Tag Archives: church

On Being Different

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A reflection by Lindsey

This week, I’ve found myself reflecting a lot on my experiences growing up. As a kid, I was different. It was rare for me to find places where I perceived that I fit. No matter what the metric, there were ways I frequently experienced a strong sense of otherness. I constantly looked for opportunities where I was like the other people gathered, and by the time I hit fifth grade, I realized that these opportunities required that I travel outside of my typical geography.

You see, early on, I realized that I was smart. I was that nerdy kid, incredibly enthusiastic about seemingly random things. When I discovered science camps at my local university, I was in my element. Finally there was a place where it was okay to be that geek.

Consistently being different is hard, especially when we live in a world that values conformity. I think nearly every adult can identify acute places in his or his childhood where, no matter what, feelings of difference were a constant companion. Feeling different can be excruciating. I remember some of the questions that used to run through my head when I was younger: Why must I salivate over logic problems instead of waiting with baited breath for this week’s basketball games? Why would I rather bury my nose in a book than chat it up with the “cool” kids? Why is it that I can’t wait to get home to do my science experiment instead of play video games? And yes, I would have used the word “salivate” to describe my relationship with mathematics.

Regularly, I use concepts of otherness when discussing my personal comfort with using LGBTQ alphabet soup to describe myself. To me, LGBTQ simply indicates that I experience the world differently than cisgender, heterosexual people. To make sense of cisgender, heterosexual people, I try listening to them describing their experiences. However, the more I learn about said experiences, the more convinced I am that mine are different. I’ve accepted that there is an overwhelming majority of straight, cisgender people around me. But, just as science camps afforded me a place to relax and be myself, spend time around LGBTQ Christians gives me yet another space to experience a deep sense of belonging.

With some frequency, I find myself wishing that more conservative Christians could appreciate my desire for room to relax and just be me. When I was a kid, I learned that virtually every school had smart kids. The way to get a bunch of smart kids together was to create opportunities that acknowledged how our smartness could be used to create community. Similarly, I believe that it’s absolutely true that virtually every church has LGBTQ Christians. It’s worth creating space for LGBTQ Christians to gather, to have an opportunity to feel less different and more at home.

I remember the huge sense of relief when I walked into my first Gay Christian Network conference in 2008. All of a sudden, I was with 200 other people who were like me! However, I almost couldn’t work up the nerve to go. I had heard so many conservative Christians completely bashing any and all LGBT organizations. If these organizations claimed to be Christian, then they were certainly distorting the truth of the Gospel and merely parroting what itching ears wanted to hear. I didn’t feel like I had any space whatsoever to affirm an event like the GCN conference as a good thing. I have since attended five GCN conferences because GCN is one of the few LGBT Christian organizations that has any space to walk alongside me as I journey alongside Christ. To be sure, it’s only one space, but it is certainly a space where I feel an absolute sense of being at home.

In many ways, I felt that same sense of home when I first went to science camp. As I have grown older, I have heard many arguments about why schools should stop providing programs to gifted students. While I’m confident places like science camp will continue to exist, I hope every student has somewhere at school where he or she feels a sense of being accepted. Why are we so quick to tell people who find themselves in a minority demographic that nothing can be done in their backyards to help them feel more at home?

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.

Some Thoughts about “Third Way” Churches

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A reflection by Lindsey

As I’ve been hanging around Twitter, I’ve seen a number of people asking questions like, “What does it mean to be a Third Way Church?” The question comes after a Southern Baptist church in California decided to adopt Ken Wilson’s approach to questions of LGBT people in the Church. Wilson proposes a Third Way where the hallmarks include “welcoming and embracing” LGBT people rather than adopting an “open and affirming” position. From what I can tell, many of the Third Way churches are trying to shift thinking found in Evangelical churches. It’s worth noting that Wilson’s book is arguing for a different approach than a Roman Catholic documentary by the same title. I have a soft-spot for what Wilson is trying to do because Wilson pastors a Vineyard church. In college, I used to attend a Vineyard church before coming into my current Christian tradition. A significant number of my close friends identify strongly with Evangelical traditions, and my reflection here should be read as coming from the perspective of an outsider musing on different things I’ve observed.

Culture war issues invite binary thinking. Many commentators say, “You either affirm gay marriage or you don’t,” or “You teach homosexuality is a sin or you don’t.” Within the binaries, I think it’s fair to say that there is no middle ground. However, I am no stranger to the conversation about LGBT people in the Church. I’d posit that approaches like Third Way and Generous Spaciousness are trying to move people away from asking binary questions about LGBT Christians. In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t had any time to actually read Ken Wilson’s A Letter to My Congregation yet, and I don’t intend to describe his exact approach in this post. Nevertheless, I think Third Way approaches are becoming increasingly common.

