homosexual that they
will be in serious personal and perhaps
social trouble unless they attain a steady
partnership within their homosexual lives,
one can recommend them to seek such a
partnership and one accepts this relationship
as the best they can do in their present
situation.”8 I later learned this is based
on the moral principle that no one is
obliged to do what is impossible for
them to do.
During my journey, I read that
Catholic church teaching says six biblical
texts clearly say homosexual behavior
is immoral. But my journey also led
me to Scroggs, Furnish, and other biblical
scholars, who convincingly argue
the Bible is not really so clear on this.
So at this point in my journey—and
it was a meandering 14-year process, not
the series of logical steps I’ve presented
here—I’d learned that it is not a sin for
Jim to have a homosexual orientation,
and that Jim can be gay and a faithful
Catholic, just like any other faithful
10 Open Hands
Catholic who struggles with objective
moral norms established by the
church. The U.S. Bishops say it well:
“Homosexual [persons], like everyone else,
should not suffer from prejudice against
their basic human rights. They have a right
to respect, friendship, and justice. They
should have an active role in the Christian
community.”9
Through this process, I also learned
a thinker has feelings too! Since my son
is gay, I’m personally affected by these
teachings, and I would like some of
them to change. I learned that’s OK too.
Because none of this teaching is infallible…
which means, of course, it can
change. But will it? Change springs from
unresolved tensions. Here are three:
1. The Catholic church says it’s OK for
gay people to be gay as long as
they’re celibate, yet the church also
teaches that celibacy is a gift. Are all
gay people gifted with the ability to
live a celibate lifestyle?
2. Catholic church teaching considers
homosexual orientation to be a
sexual deviation, a “disorder.” The
church also teaches there can be no
conflict between faith and reason,
yet the American Psychiatric Association
and the American Psychological
Association consider homosexual
orientation to be a natural sexual
variation.
3. Not only was church teaching formulated
without the participation of
openly gay and lesbian people, but
the teaching doesn’t take into account
the lived experience of many
faithful, gay and lesbian Catholics—
real people— made in the image and
likeness of God, who, like all of us,
struggle to do what God calls us to
do.
Change in church teaching is possible,
but the official church tends to
move very, very slowly. So, what do I
do today? Well, that brought me to
another teaching that surprises many
Catholics—the primacy of conscience.
The Catechism puts it very simply: “A
human being must always obey the certain
judgment of his [or her] conscience.”
[My emphasis]10 “Wow!”, I thought,
“That’s pretty clear!” Does that mean
we can do anything we want? Theologian
Charles Curran answered that for
me—quite concisely: We must obey our
conscience, but our conscience might
be wrong.
This led me to the concept of moral
discernment in the Catholic moral tradition.
The church suggests looking at
experience, reason (including the sciences),
tradition (church teaching), and
scripture. Why all four? Because each
has been wrong. Consider the flatness
of earth (experience), the theory that
babies came only from the man (reason),
the excommunication of Galileo
(tradition), or slavery (scripture). But
what if church teaching and our conscience
do not agree? Church teaching
itself says we should start with the presumption
that church teaching is right.
Then, consider scripture, reason, and
our experience, and return to the ultimate
question: Are we responding to the
God revealed in Jesus Christ?
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton gave me
an example of how to balance church
teaching and conscience when he said,
“I don’t make judgments about a gay
person’s conscience any more than about
the military man at a SAC air base or on a
Trident submarine who would fire a
nuclear weapon if ordered to. I think in
some ways the church teaching on that is
clearer than on homosexuality…Anybody
who has the intention of using such weapons
is, in my judgment, in a situation that
is drastically evil. And yet I cannot judge
another person’s conscience. If that person
comes to communion, I cannot refuse.”11
Church teaching, personal sin, conscience,
discernment. Intellectually, I
found Jim can certainly be gay and
Catholic. But this discovery was still in
my thinker’s world of theology and
homosexuality until I heard Bishop
Kenneth Untener. Speaking to a largely
gay and lesbian audience, he said:
“When we die, and as a moral theologian
I don’t say this lightly, the only thing that
will matter is how we treated each other.”12
That’s when I realized the final step of
my journey was getting to know and
love many faithful Catholic gay people
who like our son, Jim, are made in the
image of God and are loved by God,
who love God and love their neighbors
as themselves. That’s how I really know
Jim can be gay and Catholic. ▼
Casey Lopata, shown here with his son,
Jim, is cofounder of Catholic Gay & Lesbian
Family Ministry which advocates for
and facilitates pastoral care for Catholic
g/l persons and their families/households
on behalf of the Roman Catholic Diocese
of Rochester. A member of St. Mary’s
Church, PFLAG, the Catholic Parents Network
and the National Association of
Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries,
he gives presentations with Mary
Ellen, his wife, in parishes, high schools,
and conferences.
Notes
1National Conference of Catholic Bishops,
Human Sexuality: A Catholic Perspective for
Education and Lifelong Learning, U.S. Catholic
Conference, 1991, 54-55.
2National Council of Catholic Bishops,
Committee on Marriage and Family, Always
Our Children, 3rd printing, revised June
1998, p. 6.
3Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church
on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,
1986, #3.
4Always Our Children, p. 7.
5Letter to the Bishops, #7.
6National Conference of Catholic Bishops,
To Live in Christ Jesus: A Pastoral Reflection
on the Moral Life, 1976, #52.
7Letter to the Bishops, #11.
8Jan Visser, in The Clergy Review (London),
1976, v. 61, p. 233.
9To Live in Christ Jesus, op. cit. #52, and Human
Sexuality, op. cit. 55.
10Catechism of the Catholic Church, U.S.
Catholic Conference, 1994, #1790.
11Tom Roberts, He’s Not Disordered, He’s My
Brother, National Catholic Reporter, Nov. 4,
1994, 6.
12Bishop Kenneth E. Untener, “Hallmarks of
the Church” [Address delivered at a New
Ways Ministry Symposium, March 28,
1992], in Voices of Hope, Eds. Jeannine
Gramick & Robert Nugent,(New York: Center
for Homophobia Education, 1995), 151.
Fall 1998 11
enemies. Gays were told where we must
live, where we should shop, how we
should dress, where we should eat, how
we should vote and how we could liberate
ourselves from our pasts. Too
often this “liberation” included throwing
off the yoke of patriarchal churches
and families.
A movement founded in opposition
to the religious right found little room
within itself to say there were good religious
people and bad religious people,
or that there were good Republicans and
bad Republicans, good families and bad
families. In its fear of attack, it painted
an uncomplicated world of black and
white. It was deliberately the mirror
opposite of the world painted by the
growing religious right, but equally
black and white.
The anti-faith bias within the gay
community has taken its toll. And I believe
that the next phase of the gay
movement will be a return to faith and
spirituality. The rejection of faith has
allowed for a pervasive moral relativism
to permeate our side in the political
debate. I believe that underlying this
ethic is a deep-seated feeling among
many gays that yes, in fact, in their quiet
moments, they believe that being gay
is bad and shameful. So the ethic
evolved into the belief that whatever I
do is my business and no one else’s.
There is no right or wrong in any objective
sense, just whatever feels good.
Meanwhile, American society increasingly
believes that the moral relativism
it embraced a generation ago has
not held up over time. We see kids killing
kids, children having children, intensifying
poverty, and new diseases
unimagined in earlier times. In record
numbers, the baby boomers are going
back to church today. And at the same
time, mainstream Protestant denominations
that embraced therapeutic, moral
relativism are watching their numbers
drop, while fundamentalists churches
grow dramatically.
In the midst of America’s culture
wars, the religious right has brilliantly
and dishonestly become the loudest and
most-quoted voice of concern for family
ethics and morals. They have an increasingly
appealing message to society.
Their call for a return to an old-fashioned
sense of right and wrong is tied
to a nostalgic, mythical view of America
of the 1950s. Their message sells because
of the vacuum that has been left
by the mainstream churches, and they
have clear culprits for this chaos: homosexuals
and feminists are at the top
of the list.
The gay community finds itself in the
middle of today’s culture war. We are
defended by liberals who, increasingly,
find themselves on the margins of the
cultural debate. We are attacked and
demonized by a religious right that
grows in size and sophistication and
political clout.
This is a crucial moment for gay
people of faith. I believe that we must
define our movement for what it is—a
moral movement. Instead of talking
about rights that we want or demand,
we need to tell the American public that
our movement is about a need to be
honest, to not bear false witness. We
are not only about sex, we are about
people who want to love each other.
We are not about shoving our
agenda down people’s throat, but we
do speak for many who remain silently
in the closet. We are not about
recruiting children, but are about saving
kids’ lives. The gay movement,
through its spiritual leaders, must articulate
a message of morality, though
it will not be the morality defined by
those who have to date capitalized on
this discussion.
How can you be gay and Republican?”
It’s the question I’m
most often asked about my job
as the head of Log Cabin Republicans.
Many gays and straight liberals ask it
with the sense that I’m some sort of a
traitor. Republicans wonder because I
don’t fit their caricature of what a gay
person is. Since there isn’t much of a
wall between church and state these
days, as these same people find out I’m
an ordained American Baptist minister,
they always follow up: “How can you
be gay and Christian?”
Like the questioners of Jesus in Mark,
chapter three, those on both sides see
me as being, in today’s therapeutic language,
a “self-hater” or “kidding myself.”
In the language of Galilee in the
time of Jesus, they might say I’m possessed
by Satan. But a house divided
against itself cannot stand, Jesus points
out. Yet standing against conventional
wisdom of who you must be looks to
the world as a personal house divided,
when in fact, it may be exactly the place
that Christ calls us to be.
The reality of politics today is that
one in three gays vote Republican, a statistic
both gay Democrats and the religious
right would like to keep hidden.
In issues of faith, I would suggest that a
much larger percentage of gays are actively
spiritual.
But what’s exciting about today’s gay
movement is that it’s maturing beyond
its adolescence, where the gay establishment
held power over the newly forming
community. With a fear of outside
attacks from political figures and religious
figures in the culture wars, gay
leaders who called for tolerance and
trumpeted diversity ironically established
a rigorous conformity within the
community.
Republicans, the church and even
our families were at times posited as
“
12 Open Hands
This is the most strategically important
thing the gay movement can do
right now. It doesn’t require us to pretend
to be what we are not, simply to
open the door of closeted people of faith
within our community. The country
needs to hear their story.
The next step is where the Holy Spirit
comes in. I believe that by employing
the love of Jesus, we can change
people’s hearts. This is not somesophisticated,
focus-grouped political
strategy—it is simple faith in the power
of God. Two examples come to mind.
At a debate with a leader of the religious
right at a leading American university,
my opponent started to falter in getting
his message across. The audience,
mostly sympathetic to my argument,
began to pounce on my opponent with
sarcastic, demeaning comments. Suddenly,
I no longer saw my opponent as
some jerk who threatened me. Instead,
I saw a fellow human being who was
under a vicious attack. My political instincts
were overridden by my Christian
l no longer saw my opponent as some jerk who
threatened me. ...My political instincts were overridden by
my Christian instincts. l asked the audience to respect his opinion
and refrain from attacking him personally.
