A CHRISTIAN VOICE FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: THERE IS ONLY ONE CHRISTIANITY!

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

THERE IS ONLY ONE CHRISTIANITY!

"Conservative Christians will throw down the gauntlet to the Archbishop of Canterbury this week and demand that he disown the US church over gay bishops." [For the full article, see here.]

Although I have used the label "progressive Christian" in some of my writings, I've never felt comfortable with that term, any more than I feel comfortable with the designation of others as "conservative Christians."

You are either a Christian or you're not! A Christian adheres to the Gospel of Christ, a Gospel that is not open to interpretation!

That Gospel mandates us to be agents of God's grace in this world; live by implacable trust in Jesus to guide us and deliver us through (although not necessarily from) our sufferings and hurdles in life; live lives of love; peace; reconciliation; inclusiveness!

There is no other Gospel, and there is no other Christianity! When one seeks to exclude any of God's children from full and equal fellowship and/or seeks to deny others civil and sacramental rights, he or she is not a Christian, regardless of what he/she calls him/herself!

Of course, there is a large tent within Christianity that can, and should, accommodate all types of theological perspectives! However, those perspectives must be circumscribed by the Gospel message as outlined above, or else those perspectives can't in any meaningful way be considered to be within the Christian rubric!

Christians aren't handmaidens to the secular powers that be; they are not haters or hate-mongers; they do not in any way advocate prejudice and/or discrimination, either through rhetoric and/or action; they do not remain silent in the face of the oppression of others; they seek to impact the culture by preaching and living out the love of God for all of our fellow human beings; they exude kindness and harmlessness to people, and have the faith in God that requires us to speak truth to powers that undermine, if not contradict, Jesus' call for us to realize that the Kingdom of God can easily be grasped by living up to the mandate of Jesus that we love God and love others, even those whom we perceive to be our enemies.

Let's not be suckered into believing that there are different stripes or kinds of Christianity! Let's not be sanctimoniously "liberal" in thinking and saying that some Christians are more "Bible-believing" than others! The fallacy that "conservative Christians" are more "Bible-believing" than are the "progressive" or "liberal" Christians is patently false!

Those who selectively choose Bible verses that support their preconceived prejudices and conveniently ignore those verses that contradict those prejudices are not "conservative Christians!" Indeed, they are not "conservative," in that they don't adhere to the Gospel of Jesus; they are not "Christians" as they don't adhere to the Gospel of Jesus!

Biblical literalism doesn't denote a Christian! Indeed, knowledge of the Bible doesn't denote a Christian!

Being called by God, obedience to God's call on one's life, showing forth the love of God, and loving and trusting God through Christ define a Christian! Indeed, even if one doesn't know or understand a word of the Bible, he or she can be a Christian, if he/she loves God and loves others! Christians worship God and not the Bible!

The Church of Jesus Christ is a large, open tent! Yet, it will never be large enough to embody hateful and exclusionary rhetoric and actions by those who are wolves in sheep's clothing who demean and humiliate others in the name of "God" and in the name of "love!"

The institutional Church, unfortunately, has within it all too many leaders and members who embody those hateful values! On the other hand, the Church of Jesus Christ (not to be confused with the institutional Church that can, but frequently does not, intersect with the Church of Jesus Christ) only contains within it people who adhere to the only Gospel to be found in Christianity, and Jesus' Church is impenetrable to, and has no place for, those who refuse to adhere, or are incapable of adhering, to that blessed Gospel!

For professing Christians to advocate prejudice, discrimination, exclusion, and the oppression of others makes a mockery of the term "Christian," and shows that they are not agents of the Prince of Peace, but are witting or unwitting agents of the Devil whose rhetoric and/or actions do untold damage to others, as well as to the credibility in the minds of so many others of Christianity itself!

It's high time that it was made very clear: Those who profess to be Christians and who, by their hateful rhetoric and/or actions, make a mockery of the Gospel and of Christianity are deluding themselves!