Many evangelical churches have a Third Way style approach to questions of baptism. Whether a particular congregation would prefer to perform adult baptisms, many churches argue rather strongly for the idea that a person should only be baptized once. If a person has grown up in the church and was baptized as an infant, many congregations accept the newcomer through a letter of transfer. Some churches ask every newcomer to meet with the pastor, choosing to acknowledge a new member through a public affirmation of faith. Churches that strongly prefer adult baptisms frequently perform infant dedications or adopt a posture of quietly looking away when parents visit a church associated with members of their extended family to have the child baptized. Equally, it’s common for churches that have infant baptism to wait for parents to make a decision about whether and when a child should be baptized. There’s generosity in giving people space to discern their timing.

Relative to questions of LGBT Christians, I think many Third Way evangelical churches consider the status of various newcomers to their communities. Has an LGBT couple been married in another Christian tradition? Is civil same-sex marriage available in communities around the church? Does an LGBT couple have children they want to raise in the Christian faith? From what I can see of authors advocating a Third Way, these authors would say, “Let these families come and participate in the life of our church.” The communities generally strive to maintain uniform expectations for everyone in the church. If membership requires serving on a ministry team, then LGBT families are welcome to serve on a ministry team. If pastors ask people to participate using their various gifts and talents, then the pastors consider everyone’s gifts and talents. If the church has a newsletter that gets mailed, perhaps the church includes the names of everyone in the household on the address label. The choice to receive everyone who comes through the door with open arms seems to be a driving motivator of churches to adopt a Third Way approach.

Third Way approaches to certain issues do seem to be remarkably viable over the long term, at least in certain communities. I lived in England when I worked towards my Master’s degree. As such, I was invited to attend services at a lot of Church of England parishes. I was rather amazed at how the Anglican church takes a Third Way approach to the elements of communion. I remember attending one service where the person on my left was a strident defender of the belief that the Eucharistic elements became the body and blood of Christ while the person on my right thought the wafer was a poor substitute for Passover bread. Personally, I was experiencing a huge deal of cognitive dissonance. Things started to click together when the celebrant offered the Eucharistic prayers that had contained wordings very similar to the following:

“Accept our praises, heavenly Father, through thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, and as we follow his example and obey his command, grant that by the power of thy Holy Spirit these gifts of bread and wine may be unto us his body and his blood…

Wherefore, O Lord and heavenly Father, we remember his offering of himself made once for all upon the cross; we proclaim his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; we look for the coming of his kingdom and with this bread and this cup we make the memorial of Christ thy Son our Lord.”

In the wordings of the prayers, the theology was communicated as body and blood AND bread and wine. It seemed to me like the people on my right and on my left were self-selecting what parts of the prayers to pay attention to. As I queried different celebrants, I consistently heard answers that the English people had quite enough of Protestants killing Catholics and vice versa, and that the current approach allows people from different perspectives to worship together peacefully. These clerics thought it was admirable to bring previously warring people to the same table and to have a wide tent. While I can see where these clerics were coming from, I was still inclined to look at the situation more than a bit cross-eyed and would posit that most Catholic and Orthodox believers would resist this line of reasoning. One challenge of Third Way approaches is that they compel Christian traditions to determine where there is and is not space for disputable matters.

Suffice it to say, I do think Third Way churches are welcoming a great deal of liturgical soul-searching (for lack of a better word). How do these churches understand marriage? Might they take an approach of answering questions in the particular (i.e. Should we extend our blessing on these two men to share life together?) rather than saying, “Yes, we absolutely affirm the rights of all LGBT people to get married in our church.” Would a pastor consent to officiating a service held in a venue other than the church? Might the church adopt an approach of providing LGBT couples with legal counsel to navigate different ways of recognizing the relationship? Does the church want to dive deeply into exploring visions of celibate vocations that can be truly life-giving? Would the church consider crafting rites to allow people to enter a celibate vocation?

Here at A Queer Calling, we’re constantly talking about the need to help LGBT people discover truly life-giving vocations that empower them to live into the fullness of the Gospel. In my opinion, churches seeking a Third Way are trying to transition from a legal binary of “Yes/No” into a more holistic view of Christian discipleship. I think churches with a traditional sexual ethic do well to look at the fullness of their traditions in an effort to move beyond mandating LGBT people to a “vocation of No.” I also think that churches with a modern, liberal sexual ethic might consider listening to people seeking guidance in discerning vocation. As an observer looking in on the conversations, it seems like many people with a modern, liberal sexual ethic would say that LGBT people should be able to marry without providing any support to LGBT people who want guidance about living a celibate vocation. Likewise, many people with a traditional sexual ethic would say that all LGBT people should either be celibate or enter into opposite-sex marriages without considering the question, “What if a legally married same-sex couple came to my church, encountered Jesus in a real way, and sensed that God was asking them to grow in faith within the context of my Christian tradition?”

