The Rev. Dr. Jay

“Behold thy Mother” — Marriage, Family, & Salvation

Jesus created a family. Would voters in North Carolina or at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church recognize it?

That question occurred to me as I read the full transcript of President Obama’s interview this week about marriage equality. He mentioned the word “families” or “family” explicitly at least five times and referred to the various families he knows even more. (Read the transcript of the interview here.)

In fact, Mr. Obama talked about families more often than he talked about fairness and equality. And that’s exactly where the emphasis belongs. Fairness and equality matter so much because families matter so much.

Those who are opposed to marriage equality seem to worry most about what will happen to the “traditional” family. So on this Mother’s Day weekend, Christians might want to pause and consider just one traditional biblical family, the one Jesus created.

Go back to Good Friday for a moment and to John’s gospel. As Jesus is suffering the throes of an ugly death, something quite beautiful happens. He looks around and sees only a few of his intimates nearby, including his mother. And then he speaks to her: “Woman, here is your son.” Then he turns to the “disciple whom he loved” who is also standing there and says, “Here is your mother.” From that hour, the disciple took Mary into his own home (John 19:26-27).

So who is this “disciple” in the story? Is it the same one, the “beloved disciple,” that reclined so tenderly against Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper? Is it the author of the gospel itself, who recounted the first miracle of Jesus at a wedding? And by the way, where did all the other male disciples run off to at this moment, leaving just this one man with some women at the foot of the cross? (About that question, many gay and lesbian people could offer hundreds of anecdotes in response; but I digress.)

This is a rather peculiar moment. In the midst of profound suffering and on the verge of death, wouldn’t Jesus have other more pressing things on his mind than family planning? On the other hand, what else could be more urgent than what will become of those he loves once he’s dead? Could families be a matter of life and death? And isn’t that how many Christians would also describe “salvation”?

In this wonderfully peculiar gospel moment, Jesus explicitly creates a family. I would guess that this particular family had already been formed prior to this moment, but here Jesus doesn’t want to leave any doubts.

Nor should we have any doubts about this: only a very few jurisdictions in this country would even recognize what Jesus created as a family. And I wonder what would happen if Christian churches took a vote on it. Would our synods and general conferences and assemblies vote to recognize the mother of a dying man and that man’s male companion as a “family”?

The beloved disciple took Mary, the mother of Jesus, into his own home. Today, that household arrangement would face significant hardship without social security survivor benefits, IRS allowances in the tax code, and access to health insurance. These aren’t obscure social policy details, which is exactly why Mr. Obama spoke so frequently this week about families.

Some gay and lesbian couples cried as they watched our President declare support for marriage equality and “straight” allies shouted with jubilation and many religious leaders voiced a hearty “Amen.” They did this because of the most biblical and traditional reason there is: family.

In this Easter season, Christians celebrate the promise of new life. Mother’s Day celebrates the traditional family. Jesus wonderfully blended the new and the old as he was dying, by reminding us what family really means, just as President Obama did this week.

So here’s a peculiar thought: Mr. Obama’s interview would hardly be newsworthy if more politicians and religious leaders alike actually read the Bible.

Memo to PBS: Jesus Supports Marriage Equality

“See, I am making all things new!” That’s a great biblical exclamation for this Easter season (Rev. 21:5). But apparently the news media didn’t get the memo. That’s not terribly surprising, but I did expect more from PBS.

I have come to expect that both Fanatically Xenophobic (FOX News) and the Moderately Socialist News Broadcasting Company (MSNBC) to play the tired old religion-hates-gay-people card. It makes for great ratings. But the PBS News Hour?

The News Hour led their broadcast today with the great news that President Obama has declared his support for civil marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples. The story then shifted to the analysis part. And upon whom did PBS call to discuss “both sides” of this issue? Evan Wolfson, of Freedom to Marry, and the Rev. Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church, who is opposed to marriage equality. (Here’s the clip.)

