Relative to last time’s A gay reader confronts a Catholic bishop in an airport, I yesterday got in the below interesting perspective from Jon Hatch. Jon has a Master’s of Philosophy in post-conflict reconciliation studies (via this program at Trinity College Dublin) and is currently entering the final phase of his Ph.D. of Theology.
My training in post-conflict studies helps me put a lot of this [crap] into context—not to approve or rationalize it, but to understand the emotions and feelings from which it arises. Basically, after a war or a conflict there’s a period of transition into a new form of stability. Those who lost the conflict, or at least are now on the short end of it, are incredibly vulnerable. They feel lost and frightened, not knowing what the future holds for them under the new regime. What the new regime must do is make assurances that the losers will be treated equitably. (This almost never happens unless the victors get a lot of help and are really held to account by the international community. Victors are much more inclined to just do away with their enemies, to further marginalize and oppress them.)
The Gay Wars are just about over. They are entering their final phase. And not to put too fine a point on it, but we on the side of full gay equality have won. And the losers are really scared. How will they fare under the new regime? Are we going to force them to do things they don’t want? Marry people they don’t want to marry? Make them teach in their schools things they don’t want to teach? Of course we won’t do any those things. But this post-conflict transition will nonetheless be as unhappy and messy a process as every other one.
We’re all raw and exhausted from the war (and in pockets of course a lot of the war continues). We have lost so many loved ones, watched them be destroyed by forces that should have loved and protected them. The forces within the Church are losing this war incredibly ungraciously, stupidly and, frankly, cruelly. That often happens. The end of wars is often incredibly cruel and vicious. (On YouTube see, for example, the film Der Untergang, about the final days of the Third Reich).
But we must win this war graciously, intelligently, without malice or vengeance. We must dream of better. We must work for better. A better Church: the Church of St. Gregory, St. Teresa, Catholic Workers, the nuns of El Salvador, of the Solentiname community, of Fr. Gerry, James Allison, the Worker priests of France, Taize, Oscar Romero, and others who show us what true love and sacrifice for the weak really looks like.
Our Church exists in the midst of the Vatican’s. But there are so many more of us out here than there are priests and prelates walking the hallowed halls of the Vatican.
Christ assures us that the very gates of hell will not stand against us. The Kingdom of God, he tells us, is within us. And thanks be to God for that.
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I appreciate Jon Hatch sending you this missive, John – and yes, it does give me something new to think about, but like others here, I look at Jon talking about ‘having won the war’, then I look around me, and the fact that both my husband and I are talking very seriously about getting our Concealed-Carry gun licenses and, well… /sigh
For years now, I’ve noticed that when ‘Christians’ trot out their ‘clobber passages’, one verse consistently gets left out – while they’ll gleefully quote Leviticus 18:22, the companion verse – Leviticus 20:13 – the ‘being gay is an abomination and you must be killed for it’ verse – didn’t get mentioned about 99% of the time. However, that’s no longer the case. I’m noticing Leviticus 20:13 being mentioned more and more often – and it *really* bothers me. In the days and weeks after Amendment One passed in North Carolina, I was horrified to hear pastors demanding that gays and lesbians be rounded up and stuck in concentration camps, or that ‘the government should kill gays’ and on and on and on – the line between ‘the Bible says you’re an abomination’ and ‘the Bible says you’re an abomination AND you must be murdered for it’ is being crossed more and more often, while too many Christians just look at their toes and mumble ‘well we aren’t ALL like that’. I don’t like it. Not. One. Bit.
As for the ‘war’ analogy – I know it bothers some, but to me it’s becoming more and more apt – with each victory for us, the rhetoric just keeps ratcheting up a little higher… just a little higher… I’m already hearing that ‘war’ rhetoric a LOT from Christians – people who seem to legitimately think that their rights are being stripped away, that the National Guard will be breaking into their churches any time now… and that fear is being manipulated into anger. Lots and lots of anger.
