Witch Hunt

Gays & God

In this Special Edition we are making a suicide run

into the issue of homosexuality and the Black church. This is one of those issues that incites disgust, anger, fear and loathing, a topic no one wants to deal with and yet everyone flocks to virtually any reasonable dialogue on it. Why? because, whether we admit it or not, we're looking for answers. Many of us, within the Christian church if not specifically the Black Church, want peace. We want a truce. We want to find a way to come together as a family without the hiding, the whispering, the suspicion, the expulsion from our group of same-gender loving persons. Publicly, we get our back up. The simple fact I am not writing in all caps, sending gays to hell, makes me a marked man. My many pastor-friends start scurrying for the exits when we use anything short of a judgmental tone towards these persons. Call it what you like, but this behavior is fear. Pastors are terrified of the subject because, for most of us, keeping our job is our highest ministerial priority. As pastors, God's truth should be our highest ministerial priority, but it's not. Most pastors will throw  LGBT persons under the wheels of the bus at the slightest provocation because they know, if they do not, their pastoral days are numbered. Many pastors, white and black, pander to the ignorance of their congregations instead of educating and leading. Most of our churches operate under rules of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, wherein persons we know, for a fact, are gay are accepted just so long as they never actually publicly admit it. We just go on pretending to see what we want to see while encouraging these persons to live a lie. The minute our suspicions are confirmed, we feel compelled by our biblical ignorance to turn on them, to shun them and show them hate. A black pastor, presented with evidence of a ministry leader's homosexuality, must take immediate steps to discipline and rebuke that leader. Many of our pastors secretly arrange for sexual reorientation therapy to try and rehabilitate gay leaders.

This is our fog of war, our stumbling around blindly in ignorance and fear rather than prayerfully studying and engaging. In this non-discussion, pastors simply cannot risk seeming reasonable. They've got to be  harsh judges in order to maintain their credibility. Even arranging a fair and balanced forum to exchange views and pray together, would seem by their uneducated and ignorant congregants as a capitulation to sin. And rather than challenge that mindset, many if not most pastors simply perpetuate it. Homosexuality is, to many black Church Folk, the greatest sin, worse even than murder. Most Church Folk I've ever known have no sense of the fact that their pettiness, gossip and failure to love are every bit the sin that homosexuality is. Pastors who fail to educate, who fail to lead, deserve the crippled, ignorant, half-baked ministries they create.

I presume this to be a mystery, falling short of a paradox,

that God condemns homosexuality while, at the same time, creating homosexuals. To suggest someone can be born into an inescapable sin is to deny the power of the cross. To suggest that a person must war against their own nature and embrace shame and scorn just to make it into heaven and be embraced by a loving God is paralyzingly stupid. In that context, making criminals of homosexuals seems wrongheaded.

Enforcing Christian values upon social justice and moral standards seems right but it really isn't. Morality and spirituality are not one and the same. Morality (the quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct) has no external or infallible truth to it. Theology (rational inquiry into religious questions), ideally, should be based on eternal truths, which have nothing to do with morality per se, other than that our adherence to these eternal truths forms opinions we express as guidelines governing our moral conduct. Theology and morality are hardly one and the same. A decent and moral idea, rule, or concept can still, in all its purity, transgress the holiness of a divine God. As such, our sense of morality is of not much use to God (Isa 64:6). Churches relying on their sensibilities of what is good, right, and moral to dictate their interpretation of scripture is, in and of itself, faulty exegesis. The Church should not be in the business of dictating morality, but should be proclaiming truths both eternal and infallible. We, as individuals, having been presented with these truths, are a people at liberty to embrace or reject those truths, and our sense of morality is the expression of that decision.

This is an issue the black church, that all churches, are gong to have to come to grips with. The church really isn’t especially tolerant of anybody, LGBT persons perhaps least of all. It is not the church who’s shown tolerance to persons in conflict with Levitical law, but Jesus Christ, Who healed lepers and traveled through Samaria and sat with known prostitutes, tax collectors and other lowlifes. These persons, dismissed and ostracized by the religious institutions of the day, were drawn to Jesus, while they are routinely despised and rejected by us, His followers.