Really, PBS? Did you just again trot out that silly old trope about religion never really catching up to the real world? Really?

So, PBS News Hour, you chose today, when the President of the United States – a man of deep faith – declared his support for marriage equality (and even cited religious reasons for it!) as the occasion to perpetuate the tired old cliché that religion is the opponent of fairness and equality? Really?

So, PBS News Hour, please consider that people of religious faith who fully and actively support full civil rights for LGBT people are not an anomaly, an aberration, or statistically insignificant. We’ve been raising our voices as best we can for quite a while now. Seriously, please do let us know what more we can do to get your attention. Seriously.

For now, PBS New Hour, please consider this, just from my little corner of the world:

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Pacific School of Religion (a seminary!), where I have worked since 2003, has been striving tirelessly for full marriage equality for all people. We’ve done this by joining our efforts with many other religious organizations, faith communities, clergy, and congregations all across the country. In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, the Center’s Coalition of Welcoming Congregations (more than 200 congregations) has spoken loudly and clearly about its support for civil marriage equality. (Read the Center’s statement issued today about the President’s support of marriage equality.)

The Episcopal Church, in which I am an ordained priest, will this summer consider a variety of materials for the blessing of same-gender relationships. Moreover, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism (among many other religious bodies) all support civil marriage equality for same-gender couples.

So, PBS, why am I picking on you? Because I’ve come to expect more from you than all those other television hacks trying to pass as journalists and who care only about ratings and advertisers.

Why am I picking on you? Because what you did today illustrates a much wider problem about religion reporting in the United States, a problem that has profound consequences not just for LGBT people but for immigration policy, international relations, and economics.

Why am I picking on you? Because LGBT teenagers are killing themselves, humans are destroying the planet, the gap between rich and poor grows wider every day, and we’re drowning in health care costs – and progressive people of religious faith actually have something to contribute to all of this! Would anyone know this by watching your newscast?

My peculiar faith as a Christian, an Episcopal priest, and a gay man convinces me wholeheartedly that Jesus supports full marriage equality for all people. And that’s just the tip of the religious iceberg of what I and so many other Christians believe Jesus would support in the effort to create a society in which all people thrive and flourish.

I’m more than happy to redouble my efforts to get the word out about the socially and politically good news of the Christian Gospel and to mobilize as best I can my friends, colleagues, and the hundreds of thousands of other Christian companions in this country who believe likewise.

That’s what I’ll do. Now, PBS News Hour, what will you do?

“Enchanté, Madame”: Why Good Policy Alone Won’t Save Us

Christ is risen and we’re killing the planet. I know – you’ve heard something similar countless times. Another species extinct. Another ecosystem threatened. Global climate change. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Maybe you haven’t heard this one quite so often: If it’s okay to rape women, it’s okay to rape the planet.

That grisly connection is, alas, being performed right now on legislative stages in Washington, D.C. and in far too many states. The link between the current war on women and the war on the planet (the former talked about incessantly these days and the latter, not so much), is subtle but vitally important.

I firmly believe that the many complex “issues” we face today are woven together in complex, lovely, troubling, spiritual ways. I want to try to evoke that here, if only as a preface to the great work our species must now confront. So let’s consider just a few of the dots that need connecting at the moment:

First, access to birth control and abortion (which is still technically legal in this country) is under attack. If only this were old news. I appreciate the moral quandaries faced by people of good faith about abortion, but now we’re seeing restrictions appearing even when the health of the mother is at stake, and even in cases of rape and incest. So, is it really okay to rape women? (For more on access issues, read here, which is wonky and policy-heavy, but important; or Rachel Maddow’s take on it here.)
Second, access to clean water, clean air, and a safe food supply is equally under attack. This doesn’t appear often enough in the headlines. According to some, the current Congress is the most anti-environment Congress in U.S. history. (Read more about that here; though this is a partisan source, it nonetheless provides helpful links to actual legislation, and it’s disturbing.)
Third, access to the truth requires tedious knowledge of legislative riders, appropriations bills, and countless other political arcana that make most people reach for a cocktail instead. The U.S. House, for example, recently passed a much needed piece of legislation for student loans, but paid for it by reducing health care funding that might affect women the most. (The word “might” is important there and I recommend Ezra Klein’s take on this here.)