These days, I can’t help but feel like Gandalf and Pippin from the last Lord of the Rings movie looking out at the mountains of Mordor and seeing the violent and rage-fueled firestorm just peeking over the tops of the mountains. We’ve talked a lot about the ‘tipping point’ in which rights for us are supported by the majority of Americans – and polls consistently show we’ve already reached that point – but what about the OTHER tipping point? There are a lot of very, very frightened ‘Christians’ out there – and if that fear is already driving them to violence (anybody notice how the number of LGBT hate crimes is going through the roof this year?) what’s going to happen if/when President Obama is re-elected? Or we win the ballot initiatives in Maine, Maryland or Washington State? Or DOMA gets struck down by the Supreme Court?
I admit it – I’m scared. I’m scared for my husband. I’m scared for my LGBT friends. I’m scared for my straight ally friends and family. I’m scared for myself. I WILL continue to assertively push for full Equality. I will continue having discussions with folks about how this anti-Gay animus affects me and my loved ones… but I have this growing dread of what the final days of this war are going to look like.
not to get off topic- but you might look into http://www.sacramentopinkpistols.org/
there are chapters in many states…..
It’s only a war if there are two sides out to get each other – otherwise it’s just a slaughter. The war analogy loses the idea of one side being oppressed and victimized, and instead allows them to both claim to be under attack. Don’t let them get away with it.
I appreciate the sentiment, but as others have said, the use of war metaphor squicks me out a little.
It’s funny I should happen upon this post today. God gave me these words for some good friends and fellow Christian LGBT allies just the other day and I thought I’d share them here:
“We walk a delicate balance between compassion for the sinned against; righteous indignation for their plight and grace for those who sin against them by way of oppression and spiritual abuse. May our compassion for the sinned-against never excuse us from grace for those who sin against them. Likewise, may our grace for those who sin against them never cause us to forget what we’re fighting for…
…
Trust me, that thought was bred of my own failings in this area: the tendency is to get so caught up in the conviction to stand up for what’s right that we forget that the grace of God is what delivered us from the same poisonous doctrine. Being right is never an excuse to view ourselves as better than anyone else. Quite the contrary; it is yet another reason to be humble and gracious before God.”
squicks!
This is a beautiful thought. And as a Christian who is gay, it’s a challenge showing grace to those who gleefully condemn me and would oppress me. But letting go of some of those really ugly feelings I harbor is important.
I would only ask, as a Christian allies of people who are gay, please don’t use grace and peacemaking as cover for staying silent rather than standing up for what’s right.
I thought last year’s debate on ordination standards in the Presbyterian Church (USA) was a great example of walking the line you describe. It is also an illustration that showing grace is not the same thing as avoiding conflict.
I am better than these guys. And their words and actions prove it every day.
I don’t, personally, consider myself better than them. “There but for the grace of God go I…” and all that. I was raised in a church. If I were not transgender and bisexual, I would not have that same kind of raw empathy that only those on the inside can have. And who knows what I might have done or said against LGBTQ people? I feel actually very privileged to have gained this in-y0ur-face crash course on human nature and conflict. I have grown immensely because of it.
Matt, subconsciously, you *do* think you are better. “There but for the grace of God go I . . . ” simply means that you believe you deserved his grace more than the bigots who are too ignorant to know better. I know you don’t consciously mean that. But think about that phrase. Why did you receive the grace of God, but not the innocent who was born into a bigoted, ignorant family? Because for some reason, you deserved it more?
I’m not picking on you in particular, Matt – that phrase just really bothers me. And it is normal human nature to believe we are “better than.” I’m sure “they” believe they are better than you, or me, or John Shore, that wolf in sheep’s clothing who keeps leading us astray.
What we do with that belief, not whether we believe it or not, is what defines us.
i thought a key part of the concept of grace was that nobody deserves it. but then i was raised calvinist.
I was raised a Methodist but taught the same thing.
I don’t disagree, n. and Diana – I just really don’t like that phrase. But if no one deserves God’s grace, then it’s just . . . random?