I’ve been in communities that I regard as Third Way communities. The Gay Christian Network works tirelessly to ensure that LGBT Christians feel welcome, independent of their conclusions on sexual ethics, providing support to LGBT people with both traditional and progressive sexual ethics as well as those who are still grappling with the questions. As a community, we’re committed to doing life together. Different people make various decisions about what to do in certain situations. However, we also know that every invitation to share life together is considered independently. Passing on one gathering does not mean that a person won’t be at the next. Despite differences in how we approach sexual ethics, we know that we’re diverse in just about every other way imaginable as well. For all of our diverse approaches, we hold in good faith that everyone is interested in growing towards Christ wherever he may lead. I think the community continues to exist because the people gathered constantly assert that as long as we all focus on Christ, we’re going to get even that much closer to living our lives in accordance with His will.

To be sure, there benefits and drawbacks to a Third Way approach. I completely agree that there are some issues where it does not make sense to try and work towards a Third Way. Even in this post, I shared that I am absolutely uncomfortable when communities try to take a Third Way approach to what happens to the Eucharistic elements. However, I do think that there are issues where it can be absolutely beneficial to take a Third Way approach. When communities take a Third Way approach, I see them saying, “You know, as we’re listening to the Holy Spirit together, we seem to be raising many different kinds of pastoral considerations. It’s worth moving prayerfully and humbly towards Christ in the midst of all these questions. We can be okay that we all feel like we’re trying to find our way in a fog. Let’s commit to remaining a community together as we focus on Christ and trust Him to guide us along the way.”

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.

Perspectives, Persecution, and #TakeDownThatPost

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This post is our second 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. You can read Jake’s most recent contributions to the series here and here.

In last week’s post, we opened our discussion about persecution by exploring the role of silencing. It was an odd juxtaposition of themes because the night before our post on silencing went live, we had tweeted the following:

Some context: several of our friends on Twitter were using the hashtag #TakeDownThatPost to raise awareness about an ill-conceived reflection from a youth-pastor-turned-sex-offender. Leadership Journal had given the anonymous convicted sex offender a platform to describe a sexual relationship between a youth pastor and a student in his youth group as a mutual, extramarital affair. We agreed that especially because of this publication’s intended audience (people in pastoral leadership roles), the editors of Leadership Journal needed to take a critical look at this article, and we posted our tweet.

By the time we checked Twitter the morning our blog post released, we had received some messages suggesting that we were hypocrites because we had shared extended thoughts about how silencing can be the beginning of persecution while seemingly arguing for some degree of internet censorship regarding a difficult conversation topic in the church. People wanted to know, were we engaging in a sort of doublespeak, claiming that we should be able to share our story about life together while actively trying to block a repentant sex offender from sharing his story? Some of our readers asked if we were aware of the various obstacles that make it difficult for convicted sex offenders to reintegrate into society.

Truth be told, we each have different reasons for discerning carefully questions of how society should approach reintegration of convicted sex offenders. Lindsey has personally been considering many facets of this issue after learning in 2012 that some churches have been offering or at least considering adults-only services so that registered sex offenders can attend without violating their parole. Lindsey has been surprised at how aspects of sex offender registries can create challenging legal issues, such as the social stigmatization and penalizing of juvenile offenders years after they have reached adulthood and the difficulties that legally of-age high school students can face when dating someone barely underage. Sarah is a survivor of sexual abuse, and much like the young girl described in the article in question, Sarah was a middle school student when the abuse began, and the abuser was in a position of leadership in a church. Sarah has encountered many incredibly judgmental reactions when people have learned that Sarah has forgiven the perpetrator and would be interested in understanding more deeply why he did what he did. Many of these people have reactions rooted in a belief that only survivors’ stories should be told because any story from the perspective of an abuser would invalidate a survivor’s story.

We have two entirely different sets of experience that we bring to discussing this issue, but neither of us would argue for silencing repentant sex offenders. We find it exceptionally important to navigate the tension between arguing against silencing and simultaneously advocating that the church change the tenor of particular conversations. While asserting that all people the space to share their stories, there’s good reason for us to be concerned that certain approaches to difficult topics can result in stories being used as weapons.