However, none of us is to be deluded by them, and we are to educate intelligent, decent, and sensitive people to this fact so that they are not deluded by them either!

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2 comments:

Annie said...: Well said, Jerry!

I think we are in the same place right now. Keep speaking the truth in love!

Thanks,
Annie; October 2, 2007 at 7:45 PM
Jerry Maneker said...: Thanks so much, Annie. God bless you!; October 2, 2007 at 8:18 PM

FROM "THE CHRISTIAN LEFT"

"It’s easy to see the sinfulness and corruption of “the world” for what they are when you spend enough time reading what Jesus said. It has nothing to do with abortion and gay marriage. It has everything to do with the lust for money, power and control. Starving the poor and depriving the sick of health care, not caring for the least of these among us, is what angers God the most. It’s easy to see why the road is narrow. The world is very efficient at convincing even Christians that its agenda is good. When people try to carry out God’s agenda they’re labeled “Socialists” and demonized."

MUST-READING FOR THOSE INVOLVED IN THE LGBT CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE

In most Native American history, Gay, Lesbian, and/or Transgendered individuals were considered holy and treated with the highest respect. They were the historians, the healers, and the people of empowerment. They possessed the delicate balance of male and female, and were often honored for being unique and having a different spiritual calling. For their tribes, they were the mediators between the spirit world and the natural world. They were known in their separate languages as “naadle” (nad le) They who love their own kind, translation from the Navajo language; “winkte” (wink-day) would be woman, translation from the Lakota Sioux language; and “bade” (bah-day) male/female person, translation from the Hidatsa language. (By the staff of the Two-Spirit Society of Denver.)

CIVIL RIGHTS ARE NOT TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ELECTORATE!

We can't spend our time and tremendous amounts of monies trying to get the majority of the electorate to vote for equal rights. If integration of African Americans was put on the ballot in each state during the civil rights era, we would still have segregation and Jim Crow laws! There must be meaningful, coordinated, and aggressive grassroots, street, and organizational activism, coupled with the filing of civil suits at the federal level, to achieve equal rights. "Separate is not equal," and that fact must be, and undoubtedly will be, affirmed by the Judiciary in regard to Gay people, as it was for African Americans, and not left to the will and whim of the majority of the electorate, for to do so demeans Gay people, and puts each and every minority group's rights up for grabs. We would never think of putting one or more civil rights of Jews, of African Americans, of Asians, etc. on the ballot to be voted upon, and Gay people's civil rights must not be treated any differently.

Christianity Is A Lifestyle

Christianity is a lifestyle -- a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into a clever "religion," in order to avoid the lifestyle itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain, and still believe that Jesus is their "personal Lord and Savior." The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great. - Richard Rohr

THE BIBLE IS NOT GOD

The Bible is NOT God! To elevate the Bible to the status of God, not only is an injustice to scholarship and logic, but is a direct offense against God Himself. We are to have no idols other than God, and biblical literalists and many of those who seek to counter them, both use the Bible as an idol, elevating it to the point where they explicitly or implicitly believe that it contains all of God's Word to us. Jesus is God's Word, and Jesus makes very clear what God expects of His followers: to trust God over and above seen circumstances, and to love other people! That's what puts the lie to homophobic professing Christians' selective use of certain biblical passages to "justify" and impose their hateful prejudices on others; their re-defining Christianity, and God Himself, in their own image, thereby using not only the Bible, but themselves, as their idols; ignoring Jesus' words, work, ministry, and life! The Bible is best viewed as a "finger" that points us to a couple of the many dimensions of God. What the biblical literalists do is equivalent to the following: If I ask you where you live and you point in a given direction and I just keep staring at your finger, I'll soon come to know everything about your finger, its size, shape, fingerprint, and every single detail about your finger, but I won't come any closer to knowing where you live. I have to look to the place where your finger is pointing in order to know where you live. The same holds true for those who elevate the Bible as being the "inerrant word of God." No! Only God is the Inerrant Word!