These are not sexy dots to connect. But connect them we must. Consider this recent pithy observation about environmental responsibility from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams: the world is “not just a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.” (Read a great essay on this here.)

I can’t help but wonder if far too many men think the same way about women – women’s bodies as warehouses, incubators, resources, objects. We’ve had a few decades now of insightful analysis about the link between male privilege and ecological degradation – men can control “mother” nature just like they (try to) control women. But I’m not at all convinced that such a link has sunk into our collective consciousness. (Even less likely to have sunk in are the connections between misogyny, homophobia, and global climate change…but I digress.)

So I wonder: How might all of us think differently about our own bodies, the bodies of others, the bodies of non-human animals, and the body of this planet? Would thinking differently make a difference in how we live, the social policies we support, the politicians we elect? I hope so. But what does “thinking differently” mean?

What about “enchantment”?

A few years ago, I stumbled upon a book that proposed precisely that and I’m still trying to tease out its implications. The book is by James William Gibson, called A Re-enchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature. It’s an insightful, heartbreaking, hopeful, and lovely book. I also believe Gibson captured something critical and essential: arguing about environmental policy won’t solve any of our problems unless we rekindle our nearly forgotten enchantment with nature.

By “enchantment,” Gibson means many things at once: nature isn’t anyone’s private property; it isn’t just a “resource”; it has its own life and value and beauty quite apart from humanity; and it’s uncanny, uncontrollable, lovely, grotesque, compelling, beyond categories of human meaning making. It is, in a word, enchanting.

I really want to think more and write more about this, and I will. But for now, in the midst of these Great Fifty Days of Easter (Easter is a season, longer than Lent), I frequently find my spiritual attention gravitating toward the image of the “new creation.” The resurrection of Jesus wasn’t just for him, and it wasn’t just for every other human. In some way, Easter proclaims God’s stubborn commitment to life for everything, without exception. Now that is surely peculiar, thankfully.

So, could that great Gospel proclamation lead us to a re-enchantment with the world and all its many wondrously uncanny and glorious bodies? Could it, at long last, dismantle the utilitarian and objectifying posture toward women’s bodies that so many politicians, not to mention religious leaders, seem to adopt? Could Easter move us to find each other and the world around us enchanting?

I believe it could. And not a moment too soon.

Radical Nuns Take Over the U.N. — World Peace Declared and the Church Objects!

That is, of course, a ludicrous headline, worthy of “The Onion.” That said, and given some of my past experience with Roman Catholic women religious, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if they made the attempt.

Moreover, given the latest absurdities from the Vatican concerning apparently “rogue nuns,” I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the Church objected to world peace if it didn’t conform to orthodox doctrinal standards. I wish I were making that up. Alas, the Vatican recently voiced its objection to the compelling and effective social justice ministries of The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, even though those ministries are perfectly aligned with more than a century of Catholic social teaching. (Don’t try to make sense of institutional Christianity; it will make you crazy and drive you to drink. I’m here to testify.)

So let’s pause here. Take a deep breath. Perhaps we can frame these absurdities with the peculiarities of Christian faith. Sure, radical nuns taking over the United Nations is ludicrous. But consider the following story. Is it any less ludicrous?

Two friends are walking down a dusty, deserted road. They are sad and grieving over the death of a friend. As they talk about their lives and the state of the world and their grief, a stranger joins them on the road. This stranger has truly mind-blowing things to say about the meaning of life and those two friends are spellbound.

They invite the stranger to join them for supper. As they sit down to table, they finally recognize this stranger as their dear friend who had died. In that very moment, the stranger disappears.