Persecution can occur when certain stories become weaponized. This is just as relevant to stories about LGBT issues as it is to stories about sexual violence. We can appreciate the authenticity of stories like that of Rosaria Butterfield–a heterosexually married Christian woman who previously identified as a lesbian–while simultaneously affirming that the way Wheaton College handled student concerns about her speaking engagement has made LGBTQ students perceive that the campus has no place for their stories. Many LGBTQ Christians have had to fight for the right to share their stories amidst dominant cultural narratives that suggest being gay is a choice and it’s possible for gay people to become straight. As a celibate, LGBT, Christian couple, we’d be deluding ourselves if we failed to acknowledge that some cisgender, heterosexual Christians see our way of life as some sort “ideal” for LGBT Christians. We try to do whatever we can to prevent people from weaponizing our story, but we know that we cannot control how people pitch us and our story to their friends. There’s nothing we can do to prevent others from pointing at the gay couple next door and saying, “Why can’t you be in a celibate partnership like Lindsey and Sarah?” But seriously, we do not recommend celibate partnership as a way of life for all LGBT Christians. If you have used our story as a weapon against your LGBT friends, can you a) stop it, b) apologize for the way your actions have brought harm, and c) practice showing love in the midst of difference?

We decided to participate in #TakeDownThatPost because we thought the article in question was full of linguistic weapons with potential to re-traumatize survivors. The original version portrayed a sexual relationship between a youth pastor and a likely middle school-aged student as a) an extramarital affair, b) a mutual relationship, c) an innocent friendship that went too far, and d) a shared experience of sin and temptation. It is absolutely wrong-headed, misguided, and soul-crushing to suggest that middle-school aged students knowingly and willfully “seduce” their pastors, teachers, or coaches. Even aside from Sarah’s story, we know far too many survivors of sexual violence who have suffered under the pervasive societal assumption that they were somehow “asking for it” to happen to them. The anonymous author showed no concern for how his actions impacted the young girl, the church, and the broader community. Despite naming “selfishness” as the main sin that spiraled out of control, his discussion about the impacts of sexual sin was remarkably self-centered and zoomed in on everything the author himself lost as a result of his actions.

When a story has become weaponized, people must step forward in order to prevent further harm. There were a number of courageous people sharing their stories across the internet in an effort to educate Leadership Journal as to why the originally published piece was so problematic. Tamara Rice wrote up a detailed review of what happened when she suggested that #TakeDownThatPost might be a way to amplify survivors’ concerns. Mary DeMuth penned an excellent open letter to the anonymous writer to explain why he needed to grieve how his actions affected other people and to provide some insights regarding what repentance looks like. As we followed developments on our Twitter feed and read pieces from various authors, we noted many thought-provoking conversation starters about how survivors and their stories could inform responses from Christian leaders. The vast majority of tweets we saw that were tagged with #TakeDownThatPost argued for meaningful, authentic, and solution-focused dialogue.

Advocating for safe spaces for all people is the antithesis of persecuting others. As we think about civil conversations on important issues in the Church, we keep asking the question, “How do we create safe spaces for everyone to share ideas freely?” The anonymous man writing from jail may be of the opinion that he had an entirely mutual relationship with the young girl in his youth group. He is free to write that down in the journal he may keep under his pillow, in letters to his close friends, on his personal blog, or in other venues available to him. It is probably good for him to get his thoughts on paper, so he can reflect more deeply on how his actions were sinful. However, we do not believe it is appropriate for a top-tier magazine targeting Christian leaders to publish a six page sermon describing a sexual relationship between a youth pastor and a child as a mere extramarital affair rather than sexual abuse. Leadership Journal and similar publications have an obligation to Christian leaders to raise thoughtful discussion about preventing sexual abuse, modes of restorative justice, and helping survivors heal from trauma. As we followed #TakeDownThatPost on Twitter, we perceived that its advocates were attempting to educate others on holding constructive conversations about sexual abuse while putting safeguards in place for survivors to participate without shame.

Consumers of a publication, a television show, or any other form of media have the freedom to critique its content. Suggesting that #TakeDownThatPost was an instance of persecution aimed at sex offenders is similarly ludicrous as the suggestion that, for example, A&E was persecuting Phil Robertson (and Christianity) by suspending him from Duck Dynasty. Consumers of A&E who objected to Robertson’s interview were not saying, “We think Phil Robertson and all conservative Christians should be silenced.” Instead, the main message we heard throughout that whole fiasco was, “A&E should not offer a platform to a person who conveys harmful stereotypes about gay people, comparing them to humans who have sex with animals.” As we said in our first post of this series, freedom of speech in America does not mean that you are entitled to escape the social consequences of what you’ve said. And when powerful outlets like Leadership Journal respond to previously silenced people amplifying their voices with direct calls to action like #TakeDownThatPost, we all benefit from the deeper dialogue.

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.

Fostering Civil Conversations about LGBT People and the Church

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We are grateful to our collaborators for this post: David Romano, Erik, Bill, Alison, and one other friend who wishes to remain anonymous.

