Happy April

I may not feel like doing much writing at the moment, but I can at least point whoever's still reading toward some of the interesting things I've come across recently.  In this installment:

1. Justin Lee explains what homosexuality is (graciously, as always) for those who still think of it as nothing more than a sex act.

2. Switchfoot's lead singer explains why they don't consider their music "Christian."  As someone who grew up listening to Christian music (and continued the habit into my 30s), I'm happy to see the separatism of evangelical culture slowly fading away.

3. A group of gay bloggers, thinkers and activists have signed a statement emphasizing the importance of supporting our opponents' right to publicly disagree with us.  It's often a fine line to walk when dealing with those who would deny us our rights, but we must be careful that we don't become that which we once deplored.

4. Which is not to say that we should let what our opponents say go unchallenged.  And as Rachel Held Evans noticed, the things they're saying keep getting more hyperbolic.

5. On a lighter note, as a fan of the magicians who appear on America's Got Talent, I would be remiss in not sharing this amazing act that appeared recently on Britain's Got Talent.

Links

In this month's edition (and I do seem to only be posting monthly so far this year), the theme is balance.

Maintaining balance and speaking in nuanced terms is a difficult thing to do in the highly polarized atmosphere that we currently find ourselves in.  Even at our best it can be challenging to avoid unconsciously slipping into a more adversarial tone.  At least, I've found that to be the case for myself, and I've seen it happen to others as well.

Link 1: Justin Lee is an individual who has a good track record of disagreeing graciously and maintaining a balanced perspective.  As such, it gives his words more weight when he writes an exhortation to conservative Christians like this one.  Only God knows how many will actually listen, but given Justin's reputation as a bridge builder he's in a better position than most to get through to those who genuinely do care.

Link 2: I also appreciate Rob Tisinai, who very ably tears apart anti-gay myths while still maintaining a nuanced perspective, as well as a strong respect for free speech and engaging with opposing viewpoints.

Link 3: Brian McLaren is another gracious voice who often takes a lot of heat for swimming against the tide of evangelical opinion.  In this piece he answers one of his critics.

Link 4: Being a fan of astronomy and science in general, I watched the premiere of the new Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson last weekend.  The first episode was a bit basic, but the show has potential as a teaching tool for young learners and for anyone else seeking to broaden their understanding of the universe we live in.

That said, the first episode also provided an example of how to fail at maintaining balance.  As Tobias Haller points out, Tyson's use of Giordano Bruno as an example of the dangers of placing dogma ahead of evidence was a bit misguided.  Bruno, as Tyson acknowledges, was not a scientist, and his belief that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe (while ultimately proven correct) was neither the product of scientific reasoning nor the primary reason he was executed for heresy.  And while the show half-heartedly acknowledged those facts, its emphasis on Bruno's martyrdom was nonetheless misleading.

A Call For Help

As anyone who follows world news is undoubtedly aware, violence against LGBT people has been increasing in numerous countries across Africa, and several countries have made their already draconian anti-gay laws even harsher (most notably Nigeria and now Uganda). Unfortunately, political action has proven to be counterproductive in some cases; pressure applied by Western governments and activists has only caused the countries in question to dig their heels in and push back even harder.  So while silence is never an option, clearly new approaches are called for.

Activist Melanie Nathan (a native of South Africa) is trying something different: she has set up a Rescue Fund to Help LGBT People Escape Africa.  Click on the link for more details and/or to contribute.

Hopefully it will someday be possible to begin a sober and peaceful dialogue on human rights issues in these countries (and the many other parts of the world that are still hostile territory for sexual minorities), but right now it looks like that day is too far off to help the many people whose lives are currently in danger.

Links

A few interesting articles to round out your week with:

1. First, this article on a side of C.S. Lewis that most people have never been aware of.  Some people want to keep their spiritual heroes on pedestals; personally, I like him more now that I know a little more about his human side.

2. Rob Bell on how to read the Bible.  It comes to life in a myriad of ways as soon as we stop trying to read it like an instruction manual.

3. Building on this piece from John Shore, perhaps the billboard Times Square really needs this Christmas is one that says Don't Feed the Fundies (of any stripe).

A Few Good Links

A few recent items from my reading (and viewing) list that were worth sharing:

-Justin Snow's Decline and Fall of the Ex-Gay Movement provides an accurate and fairly comprehensive history of the movement.  While it still feels premature to announce its fall, I certainly pray that its decline is terminal as people continue to wake up to the fact that gay people are no more broken and no less valuable than everyone else.

-Nakedpastor's version of the blind men and the elephant nicely sums up how foolish we make ourselves look when we claim to have God all figured out.

-Momastery's Glennon responds to her critics, some of whom sound a lot like those blind men arguing over the nature of their elephant.