When I was just learning about adoption, back when my oldest was a baby, I was involved in a discussion with some other adoptive parents and some birthmothers. One of the a-moms said something like, “I would never criticize any of you for having a child out of wedlock. I had sex before marriage, too, and there but for the grace of God . .. ”
The birthmothers in the group were genuinely hurt, some were angry. “So God gave YOU His grace, but ignored me?” “You believe that God’s grace made sure you didn’t get pregnant, and that the son I bore and have loved for 30 years without ever knowing him, the son I miss every day of my life and who I hope is a joy to his adoptive family – he didn’t come from grace??”
Usually, we use that phrase ABOUT someone we perceive as less fortunate than ourselves. But rarely do we say it directly TO the person/people we’re referencing. When you do, it takes on a whole different meaning. God gave ME his grace; sorry he passed right over you.
I’m not saying that Matt (above) actually feels that way – but ever since that conversation, I’ve thought about that expression differently. I believe it is something we say when we feel like we were handed good fortune or dodged a bullet, in an attempt at humility – to give God the credit instead of taking credit ourselves. But the message remains the same – “I am the blessed one, sorry your life sucks.”
Needless to say, not an expression I use anymore.
Re: “if no one deserves God’s grace, then it’s just . . . random?”
This is an important doctrinal difference between evangelical and mainline Christianity: Calvinists, Armnianists and Universalists and is relevant as to “how one becomes a Christian.”
The Arminian (Evangelical) point of view of Free Will teaches that we participate in our own salvation. Grace is conditional upon us believing, accepting Jesus as our Saviour, being born again, repenting and asking for forgiveness, asking Jesus to come into our heart, etc. Grace is conferred upon us in exchange for us choosing God.
Calvinism ascribes to Total Depravity. Our sin nature passed onto all of mankind through The Fall of Adam makes us so sinful such that no one can do anything to achieve Grace, including believe. We do not participate in our own salvation. God chooses us. We don’t choose God. Various degrees of predestination abound and is a sticky topic. So God chooses some but not all? That seems …unjust.
Universalists believe God chooses all of us and reveals God’s self to us in God’s own way and God’s own time. Substitutionary Atonement through the death of Jesus may or may not play a role.
Other non-dualist faiths reject the idea of original sin, believing in a more yin and yang approach that all of us have evil and divine within us and all have the potential of having the divine spark/chi/atman/soul activated within us. As the Native American Spirituality tale goes: the one that grows is the one we feed.
Evangelicals would say being innately sinful, none of us deserve grace. God offers it as a free gift. It’s our job to reach out and accept it.
Calvinists would say none of us deserve grace, but God offers it as a free gift. Who are we to know who and why God chooses some and not others.
Universalists might say God loves us all so much that God will never stop drawing all of God’s creation back to God’s self and God will always make a way. Grace is that way and it is for everyone.
I want to be a universalist… So bad. But i look out at the world and total depravity is still the most observable part of any theology ever, in my opinion.
I don’t know if I’m a universalist. I’m looking into it and I want to read “God’s Final Victory,” by Eric Reitan which purports to make the most comprehensive case for it. But I digress.
I know it’s easy to look at the world and see almost nothing but Darkness, but that’s not because Darkness is the strongest force in the world. It’s because Darkness roars and churns and screams bloody murder to make itself known so that none can deny its existence. The Light, on the other hand, is humble, quiet and gentle, seeking to do no violence, even to the Darkness, which it wishes only to redeem. The drawback to that approach is that the Light is harder to see if you don’t know where to look, but if it changed, it would cease to be Light.
It’s all a matter of perspective, and this is what draws me most toward universalism:
It’s the difference between hearing the bloody howling of the Darkness, seeing the destruction it has wrought and looking out at a world going to Hell, and finding the tiniest, quietest sliver of redemptive, life-giving Light and looking out at a world being prepared for Heaven.
Just my perspective.
Deserving…. THAT is a hot-button trigger word for me. To live in a dark, straightjacket of a fundy home where spirit breaking was part of the daily routine, but still clinging to a clean, unspoiled concept of God who protects His children, comforts them, and gives them The Way in which to Live that brings… IDK, something better than what I was living.