I believe much of our corporate (collective) condemnation of gays stems less from conviction than from fear. Many of our pastors are either moderates or liberals but they are intimidated by and fear the response from their congregants should they show tolerance to even one gay person. According to the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, the Daviess-McLean Baptist Association in Western Kentucky will meet next month to vote on whether to remove Journey Fellowship from their association for allowing a support group for parents gays and lesbians to meet in its building. Here in Ourtown, churches affirming of gays are typically branded as “Gay Churches,” as if the institution itself could be gay or as if no straight persons worshipped there. This is the level of childish homophobia at work. It can destroy congregations and ruin ministerial careers. As a result, most of our churches are neither open nor affirming of LGBT persons, and such practice is rarely a result of enlightened engagement and rigorous analysis, but a capitulation to tribal ignorance so deeply engrained in our cultural DNA. There is no biblical model for Jesus Christ excluding anyone, anyone at all. Whose sin was greater than that of Judas Iscariot, and yet Jesus welcomed and embraced him. The biblical model is Jesus meeting people where they were, regardless of their situation or lifestyle. Jesus preached a transformative Gospel, while most of us preach legalism and doctrine.

Most pastors, here, would never admit it but they really

do not have a practical or even reasonable response to the LGBT community. Just bluster and condemnation, and even that is disjointed and poorly organized because they give it no thought whatsoever. These people are a write-off to them, and they do not invest in study to learn more about the community or individuals because there's no upside to it. Pastors who receive gays are routinely run out of town, and thus the pastors are intimidated by the ignorance of their own congregations. I know of no black pastors who sponsor or attend any support groups for gay families, where much of what we will examine in these essays is discussed.

I can't imagine why gays come to church at all, here. I mean it. But they do. They come, they sit in the back (like we used to back in the plantation days). They aren't asked and they don't tell, but we know who they are. Or we think we do (our gaydar is usually way off). I've told gay friends that I consider them exceptionally brave to, every week, go to a place where they can't be who they are. But they want to be near to God, and they want the African American black church cultural experience. It has value to them—this thing many of us take for granted because we can go wherever we please. But these are people who live at least part of their lives in shadow, and for whom coming to church on Sunday involves risk. The very least we, any of us, could do is be kind to them, and not let our own ignorance consume us.

There does exist, however, within the diversity of the LGBT community, an agenda to strip the church of its moral authority, purpose and effectiveness. The net result of our intolerance, bigotry and hatred is that many in the gay community hear only hate from us. If you’d grown up hearing only hate from the church, you would, inevitably, develop a resentment of if not a hatred for the church. There is, indeed, an agenda within the gay community that is virulently anti-Christian and anti-church. While this movement is at least partially a consequence of our own ignorance, it is, nonetheless, something the church indeed has a responsibility to address.

Telling Your Own Story

In addition to our pastors' career hurdles and personal hang-ups, attempts at dialogue between gay and straight Christians are often hampered by the public face of the LGBT community. When most people hear "gay" they immediately think of the sex act itself. No other dimension of these persons is considered or valued. The LGBT community could learn a thing or two from the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which invests millions annually on public relations and public information campaigns to combat their own deeply-ingrained prejudice: that LDS is a secretive cult hostile to blacks. We will for the moment, not run off on the railroad spur of what LDS is or is not, but the investment they make in their own message is important to note. If you're not telling your own story, someone else is. The LGBT community relying on the mainstream media to tell their story is a terrible idea.

Events like PrideFest celebrate sexuality in a variety of expressions, but often these events come across through the media as Mardi Gras-style fleshfests. Rather than celebrate the diversity of human existence, there is an overwhelming sense of inappropriate public sexual behavior, a kind of drunken Roman orgy of semi-nudity and groping. This is what ends up on the news: women kissing (always a crowd pleaser) and drunken young men in G-strings feeling each other up. This behavior offends the Holy Spirit in me, and feeds the temptation to paint the entire community as lacking self-control or even good judgment concerning public morals. If this were a “straight” pride parade, and these were hetero couples practically nude and groping, I would be just as offended.

In the struggle to overcome the church’s traditional revul-

sion shown toward LGBT persons, these kinds of displays undermine the community’s efforts to be welcomed and/or engaged by the church. This is simply not behavior the church, on any level, is going to endorse. Clergy sympathetic and unafraid to engage the LGBT community would run for cover, would not and could not stand with the community during events in which public displays of childish and gross behavior are welcomed and accepted as such behavior completely undermines any efforts at dialogue.