-Finally, on a lighter note, here at last is a horror movie that doesn't insult my intelligence.

A Great Debate

At last, a conversation between a Christian and an atheist that makes me smile rather than cringe.  It's not our differences in belief that we need to fear, but how we treat those we disagree with...

Links

And now for another installment of people saying things I wish I'd said...

-Donald Miller would rather be hated than loved with conditions.  I'm inclined to agree.

-Fred Clark points out how conservative Christians make the power of Gay more powerful than anything else in Creation.

-Australia's Prime Minister makes a principled case for supporting marriage equality.

Blogosphere Roundup

It's been a very long time since I posted three times in the course of a week.  Don't count on that pace continuing, but it does feel good to be back in the saddle (with shoulders that are feeling better than they have for the last two and a half years - whatever my physical therapist earns, it's probably less than he's worth).

There's more than enough commentary being posted already over the Supreme Court's big gay rights decisions yesterday, and I don't feel like I have much to add to that.  But here are a few links related to various things that are worth not missing:

1. Christine is back in the blogosphere, at least for the moment, and she has a thoughtful take on the closure of Exodus International that I haven't read elsewhere.

2. This wonderful post from a straight ally is not to be missed.  If we had more people like her in our churches, we might not have the problems highlighted in #3:

3. Since it apparently still needs saying, here is a quick recap of the religious right's legacy to American Christianity.

4. Finally, a quote shared by a friend of mine on Facebook.  It's a timely reminder that our current situation is not so different from the conflicts faced by previous generations.

"The tree of abolitionism is evil and only evil - root and branch, flower and leaf, and fruit; that it springs from, and is nourished by an utter rejection of the Scriptures. When the Abolitionist tells me that slaveholding is sin, in the simplicity of my faith in the Holy Scriptures, I point him to this sacred record, and tell him, in all candor, as my text does, that his teaching blasphemes the name of God and His doctrine.”

-Rev. Henry van Dyke, Princeton-trained theologian and minister, 1860

The more things change, the more they remain the same...

(A shorter version of this statement was quoted by Rachel Held Evans a few months back.)

Identification

[G]roups define themselves and even hold themselves together largely negatively—by who they are not, what they are against, and what they do not do. We need a problem or an enemy to gather our energies. We usually define ourselves through various “purity codes” to separate ourselves from the “impure” and the presumably unworthy. Simple worship (“what we are for,” or in support of, and what we love) is much harder to sustain.

-Richard Rohr

(hat tip: Wendy Gritter)

Diversity

A friend pointed me toward this article about evangelical homeschoolers who want to teach evolutionary theory to their children.  It's easy to forget, when the media focus on the loudest voices (typically the strident, anti-science fundamentalists), that the evangelical realm is a diverse one (and I have forgotten that on occasion).  Even at my strongly conservative Christian college there was (and is) no uniformity of opinion on this issue, though those who accept evolutionary theory were (and likely still are) a small minority compared to young- and old-earth creationists.

And, as this letter writer pointed out to John Shore, not all young-earth creationists are narrow-minded fundamentalists, and not all of them have an extreme political agenda.  Just as LGBT individuals can be found scattered across nearly every demographic spectrum, so too we need to allow every individual we encounter to be just that - an individual.

Links

First up, a call for bridge building between Christians and non-Christians.  It will take a lot of work from both sides of the aisle, but respectful dialogue is not impossible.

Second, a tale of the sad reality of the way many evangelicals still treat those who fail to conform.  While it's not that bad everywhere, the legacy of fundamentalism still taints many churches and organizations.

Finally, an interesting observation about the positive side effects of LGBT equality.  Justice is not a zero-sum game; it has a positive impact on everybody.

The Turning Tide

I have to admit to a certain amount of surprise at the amount of momentum the LGBT rights moment has gained since the 2012 elections.  It's a pleasant surprise, to be sure, but my more pessimistic side was expecting resistance to temporarily increase - the religious right's last big push, as it were.

That could still be coming, of course.  As social conservatives find themselves increasingly outnumbered, desperation may push them to extremes before the fight is over.  And the Supreme Court has yet to issue its own verdicts that could further alter the political landscape.

For now, though, the good news keeps rolling in.  The latest positive signs of change:

-Rob Bell has officially come out in favor of marriage equality.  This is perhaps the least surprising of the three, given how quiet he has remained on the issue for quite a few years, but it's still a telling sign of the changes taking place even within the evangelical community.

-Less expected was Senator Rob Portman's change of heart.  It's not every day that a staunch social conservative - even one with a gay family member - does a 180.  And whether it was a sign of courage or political expediency on his part, every ally counts.

-This year's CPAC gathering was also quite revealing.  When opponents of gay rights are outnumbered by supporters at a conference full of Republicans, even the most pessimistic have to admit things are looking up...