I was the classic good girl, following the rules to earn the seal of approval–praying, communing, proselytizing, and studying the teachings. I did everything I could do “right”. I was hassled in school for my denominational affiliation, yet I didn’t give up.
And when things got quite bad and fear was thick, I prayed and prayed and prayed. Falling asleep mid-prayer was common for me, if only because God was the only being at that time who was real to me, who promised to be there for me when I needed Him.
You can likely guess the prayers weren’t terribly successful, not until I was able to move out and get help. But deserving… if I did the correct things and still couldn’t get God’s intervention, then there must have been something wrong with me, right? Then maybe I ‘deserved’ all that I endured?
There is nothing to deserve. I couldn’t ‘deserve’ the love and care of my parents–one who was absent, the other mentally ill. I will not again allow my faith to be sullied by the notion of deserved, conditional love again. If God cannot love His creation without the context of pity and undeserving, then there’s a problem. Love from pity is not love.
I get what Matt is saying and I’m not criticizing either, but I’m with Mindy.
Ah, hon. Welcome to the recovering fundamentalist section of John Shore’s page. You can sit by me. There’s plenty of room.
The not-good-enoughness of fundamentalism is soul-crushing. John was kind enough once to publish a note I wrote about that here:
http://johnshore.com/2011/07/17/the-patriarchal-ego-fortifying-psyche-destroying-soul-crushing-domineering-brain-washing-fear-inducing-manipulative-spiritually-abusive-world-of-the-fundamentalism-i-know/
Yes. The idea of not deserving has been perverted into magnifying just how loathsome and vile we poor wretched souls are, and boy don’t they like to preach that thick from the pulpit and project that feeling out onto everyone they meet. And it reinforces the conditional love that so many who have been reared in that faith have experienced by everyone in their lives who should have loved them best and unconditionally and didn’t. They reject an unconditionally loving God most likely because the cognitive dissonance of our parents and families and ministers and friends not matching how an unconditionally loving God would love us would be too painful to bear. And, so the sad news is that it is easier to be angry than sad…and keep preaching the angry punishing God that we see reflected in all those God-fearing people around us than to believe that everything we’ve ever experienced as love thus far has not been.
The good news is this is not God.
Ugh. So much spiritual violation and bloodshed. It’s never easy to think you are alone, yet it’s never easy to know that you’re in good company, you know?
The recovered fundy section now turning into the support group!
John is such a patient man. It was surprising to learn he’s Christian too! Didn’t know those two things existed in the same space!
I joke, and yet this is the space in which I still pivot in terms of Christian beliefs and values. Didn’t realize until lately how much un-learning I’m still doing after being out of my particular ‘cult’ over 15 years. I’m still blaming Christ for what skates by under his radar, with his name hijacked and attached to it. WIP.
So thanks Christy. If it’s alright, I’m gonna tuck in right next to you here. *hug*
Have either of you read Jay Bakker’s book Son of a Preacher Man? He talks about how he discovered grace, as an adult, and then he asked his father why he never told him about that. And Jim said, I didn’t know about it, either. Sad.
Grace isn’t about “deserve,” and it’s not about “depravity.” It is about how unimaginably much God loves us. People can’t fathom that kind of love, so they devote themselves to looking for the meanness in the gift. It’s not there, so they invent it. It’s not there. The challenge for many of us non-fundies is to get that across to people who’ve only heard the meanness.
I haven’t read it, Sharla, but you’re right, “It is about how unimaginably much God loves us.”
As the anger waxes and wanes about feeling deceived and lied to and knowing the abuse that goes on and the magnitude of what it takes to admit and absorb one has been brought up in a cult … I have learned the same insight that Jay came to: They can’t teach what they don’t know. How desperately sad is that.
At its heart this is about toxic family systems, learned behaviors and habits, indoctrinated hierarchical insulated social systems, fear, manipulation and unhealthy psychology sanctioned by doctrine and dogma; it goes deep.