Here at A Queer Calling, we work very hard to foster civil conversation about LGBT Christians. One of the first things we did when we started our blog was to author our comment policy. We know that comment boxes on the internet can make people seriously question the future of humanity, especially when contentious topics are being discussed. Since we value vulnerability and hospitality, we wanted a comment policy that helps people get over their understandable fear of the combox.

We recently tweeted:

It is completely, absolutely, totally, and entirely true that we welcome all people to leave us comments. We have especially enjoyed thoughtful challenge from people who disagree with us, even going so far to say that respectful disagreement is one of the ways we feel affirmed. However, we’ve noticed some differences in how various ideological camps have decided to engage with us as bloggers. We wonder who is on the other side of the search engine when we see that people have found is with search terms like: “Are Sarah and Lindsey of A Queer Calling really celibate?” “A Queer Calling are they really gay or straight people trying to fool Side A people,” “Are Lindsey and Sarah of A Queer Calling really orthodox?” “A Queer Calling self hating gays,” and “Lindsey and Sarah gay does their priest know.” What strikes us about these questions is that they are clearly asking something about the two of us but the searcher seemingly values asking the hive mind of an internet search engine more than contacting us directly.

We’ve received some correspondence from more conservative readers that indicates fear of getting shouted down by more liberal readers for whom the ship on LGBT Christian issues has already sailed full-steam ahead to complete affirmation of same-sex marriage. We wonder if people feel more comfortable having these discussions when everyone present basically agrees theologically and politically. If everyone gathered has come to modern liberal conclusions about sexual ethics, then it’s easier to decry those who hold traditional conservative conclusions as “out of touch” (if you’re among a reasonably polite group) or heartless hypocrites with no awareness of how the LGBT community suffers from soul-crushing oppression. We’ve noticed a breakdown of civility on both sides when people assume at the outset of the conversation that anyone who disagrees with them is ignorant or malicious.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a chance to see what happens when people move a conversation that started somewhere else into purposes that suit the sensibilities of their own camps. We had published a post where we discussed the question, “How would you suggest that Christian traditions respond to LGBT people who have given their all to celibacy only to see it fail them?” Another blogger, Daniel Mattson, quoted from our post and added significant spin that misrepresented the intention of our original post entirely. Another writer, Austin Ruse of Crisis Magazine, picked up on that blogger’s themes. Some other celibate, LGBT, Christians who are our friends recognized the quote as being from our blog, which is how we found out that we had been misrepresented. When we found these articles, we published our initial response. We and our friends were amazed at how quickly the conversation our post had tried to start became less than civil. We all noticed how both writers seemed to be making demands that celibate, LGBT, Christians should “stop whining” and “man up.” The more we’ve thought about this incident, we have realized that it’s not an isolated event. The blogosphere is extremely contentious when it comes to LGBT people and the Church, where similar patterns continue to repeat themselves. Several of our friends wanted to provide their own responses to those who feel qualified to give such orders to others just outside of their ideological camp. Therefore, we decided to give some space here at A Queer Calling in an attempt to add more voices to the conversation about how to foster civil discourse about LGBT people and the Church.

On the internet, it is really easy to bully. The internet affords bullies a range of tools. A person can successfully move a conversation into his or her own ideological camp and attempt to isolate it by not providing a link to the original source. It becomes easy for readers to take authors out of context when this happens. In thinking about one of the aforementioned articles, Erik reflects: “I might address the academic failures of the article – Ruse doesn’t properly cite the quotes he uses, thus denying his reader to explore the original context of the quote in full & demonstrating poor editorial practice.”

Additionally, an author can package condescending messages in a multitude of forms. Bill comments, “Instead, in pundit like tones, they have introduced a new unhelpful conversation, with new loaded terminology like ‘new homophiles’ — a quick and easy way to lump, categorize, and demonize without encountering anyone in the spirit of truth.”

One celibate, LGBT Christian we talked with who wishes to remain anonymous shared:

“I felt my nerves get on edge a bit and my heart crumbles when I read statements made by Mattson and Ruse that lacked empathy; I felt shame after seeing the Han Solo eye roll photo insert and the crying baby. Why did it affect me that way? I am not the person whom it is directed at but I can relate. I felt bad for those it was aimed at. Writing like that instills condescension towards ‘the other.’  How can it not be meant to injure? Although the written word is only ink on paper it can be a wielded sword in the blogosphere world.  And it reminds me of bullies on the playground.”

When people are bullied, they often have to convince themselves that they have a story worth sharing. Alison asks, “My question for Mattson is: Are you saying that I should stop opening up to other Christians about my struggles? Are you saying they should stop opening up to me? We should just assume that others have a greater cross without talking with each other about those crosses?”