It would be easier to make a case for inclusiveness if I could find an LGBT website that does not require me to cover my eyes while surfing it. Most every LGBT site I’ve ever seen contains copious displays of sexual behavior, as if the sex act itself were all the community were about. I’ve had gay friends tell me, “I’m more than just ‘gay.’ I don’t want to be known only as ‘gay.’ I’m a person.” And, they're right. But most any blog or information site I go to is wallpapered with images of bare-chested men rubbing each other. I don’t want to see that. I can’t defend that. And I can’t see past “just gay” when the sex act itself is shoved at me in a megalomaniacal way. This works against most reasonable dialogue because it’s a lot like trying to shake my hand while giving me the finger at the same time

While I am told there are a diversity of events, including family and religious activities, at Pride, I don’t go to Pride because of the behavior mentioned above. I also don’t go to Mardi Gras. At both events, it is not the family, cultural and spiritual events that make it onto the news. It is the drunkenness, the semi-nudity, the debauchery. Now, how would the LGBT community police that behavior? Is it their collective responsibility? These are complex questions. But discussions should and hopefully are occurring concerning the news media’s bias. I don’t think it is universally an anti-gay bias (though, for sure, some of it is), but the media is inclined to put pictures on-air that will get them the highest ratings. An LGBT family spending play time in a bounce castle is not going to make it onto the 6 O’clock news. Cops breaking up a drunken brawl between young gay men wearing only codpieces will be repeated over and over, ending up all over the planet on viral video. And that, not the bounce castle, becomes the face of PrideFest if not the LGBT community. This is certainly unfair, as this exact same behavior (including, on occasion, the codpieces) occurs during St. Patrick’s Day parades—allegedly religious celebrations which are all but universally drunken leprechaun fests—but that’s every community’s burden: overcoming its stereotype.

It is my prayer that the views expressed in the following essays (click the little covers at page bottom to go to the next page) will, at the very least, get the discussion going in a prayerful and reasonable way. There is no gay-bashing included here but there is also no gay-excusing going on, either. We are affirming God and His Son Jesus Christ and attempting to build on a common ground of faith.

Part 2: Are People Born Gay?

Christopher J. Priest
24 July 2011
editor@praisenet.org
TOP OF PAGE

Causes of
Homosexuality:
A Christian Appraisal
of the Data

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Conservative View: For the conservative view, a brilliant and exhaustive detail of scientific data on the origins of homosexuality placed into a biblically-based theological perspective. This is an absolutely brilliant dissertation, ne worthy of study and debate. As with Pastor Lowe (above), I do not entirely agree with Dr. Sodergren's conclusions, but I was eminently impressed by the equanimity of his dedication to science and his obvious investment in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have, frankly, never read anything that comes close to this in terms of scientific deconstruction paired with exegetical procedure. Anyone serious about engaging these issues really must read this paper in its entirety.

Dr. Andrew J. Sodergren
holds an M.S. and Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. His doctoral dissertation, completed in 2009, was entitled Attachment and Morality: A Catholic Perspective. Dr. Sodergren also holds a Masters degree in Theology from the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washing-ton, DC where he currently serves as Adjunct Faculty. He and his wife Ellie have been married 11 years and have four children. They currently reside in Lincoln, Nebraska where Dr. Sodergren works as a psychologist for Catholic Social Services.

What Would Jesus Do?

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CHRISTOPHER PRIEST
June 28, 2015 at 4:30 pm

The greater threat to American Democracy is to weaken the U.S. Constitution by selectively applying its values and protections. Similarly, the church must look not to the U.S. Constitution, nor to the Levitical Holiness Code, nor even to The Apostle Paul. Conservative white churches and nearly all black churches I have experienced in my life tend to teach this false Old Testament doctrine, this Pauline doctrine. Memo to the church, white and black: Jesus Outranks Paul. In the final analysis, all of the liturgical complexity boils down to this: the church—white, black, Asian or what have you—must look to Jesus. This is what we routinely do not do, placing emphasis on Paul or Moses or whomever else, and using their words to supersede or overlay those of The Master. We routinely turn away from Christ, to Paul, to Moses, when we cannot find ammunition for our hatred and loathing within the Gospels. We look beyond Jesus because, obviously, Jesus is not enough for us. We’ve formed our opinion and keep flipping pages until we find some line of scripture we can rip out of context to justify behaving like idiots.

