Merry CHRISTmas or "I am Sorry"

Merry CHRISTMAS and “I am sorry”

This is only paper and these are only words. This is a less than adequate medium to express a more than moderate statement. The typical Christmas greeting is “Merry Christmas”, I, however, would like to offer an “I am sorry” in its stead. Thank you and congratulations and for getting past the title and the subject of this article and caring enough to read further. The entire subject of “gay Christians” seems to be wrought with strong opinions. The Christian church wants to deny the truth of those two words sitting side-by-side, and the gay community wants to hiss at gay Christians, calling them traitors and not wanting to associate with them. It is a complex subject, it is not well studied and it is filled with prejudice. And, it is time to look at it.
Your brave and kind editor, Laura, asked me to perhaps bring understanding to the topic of “why should the gay community care about Christianity?” and “why now?” If you have read any of my columns over the previous ten months, you may know that I am a straight, Evangelical Christian. Please don’t stop reading here . . . I am not the enemy and this may be one of the most important things I ever write in RENO OUT and it may be one of the most significant things the spirit inside you ever reads, so please, stay with me to the end. You may well receive a new message or you may be refreshed by the old message you remember from your childhood.

It is December, and try to escape it as we may by saying “Happy Holidays”, at the center of all the hub-bub is the word “Christ”. The figure at the very core of this season, Jesus Christ, has been so distorted and His message so hijacked that is may appear to you that He is the guy holding the very large judgmental hammer you have felt, the bouncer at church doors saying, “No, you can’t come in here.” He is not doing that. I do not know how this message of love, grace, mercy and equality got twisted to hypocrisy, prejudice, bigotry and hierarchy, but it did.
There are no sure numbers I could find that could tell me definitively what percentage of the gay community has been raised in churched homes. I do however know that 85% of this country consider ourselves Christians and you come from those average American families. Likelihood is, that many of you went to church, to Sunday school, made Communion and Confirmation and some of you even went to Christian colleges. True story. What happened? There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence to support that, if you are in the 35 and over group, more of you were in church youth groups while growing up. At a time when teens are inherently questioning who they are and “where do I fit in?” gay youths are also trying to figure out why they feel so different and struggle with “what is going on?” Church groups are one of the few places youth could and still can look for answers to those deeper questions. Part of the longing was being fulfilled but, mixed in with that healing balm was dose of poison. You were told that God loved you and, you were also told that God hated homosexuality. It is destructive to tell people their “problem” and then make it worse by not meeting the need. One can only hold onto the hope of a positive message for so long while feeling the rejection. The initial peace turns to bewilderment and people, understandably, walk away. We are all too often guilty of looking at the “problem”: homosexuality and not the need: to be loved and accepted for whom we are. Today, we turn the leper away; we turn the people away that we do not want to deal with. But that is not the example of Jesus; He touched the leper, He met the need. That is the Jesus of the Bible, not the bouncer-Jesus.

Gay men, by anecdotal evidence (there are no hard studies here), tend to seek spiritual answers more often than do lesbians or straight men. The gay male brain frequently appears to be hard-wired more like a female brain. The right and left lobes are bridged making gay men more artistic and spiritual than straight men. This cannot be a surprise to anyone. It certainly is my experience in gay Christian communities. The overwhelming predominance in gay churches is male attendance and participation. This is not so in traditional churches. In mainstream churches, mostly women attend. I have a pal named Todd who lives in San Francisco and he is a gay man with a Pentecostal background. If you don’t understand that terminology, he did church with colorful preaching, respondent and loud “Amens” from the congregation. Sunday services were long with no prescribed time to end. He was not welcome in his home church when he came to terms with his sexuality. He wanted his church family to accept that he was still a Christian, yet a gay man at peace with his same sex attraction. That did not happen. He joined a secular support group of men also coming to terms with sexuality and it was there that he saw an abundance of spirituality within the group. Many participants came from Christian homes, but were now being told “you are not welcome here”. So, they took their searching elsewhere, somewhere where they would be accepted. They left Christian churches and took their spiritual inclinations to bridge-building belief systems, away from the ones that had just rejected them based on sexuality. This scenario makes total sense to me. If I were raised in a home that suddenly turned abusive, unloving and critical, I would try to leave that home and in an attempt to create a new family of acceptance and love elsewhere. I would look for a new family to adopt. This is exactly what is happening. Gays raised in churches are leaving them and going to accepting belief systems or, not attending any churches at all.