Encouragement

There's no question that general acceptance of LGBT individuals is at an all-time high.  Enough Americans now support their gay neighbors that even Republicans are beginning to jump onto the bandwagon in meaningful numbers.

Even so, there's still enough anti-gay sentiment in the world that it's helpful to be reminded that many straight people are on our side - people who could choose to sit quietly on the sidelines at little or no cost to themselves.  A few such stories, to brighten your weekend...

-Brian McLaren talks about the Sunday that catalyzed his journey toward acceptance.

-Another pastor shares why he opens his church's doors to everybody.

-A straight guy exhorts his friends to consider how their words affect others.

-An ally talks about her gay best friend.

Thought For the Day

Thank God we all have fallible parents!  Through their mistakes, they force us to take stock of our lives, grow up, make personal decisions, and take responsibility for them.  Thank God, too, for the fallibility of the human church - otherwise we could never distance ourselves from it and mature spiritually.

-John J. McNeill, Taking a Chance on God

Resistance

With society's growing acceptance of its LGBT members, especially among the younger generations, it's no surprise that gay students are becoming vocal even at the more conservative Christian colleges.  So the rise of LGBT-supportive groups at schools as conservative as Oral Roberts University, Wheaton College and now Biola University was really just a matter of time.

And I do support the right of these schools to maintain theologically conservative stances on any and all issues they see fit.  So while some of the doctrines taught in their Bible classes may do a mind job on the gay members of their student body (I speak from my own experiences at such a school), nobody is truly being forced to attend them.  I do agree with Misty Irons' point about allowing gay students to live honestly, but at the schools in question it should be possible to accommodate that without any major change in doctrinal stance.

I do, however, have to take issue with a statement that Biola's president, Barry Corey, made in a recent address to the student body (as relayed by John Shore):

Who did He [Jesus] rise up in anger and not receive? Those who quoted scripture like the Pharisees, who wanted to legitimize a certain way of life that Jesus said was not right.

This from the president of a university that includes a theological seminary?  I can see where he's trying to go with that thought, but it's a rather ironic stretch for someone accusing others of twisting scripture.  Jesus' anger at the religious leaders of his day was directed at their hypocrisy and self-righteousness, at the people they drove away from God (both directly and indirectly), and at the higher value they placed on the letter of the law over the people the law was written for.  In the rare cases where those leaders were permissive rather than legalistic, it was primarily for the benefit of a privileged few.

It's one thing to debate what Christian sexual ethics should look like, and quite another to turn Jesus' righteous indignation upside-down to condemn those who call on the church to stop driving LGBT individuals away from God.  The fact that the top spokesman for a highly regarded evangelical institution would engage in such sloppy exegesis suggests that the Biola Underground has him far more rattled than he would ever publicly admit - and perhaps even that there are cracks in the dam that aren't yet visible to outside observers.

Invocation

For as long as there has been government, rulers have sought to convince their subjects that they have a Divine mandate (or its nearest equivalent) to rule. This is little different in democratic societies, though in terms of the American political scene it hasn't always been as blatant (and polarizing) as it is today.

The religious right is the most obvious exemplar of this "God is on our side" mentality, with liberals continually framed as both anti-American and anti-Christian. But the religious left doesn't always refrain from playing the same game, even if it gets less attention for doing so. "Jesus was a socialist" is a commonly-heard catchphrase, often accompanied by verses like Matthew 19:21.

Inasmuch as such statements serve to jolt those who have come to associate the Gospel with laissez-faire economics, anti-gay politics and an interventionist foreign policy, the left does have a point. Jesus' advocacy for a self-sacrificial lifestyle with an emphasis on helping the poor and disadvantaged does in fact line up with socialistic ideals.

In the world we inhabit, however, the concept of socialism cannot be divorced from its political connotations. And in that regard, Jesus was not a Socialist - he never advocated government redistribution of wealth or, for that matter, any governmental system. Unless his statements on the subject all went unrecorded, Jesus seemed remarkably unconcerned with our politics and far more interested in how we treated others on an individual and community level.

Furthermore, while most would agree there is merit in government providing a social safety net for its citizens (though what that net should consist of is open to debate), the idea that Jesus would have been an activist for such a system doesn't add up any more than the idea that he would be standing with the Family Research Council against gay rights - it doesn't fit with the witness of the biblical authors who chronicled his life and ministry.

In contrast to what we see in the examples of Christ and the early church, government-run aid programs are the most depersonalized form of charity possible.  In the early (pre-Constantinian) church, members gave not only their material resources but also their time and even their lives for the benefit of their neighbors.  They were directly involved in each others' lives and knew (or got to know) the people they were helping.