Just as we began, a large band of counter
protesters arrived. These men, in the
name of Jesus, proceeded to call us every
evil gay epithet I’d ever heard, and
a few I hadn’t. Tensions grew high in
the one hundred degree heat, but we
managed to keep our cool. What disgusted
me most about the opposition
was that they cloaked all of their arguments
in the name of God. As far as I
was concerned, they were blaspheming
God. At one point, I was encircled by
the protesters, and I said: “I love you. I
love you because God loves me, and
only through His love can I love you.”
One of the protestors responded: “God
does not love you. He hates you. And
you’re going to burn in hell if you don’t
change.” Fortunately, we caught that
moment on videotape. While I wasn’t
effective in changing his mind that day,
I’ve shown this tape to many Christians
who are currently opposed to gay rights,
and all have seen the dangers of the
church’s rhetoric and they’re embarrassed
by that manifestation of it.
Slowly but surely through the power
of God there will be change. As a gay
Christian, I knew that it was nearly impossible
for me to fulfill my call through
work in a traditional parish. But I believe
that my position as a gay Christian
Republican, which has put me at
the center of one of the most important
civil rights battles facing the church
and this country, is a call of its own.
These are exciting times to be openly
gay in America, and there has never
been a more important time to be an
out gay Christian. This is no time for us
to hide any part of who we really are
under a bushel, and the possibility to
be part of God’s plan for change is tremendous.
For information on the Log Cabin
Republicans, write to 1633 Q Street
N.W. #210, Washington, DC 20009,
phone 202/347-5306, fax 202/ 347-
5224, or e-mail: info@lcr.org Visit the
group’s website at http://www.lcr.org
Rich Tafel, a graduate of Harvard
Divinity School, is an ordained
American Baptist minister and the
executive director of Log Cabin
Republicans. He is the author of an
as-yet-untitled book, due next
spring from Simon and Schuster.
instincts. I asked the audience to respect
his opinion and refrain from attacking
him personally. I got a perplexed look
from the audience and an even more
perplexed look from my debate partner.
When it came to be his time to speak
again, he gave a rousing endorsement
of me and agreed there could be some
common ground on this issue, maybe
domestic partnerships. After it was over,
he reached over and gave me a hug and
thanked me. Following the presentation,
one politico in the audience observed
to me, “You had him in your
sites, but you couldn’t pull the trigger.”
While this was intended as an insult, I
realized it was actually a compliment
in disguise. I do believe that the culture
war over homosexuality will be
won when we approach it from the perspective
of Jesus, not politics as usual.
Common ground can’t always be
found, but we are called to love our
enemy no matter what. I spoke at a rally
in Ft. Worth, Texas, in opposition to the
homophobic policies of the Texas GOP.
“The House of
Daily Bread”
“When we ask for ‘our daily
bread’ in the Lord’s Prayer,
we could be asking for just
enough ‘understanding’ for
today. Life gives us countless
experiences of dissonance, as
the Psalms record. And yet
we ask in return for some
bread, some understanding
to nourish us for this day.”
Mary Callaway Logan
Fall 1998 13
Ed. Note: The term “culture wars” used
today by the religious right originated in
Nazi Germany, when it was used to support
“purifying” German culture.
The idea of a culture war has been
imbedded in our consciousness
since James Davison Hunter’s
1991 Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define
America and Pat Buchanan’s speech
about “a religious war, a culture war”
at the 1992 Republican convention.
James Dobson, head of the powerful
religious right group called “Focus on
the Family,” wrote in his 1992 book (coedited
with Gary Bauer), Children at Risk:
Nothing short of a great Civil War
of Values rages today throughout
North America. Two sides with
vastly different and incompatible
worldviews are locked in a bitter
conflict that permeates every level
of society. Instead of fighting for
territory or military conquest,
however, the struggle now is for
the hearts and minds of people.
It is a war over ideas.
Paul Weyrich, a key creator of institutions
on the right, has said:
It’s a war of ideology, it’s a war of
ideas, and its a war about our way
of life. It has to be fought with
the same intensity and dedication
as you would fight a shooting war.
And Peter Steinfels, who writes a column
on religion for the New York Times,
wrote in Christianity and Crisis in 1982
about the:
growth of a network of intellectual
institutions that function to
dampen outbreaks of fundamental
social criticism. The theory
behind this movement is by now
well known: that a new class of
educated and disaffected “brain
workers,” infected with the “adversary
culture” they imbibed in
college courses or absorbed from
a hundred toxic residues of the
New Left and the counterculture,
will sap the foundations of American
foreign policy and domestic
economy— unless, that is, this
new class can be isolated, browbeaten,
discredited, lured, or
taught its true interest in a wellfinanced
“war of ideas.” The effective
strategists of such a war,
or so Irving Kristol advised his
business readers in the Wall Street
Journal, would be dissident members
of the new class— to begin
with, former leftists like Kristol.
Part of the intellectual framework for
this activity has been provided by a
band of intellectuals called the “neoconservatives.”
They emerged from the
New York intellectual debates of the
1930s and gained momentum after the
Vietnam War. Such names as Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Michael Novak, William
Bennet, Richard John Neuhaus, Norman
Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and
George Weigel are associated with
them. Many were Democrats. Many
were involved in the civil rights movement.
Many opposed the Vietnam War
but by the 1970s were on a move to the
right; they often were defined as hawks
on foreign policy, New Deal on social
issues.
Part of the structure on the right for
the war of ideas came from a traditional
conservative, Paul Weyrich, founder of
the Free Congress Foundation and its
cable television arm, National Empowerment
Television. Weyrich told me in
some detail about how he, as a Senate
aide, attended a meeting of liberals early
in the Nixon administration. He was
stunned at how well coordinated their
attack on Nixon’s housing program was.
And he departed determined to create
similar coherence on the right.
Soon he established the Heritage
Foundation (where he stayed only a
short time) and is given credit for helping
to talk Jerry Falwell into heading
an organization called the Moral Majority,
which Weyrich named. At Heritage
and then his own Free Congress
Foundation he has raked in money from
the Coors family and Scaife and many
other corporations and foundations
(the Brady Foundation has given $2
million to National Empowerment Tele-
The recent demise of
Second Stone (see Movement News) for lack of
adequate financial support and the need for additional economic
solutions to maintain Open Hands makes this article by the editor of the
no-longer-published Christianity and Crisis all the more timely.
’
’
Over the past 25 years corporate sources
have funded a proliferation of think tanks and institutions
to wage a war of ideas.
14 Open Hands
Purchasing Power of the Press
An Example
Eugene TeSelle
Several conservative Christian publications collectively are the lengthened shadow of one
disgruntled Presbyterian, J. Howard Pew. According to the official biographical sketch of
him (Faith and Freedom, published by Grove City College in 1975), he was the chief
funder of three journals in succession.
1. Christian Economics, founded in 1950, championed the free market, limited government,
and moral constraints on business activities. Already during the 1950s Pew was
objecting to the social pronouncements of the Presbyterian Church, trying to limit the
church’s interest in public affairs, and spreading the word that many members were
withholding contributions to the General Assembly until it stopped meddling in secular
affairs. This drew forth the famous riposte, “We trust that Mr. Pew will tell these
friends in unmistakable terms that The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and
its General Assembly are not for sale” (Presbyterian Life, May 15, 1960).
2. Christianity Today was founded in 1956, with Pew as chief financial backer. But he
criticized its board in 1964 when the periodical seemed to take too soft a stance
against the economic, social, and political statements of the Presbyterian General
Assembly in Oklahoma City (this was the Assembly that elected its first black Moderator,
Edler Hawkins, and responded to issues ranging from nuclear weapons to civil
disobedience and the Civil Rights Act of 1964).
3. In 1967 the Presbyterian Layman was launched. Its first goal was to fight the Confession
of 1967 with its theme of reconciliation and the theology behind it. The Presbyterian
Lay Committee continues to receive money from the Pew estate. The reports of
the Pew Charitable Trusts indicate that it was given $325,000 over two years in 1990,
and $375,000 over two years in 1992.
It is said of the intensely congregational Churches of Christ, that “they don’t have bishops,
they have editors.” You get influence and power when enough people read your
periodical. That seems to be what has happened in the PC(USA). Until the denomination
decided last year to send out a new “every home” periodical, the Layman was the only
channel of information about the church for many people.
Eugene TeSelle, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and
Yale University, is Professor of Church History and Theology at
Vanderbilt Divinity School. He is president of the Witherspoon Society,
“Presbyterians working for peace and justice, caring for our
earth, and helping our Presbyterian Church become more open and
inclusive.”
vision, part of Weyrich’s operation,
which does cable television nationally
featuring such people as Gingrich, Robert
Novak, the NRA, and the Christian
Coalition.).
Using ‘Wedge Issues’ to
Polarize People
Both the neoconservatives and the
conservatives have practiced a style
of attack that often depends on wedge
issues to polarize people. Michael
Bauman said it bluntly at an Ethics and
Public Policy seminar:
The comments that are most successful
today are those that are
pointed, that are sharp, that are
memorable, and that might make
your opponent something of
a laughingstock…Logical arguments
don’t very often win the
day…It takes rhetorical power and
aggressiveness to mobilize people
around your cause.
Irving Kristol told his corporate readers
to attack the integrity of critical journalists,
not to argue with them. Listen
to Weyrich use a wedge issue:
Abortion is the symbol for a cultural
cleavage between those with
a sense of community and responsibility
and the votaries of imperial
individualism, between those
whose sons fought in Vietnam
and those whose sons chanted
mantras for the victories of Ho
Chi Minh; between those who
worship in churches and those
who desecrate them; between
those who accept our culture and
those who seek to tear it down.
Soon feminism and homosexuality
joined abortion on the list of wedge issues
that divide people politically, religiously,
and personally.
The conservatives’ pleas for funding
were heeded. Over the past 25 years
corporate sources have funded a proliferation
of think tanks and institutions
to wage a war of ideas. The DeVos family
of Amway has provided extensive
funds for organizations on the right.
The powerful Tele-Communications
cable television company may start a
Christian channel and has talked of supporting
National Empowerment Television
which so far has a weak group of
cable stations. Domino Pizza’s Thomas
S. Monaghan heads a foundation that
gives away millions to right wing and
charismatic Catholic groups. And several
foundations have played a crucial
part in this funding.
The ‘Four Sisters’
I have spent some time recently looking
especially into the “four sisters,”
as they are called in the industry. These
four industrial foundations— Bradley,
Olin, Scaife, and Smith Richardson—
have played a major and largely unknown
role in the war of ideas.
The four foundations have worked
together to fund a variety of institutions
and together created a new Philanthropic
Roundtable that monitors the
giving of other foundations and encourages
cooperation among conservative
foundations. Examples of their joint
giving in 1993: $3.7 million to the
American Enterprise Institute; more
than $1 million to Weyrich’s Free Congress
Foundation; $995,000 to the Center
for the Study of Popular Culture
(headed by erstwhile Ramparts editors,
David Horowitz and Peter Collier, who
spend most of their time attacking public
broadcasting and progressive college
curricula); the Manhattan Institute
Fall 1998 15
A Public Apology
Gil Alexander-Moegerle
Co-Founder of Focus on the Family
I recently heard the Jewish philosopher Dennis Prager say, “Civility requires that responsible
members of the various groups that make up a culture have the courage to
apologize to the rest of society for bad people within their group.”
I have come to issue such an apology for certain actions and attitudes on the part of
the Christian right in general and James Dobson and Focus on the Family in particular:
First, I apologize to the women of America for the sexist attitudes all-too-often displayed
by James Dobson and the organization I helped found.