In Leonard Cohen’s song _Come Healing_, there is a line “none of us deserving the cruelty or the grace” that i couldn’t resist mentioning in this context. Not sure what the real answer is, though
Mike, I totally hear you, brother. Sometimes I am so hurt and angered by the anti-gay rhetoric being spewed that I could s**t a brick.
As long as we’re engaging in this dialog, let me offer yet two more unsolicited thoughts. Do with them as you will.
When we respond to hate with hate, the whole thing escalates. When we offer wholesale indictments of Christians as judgmental bigots and religion as evil, we allow them, in turn, to paint us distorted caricatures of overly-emotional, evil aggressors who are destroying society and attacking God Himself.
Who pays for this escalation? Johnny – the gay kid who lives in Podunk, Pennsyltucky. Johnny doesn’t have the luxury of running away to a gay ghetto on a coast where it truly has gotten better. For Johnny, things have gotten immeasurably worse.
Look at what happened when our side had an overreaching reaction to Dan Cathy’s anti-gay remarks. It was a truly disheartening backlash. The popular sentiment behind the run on chicken sandwiches was “we’re sticking it to the gays”. My guess is that the other kids in Johnny’s class were more emboldened to abuse him because they saw their friends and family doing exactly the same thing (on TV, on facebook, and at lunch). Are we surprised that our seeming political victories have correlated to a higher incidence of gay teen suicide? I am by no means defending indefensible bullying behavior. I am only suggesting that the more heated the public battle, the worse it gets for Johnny.
The other thought I’d offer is this: the intent of anti-gay Christians counts for something (maybe not everything, but at least something). Many anti-gay Christians truly and sincerely believe that gay people are damned hell. Fear is a powerful motivator – especially for the parent of a child who is gay. I’m not saying that their intent excuses their impact. But it’s not fair to label all anti-gay Christians as haters. They may be objectively intolerant and bigoted (which are emotionally freighted words that probably do not advance the conversation). But some people think that “loving” means “trying to save you from hell”.
I’m far from successful, but I sincerely try to assume the best intentions of those that disagree with me…at least going into the conversation.
I believe that it is possible to be assertive (maybe even aggressive) without being unkind. I believe that our moral argument about the real harm they are causing will carry the day. So I focus on the impact, not the intent, of the anti-gay Christians. BTW – I thought you did exactly this brilliantly in your exchange with the Catholic duo at the airport.
I really do appreciate what you are saying and the compliment you paid me.
However, at a certain fork in the road, you and I part company. In my view, demanding equality should not be considered as an escalation. Forcefully saying “I will not live by the values you dictate or legislate for me” is not escalation.
You speak of Johnny. I would speak of Matthew Shepard. People have never needed a reason or an escalation to hate gay people, beat them, and leave them to die, tied to a fence. I believe that what happened to Matthew Shepard is, in fact, less likely to happen today precisely because we stand firm and say, “enough.” (Even if it’s only saying, “I’ve had enough of you and your chicken sandwiches.”)
So what is kindness? I believe sometimes it is saying, “you seem to feel it’s OK can bully this kid Matthew … now, try to imagine doing it once I’ve taken a baseball bat to your knees.”
Jesus and I part company on this as well, so I don’t believe I necessarily hold the high ground. But to sometimes respond to hate with a fist, or a baseball bat, or with the fire-bombing of Dresden, seems entirely appropriate.
Nothing surprises a bully – or a President, a Senator or a Congressman – who believe they safely ensconced at a dinner party of “friends,” than to have the man shaking their hand say, “I think you should be ashamed of the way you treat the gay community. You, Sir, have acted in vile manner.”
I am generally considered a very kind man. And I’ve learned nothing surprises a bully more than a left hook from a nice guy.
Hey Blog Reader, if you ever choose to author your own, it HAS to be called A Left Hook from a Nice Guy.
Love that! But if I author a blog, I won’t have time for rants and diatribes here … choices, choices, choices.
Just sayin’
and our love affair grows.
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