That’s a rough paraphrase of a classic Easter season story from Luke’s gospel (24:13-35), often referred to as the “Emmaus Road story.” It’s one of my favorites. I like to pair it with the story about “doubting Thomas” that so many Christians heard this past Sunday. I like to pair those stories because both of them diffuse our obsession with certainty. Both of them dethrone human hubris. Both of them elevate doubt and humility to spiritual virtues.

I take both stories as cautionary tales for theologians (like me) and institutional Christianity more generally. Any attempt to make absolute statements about God, Christian faith, or spiritual practice will always fail. Always. Like the risen Christ in the story from Luke, God will always slip through our fingers in that very moment when we think we have it all figured out – or more pointedly, all nailed down, understood, captured, and controlled.

The truth of any religious tradition or spiritual practice does not reside in how well we talk about it or parse its doctrines or ensure its systematic coherence. No, the truth of any religion resides in how we live it, and how our living promotes liberation from oppression, social justice, human flourishing, and planetary thriving. If that kind of effective spiritual living runs counter to doctrinal articulation, it’s high time to adjust the doctrine. The entire history of Christianity bears painful witness to this.

To be clear, I’m not promoting intellectual laxity, moral libertinism, or “laissez-faire spirituality.” I believe Christians ought to make bold claims, strike outrageous social postures, and preach like our lives depend on it (because they actually do). But I also believe that we should infuse all of it with a healthy dose of humility. After all, we could be wrong; we have been wrong in the past; we will be wrong again.

Alas, institutional Christianity’s besetting sin is not boldness but safety; not risk for the sake of life but the status quo for the sake of survival; not reckless creativity but staid conformity, and mostly for the sake of power and privilege. And by “institutional Christianity,” I do not mean only Roman Catholicism.

So here’s a modest proposal for this Easter season. If even the most wonderful news of all time – the resurrection of Jesus – can slip through our fingers in the blink of an eye, then we might want to handle our doctrinal positions a bit more lightly.

Here’s the more pointed version: If the Church can’t control the risen Christ, then maybe it shouldn’t try to control radical nuns who are actually living the Resurrection in their work of social justice and human flourishing.

Is doctrinal adjustment too high a price to pay for new life? Really?

The Fairness of Death & the Generosity of Easter

The Word of God became flesh and was killed. God should have known better than to try to mess up a neat and tidy social system.

Every society needs an orderly system in which everyone knows her or his proper place. When everyone plays fairly and follows the rules, the whole thing runs smoothly. If you choose an unseemly profession, like being a tax collector or a prostitute, you shouldn’t expect to socialize with polite company; it’s only fair. If you squander your savings on wild parties, don’t expect any help from your family and neighbors; it’s only fair. If your anger about profit margins boils over and you cause a scene at the local IRS office, expect to be arrested and prosecuted; it’s only fair.

Pastor Rick Warren would apparently agree. In a recent interview, Pastor Warren explained this perfectly sensible worldview in response to President’s Obama’s call to shoulder each others’ burdens:

Well certainly the Bible says we are to care about the poor. There’s over 2,000 verses in the Bible about the poor. And God says that those who care about the poor, God will care about them and God will bless them. But there’s a fundamental question on the meaning of “fairness.” Does fairness mean everybody makes the same amount of money? Or does fairness mean everybody gets the opportunity to make the same amount of money? I do not believe in wealth redistribution, I believe in wealth creation.

As perfectly reasonable as that sounds, there are some problems with it. I’ll mention just two.

The first problem is this: virtually every single parable in the gospels. Take your pick – the parable of the sower, the prodigal son, the pearl of great price, the lost coin, the lost sheep, any of the wedding banquet stories – just pick one. You won’t find anything at all about fairness. But you will find the God of absurd, foolish, and gregarious generosity.

So how about this – let’s create a national economic policy based on Jesus’ parable of the laborers in a vineyard. Each one worked a different number of hours. Each one was paid exactly the same. (Matthew 20:1-16). Why, I wonder, hasn’t Pastor Warren thought of that? Or maybe his Bible doesn’t have that particular chapter in it (as my friend and colleague Susan Russell suggested on her Huffington Post blog).