Beloved: if you call yourself a Christian, you must look to Jesus. The trite phrase has lost none of its truthfulness: What Would Jesus Do? Jesus walked the earth under the imprimatur of the Roman Empire, among the most perversely corrupt pagan societies the world had ever seen. Homosexuality was freely and openly practiced in Jesus’ day, as were gross displays of depraved sexual conduct of all orientations—hence the term “Roman Orgy.” Yet, there is no record of Jesus ever once having mounted any campaign or having spent the donations of the faithful in some fruitless political effort to rail against the empire.

Like many voices here, I do not affirm gay marriage; I don’t believe that is God’s plan for us. The question is: do things I *don’t* believe in threaten those things I do? Of course not. For, if they did, my belief would be meaningless.

The Church’s mission is not to create God’s Kingdom here on earth, nor to enforce God’s “Law” upon people by political means. The mission of the Church is simple: to tell people about Jesus. This is rarely done. Past all the rhetoric and pulpit thumping, the actual telling-people-about-Jesus part is an afterthought, tossed in before the benediction. We can fistfight over gay marriage all day if you want to, the bigger threat facing America is a church that refuses to follow Christ.

MARIANNE W.
June 29, 2015 at 10:15 am

Yes, the bigger problem is Christians not following Christ, by for example endorsing gay marriage, i.e. endorsing sin. There are two reasons why you must as a Christian oppose gay marriage. It has vast implications for every sector in society. They teach that it’s morally right in schools, universities, etc and FORCE people to agree. People are now fired just for disagreeing. Most of all, they TEACH and champion that it doesn’t matter to kids if they don’t have a father or mother. Children are treated like dolls that you can kill, buy or sell depending on whatever you want. They are sacrificed at the altar of lust. Hillary Clinton has vowed to BAN the right to disagree. They clothe it in terms like “discrimination” when in reality it is their right to FORCE everyone to agree with them. You need to pay close attention to what’s going on and who you vote for in the next election. This is really dangerous stuff. This vote by SCOTUS was another full on assault on democracy. Americans have repeatedly voted down gay marriage, and they have repeatedly denied that vote.

CHRISTOPHER PRIEST
June 29, 2015 at 11:50 am

Thanks, Marianne. Perhaps you missed my point where I indicated I do not endorse or affirm gay marriage  My point was that there were a great many things going on, approved by both the community and the government, which Jesus would never endorse, but He mounted no campaigns, started no petitions, organized no rallies, nor did He teach us to. Jesus focused on doing the will of His Father, and did not allow His ministry to suffer from worldly distractions. They brought Him a woman caught in adultery… what was His response? Engage in debate? Defend her behavior? Lobby Congress? [John 8:1-11]

Herod The Great committed infanticide—slaughtering thousands of infants—but did Jesus organize against abortion? Did Jesus campaign for any ballot initiatives or encourage His followers to support only Christian-friendly administrators? What is the personal example of Jesus Christ? Of Paul, who wrote to the churches warning of the debauchery being practiced throughout Asia Minor? Did Paul organize politically? Did Paul organize picket lines outside of pagan temples? There is absolutely no biblical model for much of the conservative Christian agenda. I don’t believe Jesus would form a SuperPac and cozy up to politicians He’d know, full well, were just using Him. Jesus stayed focused. He didn’t allow Himself to become distracted.

We have to stop this zero-sum mentality: not becoming distracted is not the same thing as endorsing things out of step with our beliefs. I am far more concerned about child prostitution, the never-ending massacres going on in emerging Third World countries, homelessness, starvation and other issues than I am worried about who marries who. You want to end abortion? Tell somebody about Jesus. Follow the Master’s example: engage, forgive, invest yourself. It’s easy to organize and give money to political factions and mount ballot initiatives; those choices make a virtue of cowardice because we do all this paperwork and write a check because far too many of us are too timid to engage people one on one. Why not follow the Master’s example: sit with one person, just one, this week, and you’ll have accomplished more than all the millions wasted on trying to force Christian conduct on people who do not know Christ.