LGBT PEOPLE AS "EUNUCHS SO BORN FROM THEIR MOTHER'S WOMB."

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb.... (Matthew 19:12)

I don't think any scholar who is truly spiritually sensitive can not see that "eunuchs so born from their mother's womb" refers to Gay and Transgender people who, on this earth, most closely reflect God Who is Spirit and Who transcends gender. LGBT people are God's gift to this world, and to His Church. Too many of the former largely reject that gift; Christ's Church, unfortunately, seems to comprise very few within the institutional Church.

THE CONFUSION OF "HEDONISM" WITH "GAY."

In my opinion, a distinction has to be made between "hedonism" and "Gay," and much public persona of Gay people, and the commentators on all too many LGBT-oriented sites, seem to be more hedonistic than Gay. Frivolity, indecency, and use of hateful epithets as self-identifiers tell us far more about them than it does about Gay people. They use "queer" because they feel "queer," and don't see being Gay in any other terms than being "indecent" and "abnormal." And many of them pride themselves on being outsiders! This reflects their psyches, and they are too dense to accept that fact, let alone change their rhetoric and self-perceptions. They resent anyone who tells them that they are not "mistakes," and that dignity is essential in living one's life, and they undoubtedly thrive on lack of such dignity. I learned a lot from a transgender woman, for example, when she resented the fact that I said that she wasn't a mistake! She tenaciously hung on to the fact that she is a mistake and resented any other possibility. The same is true for most Gay people who comment on assorted Gay-oriented sites. Blindly accepting the oppressor's rhetoric and actions has done inordinate harm to many LGBT people, and that's a great deal of what we must fight against.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AUGUST 4, 1857

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.

A NOTE ON THE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE USE OF PEJORATIVE SELF-IDENTIFIERS

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GAY RIGHTS ACTIVISM, BY DON CHARLES

1. Thou shalt not address thyself or thy kind with inaccurate, disrespectful or dehumanizing labels, nor shalt thou do or say anything to marginalize thyself or enable thy own oppression.

2. Thou shalt not treat thy moral crusade like a political campaign. Thou shalt not value the welfare of political parties over the welfare of LGBT folk, nor shalt thou bind the equality movement to any political party.

3. Thou shalt not disrespect transgender identity or transgender bodies, and thou shalt not kick thy transsexual brethren to the curb for political advantage. Thou shalt endeavor to rid thy movement of transphobia as well as biphobia, sexism, heterosexism, racism, sexual racism, ageism and class bias.

4. Thou shalt not defend, attend or fund any religious institution which preaches genocide against LGBT folk, and thou shalt pursue separation of church and state with all thy mind, heart and soul. Thou shalt directly confront religious institutions that preach LGBT genocide, and thou shalt use authentic, inclusive theology as a weapon against hateful doctrine.

5. Thou shalt not use the equality movement as thy vehicle for exhibitionism, hedonism, political ambition or self-promotion.

6. Thou shalt not excuse any form of inequality (such as exclusion from marriage or military service) on ideological grounds, and thou shalt not give LGBT equality less importance than other social issues.

7. Thou shalt vigilantly police media representations of LGBT folk for demeaning, ridiculous and vilifying portrayals, and thou shalt not fail to include Gay media in thy policings.

8. Thou shalt preach the gospel of comprehensive sex education. Thou shalt promote intelligent conversation about human sexuality, express thy own sexuality without shame, be considerate of thy sexual partners, and shun sex practices that are unhealthy, irresponsible or illegal.

9. Thou shalt access public and private education systems and use those systems to diminish fear and ignorance about LGBT people. Thou shalt not be turned aside from this goal by scurrilous accusations of "recruitment".

10. Thou shalt protect, nurture and serve as role models for LGBT youth, and thou shalt protect, honor and provide for LGBT elders.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

THERE IS ONLY ONE CHRISTIANITY!

2 comments:

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