The second problem is this: God raised Jesus from the dead. Now that’s totally unfair. After all, God is the one who so foolishly chose to plunge into the fleshy pool of human vulnerability; mortality has consequences. And besides, if we can’t expect God to play by the rules, surely chaos would result, and that’s just not fair.

But here’s the thing: God doesn’t care much about fairness. God cares far more about abundance – abundant grace, abundant love, abundant life. Not even death, apparently, can quash divine abundance. And that word – abundance – could surely ease Pastor Warren’s fears about “wealth redistribution.” There really is enough, more than enough, to go around for everyone. As far as I can tell, God has never heard of a zero-sum game.

So if Pastor Warren worries that the Gospel might rob the poor of their dignity (as he intimated in that same interview), he might want to meditate for a bit on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37); or the one about poor Lazarus begging at the rich man’s gate (Luke 16:19-31); or the story about that uppity foreign woman who taught Jesus a lesson about scraps from the master’s table (Matthew 15-21-28); or the woman with an unending hemorrhage (presumably without any health insurance) whom Jesus healed (Matthew 9:20-22).

That peculiar text called the Bible that Pastor Warren likes to quote also includes something else. To the wealthy, educated, religious elite of his day, Jesus said this: “Truly I tell you, the tax-collectors and prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:31).

Now that’s really unfair…thank God.

Harrowing Hell & Holy Liminality

Betwixt and between. Neither here nor there. Departed but not arrived.

Justice proclaimed but not yet fully practiced. Equality enacted but repeatedly denied. New life promised in the midst of death.

These are profound but often difficult moments. Some decades ago now, anthropologist Victor Turner analyzed moments of transition when someone has started to leave one phase of life but hasn’t yet moved fully into the next. Think adolescence, that awkward slice of life when one is no longer a child but not yet an adult. Turner referred to these as “liminal” moments, taken from the Latin word “limen,” for threshold.

The fecundity of these in-between states dates much further back than Turner, to ancient mythology. “Liminal deities” preside over thresholds, gates, and doorways, lending spiritual significance to border crossings. In Greco-Roman mythology, Hermes/Mercury was the messenger of the gods and guide of the dead, just as Janus became the god of doorways, of beginnings and endings. Janus, the god with one face looking forward and another looking back, is often associated with New Year’s Day, January 1.

Liminal moments can be challenging and disconcerting; just ask any teenager. My own constitutional impatience makes it difficult to rest after finishing a project; I’m eager to start the next one. Communities and institutions in transition frequently want to skip over all the unsettling liminal bits, those untidy passages where the past still haunts and the future remains unclear. Sloughing of the past too quickly risks losing what we might need to make a leap forward.

But there are other kinds of liminality, too. Moments of getting stuck between a past that we won’t relinquish and a future we’re unwilling to embrace.

The Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) heralded a long overdue transition toward racial equality in the U.S. Not only is a racially just society still woefully elusive, current legislative initiatives would drag us back to the “Mad Men” era if not a virtual Jim Crow. A woman’s right to make decisions about her own body should have been settled decades ago even as contraception is once again on the legislative table. The Supreme Court overturned state sodomy laws in 2003; lesbian and gay couples can now have sex without fear of prosecution but they can’t get married.

There is much work to do, and neither nostalgia nor utopia will help us. Navigating the liminal “betwixt and between” thus proves both rich and challenging. The past is familiar but sometimes painful; the future is hopeful but unknown. Today, on the Christian calendar, I’m reminded that Jesus hallows the liminal by harrowing hell.

The day between Good Friday and Easter, “Holy Saturday,” is a truly peculiar day. Suspended between the Cross and an empty tomb, Christian communities and clergy busy themselves with Sunday preparations.

