I-YOUniverse

Gordon Atkinson’s comment at CCblogs on my piece Requiem for Cannibals prompts me to write about homophobia, the church, and me.

A prayer for healing

A couple decades ago the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond offered a service for healing at which unidentified people who were gay and HIV+ or living with AIDS assisted. If you wished, you could receive anointing and prayer for healing. I was anointed and prayed to be healed of my homophobia, which flared up in my training to be a pastoral counselor.

 About then, a Southern Baptist Convention president announced in San Francisco that AIDS was God’s judgment on homosexuals. Of course, most people don’t know that in Baptist polity, rightly construed, he was speaking for himself alone.

I felt I must do something. So I began volunteering with the local AIDS ministry. In those days we still didn’t know much about how the disease was spread; antiviral cocktails hadn’t been discovered yet.

(Although this is about 20 years ago, I am not disclosing identifying details about clients or volunteers.)

Panic up close and personal

The training I received in a neighborhood Episcopal parish house was glorious. I met vibrant Christians who were really making a difference. Sunlight literally bathed the room.

But nothing prepared me for my first visit. On the living room wall was the large family portrait like they take for church directories: a vigorous healthy young minister in all his pastoral dignity, his beaming wife, and two-year-old daughter. When I met him, however, he lay on the bed, weighing less than 100 pounds. Half conscious, he rolled about, crying out, “Lord, have mercy! Have mercy!”

I used up my latex gloves changing his diapers. When I wrongly fed him a bit of cheese, he choked. I had to reach my unprotected hand into his mouth to remove the cheese. Of course, now we know that, although dumb, that action is not as life-threatening as it felt.

I drove home, and succumbed to a panic attack.

The prodigal Sonny

I decided, given my own physical challenges, to volunteer in an AIDS hospice rather than in private homes. My client now was a 6′4″ skinny 20-something man with a sunny smile, so let’s call him Sonny. I met him once a week for a couple years.

When His Baptist family of birth ejected him because of his addictions and attendant problems, Sonny learned to survive on the street. His vocabulary, however, was better than mine. I quickly learned to trust Sonny to use all his survival skills at all times. He knew how to direct my guilt symphony with the expertise of a Leonard Bernstein.

I had to stop seeing Sonny for my favorite pastime, spine surgery. But, when he was baptized by a Baptist pastor and received into the church, he called me to tell me. Shortly before his death, he enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast at home. His father gave him a key to the family home.  

I love Sonny. I miss him to this day.

For simplicity’s sake I’ll use “gay” as shorthand for “male homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered” persons.

 Entering into the church’s closet

While the church is wrangling about homosexuality, about one in ten of its members wrestles with core identity concerns about being gay. A much larger percentage love gay family members, co-workers or friends. Gay teens experience a much higher rate of depression, addiction, and suicide than other teens. Unlike minorities whose difference is visible, gay youth often feel utterly alone; they know no one like them. Church is the last place they dare go for help. Many media images of gays are unhealthy or destructive.

Several years after leaving a church, I got a phone call from a member. (Again, identifying details changed.) ”Can I come see you?” she said. The issue was her son’s being gay. After her own conversion, she lived totally for Jesus. She believed the Bible condemns homosexuals. But her son hurt so deeply. He rejected his homosexual nature, but could not change; he felt damned.

His mother called to ask me to share my understanding. She took it and studied the Bible intensively on her own. I passed on copies of Fr. John McNeill’s Taking a Chance on God and Walter Wink’s Homosexuality and the Christian Faith.

Frankly, I was dumbfounded. Years earlier, she was closed. Now, not having seen her for a long time, I found her heart tender and open to her son’s suffering. The seed God’s Spirit had hidden in the soil of her heart, after long dormancy, had germinated.

After walking away from—where to turn to

A third instance, more recent. Homosexuality was the headline everywhere. When my Sunday School class asked me to teach what the Bible says about homosexuals, I did. The pastor told me to stick to the safe parts of the Bible; instead, I walked away. I should have done it sooner, more simply. People have a right to their beliefs; I, however, will never again be involved in a church that does not expressly welcome gay people.

You’ll find whispers of openness (often more powerful than shouts) on my blog. From day one, I described e-thou encounter (precursor to I-YOUniverse) as a welcoming affirming space. Those words describe Baptist churches who welcome gay members (go here: http://www.wabaptists.org/.) 

On the side bar is a link to What We Wish We’d Known, a fabulous resource nicknamed The Blue Book compiled by caring friends, here: http://www.pcmk.org/Blue_Book_V5.pdf.

Other resources can be found at the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, here: http://www.bpfna.org/.

I never thought my post about enduring schism and living to tell the tale might covertly endorse the fear and hatred of people who are lesbian, gay, transgendered or bisexual.

Fighting is not the best way. Use your good energies to make a difference. If you can’t agree, walk away. Shake the dust off your feet. Put the church assets in God’s hands, and walk away.

What Paul did

One biblical model is how Paul dealt with Hebrew-Greek racism:

When [the legalist faction] opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” Then he left the synagogue and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue.

Acts 18:6-7 (NRSV)

In taking up the Collection for the poor of Jerusalem, he continued throughout his life to reach out to those who excluded themselves (Rom. 15.26-27).

Where I am now and here

Concerning this phobia (like all the others), still I have miles to go. But it’s way past time for followers of Christ like me to get up off our assertions and

reach out to,
learn about,
get acquainted with,
invite home for dinner,
celebrate the weddings and anniversaries of,
share the heartbreak of,
be politically active on behalf of

gay people, black people, Hispanic people, undocumented immigrant people, Jewish people, Muslim people—

 WHOSOEVER’s a pretty big group of people—

It’s way past time for followers of Jesus to be and to do everything, anything you do when you’re for real.