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.

Drew Smith’s insightful piece James Dobson Misrepresents Barack Obama’s Views on Religion gets me. (You’ll find it at CC blogs.) Having lived all my professional life as Southern Baptist clergy in the warlock’s cauldron of “The Conservative Resurgence” or “The Controversy” (which it is depends on whose side you’re on like the War of Northern Aggression or the Civil War), I have strong unhealed emotions about schism.

Lose-Lose Lose-Lose

The first is my profound belief that nobody wins, everybody loses. In denominational schism everybody’s a loser, especially outsiders who are weighing whether Christ makes a difference or not. Mike Warnke asks, if a 1000 member church splits in two, how many people will go to the two churches? Not 500 each, but maybe (if God forgives us) 100 each. Net loss of 800 little lambs and mothers with child, for each of whom we will give account to God.

Is there Any Sorrow like my Sorrow

The second is a feeling of sorrow. Dr. Ben Bruner, my deacon at First Baptist Church Richmond, was married to the great great granddaughter of one of the women who founded the Woman’s Missionary Union. She said, “It’s like an unending funeral.”

My wife Sandy and I went to only one annual meeting of the SBC, Dallas 1985. The news photographers were lined up to film the moderates walk out, if they lost the presidency. The moderates lost, and all the paparazzi got was a handshake.

R.I.P. S.B.C.

But that year the SBC died for us.

People crammed in the convention center two hours before the meeting began, shoulder to shoulder at 6:30 a.m. Someone began to sing “Amazing Grace,” “What A Friend,” all the old songs we loved. Then, the doors opened and we did a hardball political hatchet job or hated those who did it.

My parents gave money they didn’t have. They went to church every time the doors were open. Baptist churches raised my mom from alcoholism. My dad started a church in our home. I was baptized at age five. (Good thing we know we don’t practice infant baptism, or it might get confusing.) I got my college education at the Baptist Student Union, and two seminary degrees at SB institutions, much of the cost borne by the SB Cooperative Program.

Fifty Ways to Leave

Cut us, my wife and I bled Baptist.

From the national denomination, to the state conventions, to the regional associations, even to individual churches: whether you were liberal or fundamentalist mattered more than whether you were saved. Pastors’ get togethers were consumed not by prayer but by the latest rendition of who did whom.

At last, Sandy and I walked away. Left the only fellowship of men and women we’d known. Left the institutions we believed in, and were willing to give our lives to.

We couldn’t fight any more.

Not soon enough for our son, who now speaks of religion, if ever, with disgust.

Wherever You Lead, We’ll Go

I had to pray, “Lord, those who built the SBC built it for you: the foreign and home mission boards, the seminaries with their magnificent libraries, the colleges, the conference centers–all of it–even the Annuity Board. I took out my retirement savings and put the rest in God’s hands. I hope God knows how to deal with true believers. I never will.

But I prayed, “God bless them and use them  as you will for your glory.” It still is a very hard prayer, especially if them is specific, not general.

Now, Lord, I prayed, wherever You lead I’ll go. I never dreamed You would send me away from Southern Baptists. My wife is a United Methodist elder in full connection (I have rehearsed that, so I can say it easily).

My Church Membership’s in my Boots

Me? My heart belongs to Jesus. My church membership’s in my boots. That’s where the 16th century Anabaptists kept lists of scriptures that they knew by heart because carrying a copy of the Bible around could get you killed.

The Schleitheim Confession (1527) is one of the earliest Anabaptist confessions. A significant theme is Vereinigung, which John Howard Yoder notes can mean union, atonement, reconciliation. As a past passive participle it means, “to be brought into unity.”

Thus, the same word can be used for the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, for the procedure whereby [sisters and] brothers come to a common mind, for the state of agreement in which they find themselves, and for the document which states the agreement to which they have come.

trans. John H. Yoder (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1977), p. 20.

Vereinigung is Good Enough for Me

John 17 records Jesus’ prayer that all who believe (belive and belove) in His Name may be one as Father, Son and Spirit are one. I repeat His words, may all be one.

I offer a prayer for my Anglican sisters and brothers, who are heading into the abyss. I ask God to forgive me the part I played, for it takes two sides. I’m not important enough to have done much damage. But if I did any, it’s way too high a price to pay for being right. And only God knows who’s right and who isn’t.

I believe, as we see one denomination after another cannibalize its own bleeding flesh, that we are watching the death throes of a way of life God has used in the past, and could use again.

If only we put God in the driver’s seat, and our love of power and preeminence and doctrinal purity in the trunk under the spare. But if we must do that, we’d better not have a flat. The spare will be eaten to bits in no time.

Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.