Christian tradition has Jesus doing something on this day as well – descending into the underworld to rescue all those held captive by the Devil. This is the sacred version of “no child left behind.” In Janus-like fashion, the crucified Jesus refuses to forget the past even as he looks forward to a promised future.

One of my favorite depictions of this Holy Liminality is in the Byzantine Church of the Savior in Chora, Istanbul, where a gorgeous fresco covers the apse. It depicts Jesus, standing on the gates of hell that he has just smashed, raising Adam and Eve from their graves. Actually, he’s dragging them out from death. I can’t help but see both astonishment and a touch of reluctance in their postures: “Really? You remembered us? But where are we are going? What lies ahead?”

On this day, this Holy Saturday, in the midst of busy preparations for the Feast of Resurrection, let us pause, even for a moment, to remember what we marked yesterday: the lengths to which imperial forces will go to maintain the status quo. Let us remember as well all those who came before us, the pioneers and visionaries who carved an arduous path toward a better world. Let us remember all those who did not live to see that promise fulfilled. And let us remember all this to fuel the hope we need for the work still to do — a profound hope indeed, which, as tomorrow’s feast reminds us, was first announced by women.

The promise of tomorrow cannot be won by forgetting yesterday. That makes this particular Saturday not only peculiar but also, and therefore, holy.

Holy Fools for a Holy Week

Carrying his cross on the way to his death, Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me but weep for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:28). Indeed.

I’m sure Trayvon Martin’s mother has been weeping of late (read more). So has the mother of Dalton Lee Walker, a twelve-year old boy who took his own life a few days ago because of bullying, and on the very same day the documentary film Bullying opened nationwide (read more about that here). If she could, Shaima al Awadi would be weeping, not only for herself but for her four children. But she can’t. She was beaten to death in her San Diego home with something like a tire iron this past week. Why? She’s Iraqi and Muslim (read more here).

I’ve been reflecting this Lent on the powerful and poisonous confluence of male privilege and white supremacy – what it looks like, its effects, and what it will take to dismantle it for the full thriving of women and therefore also of the planet.

Now that we have arrived to Holy Week, I believe those reflections have been rather foolish. Isn’t it just a fool’s errand to dismantle centuries of white male privilege? Yes, it is. And I am happily a fool to try.

Palm Sunday this year, the beginning of Holy Week, is also April Fools’ Day. What a great coincidence for reflecting on the absurdity of marking with elaborate rituals these ancient, first-century stories – as if they mattered, is if they still speak today, as if they might actually change the world.

I think the best way to journey through this holy week is to don a jester’s cap and embrace the foolishness of the whole thing. Here let me offer two reasons why.

1. Religion is always vulnerable to being co-opted by empire.

In some ways, this is obvious, but far too often, not obvious enough. First century Palestine was an occupied province of the Roman Empire. Those political dynamics are reverberating throughout the gospel texts in ways most readers usually don’t notice.

I worry, for example, that talking about the “triumphal entry” of Jesus into Jerusalem (as most Christians do on Palm Sunday) is terribly misleading. I was reminded recently that on the Jewish feast of Passover, the Romans typically staged a military parade in Jerusalem to underscore their control and power. A leading military figure would ride at the head of the parade on a horse followed by the armored might of centurions and soldiers. (Read this provocative and insightful post about all this here.)

Put the story of Jesus into that context: He climbs on to a donkey, not a horse, and basically waddles into the city, not followed by soldiers but by the people. This is a moment of deep political mockery worthy of a 1990s-style ACT UP protest. The donkey didn’t even belong to Jesus – he had to borrow it. And the only armor his followers had were the branches of palm trees.

If ever there was a biblical precedent for April Fools’ Day, this is it. Jesus was making a profound joke, but with a point: Don’t take Rome so damned seriously.

Of course, and to put it mildly, one mocks imperial power at one’s own peril, especially when the very next thing you do is wreak havoc in the local IRS office, which is exactly what Jesus did with those money-changers’ tables in the temple – the prime location for religion’s co-optation by empire.