I apologize to African Americans and other ethnic minorities who are concerned by
the continuing vestiges of intolerance in the land and by the dangerous role James Dobson,
a wealthy, powerful, white, heterosexual male, plays in promoting intolerance.
I apologize to lesbian and gay Americans who are demeaned and dehumanized on a
regular basis by the false, irresponsible, and inflammatory rhetoric of James Dobson’s
anti-gay radio and print materials.
I apologize to Jewish Americans as well as Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and atheist Americans
who are also victims of the dangerous words and divisive political actions of James
Dobson, who claims quite falsely that this is a “Christian nation” that should be “ruled” by
fundamentalist Christians and their doctrines.
I apologize to the American media, specifically to radio, television, and print reporters,
who have been ridiculed and demonized by Dobson and his staff and guests.
I am ashamed of my former colleagues for their attacks on you and for their pattern of
slamming the doors of reasonable access in your face. And I encourage you to bang
those doors down, to investigate, and to report the truth about the threat James Dobson
and other religious extremists pose to the American tradition of tolerance, inclusivity, and
the separation of church and state.
And I apologize to my fellow Christian Americans, many of whom have been misled
by a man I once loved and trusted. ...I apologize to any American who has felt the sting
of James Dobson and the Christian right wagging their holier-than-thou fingers in your
face, shrieking that because your views differ from theirs, you are ungodly, evil, and
unworthy of the rights of full citizenship.
Please don’t let extremists confuse you about the life and teaching of Jesus. He spoke
in love. I regret that Jim [Dobson] and Focus [on the Family] do not.
From a statement to the press on August 15, 1997, at the Gay and Lesbian Pride Center
of Colorado Springs, Colorado.
for Policy Research— Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani’s most helpful think tank—got
$515,000. The National Association of
Scholars, conservative faculty, received
$840,000.
By now you must be thinking that
I’m either bitter— in spite of hard work
the most the late lamented (I hate the
word defunct) Christianity and Crisis
ever got in one year from foundations
was $50,000—or a conspiracy theorist.
So let me quote from the Wall Street
Journal (Oct. 12, 1995), which was concentrating
on Richard Mellon Scaife but
its comments could be extended to the
four foundations:
(Scaife) is nothing less than the
financial archangel for the (conservative)
movement’s intellectual
underpinnings…Current
GOP proposals to restrict government
regulations, set term limits,
revamp welfare and limit civil liability
awards all have some roots
in Scaife-funded groups.
Infiltrating the Church
As Peter Steinfels put it in the 1982
article quoted above, it took some
time for the sponsors of the “war of
ideas” to locate their condottieri—hired
guns—in the field of religion. But they
did. And these four foundations—who
unlike foundations such as the Lilly Endowment
and the Pew Charitable Trusts
had never shown any funding interest
in matters religious— began to support
agencies created to fight the war of ideas
within the mainline churches.
One of the first indications of this
new development arrived with the publication
in 1979 of a tendentious tract
called From Amsterdam to Nairobi: The
World Council of Churches and the Third
World. It accused the WCC, among
other things, of arming communist terrorists
by its humanitarian gifts to the
African National Congress in South Africa
and the Southwest Africa Peoples
Organization in Namibia. (History has
since validated the WCC involvement.)
The tract was written by Ernest
Lefever, a former staff member at the
National Council of Churches who had
started the Ethics and Public Policy Center
(EPPC) two years earlier. Lefever later
ran into trouble in 1981 when President
Reagan nominated him to head the
State Department’s Human Rights office.
He was not confirmed because it
turned out that the Nestle corporation,
fighting the boycott of its formula, had
given considerably more money to
Lefever’s center— which it considered an
ally— than he had made public. The
EPPC adopted a broader agenda under
George Weigel. It received $760,390
from the four sisters in 1993. The current
president is Elliott Abrams, assistant
secretary of state for Latin America
affairs during the Reagan administration
who was convicted of lying to Congress
on the Iran-Contra matter.
Two years later a new bolt. A sensational
article in Reader’s Digest and two
pieces on CBS’s 60 Minutes red-baited
the WCC and the NCC. A new organization,
with 89 percent of its funding
from three of the four sisters, called Institute
on Religion and Democracy
(IRD) got credit for provoking the attack.
The IRD’s creators featured Roman
Catholic Michael Novak, then Lutheran
now Catholic Richard John Neuhaus,
new Methodist David Jessup and his
former SDS colleague, Penn Kemble,
not a church member. These Washington
insiders made Edmund Robb, a
United Methodist evangelist from
Texas, president.
Finding a New Wedge
Issue: ‘Radical Feminism’
Until communism disappeared as a
wedge issue, the IRD pounded
away at the churches for their “leftist”
tendencies and created denominational
variations within the Presbyterian, Episcopal,
and United Methodist denominations.
IRD has never really been a mem16
Open Hands
bership organization; it has continued
to receive most of its funding from the
four sisters and a few other foundations,
$448,000— 80 percent— in 1994. It continues
to follow a strategy of media assaults
on the mainline churches. And it
appears to have bumped into its
new wedge issue, “radical feminism,”
with the advent of the Re-Imagining
women’s conference in Minneapolis in
late 1993. (For a detailed account of the
origins of IRD, see my article, “Old
Wine, New Bottles: The Institute on
Religion and Democracy,” Christianity
and Crisis, March 21, 1983, reprinted in
Ethics in the Present Tense [Friendship
Press, 1991]).
A third organization, the Institute on
Religion and Public Life (RPL), is headed
by Neuhaus, now a Roman Catholic
priest and longtime protagonist in the
church’s war of ideas. His RPL is based
in New York and publishes a neoconservative
journal, First Things. In it
he engages in lively polemics against
more liberal religious expressions. RPL
got $690,000 of its $893,500 budget in
foundation grants in 1993 from the four
sisters. Together with Michael Novak
and George Weigel, Neuhaus forms a
sort of Catholic triad that engages in a
variety of matters, including personal
visits to the Christian Coalition annual
gathering to urge moderation and cooperation.
All three have been on the
IRD board for its lifetime.
Two other organizations deserve
brief mention here. One is Good News,
a bi-monthly magazine published out
of Asbury College in Kentucky. It criticizes
its own United Methodist Church
primarily, but will use material generated
by IRD. Most of its money appears
to come from individual donations.
About 65,000 people receive the magazine
free-of-charge, a tactic learned from
the Presbyterian Lay Committee (PLC),
with its primary office just outside Philadelphia.
PLC publishes the bi-monthly
Presbyterian Layman which goes to an
estimated 500,000 readers free. It is
noted for its harshly slanted journalism.
It is particularly strident on gay and lesbian
issues.
The PLC was formed in 1965 by several
Presbyterian businessmen unhappy
with the Confession of 1967 adopted
by the then northern branch of the Presbyterian
Church. Key among them was
J. Howard Pew, for almost 50 years the
dominating figure of Sun Oil. Long after
his death, the PLC gets an average
of $187,500 a year from the J. Howard
Pew part of the Pew Charitable Trusts
as a “historic family interest.” It received
$3.758 million from Pew from 1968-
1984. Note that IRD, Good News, and
the Presbyterian Layman were the primary
purveyors of a negative reading
of the Re-Imagining Conference. Once
the story reached the major media
months after the conference, the issue
had already been framed by these three.
Neither Illegal nor
Immoral, but Imbalanced
This final thought: none of the above
support for groups involved in the
war of ideas, including within the
churches, is illegal or immoral. But IRD,
EPPC, and RPL would not exist without
the foundation money. And it is important
that we know what is at stake.
An estimable organization called the
Churches Center for Theology and
Public Affairs housed at Wesley Theological
Seminary struggled in 1994 to
fund a budget of $115,000. The Institute
on Policy Studies, clearly on the
left of the political debate, has a budget
of no more than $1.5 million. Compare
that with Heritage’s $23 million in 1993
and American Enterprise Institute’s $13
million.
Never mind corporations. Foundations
on the more moderate or progressive
side have never made the commitment
to funding liberal think-tanks that
the conservatives have. The reasons are
several. But until they do, the war of
ideas— cockamamie as some of them
are— will go to those on the right by
default. And unchallenged, the agencies
created to roil the churches will continue
to exact their toll.
Leon Howell was the editor of the “late
lamented” Christianity and Crisis, and
currently is a free-lance writer based in
Washington, D.C. This article is excerpted
from a presentation at the National Cathedral,
February 20, 1996.
A gay Roman Catholic priest
speaks out for what he believes—
“John McNeill is one of
my heroes. He will be
remembered as the gay
saint in the twentieth
century who initiated a
Catholic Stonewall
while the Church in fear
tried to closet him and finally
expelled him because he believed that Christianity
is fundamentally about kindness and inclusion.”
—Rev. Dr. Robert Goss, author of Jesus Acted Up and
co-chairman of the Gay Men Studies in Religion Group of
the American Academy of Religion
At your bookstore,
your Cokesbury bookstore or
call (800) 227-2872 • www.wjk.org
Both Feet Firmly
Planted in Midair
My Spiritual Journey
John J. McNeill
Paper $18.00
Fall 1998 17
Ecumenical politeness is a hallmark
of contemporary Christianity.
It is a virtue or a vice, depending
on your perspective, that keeps
denominational lines intact and boundaries
clear. The phrase covers a multitude
of sins: for example, when and
whether to receive the Eucharist in a
church other than one’s own (a quaint
theological notion or an oxymoron,
again, depending on one’s point of
view), whether and how to comment
on the inner workings of a denomination
other than one’s own. Such matters
require a certain theological delicacy,
what I think of as the etiquette of
theology.
Etiquette is clearly socially constructed—
customs differ dramatically in
regions, cultures, language groups and
traditions. Hence, it can and must be
deconstructed. Like all etiquette in the
late twentieth century, theological manners
are changing because the presuppositions
on which they were predicated
have changed already. Like most
manners, ecumenical politeness is
taught early, ingrained deeply, and hard
to change. It is relied on to keep the
theological peace and to keep the Christian
community in pieces. A wholesale
rethinking is in order as the increasingly
globalized, pluralistic religious scene
takes shape. Otherwise, ecumenical
politeness runs the risk of devolving
into irrelevancy.
My attention is drawn to this matter
when I, a Roman Catholic feminist
theologian, watch from the sidelines as
my Protestant sisters and brothers engage
in exercises that remind me of the
Coliseum. Ecumenical politeness, not
to mention time and energy, constrain
me from writing to church officials, attending
denominational meetings and
otherwise joining the fray. Progressive
and conservative forces in the Presbyterian
and United Methodist churches,
for example, do battle (the bellicose
image is unfortunate but warranted)
over the ordination of out and proud
homosexuals, an issue dear to my heart.
Yet I reserve my theological opinions,
though they are obvious and well
known in some circles, because somehow
I reason the struggle is for “them,”
not for me. Entering into someone else’s
matters is simply not done, at least not
by people with my upbringing, or so I
have thought. However, I am reconsidering
my previous assumptions and invite
others to do the same. A concrete
case prompted this reconsideration, a
case so obviously egregious that it reminded
me of my own repressive denomination.
