Category Archives: Series: What Persecution Is

From Persecution to Conversation

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This post is our third contribution to the What Persecution Is series that we are exploring with Jake Dockter at The Great White Whale. This series explores faith, gender, sexuality, race, culture, and identity. We’ll be posting one post a week for this series over the next several weeks. We’d love for you to join the conversation. Please let us know if you’re posting any related content on your own blog, so we can talk with you.

Many conservative Christians perceive that traditional Christianity is under attack by the LGBT community. Society is rapidly changing. Technological advancements spark new moral and ethical quandaries. Religious demographics have also shifted considerably in the last twenty years, reflecting an increasingly pluralized environment. Traditionally believing Christians may fear being steamrolled in the name of progress without having a chance to integrate Christian beliefs fully into the decision-making process. They might experience different kinds of intolerance on an individual level as they discuss their Christian beliefs with others. It’s not terribly uncommon for Christians with traditional beliefs and practice to be dismissed as old-fashioned, out of touch, and even oppressive. Because so many other places in society have changed, some Christians in more conservative denominations see themselves as the last outpost in the culture war. Some employ metaphors suggesting churches moving away from hardline conservative stances have been invaded by various cultural cancers.

However, when people are constantly on the lookout for evidence that a cultural cancer has invaded their Christian tradition, anything can be perceived as a threat. As Sarah was recently told by a very conservative friend of a friend, “We have to kill the cancer before it kills us!” If a rainbow flag appears in the window of a nearby business, people at the church might talk about the neighborhood’s decline. If a pastor gives a homily on sexuality, many congregants perk their ears to notice the slightest deviation from acceptably conservative rhetoric. If an obviously identifiable LGBT person darkens the doorstep of the church building, people can focus an enormous amount of energy on ensuring that the “right” people continue to give the “right” answers. It does not take long before any LGBT person can feel as though he or she is seen as nothing more than a tumor to be excised.

In contexts where churches are on the lookout for invading cultural cancers, celibate, LGBT Christians can face a barrage of tests designed to prove that they are indeed the enemy of traditional Christianity. These tests run the gamut of continual questioning of what a celibate, LGBT Christian believes about marriage and sexuality, exhortations to live a life that is above reproach, expectations that the LGBT person achieves absolute perfection in the arena of sexual morality and all other areas of the Christian life, and demands that the celibate person say nothing positive of expanding legal protections for LGBT people or point out that non-celibate LGBT friends actually can and do have virtues. Some people will go so far as to suggest that an LGBT person should not even describe himself or herself as LGBT. After all, shouldn’t a celibate, LGBT Christian be aware of the pervasive cultural cancers? Isn’t it reasonable that such a person should expect to have to overcorrect to compensate for his/her sexual orientation in order to prove himself/herself nonthreatening? We’ve experienced many people who think that we somehow “owe it” to the Church to demonstrate in unreasonable ways that we’re faithful in our theology, that our way of life together is harmless, and that we have no intention of rocking the boat within the parish.

Many people demanding reassurance from celibate, LGBT Christians will reference their own spiritual journeys of feeling like refugees from their former Christian traditions that became more liberal over time. These people are quick to assert that they lost their church homes when their former denominations started having conversations about LGBT concerns. They can’t bear the thought of losing yet another congregation to the spreading perceived cultural cancers. However, these people do not realize that many celibate, LGBT Christians have also lost our spiritual homes and constantly fear losing any place in our congregations. Seemingly, these people refuse to see that one reason a celibate, LGBT Christian might be celibate is that he or she has an earnest desire to live into the fullness of a particular tradition’s teachings on sexuality. Moreover, conservative straight Christians frequently show unwillingness to have conversations with celibate, LGBT Christians to establish relationships on a more personal level. They seem to have zero appreciation for the reality that celibate, LGBT Christians constantly face being ostracized within every Christian tradition; safe places for LGBT celibates are few and far between, and that only becomes truer as more denominations transition toward liberal sexual ethics and denominations that do not change their sexual ethics show increasing fear of any LGBT presence.

We’re tired of conversations that constantly focus on how the gays persecute the Church and how the Church persecutes the gays. We, like many others we know and love, feel torn. We care enough about what our conservative friends have experienced to know that they honestly do feel persecuted by the LGBT community. We’re not interested in silencing their stories. As much as we have been hurt by cisgender, heterosexual Christians, it is challenging for us to admit that virtually everyone on both sides of this debate has experienced some form of persecution. Nonetheless, we need to begin talk about the ways Christians mistreat each other over these issues if we are to make any progress towards Christ together. We must remember that God invites all to draw near to him. If we cannot acknowledge authentically the wounds that have been inflicted upon both sides of this culture war, then we will not be able to see the Church as a hospital for all those who desire to see the Great Physician.