To those of you who look at this figure of Christmas, this Jesus, with distain, I would like to offer more than just apology. I would like to offer truth. Christianity has lost it’s way in this modern world. I go to church every Sunday and I really do mean every Sunday. I have been at the same church for over twenty years. I treasure my Pastor, I love the people I congregate with, I learn, I grow and I would never undermine that experience. Where the bulk of churches have gotten off message is in regard to homosexuality. You’ve undoubtedly heard it all: damned to hell, reprobate, sodomite, unworthy of God’s love, yada, yada, yada. If we move beyond those distortions to what the pure and simple message of the Bible is, and that is this: that all people are equal, all people have equal access to God, and all people have equal access to grace. You are part of that all.

Let me clarify a few things about this Jesus. The misconceptions are great. On a long hike one day, with just about every subject exhausted, I asked a lesbian friend of mine if she would be open to me telling her why I am a Christian. Stuck in the midst of 14 miles where she could not out hike me and get away, she consented and was surprised at my depiction of this supposed “woman-hating” Jesus. Jesus broke down all barriers of His time of racism, of sexism, of hierarchy. He actually said that those who look down on someone else are the ones that God is displeased with. Oh, and not just a slap-on-the-hand displeased with. He called them “sons of Hell” and that was the religious leaders He was chastising. Conversely, the ones that the “holy” people saw as outcasts, sinners, aliens, poor and bothersome . . . these are the very people that Jesus cared about. Jesus spent His time with these people.

Christianity has lost it’s way on some issues of social justice and it’s apparent relevance in your community. It is not a religion of dos and don’ts. It is really about a direct relationship with a God who will make Himself clear to you when you are open to it. You don’t get away with bad behavior, straight or gay when you are trying to follow the model of Jesus. It has taken me twenty five years of following Him to get some areas of my life in line. The church doors were wide enough to let me in with all my baggage. You may only have a duffle sack compared to me, but if it is labeled “gay”, you may think you have felt disqualified. You have not. This is an actually a story from the Bible, a parable spoken by Jesus in the book of Matthew. He talks about a time of judgment after death when He decides if you have the pass to enter heaven; He will look at how we each treated the lowest of the low. That will determine what kind of person we are. There are steps to becoming a Christian, beliefs you must agree with; I do not intend to minimize that, but He will assess the validity of that conversion by how we treated those on the edge. I know how I feel about that topic; I know the compassion I feel for the abuses towards your community and I again, and again I say “I am sorry”.

So why should you even care to look back at that old issue and reconsider getting involved again? Why should you chance the condemnation, the pain that comes with that rejection? There is not a simple answer to any of this. I have had the privilege to be at the forefront of much of this discussion and in settings where I see, experience and discuss these questions with the leaders of this social justice movement. Things are changing. Youth are coming out sooner and not staying hidden; they are forcing society to see them. It then flows over to the churches. Gays in churches have friends and family who are also reacting to the abandonment of people they love. People are recognizing lies they are being told about those people. Realizing that someone has a same sex attraction may fill in a few blanks, but it does not change who they are. Christian gays and their allies are asking the churches tough questions and discussion really is happening. Secular gay organizations are becoming wiser too. Successful engagement between secular gay communities and the church will not occur by running into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in a pink leather thong with the intent to desecrate the Communion host. This is very counterproductive, albeit newsworthy. Like it or not, our spiritual beliefs as a nation guide us and the two sides must begin having thoughtful conversation. We are human beings first before sexual beings. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to exhibit mutual respect?

I would be negligent not to mention that there are many Christian denominations that are gay-friendly. There may even be some mainstream churches in our town where you can walk in hand-in hand with your partner. But, try doing that in one of our larger churches in town. Actually, don’t do that in one of our larger churches in town. I can safely tell you that Light of the Soul United Church of Christ on Sunnyside will welcome you as you are. Pastor Denise and her partner Teresa are Christians and they will help bind the old church wounds for you and you will find a home where Jesus is preached.

I spend a lot of time with my gay friends and I have hundreds, yes hundreds of gay Christian friends. I am involved in two active groups (The Gay Christian Network, gaychristian.net and The Evangelical Network, t-e-n.org) and two open and affirming Christian churches (Light of the Soul UCC in Reno lotsucc.org and Freedom in Christ Evangelical Church in San Francisco www.freedominchrist-sf.org). I have experienced what typical straight Evangelical Christians never get exposed to. I go to conferences, church services, have many very close relationships, stay at the homes of, visit and recreate regularly with my gay Christian friends. I am becoming a place of connection and hoping to create a space of understanding. I am on line most days on gaychristian.net which is an online community of ten thousand gay Christians worldwide. It was started seven years ago as a blogsite by a wonderful man named Justin Lee. He is only thirty-one. He googled “gay+Christian” and surprise, surprise, nothing in the affirmative popped up. He started blogging his thoughts and struggles and studying and The Gay Christian Network evolved. I have stated before and want to do so publically here. If at the end of my life, Justin Lee is not one of the five most significant people I know, I will be surprised. He is gay, he is Christian and he is a trailblazer. He is becoming very visible and in demand as a speaker. He is gentle, humble, funny, talented and dedicated. He is the man behind the Gay Christian Network. I had dinner with him just this week and was amazed yet again at his heart and vision for this organization. He has tried to create a place where those youth of yesterday can now safely go for answers and where the youth of today can find answers no longer mixed with healing balm and poison. Most churches will never address the questioning going on in a gay teen, so this online community exists. It is a place to congregate when a church building is not welcoming or available. It is necessary and effective and pure genius. There is one international GCN conference each year (gaychristian.net/conference). I have gone to two conferences. When I attended in Seattle in 2007, I was the only straight Christian there. That amazed me. How could the church be ignoring this group? The group picture attached to this article is from the conference in DC last January. There will be another gathering this January in Anaheim. Straight ally attendance is growing and that is encouraging.