A Case in Point:
The Termination of
Eunice Poethig
The Rev. Dr. Eunice B. Poethig served
as the first director of the newly created
Congregational Ministries Division
(CMD) of the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.). In the fall of 1997, toward the
end of her first term, the CMD Committee
voted not to renew her contract
based on the recommendation of the
General Assembly Council’s End-of-
Term Review Committee. Personnel decisions
are made every day in churches,
but this one caught my eye because the
Rev. Poethig is more than a Presbyterian
official, indeed she has been an
active participant in ecumenical, academic
and social change circles. Despite
the fact that the last Presbyterian in my
family was my maternal grandfather,
“Be Opened”
Mary Callaway Logan
Jesus’ command to open
the ears of the one who
could not hear applies
equally to the church,
which turns a deaf ear to
the radical claim of the
gospel to “Be Open.”
18 Open Hands
Archibald L. Campbell, I realized that
she had not only been dismissed from
her parochial post. Rather, she had been
effectively removed as a church official
with portfolio from a much larger arena,
that of feminist Christian women, in
which her presence spoke loudly the
support of at least some officials of at
least one mainline church.
Eunice Poethig, like so many dedicated,
competent, savvy women who work as
church bureaucrats, was able to straddle
the wide divides between and among
church members and still get the job
done. So many such women labor quietly
to “do it all”— fulfill the heavy demands
of their jobs, thread their way
through the minefields of denominational
politics, and still find ways to support the
fledgling efforts of progressive women
to make change. My experience is that
such women do not agree with all that
progressive groups would urge, an irony
when they pay high prices for their support,
but that they are supportive in
principle because they know that it is
such efforts “out there” that help to
make change within structures.
Of course this was the problem— Rev.
Poethig attended, and I daresay probably
enjoyed, the first Re-imagining
Conference in 1993. It was, after all— as
history will record against the shrill
shrieks of its opponents— a quite respectable,
serious conference. Having a
Ph.D. in Old Testament from Union
Theological Seminary, she participates
in the annual American Academy of
Religion/Society for Biblical Literature
meeting. She has been clear about her
personal position in favor of lesbian/
gay/bisexual and transgendered people
as full members of church and society.
She is a supporter of the rights of
women to minister in all Christian
denominations. In essence, Eunice
Poethig embodies all that conservatives
worry about in church circles, and she
does so with a style and grace that make
her, like most powerful and sensitive
women, unmanageable. That she got a
new Division off the ground, that she
is a well qualified church bureaucrat
with eight years of experience as the
Executive Presbyter of the Presbytery of
Western New York, all seem to amount
to little in an environment in which
ideology is all. So much for common
courtesy, not to mention justice.
Ecumenical politeness of old would
dictate that I send an appropriate note
to Eunice bemoaning her fate and wishing
her luck. But I think that the ecumenical
linkages that bond us permit
more now, indeed require more. First,
the intricacies of individual church
workings need to be mastered by those
beyond its limits. While I can tick off
the Catholic cardinals and the cardinal
sins with ease, I am only now coming
to an appreciation of the intricacies of
the General Assembly Council (GAC)
and CMD, the ways in which Presbyterians
conduct their business and the fact
that they, like Rome, err on occasion.
This time the procedures were violated,
certainly in spirit if not in letter.
The GAC Manual of Operations calls for
a two to three hour discussion of the
matters at hand. Ms. Poethig reports
that her twenty-minute interview began
with the announcement that the Endof-
Term Committee would not recommend
a second term. It is not clear that
three hours of dialogue would have
changed anyone’s mind, but it is important
to note that when such violations
of due process occur one can suspect
that other violations lurk. Most
major corporations do better by their
long-term employees than that. They
are under legal constraints to follow
contractual obligations. It is also simply
common sense, read: manners.
Second, in such cases of injustice the
response must be broader than the individual
group affected. Justice for
Women, a Presbyterian group that
launched a petition drive on Eunice
Poethig’s behalf, found that its efforts
backfired. On appeal, Rev. Poethig’s
request for reinstatement was denied,
and her option to have her term extended
for several months was revoked,
thus making her termination effective
immediately. Here the church takes its
dubious cue from the business world
in which conventional wisdom has it
that one gets a fired employee out of
the office as quickly as possible so as to
minimize disruption. In this instance,
the petitions were disruptive so out she
had to go. There was seemingly no effort
to conceal the stunning backlash,
a chilling reality for those still working
in the denomination. For those outside
the Presbyterian Church, to steer clear
of the whole matter for the sake of ecumenical
turf is to be complicit in it.
A larger interdenominational response
would not necessarily have
changed the decision. However, it
would have put Presbyterian Church
officials on notice that such behaviors
reflect badly on them, perhaps a concern
in an era when membership numbers
are wavering. Then again, perhaps
not. But at least the ecumenical chorus
would have sung in full voice that justice
within our ranks is as important as
the justice we call for outside, and without
it our credibility is nil.
Third, in the present theo-political
climate it is hard to separate the wheat
from the chaff. I do not have inside information
from either side in this dispute
so as to evaluate the merits of the
decision on the basis of the competency
of the person involved. But I would argue
that, unless and until there is some
new consensus on what constitutes a
credible job, ideological considerations
notwithstanding, this firing will simply
be one in a long line. Indeed the Presbyterian
line is growing. The Rev. Mary
Anne Lundy was removed from her
position on the heels of her leadership
in the Re-Imagining movement. Where
will it end?
Working Together Amid
Differences
Universities have been through this
for decades, with academic freedom
now a respected if sometimes
shaky given. Many campuses have suf-
Why have we found it necessary to set up every discussion
in binary terms, every panel in a pre-constructed,
bean-counted fashion, every debate in a win-lose format?
What about looking for the strengths in all arguments, paying special
attention to those with which we disagree to ferret out their merits?
Fall 1998 19
fered through the agonies of tenure
battles, first on the left, then on the
right. Happily, they often discover that
there is usually a way to live with colleagues
with whom one disagrees. We
need to develop an ecclesiastical equivalent
in these troubled times. It is not
simply for the sake of assuring that progressive
voices will be heard. It is also
against a time when the shoe will be on
the other foot and the same justice requirement
will apply to conservatives.
Intellectual opinions are held with no
less fervor than faith, but somehow
people manage, albeit not without
struggles, to develop ways to live and
work together across wide differences,
recognizing the strengths and weaknesses
of each other as persons and as
thinkers. The alternative, of course, is
the development of narrow, intellectually
closed schools that produce equally
narrow, closed students. The religious
equivalent of this in any denomination
is a nightmare.
Deborah Tannen’s book, The Argument
Culture, might help here. She queries
why we have found it necessary to
set up every discussion in binary terms,
every panel in a pre-constructed, beancounted
fashion, every debate in a winlose
format. What about looking for the
strengths in all arguments, paying special
attention to those with which we
disagree to ferret out their merits? I suggest
some elements of this sort of thinking
could help us in church circles to
ease up a bit on the ideology and realize
that we are all in this work because
we share some similar goals that grow
out of root values. After all, matters of
faith are even less certain than matters
of science, so surely we could all lighten
up some. I do not mean to sell out key
issues on which good people disagree.
Taking a page from Tannen, I suggest
we give more careful attention to
the way in which arguments are constructed
so as to see merit even where
we disagree. For example, I can appreciate
the arguments of anti-choice/prolife
Catholics even though I come down
on the other side of the issue. Respecting
their rigor and commitment in no
way allies me with their point of view.
But it does humanize the process and
relativizes my claims. How refreshing
to think we might all do it!
Finally, the puzzling problem of politeness
is that it is designed to even the
playing field, to put people ahead of
ideas, what Professor Krister Stendahl
claimed Paul taught, the triumph of
love even over integrity. There is a slash
and burn mentality in the air on controversial
matters— claims to have
rooted out the troublesome people with
x number gone and so many left to be
expelled. It is a language set that has
no place, in my judgment, in communities
that claim their origin, authority
and inspiration in what Elisabeth
Schussler Fiorenza has called a “discipleship
of equals.” Such a community, like
the Jesus movement that inspired it, requires
more.
Ecumenical politeness remains a useful
convention. But as our interdenominational
bonds grow, so too do our responsibilities,
individual and collective,
to shift boundaries and behaviors. It is
always dicey to offer an opinion from
outside of a community of faith. But
this is a dimension of ecumenism that
has seldom been addressed, namely, just
how we can be supportive without being
disrespectful. I hope Protestant feminists
will not hesitate to address Catholic
injustices, though clearly they cannot
do so with the same vigor and insider
information that I employ. If we cannot
do this in our own small ponds here
at home, I shudder to think of the ecumenical
faux pas ahead in a globalized
church.
Mary E. Hunt is Co-director of WATER,
the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics
and Ritual (see ad, this page). She writes
regularly for WATERwheel, a quarterly
publication. This previously
unpublished
article is concurrently
being published in the
Network News of the
Witherspoon Society.
20 Open Hands
Satyagraha:
Truth-force or soul-force (sat, truth; agraha, firmness);
non-violent direct action; passive resistance;
civil disobedience; non-violent non-cooperation.
“That they all may be One;
as Thou art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may
be One in us: that the world may believe that Thou has sent me. And the glory which
thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are One.” John 17:21-22, KJV
During the summer, fundamentalist
Christian organizations
escalated their attacks on lesbian
and gay Americans, spending hundreds
of thousands of dollars on ads in
major newspapers to convince the nation
that we are “sick” and “sinful,” that
we can and should be “cured,” that our
rights and protections should be denied.
At the same time, mainstream denominations
seemed to echo the fundamentalist
call for jihad against God’s gay and
lesbian children. The July decision by
the United Methodist Judicial Council
giving legal, coercive force to the Social
Principle prohibiting “homosexual
unions” means, in the words of Jimmy
Creech, “…the Church of John Wesley,
founded upon principles of social justice
and piety, will now be prosecuting
pastors for praying God’s blessings
upon same-sex couples who make covenants
of love and fidelity.” And in August,
more than 500 Anglican bishops
meeting at the Lambeth world conference
voted to condemn homosexual
practice as “incompatible with Scripture,”
prohibiting the “legitimizing or
blessing” of same-sex unions and the
“ordination of those involved in such
unions.”
We are tempted to answer these misinforming
voices with equally colorful
soundbites of our own; however, rushing
to do battle with angry words and
clenched fists will not help our cause,
let alone bring One-ness to the Body of
Christ. Doubting the integrity or debating
the motives of our adversaries is
another dead end. We must not react,
but we must respond. The anti-homosexual
rhetoric divides and bloodies
“The Bread of Eternal Life”
Mary Callaway Logan
Because evil serpentinely insinuated itself
into God’s Garden, Adam and Eve
were prevented from eating of the Tree
of Life. But now, in Jesus, we are offered
the bread “that endures for eternal
life” (Jn 6:27). We are given an
eternal perspective that makes the evil
of the cross (a tree of death) finite and
the good of resurrecting love infinite.
Fall 1998 21
Third, when untruth threatens, we respond
with truth in love.
A Christian version of Soulforce
finds its basis in Jesus’ words: “Love
your enemies.” Gandhi defines that love
as refusing violent actions, violent
words, even violent thoughts against
our adversaries. King said love must
control fist, tongue, and heart. To win
the minds and hearts of the nation, and
to bring hope and healing to Christ’s
body, our g/l/b/t community must take
the moral high ground. We must learn
to out-love those who caricature and
condemn us. We should consider giving
up our angry chants and nasty gestures,
our mean-spirited banners and
inflammatory T-shirts, our belligerent
marches and fiery speeches. These are
acts of violence and meeting untruth
with violence only escalates the war.
