Spirit of a Liberal

Last week I received a comment that I refused to publish because it attacked an individual or a group.  Apart from the personal attack, the commenter attempted to make the point that gay friendly resolutions by mainstream churches explain a general membership decline.

Au contraire.

Two years ago, a book entitled American Grace became a national best seller, and I blogged about it in a post entitled Conservative Christianity Driving a Generation Away From Religion.  That post included this quote from another blog that suggested American Grace:

makes the case that the alliance of religion with conservative politics is driving young adults away from religion …. Among the conclusions [of a major survey] is this one: “The association between religion and politics (and especially religion’s intolerance of homosexuality) was the single strongest factor in this portentous shift.”

Today I ran across another blog post about a more recent book that makes the case even more starkly.  Here’s the open-ended survey question that formed the basis for the book:

What words or phrases best describe Christianity? 

How would you respond? What’s the first word that pops into your head?  Then, give yourself a couple of minutes to think and then answer again.  What’s your answer after reflection? 

Now shift your thinking.  How do you think others, self-identified as non-Christian and aged 16-29, responded to the question?  What of those who self-described as Christian?

With an open-ended question, one would expect a wide variety of answers, but it turns out there was a single theme that was listed on a startling 91% of the responses from this youthful age group that self-identified as non-Christian.  What do you think that one answer was?

Ready?

Antihomosexual.

Ouch!  Thanks UMC and General Conference 2012 (GC2012) for reinforcing the perception.

Well, what about the self-identified Christians in that age group?  How did they respond?

Antihomosexual.

But, it was only 80%.

The blog post contains this quote from the book, unChristian, by David Kinnaman.

“The gay issue has become the ‘big one, the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity’s reputation. It is also the dimensions that most clearly demonstrates the unchristian faith to young people today, surfacing in a spate of negative perceptions: judgmental, bigoted, sheltered, right-wingers, hypocritical, insincere, and uncaring. Outsiders say [Christian] hostility toward gays…has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith.”

That’s the bad news.  The good news is when a problem is so clearly defined, the solution also becomes obvious.  The United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the ELCA Lutherans, and the PC(USA) Presbyterians have opened their doors.  They understand that “all means all”.  They have decided to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.  By inviting gays into their pulpits and to serve at their altars, they have welcomed the whole host, the entire gay community, into full communion, full participation, full inclusion in the life of the church.

Don’t be shy, don’t be embarrassed, don’t hide your light under a bushel.  Tell the world what you have done.  Shout it from the rooftops!

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the five, principal mainline Protestant denominations lately (UMC, ELCA, PC(USA), Episcopal, and UCC).  The ELCA is a full communion partner with each of these, and I heard Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefforts Schori speak highly of the Episcopal/ELCA partnership at an Episcopal Diocesan Convention.

Both the ELCA and the Episcopal Church function with a national presiding bishop, a full-time, long term position.  Bishop Mark Hanson, only the third ELCA Presiding Bishop since the denomination was formed in 1988, is nearing the end of his second term.  Presiding Bishop Schori serves out of the Episcopal Headquarters in NYC though she was previously Bishop of the Nevada Diocese.  She is only the 26th presiding bishop in Episcopal history which goes back to Revolutionary War days.

The UCC has a General Minister/President, the Presbyterians have a General Assembly Moderator, and the Methodists have a President of the Council of Bishops who serves a two year term while continuing to serve as bishop of his or her regional body.

At the upcoming UMC quadrennial General Conference in Tampa, delegates will consider revisions to their organizational structure.  Among the proposed changes is the creation of a full-time President of the Council of Bishops without responsibility for any jurisdiction other than the national church.

Would this position be more like the presiding bishops of the ELCA and Episcopal Churches?  “Commenters have called the proposed position everything from a United Methodist archbishop to the denomination’s CEO.”

Click here for full details from a UMC News Service report.

Paul is such fun.

While his preeminent importance in the development of normative Christian doctrine is indisputable, his writings are enigmatic at best and indecipherable at worst.  What is the heart of Paul?  Does Paul reveal himself in Galatians 3:28, the so-called “Christian magna carta” –no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—or in other writings that seemingly support slavery and the subjugation of women?

Paul also finds himself plopped down in the midst of 21st century debates over gays.  Again, the question arises whether he was the great inclusivist who encouraged Gentile participation in the early church without precondition, without the proper male genitalia, against the wishes of church leaders, and contrary to scripture and centuries of tradition, or was he the greatest gay-basher in history?  Though his “vice lists” have been dubiously translated to include homosexuality, his ranting in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans may be the favorite “clobber passage” of modern gay-bashers.

they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, ²⁷ and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

²⁸ And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. ²⁹ They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, ³¹ foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³² They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.

How do modern exegetes unpack these harsh words?  Yes, this passage is about idolatry, first and foremost.  The evils of homosexual behavior are his assumption not his point.  Yes, Paul’s words must be viewed from the cultural perspective of the 1st century Greco-Roman world, and yes, Paul must be understood as a Jew learned in the law to include the Levitical abominations.  These influences certainly colored his perception, and it is unfair to ask a 21st century question of this 1st century man.  He simply would have harbored a radically different understanding of human sexuality than we do today.

But, we can go further.  What was Paul’s central theme of his letter to the Romans?  Grace.  That humankind is made right with God through God’s own offer of welcome and not through human effort, achievement, or merit—“works of the law” in Pauline terms.  Trust God and rely upon that promise (faith).  Paul works this out as he wrestles with the premise of Hebrew religion that Jews are God’s chosen over against his view that Gentiles should also be included.  Justification by grace through faith and not by works is the simplified summary.  So, if these are Paul’s themes in his letter to the Romans, where do his introductory remarks (quoted above) fit in?

Paul is setting a trap.  He is speaking to Jewish listeners, and he gets them nodding as he recites their cultural stereotypes about the unclean gentiles.  But wait, he suggests as chapter two unfolds, aren’t we Jews also guilty of breaking the rules?  How are we different?  Don’t we also depend upon God’s grace?  And then Paul is off and running with his interplay of the themes of grace, faith, works, Jew and Gentile, etc. throughout the remainder of his letter to the Romans.

In doing research for my current book project about the history of the movement for full inclusion of gays in the life of the church, I came across a succinct version of this exegesis, which came in a 1977 Presbyterian debate.  George Edwards of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, a member of a Presbyterian Task Force on homosexuality, spoke these words:

Paul says here that “God gave them up to dishonorable passions”.  Is this, then, Paul’s theology?  Of course not!  God never gave anybody up!  What kind of theology would that be?  Paul is here using a rhetorical device to get his legalistic reader all worked up in self-righteous frenzy before he hits him over the head with his own inadequacy and dependency on God’s grace.**

Perhaps we can take meaning from this passage of Paul after all.  Perhaps it is a clobber passage that offers an analogy for our current debate, but no, not to strike gays but to slam the “self-righteous frenzy” of 21st century legalists and to point them, and all of us, toward our inadequacies and dependency on God’s grace.

Paul, you sly fox.  What a wretched man you are.  Sounds like a good book title.

**Quoted in Chris Glaser, Uncommon Calling: A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988) p. 164.