To open the discussion, we have some questions we’d like to ask conservative straight Christians. If you believe that the Church is Christ’s Church and the gates of hell shall not overcome it as the Scriptures tell us, then why are you so afraid that LGBT people are able to destroy the Church? Have you ever wondered what it means for you to have a sexual orientation and gender identity? Is your first instinct upon engaging in dialogue with an LGBT Christian to make assumptions about his or her sex life or to start preaching celibacy? If so, why? We look forward to reading your comments. LGBT readers, you can also feel free to fill the comment box with questions you have for conservative straight Christians.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Silencing: The Beginning of Persecution

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This post is our first contribution to the What Persecution Is series that we are exploring with Jake Dockter at The Great White Whale. This series explores faith, gender, sexuality, race, culture, and identity. We’ll be posting one post a week for this series over the next several weeks. We’d love for you to join the conversation. Please let us know if you’re posting any related content on your own blog, so we can talk with you.

In the initial post of this series, Jake asks the following questions:

“Compared to the discrimination that our LGBTQ family has felt over generations, being denied rights, being denied love, being denied salvation, being denied access to God or the body of Christ, and worst of all being denied their own identity… does having a real estate reality show cancelled really add up to discrimination?  Is being asked to not pray [meaning, lead prayer at a banquet sponsored by the President] symmetrical to the death threats, hate crimes, actual murders, denials, and mockings that gay and transgender and questioning people experience every day?”

Reading Jake’s list of the ways LGBTQ people have been discriminated against might be jarring for some. Many a good Christian will say, “But I’ve never thought about killing an LGBTQ person. I would never kill or physically harm an LGBTQ person. I’m not persecuting them at all.” However, we believe the beginnings of persecution are much more subtle than wishing active harm on another human. We’ve observed that LGBTQ people who want to share their stories frequently get met with shouting, finger-pointing, name calling, and Bible thumping. For example, once when Sarah was talking with a friend, Sarah’s friend shared about how her priest gave a homily about treating LGBT people with respect and dignity. Almost immediately after describing the homily, she launched into a rant about how that message was uncalled for and the priest was a flaming liberal. When Sarah tried to suggest that the priest’s homily sounded like a nice reminder of the importance of treating every person like a human being, Sarah’s friend cut Sarah off mid-sentence. She expressed unwillingness to listen because from her vantage point, if Sarah thought it was possible to be a lesbian and a Christian, Sarah was not worth listening to and was certainly a heretic.

Silencing. “I’m right, and you’re wrong.” Stiffening necks. Pursed lips. “I have God on my side, so I don’t have to give you the time of day.” Flashes of anger in the eyes. Hands curling into fists, even if involuntarily. Immediate shifts in posture.

We’ve seen these all before. The patterns repeat themselves the instant we mention that we are LGBT. Conversation takes on the character of defensive combat. Topics discussed not even five minutes before are forgotten as adrenaline floods the body and emotion overtakes reason and civility. The more we try to explain ourselves, the more likely we are to hear “Shut. Up. I’m not interested in hearing your story,” with a sneer that indicates our perspective is little more than a fairy tale, or “You have nothing to contribute to this conversation. You’re just deceived and trying to deceive others.”

We are bemused by many stories where Christians in America claim they have been persecuted for their religious beliefs. Often, someone has rescinded an invitation to speak in a teaching capacity where a person has the potential for reaching a large audience. In crying persecution, this person is effectively saying, “Everyone should listen to me.” But while advocating for his or her own desire to be heard, that person seems to have little to no appreciation that every day, he or she is silencing others. When a person claiming to follow Christ presents “biblical” teaching by comparing LGBT people to those who engage in bestiality, it’s almost instinctive for LGBT audience members to try and curl up in a ball, take up as little space as possible, and remove themselves from the situation as discreetly and expediently as they can. This kind of comparison when used by Christian “teachers” dehumanizes, vilifies, and demonizes LBGT people. Furthermore, it obfuscates any true Christian teaching by packaging orthodoxy with hatred.

There is a marked difference between being silenced and losing an opportunity to speak your views to a national audience. Freedom of speech in America means that you will not lose your liberty over something you say. It does not mean that you are entitled to escape the social consequences of what you’ve said. Children who brag the playground that they can throw the football the farthest should not be surprised when their classmates take them up on the challenge. Articulating one’s view about contentious social topics like LGBT issues and having those views challenged by others who disagree does not amount to persecution.

It’s telling that consistently and repeatedly, we get the message from others that we have no business telling our story. On our blog, we’ve processed negative messages from people telling us to shut up by stressing it’s not easy to tell a story, asking whose story counts, wondering why people act as the language police to force us to use particular scripts, musing on whether the church extends conditional welcome, and sharing about how we sometimes feel betrayed. We’ve discussed that when people say things like, “Our kids should not encounter a gay couple on the television in our living room,” we feel less than welcome to visit their houses. At least seven of our 128 posts on this blog to date deal with our responses when others tell us that we shouldn’t be speaking at all. That’s 5.5% and is an exceptionally conservative estimate.

Now please understand, we are not trying to say that we are experiencing persecution on a personal level or are being treated worse than other folks who are also engaged in this discussion. We are experiencing attempts at silencing. But we wonder, what tactics of silencing must one employ before he or she crosses the boundary into persecution of the other?

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.