I know the men and women behind
this new war against us—Pat Robertson,
James Dobson, Gary Bauer, D. James
Kennedy, Beverly LaHaye. Whatever
their motives, they truly believe that we
are sick, sinful, and a threat to the nation,
that we can and should be “cured.”
They have not taken seriously the scientific,
historical, and biblical research
that demonstrates clearly that God
Thoughts on the L/G/B/T
Religious Movement
Mark Bowman
In physics we learn that every action produces what?
An equal and opposite reaction.
When you try to drive a car forward or change the direction of a moving car,
what creates resistance?
Inertia.
When a plane tries to take off, what force resists?
Gravity.
Are inertia and gravity unusual phenomena?
No, they are natural phenomena.
In social change, where do you find resistance to change?
In religious institutions.
In the conflict over homosexuality, where is the most resistance?
The so-called religious right.
Is the religious right an unusual phenomenon?
No, it’s the natural resistance to change.
As the car tries to move faster, what is the effect of inertia?
It appears stronger.
As the plane tries to fly higher, what is the effect of gravity?
It appears stronger.
Now, if you are trying to make the car go faster, what do you do?
Attack inertia?
No, you give the care more forward power.
If you’re trying to make the plane fly higher, do you attack gravity?
No, you give the plane more lift power.
What we should be doing now is increasing power and lift—cultivating allies, creating
networks, and building a movement that will overcome the church’s resistance to
change. We must engage in positive, forward-looking movment,
inviting folks to join us on the plane that is soaring up.
Mark Bowman is the publisher of Open Hands and director of
the Reconciling Congregation Program within the United Methodist
Church. This is excerpted from a presentation to the Religious
Leaders Roundtable of the national l/g/b/t movement on
July 23, 1998, in Washington, D.C.
Christ’s body and leads to intolerance,
suffering, and death for gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgendered Americans.
It must be confronted and the Soulforce
principles of relentless nonviolent
resistance as taught by Jesus, Gandhi
and King show us how.
First, we must see our adversaries as
children of the same loving God who
created us, our brothers and sisters in
Christ, members of our own family.
Neither Pat Robertson and his fundamentalist
colleagues nor the Anglican
bishops meeting in Canterbury are
evil. They are victims of misinformation
(as we have been). Our goal is not
to triumph over them but to be reconciled
with them. Ending segregation was
not Martin Luther King’s primary goal.
His goal was to help bring in the “beloved
community” where he and the
late Governor George Wallace could
live as neighbors. Our goal is not to
overwhelm, censor, coerce or even be
victorious over our adversaries. Our
goal is to be reconciled with them. No
one wins until we are One again.
Second, when untruth threatens, we
respond with truth.
There is a positive side to this new
round of anti-homosexual propaganda.
One of my non-religious, heterosexual
friends was enraged by the summer’s
avalanche of blatant untruth. “How can
they say these things?” he asked. In fact,
they’ve been saying these things for
years but saying them virtually in secret
on their TV and radio programs, in
their direct mail campaigns and fundraising
appeals.
Now, the untruth is out there
where our friends and neighbors can
read it for themselves, and though the
untruth confuses many it will also win
allies to our cause. We have one task
only: respond to the untruth with
truth. Before we respond to the antihomosexual
propaganda, we must
hear it carefully. Find the statements
that are clearly untrue, and answer
them with truth. And where they
speak the truth, even if painful, we
must acknowledge it. Inadvertently,
they have invited us to “a new national
discussion of homosexuality.”
Let’s accept!
22 Open Hands
created us and loves us exactly as we
are. It is our job to help them discover
this new truth.
Just decades ago, many of our current
adversaries were misusing the Bible
to support segregation. The folks behind
these anti-homosexual ads are as ignorant
about homosexuals as Governor
Wallace and Sheriff “Bull” Conner were
ignorant about African-Americans. King
didn’t yell back at his enemies. He
didn’t call them bigots or liars. He didn’t
waste time hating them or plotting their
destruction. Dr. King demonstrated the
truth about African-Americans by his
loving response to the untruth. We
must demonstrate the truth about homosexuals
by the way we respond to
the war of words being waged against
us. We must not hate or fear those who
misunderstand us. We must lovingly
liberate them from the untruth that
holds them hostage.
Fourth, when untruth threatens, we
respond with truth in love relentlessly.
We will not confront the untruth
effectively until we have responded
with relentless determination. For too
long it’s been a war of words. They
launch their missives. We counterstrike.
They take out ads. We respond with ads
of our own or we hold a rally, a demonstration,
a benefit, or a one-day
march—then thinking we have advanced
the cause, we all go out to party.
Soulforce calls us to a far more difficult
and demanding task.
First, we make a list of their dangerous
and deadly untruths. Second, we do
our homework, preparing our answers
to each untruth with carefully researched
truth. Third, we accept their
offer of “a new national discussion of
homosexuality” and ask them to join
us at the table in a mutual search for
truth. Fourth, if they refuse to join us
at the table; or if, when there, they
refuse to negotiate seriously an end to
their anti-homosexual campaign, we
take direct nonviolent actions that will
convince them (and the nation) of our
sincerity and compel them to join us at
the table.
Look at the fifteen organizations
listed at the bottom of the summer’s
anti-homosexual ads. These are the
nation’s primary sources of misinformation,
not just about homofolk but about
other minorities, the Constitution, the
Bill of Rights, and the separation of
church and state. In the name of “saving
it,” our Christian brothers and sisters
have become not just opponents
of God’s lesbian and gay children, but
opponents of the nation, a very real
threat to democracy.
We must surround these Christian
organizations with truth in love relentlessly,
not just for our sake but for the
future of the country. One day protests
will not do it. Ad campaigns will fail.
No one cares if our one-day march is
bigger than their march. In South Africa
and India, Gandhi led his people
in relentless direct actions to demonstrate
their sincerity and to win friends
to their cause. Refusing to give up until
their truth prevailed, King’s “children”
faced water hoses, police dogs, beatings,
jail terms, and lynchings. Our time has
come. We are second class citizens in
our own country. Our freedom is at
stake. Our lives are on the line. The
nation is in peril. It is time for a new
strategy of relentless nonviolent resistance.
The Way of Non-Violence
Gandhi and King both began their civil
rights campaigns by training their allies
in nonviolence. Marchers signed
vows that carefully proscribed behavior
or they weren’t allowed to march.
Direct actions, once begun, were not
ended until the goal was accomplished
even if it meant imprisonment, suffering
and death.
We must re-discover and apply their
Soulforce rules. I don’t know what will
happen to us and to our allies when we
take nonviolence seriously. Gandhi says
“Just take the first step and the rest will
follow.” It is time to try. Thinking ourselves
safe in our closets, we are sleeping
through a revolution. The Soulforce
guidelines are clear. Truth cannot prevail
until those who hold that truth are
willing to live and die for it. The Body
of Christ will be One again when we
learn to outlove our enemies whatever
the cost.
Mel White, pictured with his partner in
life and in ministry, Gary Nixon (l.), is
the author of Stranger at the Gate: To Be
Gay and Christian in America, describing
his experience working with and writing
for the most conservative Christian
leaders in the U.S. while struggling with
his homosexuality. He is last year’s recipient
of the national ACLU’s Civil Liberties
Award for his application of Soulforce principles
to our struggle, and is Justice Minister
of the UFMCC. He may be contacted
at P.O.Box 4467, Laguna Beach, CA 92652
or via e-mail at RevMel@aol.com or visit
his website: www.soulforce.org
Fall 1998 23
How do we navigate in the world when
our familiar methods of finding our way dissolve?
Every August from the time I was
seven until I was twelve, my stepfather
piled our family into his
old Chrysler and drove us from Ft. Riley,
Kansas, to his family home in Amory,
Mississippi, to pick cotton. I have to
confess that my cousins and I picked
little cotton, but we had a great time
raiding the watermelon patch and
avoiding work. We stayed in my Aunt
Pearl and Uncle Opal’s farmhouse,
which had no indoor plumbing. On my
first visit, I did not know about the
chamber pot under the beds, so, one
night, when I had to relieve myself,
I headed for the outhouse in the
field out back. It was a moonless
night, and in that opaque
darkness, even little squirrels
sounded like giant bears.
How do we navigate in
the world when our familiar methods
of finding our way dissolve?
We often set faith at odds with the
night, as if faith always illuminated life
like the sun and gave us clear choices:
good or evil, us or them. We need our
faith most, however, when old ways of
knowing fail us—when we face confusing
and anguishing choices. In these
moments we need faith that sustains us
through our human limits, through the
edges of our knowing and understanding—
where our fears lurk. Such sustaining
faith is like a sliver of moonlight,
just enough glow to help us keep going,
even when we are uncertain about
our footing.
The Christian tradition has tragic
moments when our obsession with cer-
“Teacher, we saw
someone casting out demons in your name, and
we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus
said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name
will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.”
Mark 9:38-40
tainty of faith inflicted great harm and
destroyed many lives. The obsession
with certainty leads to the oversimplification
of people’s lives and the lean
toward self-righteousness.
Linda Petrocelli, who directs the global
sharing of resources for the United
Church of Christ, once told a story of
an experience in Catholic grammar
school. Sister Mary Robert Cecelia gave
a lesson on the importance of Catholic
faith by concluding that everyone, EVERYONE,
even Lutherans and Episcopalians,
were going to hell because they
were NOT Catholic. When she got
home from school that evening, Linda’s
mom asked her, “Linda, what are you
grateful for today?” a question she often
asked her. Linda replied, “I am grateful
that Sister Mary Robert Cecilia is not
God.”
Reducing the world to clear polarized
choices is born of the need to control;
it is not born of love. Faith in God’s
grace is not a guarantee of certainty; it
is a promise that whatever we face, God
is with us—no matter how terrifying the
night. And sometimes, the night full of
terrors can be exceedingly long.
We need each other, even as we
stumble together in the night. We cannot
avoid forever going out into the
night if we live in this world, but Jesus
reminds us that the stranger, all those
who speak the truth, can expel our demons
of denial, self-righteousness, and
control. Venturing into the night
teaches us the limits of our control.
Courage to venture out leads us to divine
mystery, and we learn to trust that
power which transcends our limits. In
that mystery, we find a sliver of moonlight
lighting our way.
For as we find the courage to go out
into the night, we journey in the confidence
that our salvation is promised
by God and sealed in the
life of Jesus Christ, who said
to us that anyone who is not
against us is for us, even
those we do not know or
understand.
The church has too often
depended on certainty to decide
who is in our community and who is
out. We have been preoccupied with
who is authorized to act in the name of
Christ and who is not, rather than on
the quality of works we ourselves do in
Christ’s name. We cannot purge violence
and hate by counting police arrests
and convictions, and building
more prisons. We cannot take care of
families by figuring out how much we
can cut from our social welfare policies,
rather than by asking what mothers and
children need to thrive in our society.
The survivors of sexual abuse and domestic
violence who have faced their
own long nights are unauthorized exorcists
forcing us to face demons that
possess our families. We cannot under24
Open Hands
stand loving faithfully by lauding heterosexual
marriage and condemning
homosexual relationships, instead of
asking what we might learn from seeing
how love is made manifest in any
relationship. We need to know how life
is enhanced, pain and suffering healed,
creativity encouraged, promises kept,
and each person able to flourish. Under
the lens of those criteria, many
marriages would fail and many samesex
relationships would stand as examples
to us all.