Now here’s something interesting: early Christians took this resistance to empire as an essential part of their faith. Just one example comes from a remarkable critique of the Roman household. Some early Christian writers critiqued the hierarchical ordering of the Roman household, which should be a microcosm of the Church, as the body of Christ, not the empire. (I blogged about this recently; read more here.)

This was an amazing leap forward for the liberation of women in the midst of a deeply patriarchal society – and not surprisingly, Rome did not look kindly on disrupting the configuration of the imperial household. Empires never look kindly on such things – not then, and not today.

Sadly, that kind of religious critique nearly disappeared in the fourth century, when the emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the empire.

So as we walk through Holy Week, we would do well to note that the State will always rely on religion to support its imperial power. At the very least, to follow Jesus into Jerusalem means that we must not remain silent about what happened to Trayvon Martin, Shaima al Awadi, and Dalton Lee Walker.

2. The Cross is Foolish

Let me count the ways. St. Paul, no less, wrote that the cross of Christ is just foolish, a stumbling block, silly – and therefore the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). I won’t pretend to know what Paul really meant by that or to understand it. But there’s a huge elephant sitting in most “liberal” or “progressive” Christian living rooms – the doctrine of atonement. And that doctrine is lurking around every corner of the rites and stories of Holy Week.

I read recently that one of the key reasons why younger generations stay away from Christian churches is the trouble they have with that doctrine. I have trouble with it, too! But I’m troubled mostly by how just one view of it has dominated American culture. Especially during this week, I think it’s important to remember that there is not just one such doctrine of atonement in Christian history or even in the Bible; there are many. And there are also many other ways to reflect on the significance of the Cross quite apart from notions of atonement.

That said, I believe reflecting on judgment, atonement, and forgiveness is essential for our 21^st century life, but those topics have been so twisted and distorted as to make that task nearly impossible. Let’s set that aside for a moment and consider something equally foolish.

I find it helpful to think about Jesus in this holy week as the radical companion. In that way I believe Jesus reveals something truly astonishing about God – the God of solidarity.

If you want to find God you could, of course, look anywhere, but you might want especially to look among the poor, the misplaced, the homeless, the suffering, and the grieving. You might especially look among all the victims of imperial power. That’s how I read the Bible.

Earlier in Luke’s gospel, in the Transfiguration story, the disciples of Jesus are discussing the “departure” that Jesus must undergo in Jerusalem. That word translated from the Greek as “departure” is εξοδον. That’s the very same word that Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible used to refer to the exodus of the ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt – yet another empire. I cannot believe this is just a linguistic coincidence.

Remember, Moses fled Egypt only to return in a decision to engage in radical solidarity with his people, to set them free. Here I believe Luke is inviting us to see in Moses and now also in Jesus that the same passion for solidarity belongs first and foremost to God.

Jesus models this with the choice he made about his own life. He could have, for example, chosen the path of a Levitical warrior to liberate his people by force from Roman occupation. I say “Levitical” warrior because the culture of tribal warfare from which that biblical book arose was constructed on an economics of patriarchal masculinity in which topping one’s enemies – with violence, if necessary – demonstrated covenantal faithfulness.

But Jesus chose instead to follow the path articulated by the prophet Isaiah. In that book, the Levitical warrior becomes the “suffering servant,” and rather than topping one’s enemies, that servant leads all the nations instead to God’s holy mountain where they learn war no more and beat their swords into ploughshares (Isaiah 2:4).

Indeed, Luke has Jesus quote not from Leviticus but from Isaiah at the beginning of his ministry: “God has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom for the oppressed” (Luke 4:18-19).

Both Moses and Jesus chose the path of radical solidarity, not for the sake of suffering but for the sake of freedom. The God who enters our struggle with us does so to lead us out – from death to life.

I believe that’s exactly what Luke’s Jesus meant when he said this incredibly foolish thing: “Take up your cross daily and follow me.” If we live for ourselves alone, we will die; if we live in solidarity with others, especially the vulnerable, the poor, the fearful, the oppressed, and the suffering, we will live – both in this life and the life to come.