When the government takes money from me via taxation, on the other hand, it doesn't matter whether I give willingly, or even whether I like of how it will spend that money; I can be as apathetic and self-centered as I want to be, as long as I care enough about avoiding a prison sentence to pay my taxes.  I don't ever have to think about the poor people my tax dollars might be helping, and even if I do I can discharge my civic duty without ever having to actually meet any of them.

Similarly, the government employees who administer the aid programs my taxes help fund are seldom directly involved in the lives of the people they're helping.  They have a list of rules (usually quite rigid) that they have to follow when determining who gets help and how much, and those arbitrary guidelines may or may not address the actual needs of those recipients.  The government workers may genuinely care about they people they're working to help, but that concern is entirely irrelevant as long as they fulfill the minimum requirements of their job descriptions and do an adequate job of following and enforcing the rules.

And the recipients' attitudes are just as irrelevant.  As long as they jump through all the right bureaucratic hoops, it doesn't matter to the government whether the aid they're receiving truly improves their lives, or whether it slowly hardens their hearts and smothers their own charitable instincts.

So to say that Jesus would be camping out with the 99 percenters, demanding higher taxes on the rich and agitating for a single-payer healthcare system is to miss the point of his message.  Yes, it absolutely matters whether we help the poor and disadvantaged, but first and foremost it's about each of us engaging with our neighbors, living in community with them and addressing their needs as we become aware of them.  Jesus instructed the rich young man to give away all of his possessions not because wealth is an inherent evil, but because it was what stood between the young man and God.  As Christians we give to the poor in part for their sakes, but also in part for ours.  No law or governmental program can ever transform the human heart or make a single one of us more compassionate.

Having said that, by all means vote your conscience, seek justice and allow your faith to inform your politics, whether you lean to the left or right (or in another direction).  But invoking Socialist Jesus to browbeat others into accepting a social welfare platform as the Christian political agenda is only slightly less disingenuous than James Dobson or Chuck Colson conjuring visions of Sodom and Gomorrah to frighten the faithful into voting to oppress their gay neighbors.  An iron fist waving a Bible is still an iron fist, no matter which page it's pointing to.

Miscommunication, Part 1

I make an effort to avoid words like "hate" and "bigot" except where they're very clearly deserved; in many cases a more accurate description would be the tone deafness that comes from living inside an echo chamber (which the evangelical subculture most definitely is).

Take, for example, actor Kirk Cameron, who has found himself at the center of a controversy over his very tone-deaf comments about homosexuality. What he said was a simple articulation of the tenets of most conservative strains of Christianity (including the one he has devoted his life to); how he said it is quite another matter.

This post by Jim Burroway sums up the problem quite nicely, reversing Cameron's statements to clearly show how they would sound if directed at evangelical Christians. Suddenly Cameron's "I'm just as flawed" concession doesn't seem quite as gracious.

Given my own background I'm inclined to give people like Cameron the benefit of the doubt; they sincerely believe they're "speaking the truth in love" when they make statements like his. And throwing around loaded words like "bigot" tends to do more to shut down communication than to convince anyone of anything. Even so, the Kirk Camerons of the world need to be encouraged to think a little harder about how their words sound to those they're talking about; the compassion they claim to hold in their hearts requires no less of them.

Links

It's been a busy week in the blogosphere - not here, perhaps, but elsewhere. Here are a few pieces that resonated with me...

1. Rachel Held Evans slides down the slippery slope, and discovers a far different destination than the one she'd been told she was headed toward.

2. Speaking of different destinations, a former Exodus leader finds change and freedom - just not the change and freedom Exodus likes to proclaim.

3. Tired of people who use the world "biblical" to shut down debate over their agendas? So am I, and so is this guy. (Hat tip to Craig)

4. Finally, if this post describes your evangelism style, please reconsider...

The Book Is Here

John Shore's new book, Wings on a Pig, is now available in electronic form (a print version is promised in the near future). This is the book project I mentioned a couple months back; it contains the stories of 30 gay Christians (mine made the cut - it starts on page 122) as well as some of Shore's own essays. It's well worth the $10 price tag, and I'd say that even if I weren't a contributor...

Forward

Progress sometimes moves slowly, but we've come a long way in a relatively short period of time, as the victory for marriage equality in New York demonstrates. Here are a few more positive indicators:

-The growing number of conservative Republicans who recognize that the advancement of gay rights is not, in fact, a harbinger of doom. Commentator David Frum is the most recent convert.

-That growth is taking place among evangelicals as well, as demonstrated by Christian leaders like John Shore and Wendy Gritter. Wendy's recent Pastor's Conversation is now available online.

-A bit less obviously, the growing emphasis on social justice among younger evangelicals is a hopeful sign that the church may set aside its thirst for power in favor of the love and compassion that fueled its original growth spurt two thousand years ago.