Gay and lesbian Christians are the
unauthorized exorcists who have revealed
how broken our tradition has
been about sexuality. We must purge
the demons of shame, guilt, control,
and abuse from our sexuality by making
space for all to speak honestly about
how we love and fail to love. The promise
of our faith is that, somehow, as we
stumble along together, God is with us,
like the moonlight. For to work in
Christ’s name is, finally, to trust the
moon to rise in the night. We will never
know certainty, but the moonlight is
more than enough.
The moonlight reveals to us the unexpected,
what we ordinarily cannot
see. The moonlight supports our courage
to make new discoveries; and with
new discoveries come joy, generosity,
and great curiosity. When we find the
mystery and joy in the night, we have
found the full moon, the light that
shows us the unauthorized exorcists
and the open spaces where still new
discoveries await us. Let us be on our
adventurous, perilous, and life-giving
journey in the night.
Let us walk in the moonlight together.
Rita Nakashima Brock is Director of the
Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is a feminist
theologian (and served as a leader at
the first Re-Imagining Conference) and
member of the Christian Church (Disciples
of Christ). This article
was excerpted from a
sermon delivered October
23, 1995, during
the Disciples’ General
Assembly in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.
“Exiled in the House of Love”
“As so many of my collages come together with unexpected
images, this spinning figure is whirling between
light and darkness, between the inside and the outside of
the house of love—simply between. This is God’s Beloved,
as we all are, yet a feeling of exile may interfere with the
experience of God’s love.”
Mary Callaway Logan
Fall 1998 MINISTRIES 25
In Memory of Matthew Shepard (1976-1998)
The Need to Pray Always and Not Lose Heart
Chris Glaser
“Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray
always and not to lose heart” Luke 18:1.
If ever we needed a parable to keep us from losing heart, it
is now.
We were confronted with a modern crucifixion this fall. A
twenty-one-year-old gay University of Wyoming student was
severely beaten as he begged for his life and hung on a post,
exposed to the nearly freezing elements for eighteen hours
before discovered by passersby. This is what they do to unwanted
coyotes in Wyoming, kill one and put it on a post as a
warning to other coyotes that they are not welcome. This is
what the Romans did to activists of Jesus’ day, hung them on
crosses where they died of exposure along the road to warn
passersby that those who would change the status quo were
not welcome. This is what the ancient Hebrews used to do to
a goat, projecting their sins onto the goat and excommunicating
it into the wilderness to die from exposure to the elements.
We feel helpless hearing of Matthew Shepard’s suffering.
With the vulnerable but relentless widow seeking justice at
the hands of an arrogant judge in the parable that Jesus told
about our need to pray always and not to lose heart (Lk 18:18-
8), we cry to God and to anyone who will listen, “Grant us
justice against our opponents.”
University and state officials in Wyoming kept describing
Michael’s death as “an isolated incident.” But the feeling I
had in my gut as if someone’s fist had hit it with full force told
me this gay-bashing was not an isolated incident. The whole
message of spirituality is that there are no isolated incidents.
Everything that happens is part of a fabric, and this incident is
part of a shroud of prejudice that would bury us all.
This summer we saw ads from the religious right that would
portray their Nazi-like movement to extinguish homosexuality
as if it were a healing rather than a killing ministry, and
even dare to claim themselves as victims of those who would
deny them their rights to administer hate in the form of repressive
legislation.
The religious right has resurrected a term used in Nazi Germany
against those who would taint the German race, “culture
wars.” The religious right has launched what they call a
culture war against gay people, against women who make their
own reproductive choices, against those who believe in the
separation of church and state. Disguising themselves as victims,
they are the wolves in sheep’s clothing that Jesus warned
about in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew: “Beware of
false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly
are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15).
These ravenous wolves arrayed against us are not healthy
people. They are gaybashers trying to prove their holiness at
the expense of others, namely us. Their weapons are not clubs
nor guns, but the Bible and church polities.
“God, grant us justice against our opponents.”
But it’s too easy to point to the extremists who want to do
us in, such as the religious right and sick personalities. Just as
there are no isolated incidents, there are no isolated extremists.
No gay-basher— whether on the street or in a pulpit or in
office— would be able to do their violent deeds were it not for
the support of the mainstream. Virtually every gay-basher cites
religious reasons for their behavior, whether it is to take away
our lives, our livelihoods in the church, our loving marriages,
or our rights to live under protection of law.
In polls, most Americans say they support gay civil rights.
At the same time, most Americans say they believe homosexuality
is a sin. Thus the church plays the culprit behind
both the votes of legislators and electorates and the violence
of gay-bashers. As Matthew Shepard grew up and became aware
of his sexual identity, our churches repeatedly sent the message
to him that he was unacceptable to God in their various
pronouncements against homosexuality. More fatally, they
sent the same hostile message to his assailants.
“O God,” we pray, “Grant us justice against our opponents.”
Much of what I have done in my own ministry has been
for the sake of young people like Matthew Shepard. I never
wanted to see another young gay person go through what I
had to as a child and adolescent, lonely and afraid, questioning
my worth and my belovedness in the sight of God and
family and the family of faith. The welcoming congregations
movement has shared the same burden. What we have done,
we have done for the sake of our posterity, our unknown lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgendered children.
I remember one young man brought into my office by his
foster father when I was Director of the Lazarus Project of
West Hollywood Presbyterian Church. First I met with the
father, then I met with his teenage son. Years later, when I was
on a panel at the Los Angeles Lesbian and Gay Community
Services Center, a young man in his twenties came up to me
and said, “You probably don’t remember me, but my Dad
brought me in to see you when I first became aware that I was
gay. You have no idea what that meeting meant to me. You
were the first gay person I ever met, and you became a role
model for me.” He made my day.
Three weeks before Shepard’s brutal death, after I preached
at MCC L.A., a man came up and began, “You probably don’t
remember me, but many years ago I brought my foster son in
to meet you when you were still at West Hollywood Presbyterian
Church.” I told him of running into his son at the Center
and how glad I had been to hear from him again. A little apprehensive
because of AIDS, I asked after the son. “Oh, he’s
doing fine,” the father said, “He lives in Mexico now. You
made a difference. You kept him from going the route of his
brother who got onto the street and into drugs.”
This story serves as a parable about our need to pray always
and not to lose heart.
WE have made a difference. Open Hands and the welcoming
congregations movement have made a difference. If there
are no “isolated incidents” when it comes to tragedies such as
a young gay man’s death this fall, there are no “isolated incidents”
when it comes to resurrections such as this foster son’s
life as a result of our ministry. At times you may feel isolated,
Outreach
26 MINISTRIES Open Hands
but you are a thread in the fabric of a rainbow flag that will
liberate us all. Together we serve the church and the l/g/b/t
community as a living parable about our need to pray always
and not to lose heart.
Chris Glaser served as the founding director of the Lazarus Project,
a ministry of reconciliation between the church and the l/g/b/t
community. This is excerpted and adapted from a sermon delivered
to West Hollywood Presbyterian Church in California, Oct.18,
1998, in celebration of more than 20 years of ministry of the Lazarus
Project.
Discerning the Nearness of God
Lectio Divina and AlDS
Patricia Hoffman
“There was always this big chasm between God and everyone
else,” Art said, reflecting on his past experiences in the
church. “The message was, ‘You’re broken and God isn’t.’ In
Spiritual Questing I’ve discovered our unity in God that transcends
whether we’re broken or not. In this group the focus is
off of the brokenness and on the wholeness. We’re on a path
toward wholeness.”
It was deeply gratifying to me as the chaplain at AIDS Care
to hear Art’s observation after three years of participation in
Spiritual Questing groups. From the first group, which was
eight gay men, I could see that alienation was a major issue—
alienation from self, God, and others. During our weekly meetings
some expressed difficulty accepting their own feelings as
good and trustworthy. Others struggled with images of a distant
and judgmental God. Most, if not all, have told painful
stories of familial and social abuse.
The idea for the Spiritual Questing group began to hatch
seven years ago. I had just moved from Los Angeles up the
coast to the quiet city of Ventura. That summer my husband
and I spent a week on retreat in the desert at St. Andrew’s, a
Benedictine Abbey, where we were introduced to a group lectio
divina process. At the end of the week, as we drove out of the
Abbey grounds, I said, lectio divina could be a wonderful gift
in the gay community. I thought of myself offering it, but
could not imagine a setting. I was a lay woman who had worked
in ecumenical social change ministries. Leading spiritual support
groups had not been part of my life history. But a year of
volunteering for AIDS Project Los Angeles as a hospital visitor
had opened me to new possibilities. A year after that retreat at
St. Andrew’s, I was in my first extended unit of Clinical Pastoral
Education, training to be a Chaplain in AIDS ministry.
In the group practice of lectio divina, participants hear a
brief passage from Scripture or some other reflective reading
and notice a word or phrase that attracts them. They stay with
that word or phrase, repeating it silently. Each person is invited
to share their word or phrase. The passage is read again
and participants are invited to notice how the word or phrase
touches them. After three minutes of silence, people in the
circle are invited to share how the passage as a whole touches
them. There is a third reading in which they are asked to be
open to an invitation that may come to them. Following the
silence, participants are invited to share what came to them.
The session concludes with each person praying— silently or
aloud— for the person next to them, with special reference to
what that person shared.
Lectio divina delivers back to a wounded community the
authority to hear God’s word to them. The spoken word from
written scripture that meets a person’s heart becomes the voice
of the Sacred brought near. As it says in Deuteronomy 30:14,
“The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your
heart for you to observe.”
More than ninety percent of the men and women who have
been part of Spiritual Questing during the past three years
have been unrelated to a religious community, though raised
in ones as varied as Roman Catholic to Southern Baptist to
Reform Judaism. Spiritual Questing has, as one man told me,
“Given me permission to be spiritual.” He and all the others
who have come are people of spirit. Always were. Spiritual
Questing offers people who have been wounded in so many
ways a welcoming setting that suggests, this spiritual questing
is for you. It is your right. It is your inheritance if you wish to
take it.
Luke has an account of Jesus and a woman who had hemorrhaged
for 12 years. She was considered unclean because of
the bleeding. When Jesus stopped in the midst of the crowd
to ask who had touched his garment, she had bravely said
that it was her. He then addressed her as “daughter of
Abraham.” Calling her a daughter of Abraham delivered the
woman back to her status as a member of the community.
What have I wanted as week after week I showed up to
form the chairs in a circle, set out the candles, and find yet
another good lectio passage? I have wanted to deliver men
and women in the AIDS-affected community back to their
status as sons and daughters of Abraham.
Patricia Hoffman serves as Chaplain with AIDS Care in Ventura
County. She wrote AIDS and the Sleeping Church: A Journal,
published by Eerdmans in 1995. She also wrote AIDS Ministry: A
Practical Guide for Pastors, for the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries. She offers consultations and trainings in Spiritual
Questing groups and retreats for inclusivity. She can be reached
at 805/643-0446, or by e-mail at choffman@compuserve.com
Chaplain Pat Hoffman (second from left) leads Spiritual Questing
group at AIDS Care in Ventura, California.