Many people can exaggerate and misrepresent what a particular Christian tradition teaches about LGBT people. It is no secret that many Christians traditions have confusing and possibly less than charitable teachings about LGBT people. There are many official documents from several traditions that people can quote in order to shout down the voices of LGBT people and their allies. However, it is also possible to go beyond the meaning a particular teaching. David Romano, a Roman Catholic, highlights the way that authors can contort the official teachings of his Christian tradition in order to weaponize them:

“I accept that homosexuality is ‘disordered,’ meaning outside of God’s natural law, and that I am to remain single and chaste. I have no objections to these positions at all. What I object to, however, is a blogger or writer who refers to me as ‘evil,’ The Catholic Church does not believe I am evil; the Catholic Church specifically states in the Catechism that those with same-sex attractions are to be treated with dignity and respect. Referring to my orientation as ‘evil’ and suggesting that “manning up” means sitting in a corner and not discussing my personal struggles is hardly respectful.”

Entrenched ideological divides can make it difficult, even impossible, for people to share legitimate concerns about the status quo. When it comes to questions about LGBT people and the Church, we are often talking about the status of things in the present moment. Many times, people sharing about how they have been hurt by the church find unexpected points of connection with others, with concerns both near and far to LGBT Christians.

Like other members of the Church, many celibate, LGBT Christians want to be there when people are experiencing pain. Alison notes:

“When I have said ‘I felt like there was no place for me in the Church,’ the response has often been, ‘Me too!’ from every orientation. The response has been an embrace of one another. Mattson is correct in saying ‘Who HASN’T felt lost in the Church at some point in their lives?’ What I don’t understand is why he thinks we (all the Christians who talk about these struggles, not just gays) are ‘whining’ when we mention this incredibly formative, incredibly common experience. Does Mattson think gay Christians are the only ones talking about this experience? I recently heard nearly those exact same words from the mother of a child with a sensory disorder. The child has a hard time with the Divine Liturgy, and she felt like there was no place in the Church for her family. She felt like others were judging her for leaving early with her son or not attending at all, like she’d be given an attendance mandate, and no support in fulfilling it. If anyone called that conversation ‘whining’ or told her that she should just assume that everyone has a greater cross to bear, I’d be livid with that person. She was sharing a piece of her heart with me. If she hadn’t told me how the church could be more supportive of disabled children and their parents, how would I know what she would find encouraging and supportive?”

Bill reflects, “It is unfortunate that people such as Mr. Ruse or Mr. Mattson end up distorting and reducing to stock characters the very people who would likely agree with them the most if they were just comparing doctrinal and moral notes apart from spin.”

Our respondent who wishes to remain anonymous noted, “Unfortunately fighting will continue to be a problem as long as there are bullies and audiences.”

Lack of civil conversation with one another implies we can forget that the Church is, by nature, a communal organism. Erik states:

“There is a deeper problem in Mr. Ruse’s entire line of thinking that I feel compelled to address: his understanding of the nature of the Church community. It concerns me, deeply, and for matters entirely unrelated to the particular topic of homosexuality, that Mr. Ruse seems to argue that folks ought not discuss or share the nature of the cross they carry. It is unclear whether he thinks only Gay Catholics should, or everyone with a cross should – he cites the example of an unmarried woman in his parish who doesn’t complain about her singleness, so it may be that Mr. Ruse would simply prefer if everyone stopped complaining.”

As the Body of Christ, we are called to be mindful of everyone in our midst. After all, we are to mourn with those who mourn. Paul exhorts us to not be proud, but to be willing to associate ourselves with people in low positions. Part of finding ourselves in Christ is uniting our sufferings to His and to one another. Alison shares:

“My vlog has attracted several porn addicted straight men contacting me for support in facing their struggles. They contact me privately and ask me to pray for them. I go a few steps further, and connect them with resources for porn addiction and communities which focus on supporting those with this specific struggle. I can’t imagine their struggle, I’m glad they have a community to share their struggle with. I’m glad that they share their struggle with me, and I feel honored to pray for them. When they talk about how I can be more supportive of them in their struggle against sin, I listen.”

Erik reminds us:

“Community falls apart as people become more apathetic and disinterested in fixing parish churches. They do not participate in community functions, they do not send their children to religious education programs, and they do not know the people they’re sitting next to in the Church…. But if you value the community of the Church, if you care about our unity in Christ, if you care that Christ shared in your sins so that you may be free of them, then perhaps you might consider letting Gay Catholics have their seat at the table, and listening to their sufferings. I’d be willing to bet they want to listen to your sufferings, as well, and maybe, just maybe, lift you up in prayer. Maybe, when all is said and done, Gay Catholics just want the Church to be a real community.”