My point, and I apologize for not making it clearer: we should keep our eye on the ball and do what Christ commanded of us. We should not worry about, organize behind or rally against things we don’t believe in or endorse. If you don’t believe in it, stop giving it energy by being the face of intolerance. Every nickel your church wastes on the knucklehead stuff—petitions, political donations—is a nickel that is not clothing or feeding someone. We should follow Christ, follow His personal example and stop wasting time and energy fighting the wind. Being the salt of the earth does not mean we exhaust ourselves trying to force Christian principles upon it; it means being living witnesses and teaching the world, through our example, of a better way. It is not our job to change the world or, frankly, to complain about it. Our job is to tell the world about Jesus. Only an un-Christlike hubris makes us believe we are actually accomplishing that goal by demonizing people or exhausting ourselves trying to oppress them.

MARIANNE W.
June 29, 2015 at 5:26 pm

Christopher,
You’re line of reasoning is faulty and unbiblical. First off, you’re comparing apples to oranges. You’re putting 1st century Israel in comparison with modern day. They didn’t have petitions then for example. And Herod the great killing infants happened when Jesus was born. Abortion was not legal, it was heavily denounced by Christians and others. Every read the Hippocratic oath? Jesus spoke out strongly in defense of children. The polar opposite of today’s narcissistic society which champions adults sexual wants before children’s needs and natural rights. The great commission by Jesus, recorded in all 4 Gospels plus Acts describes Jesus’ command for us to evangelize until the whole world have heard the Gospel. I.e. every single person on earth should hear it and have the chance to chose to follow Jesus. What is happening now with regards to this Supreme Court ruling opens the floodgates for religious discrimination, but MOST of all; it denies children’s natural born right to a father and mother. It is already very bad.. but this is cementing it to get much worse. If you are silent and don’t speak out and fight FOR THEM, you are giving your silent consent. There is no such thing as neutrality. It doesn’t exist. Jesus himself said in Matthew 12:30 “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

CHRISTOPHER PRIEST
June 29, 2015 at 7:06 pm
(Sorry for jacking up the thread, but my sister hit reply to an earlier post)

“If you are silent and don’t speak out and fight FOR THEM, you are giving your silent consent.”

Jesus never commanded us to fight for them. There is absolutely no biblical model for your supposition. This has absolutely no basis in the personal example of Jesus Christ, Who never once protested the sin-sick world in which He lived. He taught about the Kingdom of Heaven, avoided religious (or political) debate. This was the repeated example, of Christ literally ignoring the knucklehead stuff and choosing instead to engage us, in whatever state we were in, one on one, with love and compassion. He stayed focused on His mission and did not allow His purpose to become distorted by distractions. Beloved, if we spent even a fraction of the time we waste shaking our fist at city hall telling people about Christ, we actually could change the world. Instead, we yell from the cheap seats and think we’re actually obeying God. God said “Feed my lambs.” This ain’t it.

As for Matthew 12:30: “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.” Here you’re taking scripture completely out of context. This verse has absolutely nothing to do with public protest or ministry being conflated with political action. Here Jesus is talking about religious hypocrites, who were the sole and singular targets of His disdain.

Here is an in-context quote of what Jesus said regarding those outside of the faith, His advice to His disciples regarding a distraction from their work for the Kingdom:

“Now John answered and said, ‘Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow with us.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side.’” (Luke 9:49-50 NKJV)

When we see God, and every one of us—believer or non-believer—certainly will, He won’t be the least bit concerned with how many ballot amendments you voted for or what protests you organized or how many blogs you went on to decry the injustices of this world. None of that builds the Kingdom of Heaven. Striving to transform the Kingdom of the World is idle foolishness and unbiblical; we were never commanded to do that. When we see God, He will require an accounting of what we did not to change the world but to build the Kingdom of Heaven: how many lives have we touched? How many seeds have we sown?

All the rest of it is just us veering way off purpose and distorting scripture in some vain attempt to “help God out” by ending abortion or passing some amendment to oppress the very people we are commanded to share love with.

I’m sorry we disagree. I love and respect you in Christ, and I can’t imagine why you feel it necessary to accuse me of sin just because I disagree with you. It’s a little Sanhedrin-ish.  And it’s the kind of knucklehead stuff we need to stop doing: calling each other devils just because we have a difference of opinion.

In any case, it’s not my desire to take over my brother’s blog, so I’ll be signing off. May God’s grace and peace abide with you!

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