Health
Fall 1998 MINISTRIES 27
From “Jeffrey” to “Angels”
Education for Gay/Lesbian Advocacy in a
Theological Seminary
J. Cy Rowell
Immediately before the start of my 1998 spring semester
religious education seminar on human sexuality, Paul
Rudnick’s “Jeffrey” was produced by a local theater. After the
seminar had concluded another theater produced Tony
Kushner’s “Angels in America-Part I.” Those two plays served
as the unintended but useful contextual brackets for the seminar.
This was the third time since 1993 that this course had
been offered, and the first one coinciding with relevant stage
productions.
Six of the ten general sessions focused on issues in basic
human sexuality: creation theology, issues in feminism and
the men’s movement, sexuality education for churches, etc.
Four of the sessions were devoted to gay/lesbian issues. My
challenge here was to be an advocate for gay and lesbian persons
in the midst of the so-called “objective” nature of higher
education. The solution was to be open in the course syllabus
about my goals, one of which was that “all of us will have
opportunity to deal with our understandings of and feelings
about gay and lesbian persons.”
I added: “How and to what purposes a minister gives leadership
to her/his congregation with regard to understanding
and accepting gay/lesbian persons will be as much, if not more,
a function of one’s feelings and commitments than it will be
a function of one’s theology and intellectual understandings.”
Another approach to the advocacy focus was to ask students
to sign a learning covenant in which we promised to be open
with one another and to treat each other with respect.
The “Jeffrey” play, seen by half the students at the theater
or in video at my urging before the start of the course, raised
their awareness of their own feelings. “I felt uncomfortable
seeing a man in his underwear,” a young man noted with
some surprise, while at the same time commenting that slick
ads of women in lingerie were commonly accepted. And the
long kiss between two men at the end of the play made many
students uncomfortable.
One issue in doing education for advocacy is the risk implicit
in the “advocate” presuming she/he can speak for “others.”
The key is to have those “other” voices actually present
in the class. Throughout the semester, the one openly gay
student in the class helped us to be honest and to hear a different
voice. The highlight for all the students was the session
in which we heard the life stories of three invited guests: a gay
artistic director (whose has a liberal minister father) of a live
theater, a gay caterer who has been in a partnership for twelve
years, and the lesbian founder of a gay/lesbian employee support
group of a large corporation, who brought along her
young adult son and the current gay president of the support
group. Their responses to two questions—“What is your life
story?” and “What role, if any, did church/religion play in that
story?”— provided untold insights for the seminary students.
Toward the end of the course students planned and led
presentations on topics related to either human sexuality in
general or particular homosexual themes. Of the ten presentations,
six examined gay issues, including the coming out
process, when parents come out, holy union rituals, ordination,
and congregational educational programs. In addition
there were two presentations on AIDS, one on sexuality for
the single person, and one on sexuality education in the
church.
The seminar’s final session began with an ordained gay
minister telling his story, describing the gifts and graces of
being a gay minister, and making suggestions for straight ministers
about their ministry to gays and lesbians. The concluding
worship included a litany of thanks to God for “our new
friends, those gay and lesbian persons who have shared their
lives with us.” It ended with “We thank you and commit ourselves
to being your witnesses of love and mercy in this world.”
Though the semester had ended officially, most of the students
voluntarily attended the stage production of “Angels in
America” as a way to wrap up the course. Their response to
“Angels” (as to “Jeffrey”) was positive, though there was general
consensus that before the seminar they most likely would
not have gone to “Angels” (or “Jeffrey”), but now that they
had been through the course, they were ready to “hear” the
play and in fact, were able to critique it with appreciation.
What happened to these students? The one openly gay man
found more acceptance and support in this course than at any
time in his seminary experience. The other students found
their boundaries being pushed open. They all dealt in some
way with their own sexuality and its impact on their perceptions
of gay and lesbian persons. Some were moved to a public
commitment to affirming gay/lesbian persons.
My conclusion? The theological seminary is an appropriate
context for exploring issues in gay/lesbian
understanding and fostering advocacy
for gay and lesbian persons.
J. Cy Rowell is professor of Religious Education
at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University,
Fort Worth, Texas
Campus
Connections
Homosexuality, European Churches,
the Ecumenical Movement, and the
WCC Meeting in Harare
Robert C. Lodwick
In Europe, disparity characterizes the way various churches
view homosexuality. Protestant churches range from full acceptance
(e.g. Remonstrant Brotherhood, Netherlands) to rejection
(e.g. Greek Evangelical Church). The majority of
28 MINISTRIES Open Hands
churches, however, are in the discussion stage, particularly
where there is an active gay Christian group pressing the issue.
The (Anglican) Church of England faces sharp controversy,
whereas the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden is positive.
In many European countries, a civil marriage ceremony is required
and a religious blessing is optional. In a number of
churches individual pastors are blessing Holy Unions.
Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches deny the issue,
even opposing legislation for the civil rights of homosexuals
and viewing the issue as part of the “western Protestant
agenda.” Roman Catholic congregations follow the Vatican
position, although some individual priests and parishes are
reaching out to the gay and lesbian community as in the United
States. Bisexuality and transgender issues are not part of the
current discussion in most churches in Europe.
In Geneva, Switzerland, I was part of C+H (Christian + Homosexual),
an ecumenical group that meets monthly. Homosexual
or homophile is the preferred word rather than gay. C+H
has published a statement dealing with homosexuality from
biblical, social, and church perspectives, and is now preparing
a contemporary Confession of Faith for the group.
Geneva is home to many ecumenical bodies, such as the
World Council of Churches, Lutheran World Federation, and
the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. At present, the
World Council of Churches (WCC) is struggling with the issue
of homosexuality at its 8th Assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe
in December. In his public declarations, Zimbabwe President
Mugabe is exceedingly homophobic, and local gays and
lesbians have been hounded and harassed. The two largest
Dutch Protestant churches have launched a campaign to support
the rights of Zimbabwe homosexuals, while three smaller
Dutch denominations have expressed solidarity with Zimbabwe
gays and lesbians through a letter-writing campaign. President
Mugabe’s statements have prompted two Dutch Churches
not to take part in the WCC Assembly. Some USA member
churches have also questioned holding the Assembly in Zimbabwe.
In the Assembly program, there will be a Padare, a market
place of ideas, where groups can share their stories, activities,
and concerns, such as environmental issues, debt repayment,
racial justice, women’s role in church and society, and other
vital issues. Gay and lesbian groups have been accepted for
the Padare. The UFMCC plans to offer a seminar telling its
story and describing its remarkable ministry. Several member
churches will staff a bookstand with publications about human
rights and homosexuality. Unfortunately, many Zimbabwean
Christians see this as an affront to their cultural sensitivities.
Orthodox Churches are equally upset that these groups
have been approved for the Padare. No doubt there will be
lively discussion!
This Assembly will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the
first World Council Assembly and, hopefully, the 50th anniversary
of the UN Charter on Human Rights— a golden opportunity
to speak against the discrimination of homosexuals.
Many of us believe, however, that the most important task of
ecumenical assemblies regarding the issues of sexual orientation
is to strengthen the climate in which ongoing debates
can take place. While individual churches have their own
traditions and experiences and determine their own life, the
ecumenical movement’s task is to provide a forum for sharing
of insights and searching for a common mission in response
to our calling from Jesus Christ.
Many of those preparing the WCC assembly realize that,
given the wide divergence of opinion, the primary task will be
to encourage dialogue and find common words to enable us
to discuss these issues with sensitivity among fellow Christians
with different opinions. This debate may represent a
moment of testing for the ecumenical movement— whether
we do indeed acknowledge that the fellowship is not only to
encourage us in the things on which we agree but to wrestle
with those things about which we have differences of opinion
and to hear each other with respect.
The time has not come for votes in plenary sessions, as this
could give a negative judgment, effectively shutting a door.
The only possible ecumenical action is to promote continuing
dialogue— to keep the door open. Even that may be difficult
in Harare.
Robert C. Lodwick is an ordained Presbyterian
minister and most recently served the
PCUSA as Area Associate for Europe with offices
in the Ecumenical Center in Geneva. Bob
and his wife, Hedy, have long been active members
of More Light Presbyterians.
Coming Out as Sacrament
Chris Glaser
Paper $14.00
Chris Glaser proposes that coming out
has biblical precedence and sacramental
dimensions. Using personal and biblical
illustrations, he discusses coming out as
an act of vulnerability, much like the
sacrificial offerings of ancient Israel, that
invokes God’s presence and effects
reconciliation. Includes original liturgical
material and a ritual for coming out.
Unleashed
The Wit and Wisdom of Calvin the Dog
Calvin T. Dog with Chris Glaser
Cloth $12.00
Calvin’s wit and honest observations help us
recognize our human plight. Calvin offers a philosophy of
life that has universal applications, and speaks to many of
the social and cultural issues of our day.
Also by Glaser: Uncommon Calling, Paper, $20.00
Coming Out to God, Paper, $12.00
At your bookstore, your Cokesbury bookstore
or call (800) 227-2872 • www.wjk.org
Fall 1998 29
Sustaining
the Spirit
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Believers, Here We Gather
Thomas J. Ritter, 1993 Thomas J. Ritter, 1994
*Matthew 11:28 †Matthew 22:36-40
Text and Music ©1998 Thomas J. Ritter Used by permission.
Text may also be used with Lancashire, Webb or any 7676 D tune.
30 Open Hands
Welcoming
Communities
Movement
News
MORE LIGHT CHURCHES
Govans Presbyterian Church
Baltimore, Maryland
Govans is a 500-member urban congregation which
is the product of a 1992 merger with Waverly Presbyterian
Church, a More Light congregation prior to the merger. It is a
racially integrated congregation with a long history of ministry
with persons of special needs. It provides housing for both
mentally ill and mentally disabled persons and has organized
a group of congregations committed to providing housing for
33 homeless families.
Immanuel Presbyterian Church
Anchorage, Alaska
Immanuel is a small congregation in a middle-class section of
Anchorage, drawing its members from throughout the city and
surrounding area. In the process of redeveloping its life and
mission, the congregation is committed to being a church that
is safe for discussion of any issue, including matters of human
sexuality and leadership. It makes space available to the Lamb of
God Metropolitan Community Church, and is developing a supportive
relationship with the neighborhood elementary school.
Fifteen Conservative Religious Groups
Run Anti-Gay Ad Campaign
In what critics call a follow-up to a summer of attacks by
Republican leaders against gay people, 15 religious groups invested
$200,000 in full-page ads in The New York Times, The
Washington Post, and USA Today in July, promoting so-called
“reparative” therapy for homosexuals, and planned for more
ads before the November elections. In an op-ed piece in The
New York Times (July 26), gay conservative commentator Andrew
Sullivan reflected on their strategy supporting fair treatment
of “former” homosexuals. “In a strange and beautiful
way, then, the religious right may have finally stumbled onto
the true moral ground,” wrote Sullivan. “The more you think
about it, the rights of former homosexuals are truly indistinguishable
from the rights of gay men and women.”
“Reconciling” Designation and Same-
Gender Ceremonies Prohibited
by United Methodists
In early November, the United Methodist Judicial Council
struck a blow against the Reconciling movement within that
church by ruling that “such identification…is divisive” and
forbidden. At the same time, it ruled constitutional the sentence
in the denomination’s Social Principles earlier interpreted
as legally binding on United Methodist clergy, prohibiting them
from conducting same-gender union ceremonies.