We’ve noticed that the internet can be a powerful tool for building community, even in areas filled with the most tension, but only when discourse remains civil. Civil conversation remains courteous while simultaneously allowing space for everyone and their concerns. In the Church, it’s important that we have space to listen to people who are in pain and are hurting. In so doing, we can help bear one another’s burdens while continuing our collective journey towards Christ.

We would like to close today’s post by reiterating Alison’s questions: “Why should we stop sharing each other’s burdens? Why should we stopping encouraging one-another? Why should we stop being a part of each other’s lives? Did I miss something?”

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.

What does it mean to be “affirmed”?

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Pro-gay and anti-gay, Side A and Side B, liberal and orthodox. We’ve heard these terms thrown around regularly in discussions about LGBT issues within both Christian and secular contexts. Some people refer to these dichotomies as though the terminology is interchangeable, which causes great confusion (i.e. many people who would identify with the term “orthodox” would not consider themselves “anti-gay”). Within the past couple of years, we’ve noticed that another set of dichotomous terms has emerged within the conversation: affirming and non-affirming. This language seems to be taking off both within the LGBT Christian blogosphere and in published works on this topic, and as far as we can tell it is used almost exclusively by people who believe in a progressive sexual ethic. When we have asked our friends who prefer the terms “affirming” and “non-affirming” as opposed to others for describing one’s viewpoint on sexual ethics, the most common response we’ve received is, “Those descriptions are less stigmatizing than others and are more conducive to dialogue about LGBT Christian issues.”

To be honest, we have trouble seeing that perspective. It seems to us that interchanging “anti-gay,” “Side B,” and “orthodox” as though they’re attempting to communicate the exact same concept is problematic enough, and replacing these terms with the word “non-affirming” only exacerbates the problem. The same issue exists when replacing “pro-gay,” “Side A,” and “liberal” with “affirming.” As we see it, no one is actually asking the question, “What does it mean to be affirmed?” Rather, the assumption is that in order to be “affirming,” a person must hold theological beliefs that sexually active same-sex relationships are morally equivalent to sexually active opposite sex relationships, and that same-sex marriages should be performed within all Christian traditions.

Last week on Facebook, one of our straight friends observed that, “No matter how much you love and care about an LGBT, ‘Side A’ person, if you don’t support modern sexual ethics, you might as well be in league with the Westboro Baptist Church.” It’s a bit of hyperbole, but something in that statement resonated with us because of the challenges we’ve faced in advocating for our own needs for affirmation. We’ve observed that the process of defining the terms “affirming” and “non-affirming” privileges the perspectives of LGBT people with progressive sexual ethics and ignores the experiences of those who hold to a traditional sexual ethic. While we’re interested in hearing all stories that other LGBT Christians are willing to share with us, including those from people whose beliefs are different from ours, we feel it’s time to share a different take on what it means to be affirmed. Today, we’re going to tell you more about what makes the two of us, and many other LGBT celibates, feel affirmed within our faith communities.

We feel affirmed when other Christians ask questions and avoid making assumptions about what words mean, what we believe, and what our doing life together means to us. It’s comforting when we know that the other folks in our parish are able to talk to us openly and honestly just like they are with everyone else. We appreciate it when our fellow parishioners are willing to ask us, “Why do you prefer to use the language of LGBT?” instead of insisting, “If you’re not having sex, you’re not really LGBT. You should say instead that you ‘struggle with same-sex attraction (SSA).'” When folks ask us about our sexual ethic instead of presuming that it must be progressive because we’re LGBT, we feel welcomed in church exactly as we are. And we feel especially affirmed when members of our parish show interest in talking with us about how we see our way of life as opposed to glancing at us with suspicion every Sunday. We appreciate people who have gone the extra mile to invite us into their homes for dinner in order to have these conversations because it shows they really care about getting to know us.

We feel affirmed when other Christians are willing to engage in thoughtful conversation with us about areas of disagreement. Whether we’re interacting with someone whose sexual ethic is more liberal than ours or someone who disagrees with our approach to living celibacy together instead of apart, it’s important to us that we can participate in civil and edifying discussions about LGBT Christian issues. If a person only wants to preach at us without listening to our perspective, or alternatively is too afraid to express disagreement with us on any issue, we feel unwelcome. For us, an important part of affirmation is knowing that other Christians would consider involving us in tough conversations just as readily as they would ask us to participate in discussion of less contentious matters.