I interviewed Justin for this article and he had a very interesting point I had never considered. Like it or not, faith plays a huge role in society. Try to escape it and you will be ignoring a force that you will have to reckon with on some level. It may wise to look at what this is all about simply to be able to gain understanding. The LGBT community is at a great disadvantage if it chooses to ignore this influencer. You can only cause change with understanding. Ignoring the topic of Christianity just continues the circular argument . I have long wondered why some of the prominent LGBT rights organizations have not tried to engage the church with the help of the LGBT Christian community. Put simply, if you have one side speaking Russian and the other side speaking Swahili, not too much real communication is going on. I know this approach is inching along in change. I hope to be part of that change by speaking “church” to the church in support of the LGBT Christian community. Back to pal, Justin, he is often asked “why” he bothers to be part of “them”, why he chooses to be a Christian in an atmosphere that is questioning if he can even be gay and Christian. He says he will not concede to the haters. He will not forego the purity of his faith. He stands to reclaim the message of the Bible, and it is this: mercy, love, grace and equality.

I often visit and have numerous friends at Freedom In Christ Evangelical Church in San Francisco and it is not filled to overflowing each Sunday night. Did you read that correctly? NOT filled to overflowing. How can it be that in the “most gay’ city in the U.S. the gay Christian church is a small congregation? Pretty simple answer really. If the gay population is much maligned by what they think are Jesus-followers, why would they go where He is at the center of the service? Why would they go to “enemy camp” even if it is “camp out”? I wish I could take the knowledge I have in my head and put it in yours so that you would understand that the words hurled against you are misused. There are many sources and books for you to do the research and that is a conclusion you must come to yourself. The questioning and research must be intentional. No drive-up, order and got-it here. I can’t tell you that everything you’ve heard about your unworthiness is untrue; but you’ve got to go work that out for yourself. A great start though is to reading is an online book called “Christianity and Homosexuality Reconciled” by Dr. Joseph Pearson, and it can be found for free at http://members.aol.com/cebijp/book.pdf.
The Jesus of this Christmas season is not a woman hater, He is not a hater of the gay community, He is not sexist or racist or about dos and don’ts. If that is the message you have gotten, please take the time to battle that distortion in the way that most suits you. Go to Light of the Soul here locally and let them show you our Jesus. They worship Him there, not their “gayness”. Pastor Denise brilliantly says. “We had no choice in being gay, but we do have a choice in being Christian.” Absolutely brilliant. If you are a reader, check out Dr. Pearson’ online book. Hang out with Christians that seem to get it; you’ll know who they are. They are the ones who let you be you and love you the way you are. I am not a solo flyer here. I have lots of straight Christian friends who are solid and loving and will never slam you. I was surprised recently to discover that a woman whom I had been in a very structured Bible study with shared my views. She also knew of at least six closeted lesbians in the study who wanted to learn, but had to stay closeted. I know they would not have been embraced for who they are in that environment. But, bless my friend Sal, she is loving and accepting and does exemplify the real Jesus. Jesus spent time with the people others did not want to spend time with. You’ll be able to spot the authentic ones, get to know them, you may actually like us.

I hope this crack in the barn door allowing a peek inside at what really was born in the manger that starry, starry night. It was a bundle of love wrapped in flesh come down from a God Who allows equal access to Himself. Jesus grew to be mercy, love and grace, and who can’t use a little of that? Have yourself a “Merry Little Christmas” and check out the object of the season. Please, please don’t let Christians or your past experiences keep you from investigating Jesus Christ. The church has really messed up here and we are on a path to coming back to a place of grace; we’ve not modeled it very well to your community. Find a safe spot, check it out and come to your own conclusions about how God really does perceive you. It may well be the best gift you every gave yourself. . . freedom to be who you are and a possibly new view of your worth, which in the eyes God is exceedingly great.

Kathy Baldock
kathybaldock@helloworld.com
October 1, 2008