The first action responded to the decision of the Northwest
Texas Annual Conference to name itself a “confessing conference,”
in compliance with United Methodism. The Council
cited an earlier decision that stated, “A vote to approve implies
the power to disapprove, and is therefore not permissible.”
Thus an annual conference also may not identify itself either
as a Reconciling Conference (seeking reconciliation between
l/g/b/t and the church) or as a Transforming Conference (seeking
transformation of homosexual persons), reversing two earlier
court opinions. The implications for Reconciling Congregations
were not specified, but there is fear the ruling may be
applied against such churches. In response to the question of
divisiveness, the Reconciling Congregations Program reminded
the church that “current policies and practices of [the church]
fracture the Body of Christ by excluding lesbian, gay, and bisexual
persons and their families...” [emphasis added].
The second action resulted from an appeal from the Oregon-
Idaho and California-Nevada annual conferences, questioning
a prohibition added to the Social Principles in 1996.
The prohibition of clergy performing same-gender marriages
served as a basis for the trial of the Rev. Jimmy Creech, acquitted
by one vote last March in Nebraska. The Judicial Council
ruled last August that the restriction was enforceable as church
law, an interpretation questioned by the opposition, who claim
that the Social Principles simply offer guidance. The Reconciling
Congregation Program affirmed at that time, “The…Social
Principles…reflect a realization that Christ’s message of inclusiveness
and justice is an essential component of our mission.
The decision of the Judicial Council to single out this one exclusionary
statement to be legally binding is deplorable and
theologically unsound.”
In related developments, Chicago Bishop Joseph Sprague
filed a complaint in October against the Rev. Gregory Dell for
performing a same-gender union. And nearly 70 United Methodist
clergy in the California-Nevada Annual Conference plan—
in what organizer Rev. Don Fado calls an act of “ecclesial disobedience”—
to celebrate in early 1999 the holy union of two women:
the conference’s lay leader and a member of its board of trustees.
Second Stone Mails Final Issue
The first and only national gay/lesbian Christian newspaper,
Second Stone, ceased publication with its July/August issue
due to lack of support, having suffered a $14,000 loss in the
first half of this year. Founding editor and publisher Jim Bailey,
in a letter to subscribers outlining potential reasons for a recent
decline in subscriptions, wrote, “We have lost our niche…As I
worked on the July/Aug issue, my tears have freely flown. I
have always seen Second Stone as a lifetime work. And even
more anguishing, the Nov/Dec issue would have been the 10th
anniversary issue.” Subscribers will be compensated with a full
year subscription to The Other Side magazine. While thanking
subscribers and those who wrote and published the paper, Bailey
added, “I rejoice in and celebrate the work you have empowered
me to do...I believe God has honored this work.”
Fall 1998 31
OPEN AND AFFIRMING
Memorial Congregational Church, UCC
Sudbury, Massachusetts
This suburban church of 300 members has a long
history of commitment to mission and justice. Its current focus
is planning a capital campaign which will be part of the
wider “Gift and the Promise” campaign of the Massachusetts
Conference, UCC. As a result of its ONA process, the congregation
has a support group for anyone with a concern about
ONA issues. Most members were active in the church’s ONA
process, and two members find the group helpful to themselves
and their gay/lesbian children. The church is also involved
in an exciting, growing, interfaith group of congregations
involved in ONA-type activities. This group meets twice
a year for mutual support and strategy around gay, lesbian,
and bisexual issues.
Fellowship Congregational Church, UCC
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Located in the heart of the Bible Belt, this 226-member, midcity
congregation is “an alternative church for inquisitive
people,” seeking to be a “bridge” between traditional and
progressive thought. It is a faith community which seeks to
address the religious right, while providing intellectual and
spiritual tools to people who wish to better connect their
faith, biblical teachings, and the issues of life. Over the first
weekend in October, the church hosted presentations by fellows
of the “Jesus Seminar.” Fellowship supports g/l/b activities
in the community and is home to the local P-FLAG
chapter.
RECONCILING IN CHRIST
Lutheran Church of Christ the Redeemer
Minneapolis, Minnesota
A congregation of just over one hundred households,
Christ the Redeemer gathers weekly around the word
and meal of Christ, the center of our common life and the
source of spiritual renewal for our daily lives. Opportunities
to grow and serve include, among others, learning for all ages,
small groups, refugee resettlements, serving meals at Loaves
and Fishes, and partnership with other congregations at home
and abroad. On June 28, 1998, the church became a Reconciling
in Christ congregation. The church invites every person to
the bread and cup of Christ and to ministry in his name.
St. Paul Lutheran Church
Wheaton, Illinois
This ELCA congregation of 800 baptized members, established
in 1927, is located in a suburb of Chicago in the county of Du
Page. Its members are committed to becoming an inclusive
and welcoming congregation. It is a congregation with a strong
outreach ministry, an outstanding musical program, and a
worship service with weekly Eucharist, that uses lay assisting
ministers and blends both traditional and contemporary liturgies
and music. Although the congregation lost both of its pastors,
it was able to institute and complete its study toward
becoming a Reconciling in Christ congregation under strong
lay leadership and the support and guidance of its interim pastor,
Michelle Miller. The affirming statement and a banner inviting
all to share in worship, ministry, and fellowship are
prominently displayed.
RECONCILING CONGREGATIONS
People’s United Methodist Church
Newburyport, Massachusetts
People’s UMC is truly aware of what it means
to be a church in mission. This active congregation, with an
average Sunday attendance of 50, has many members who perform
volunteer work in community food pantries and who
collect food donations for Link House, a treatment facility for
alcoholics. The church is very open to people of all backgrounds,
ages, and sexual orientations, and is extremely proud
of its active Sunday School and Children’s programs.
Praxis
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Praxis, a new church start in downtown Minneapolis, is
aimed at young adults in their 20s and 30s who have typically
not attended church or who have been left out of the
church in the past. As part of its “Open Table” mission, the
Praxis design team decided to join the family of Reconciling
Congregations even before the church opened its doors
for the first time. The church, which started holding Sunday
evening services in March, has adopted an unusual form
of worship which includes no formal preaching, but centers
on round table discussions focusing on scripture lessons.
With attendance currently averaging between 10 and 30,
Praxis has a diverse mix of gay and straight members. More
information about Praxis can be found at its web site:
www.mumac.org/newthing
St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church
Acton, Massachusetts
St. Matthew’s, a church of 350 members, began examining
the issue of becoming a Reconciling Congregation in the
summer of 1996 when a church member preached on a book
about a parent’s grief following the suicide of a homosexual
child. Throughout 1997, the church conducted four Sunday
School classes using the Cokesbury curriculum on the General
Conference Commission’s Report on Homosexuality
(1992). Following additional discussions and information
sessions with PFLAG members and persons from the local
gay and lesbian speaker’s bureau, the church became a Reconciling
Congregation by consensus on November 9, 1997.
St. Matthew’s, which was founded 36 years ago and recently
celebrated the first anniversary of its new sanctuary, has a
very active outreach program. Current missions include its
involvement with Rosie’s Place, a Boston women’s shelter,
the Maine Economic Mission, and a youth program involving
home building in Barrier Island, South Carolina. The
church will be hosting a workshop for current and prospective
Reconciling Congregations within its Annual Conference
at the end of October.
32 Open Hands
QTY BACK ISSUES AVAILABLE
___ Be Ye Reconciled (Summer 1985)
___ A Matter of Justice (Winter 1986)
___ Our Families (Spring 1986)
___ Our Churches’ Policies (Summer 1986)
___ Images of Healing (Fall 1986)
___ Minorities within a Minority (Spring 1987)
___ Sexual Violence (Fall 1987)
___ Building Reconciling Ministries (Spring 1988)
___ Living and Loving with AIDS (Summer 1988)
___ Lesbian & Gay Men in the Religious Arts (Spring 1989)
___ The Closet Dilemma (Summer 1989)
___ Images of Family (Fall 1989)
___ Journeys toward Recovery and Wholeness (Spring 1990)
___ The “Holy Union” Controversy (Fall 1990)
___ Youth and Sexual Identity (Winter 1991)
___ Lesbian/Gay Reflections on Theology (Spring 1991)
___ The Lesbian Spirit (Summer 1991)
___ Our Spirituality: How Sexual Expression and Oppression
Shape It (Summer 1992)
___ Aging and Integrity (Fall 1992)
___ Reclaiming Pride (Summer 1994)
___ The God to Whom We Pray (Spring 1995)
___ Remembering…10th Anniversary (Summer 1995)
___ Untangling Prejudice and Privilege (Fall 1995)
___ Same-Sex Unions (Spring 1997)
___ Creating Sanctuary: All Youth Welcome Here! (Summer 1997)
___ From One Womb at One Table (Fall 1997)
___ We’re Welcoming, Now What? (Winter 1998)
___ Treasure in Earthen Vessels—Sexual Ethics (Spring 1998)
___ Bisexuality: Both/And Rather Than Either/Or (Summer 1998)
❑ Please send me the back issues indicated ($6 each; 10+ @ $4).
❑ Send me Open Hands each quarter ($20/year; outside U.S.A. @ $25).
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Send to:
Open Hands, 3801 N. Keeler Avenue, Chicago, IL 60641
Phone: 773/736-5526 Fax: 773/736-5475
Published by the Reconciling
Congregation Program in conjunction
with Affirming Congregation
Programme, More Light, Open and
Affirming Ministries, Open and Affirming
Program, Reconciling in
Christ, and Welcoming & Affirming
Baptist programs.
A Unique Resource on
Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual
Concerns in the Church
for
Christian Education • Personal Reading
Research Projects • Worship Resources
Ministry & Outreach
Selected
Resources
The Argument Culture—Moving from Debate to Dialogue by
Deborah Tannen. New York: Random House, 1998.
Caught in the Crossfire—Helping Christians Debate Homosexuality,
ed. by Sally B. Geis & Donald E. Messer. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1994.
Coming Out as Sacrament by Chris Glaser. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.
The Culture of Disbelief—How American Law and Politics
Trivialize Religious Devotion by Stephen L. Carter. New York:
HarperCollins, 1993.
The Good Book—Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart by Peter
J. Gomes. New York: William Morrow Co., 1996.
Homosexuality in the Church—Both Sides of the Debate, ed. By
Jeffrey S. Siker. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994.
The Political Meaning of Christianity—The Prophetic Stance by
Glenn Tinder. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism—A Bishop Rethinks the
Meaning of Scripture by John Shelby Spong. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
Stealing Jesus—How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity by
Bruce Bawer. New York: Crown Publishers, 1997.
Stranger at the Gate—To Be Gay and Christian in America by Mel
White. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers
in Exile by John Shelby Spong. San Francisco: Harper-
SanFrancisco, 1998.
WELCOMING CHURCH LISTS AVAILABLE
The complete ecumenical list of welcoming churches is
printed in the winter issue of Open Hands each year. For a
more up-to-date list of your particular denomination, contact
the appropriate program listed on page 3.
Add Open Hands to your holiday gift list this year—
either by a donation, or as a gift subscription
($20 per year; $25 outside U.S.)
to an individual or congregation.
Send to
Open Hands
3801 N. Keeler Ave
Chicago, IL 60641
Thank you!