We feel affirmed when other Christians are friendly and hospitable to us and also allow us the opportunity to extend them friendship and hospitality. Being the Church is about being community–one that is not only united in belief, but is also united in commitment to loving each person. When members of our parish are able to connect with us somewhere within the 99% of life that has nothing to do with sexual ethics, we feel like we are truly part of one big family. We appreciate it when others can see us as Lindsey and Sarah with all our virtues, vices, interests, and personality traits instead of viewing us as “the LGBT couple” or “the celibate LGBT couple.” We love getting to know everyone in our parish, and being able to practice hospitality toward our fellow parishioners is an important part of what makes us feel affirmed.

We feel affirmed when our priest and other Christians welcome us to full participation within the life of the parish. We are very blessed to have a priest who invites us to use our gifts for the good of the whole community. We’re grateful that in our parish, we are able to participate in all ways that are available to unordained members of our Christian tradition. Shortly after we joined our current parish, we were invited to fill a slot in the rotation for families serving coffee hour. Sarah assists with teaching Sunday school. On the Feast of Pentecost this year when our worship service included readings of Acts 2:2-4 in multiple languages, Lindsey contributed by reading in Spanish and Sarah participated by signing the passage in American Sign Language. We feel not only welcome but also encouraged to participate in service projects, educational activities, and all other aspects of parish life just like everyone else.

We feel affirmed when other Christians acknowledge our humanity and dignity. When we know that the people at our church view us as people and not a project, we can relax and be ourselves. So many Christians claim license to tell LGBT people what we should or shouldn’t be doing. People who respect that we are human beings with dignity, created in God’s image and likeness are usually not interested in speculating on or policing decisions we make in our personal lives. We feel welcomed at church when other members of our faith community do not take it upon themselves to give us ethics lessons every Sunday and are instead willing to let our spiritual fathers counsel us as needed.

As we were listing and explaining each of the above points, we couldn’t help but notice that what makes us feel affirmed in church is the same basic set of items that would likely come across as “affirming” or at least “welcoming” for LGBT and heterosexual, cisgender people alike. Do not most Christians seek faith communities where members are willing to ask questions, listen, engage in conversation, be friendly and hospitable, welcome others to full participation, and recognize the divine image in each person?

For one of our Saturday Symposium questions, we asked our readers what they think it means to be affirmed. Some (both on the post itself and on Twitter) responded that true affirmation necessitates blessing marriages for same-sex couples. But others broadened the focus to helping people feel welcome and loved in general. One commenter, Jonas Weaver, stated that in his opinion support of same-sex relationships is part of the issue, but, “Affirmation is treating them with full weight and dignity and allowing them the freedom of conscience. Oddly, true affirmation sounds a heck of a lot like friendship.” Another commenter, LJ, mentioned, “It would be helpful to have a term to describe people who don’t believe that same sex ‘consummated’ relationships are ok, but basically aren’t jerks to LGBT folks.” It gladdens us to know that there are people with a liberal sexual ethic who do not reduce the issue of affirmation to a statement of, “I’m okay with it if you and your same-sex partner have sex and get married.”

More often than not, we feel caught between a rock and a hard place where the concept of “affirmation” is concerned. Most LGBT people we know would insist that for an individual or church to be considered “affirming,” he/she/it must support the blessing of same-sex marriages and hold that same-sex sexual activity is no different morally from opposite sex sexual activity. However, this approach to defining “affirming” removes freedom of conscience from the picture altogether. If a person or church must reach a particular moral conclusion on this issue in order to be “affirming” in the truest sense, isn’t this basically saying that those people and churches who offer an authentic hand of friendship to everyone while maintaining a traditional sexual ethic are actually hateful and homophobic? Is this manner of thinking about “affirming” and “non-affirming” suggesting that those with a traditional sexual ethic don’t know how to love? Perhaps refuse to love? Do one’s intellectual capacities for sorting this issue deserve respect only if one reaches a liberal conclusion?

Most of the time, we feel disenfranchised because progress within the marriage equality movement seems to throw couples like us, and arguably LGBT celibate singles as well, under the bus. It’s easy to assume that all LGBT people, even the conservative ones, are eagerly awaiting a future in which every Christian tradition will perform same-sex marriages and everyone will be “free to marry.” But what many people, including several friends of ours, consider “affirming” would actually cause us to feel oppressed within our Christian tradition. One concern that continues to grow for us is that as people with a progressive sexual ethic claim the word “affirming” for themselves, conservative straight Christians may become less and less willing to engage with LGBT Christians at all. It would be a profound loss if straight people with a traditional sexual ethic felt they could no longer extend a hand of friendship to any LGBT person for fear that doing so would inadvertently communicate theological agreement. We’re already seeing this happening. The word “affirm” has two dictionary definitions: 1) State as a fact. Assert strongly and publicly; and 2) Offer someone emotional support or encouragement. As we see it, the world would be a much better place if all of us could focus on the second definition.

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.