That’s the remarkable path Jesus blazed for us to follow – surely for the sake of Trayvon, Shaima, and Dalton Lee, among so many others.

But do note: That path is costly. It comes with great risk. It is thoroughly foolish, not least because we will have to give up much to do it. But if we do, that path leads to unimaginable life.

May this week change all us so that we can, with God’s amazing grace, change the world. I know. That’s just foolishness…..and thank God for it.

Holy Solidarity: Lent & Liberation, Part 5

Trayvon Martin. Adrienne Rich. Shaima al Awadi.

I’m taking these names with me into the Christian Holy Week that begins this Sunday. I suspect that the first two names are far more familiar than the third. So here I offer some observations about all three and then why they help me to engage with Holy Week for the sake of profound social change.

Trayvon Martin

The blogosphere is bloated with important, scandalous, insightful, stirring, and stupid posts about this tragic event (and if you don’t what this about, read about it). I won’t try to add to the bloat here except to say this: I can’t remember the last time I was this disgusted by the so-called “criminal justice” system in this country. As many others have already noted, just imagine if Trayvon had been white and George Zimmerman black. In that scenario, and less than a century ago, Zimmerman would already be dead – lynched. (Just go back and watch the wonderful film Places in the Heart.)

White supremacy is a deep poison in U.S. history and culture. It won’t be extracted but by sustained force of will, honesty, and deep conversion.

Adrienne Rich

If I see one more obituary headline about this amazing woman describing her as a “feminist poet,” I’m going to run from my house screaming into the streets (much to the annoyance of my neighbors). So when’s the last time you saw a description of T. S. Eliot as that “white poet”? Ever see Ralph Waldo Emerson described as that “male writer”? I bet you’ve seen Langston Hughes described as an “African-American playwright.”

A standard-issue human being is white and male. Everyone else needs a label. Until that stops, justice will be elusive and human flourishing will languish.

Shaima al Awadi

Just last week an Iraqi immigrant and mother of five died from injuries inflected by a severe beating in her El Cajon home (in San Diego). At the scene there was a note warning the family to “go back to your own country.” El Cajon police said they are investigating the possibility of a hate crime. (The “possibility”? Really? Give me a break.)

So, you haven’t heard about this case? I hadn’t either until it leeched into my FaceBook feed nearly unnoticed (read some more here). Then I did some digging. Shaima al Awadi actually worked for the U.S. Army, translating, helping, consulting about Islamic culture. Where is the news media on this story? Where is our collective FaceBook outrage? Do we hear or see virtually nothing about this because she was a woman and also not an “American”? Probably. Sit at the intersection of white supremacy and male privilege and all this makes horribly twisted sense.

Shaima was beaten, apparently, with something like a tire iron. And she died from those injuries. How can any of us stand this? How can we go on living in such a xenophobic society, such a white supremacist, such a patriarchal society?

Of course, those are just three names, three human beings, among countless others few if any of us will ever know who endure the ravages of white male privilege every day. I can’t possibly try to “solve” all this. Who could? But here I’ll offer some brief reflections about why I find all of this important as I enter into Holy Week. I pray that this will inspire fresh ideas for action.

Christians will remember in this holiest of Christian weeks that Jesus faced a critical choice, quite literally a choice of life and death. He belonged to a rich and vibrant religious tradition that offered a number of options for his mission. He could have, for example, chosen the path of a Levitical warrior to liberate his people by force from Roman occupation. I say “Levitical” warrior because the culture of tribal warfare from which that biblical book arose was constructed on an economics of masculinity in which topping one’s enemies – with violence, if necessary – demonstrated covenantal faithfulness.

But Jesus chose instead to follow the path articulated by the Hebrew prophet Isaiah. In that book, the Levitical warrior becomes the “suffering servant,” and rather than topping one’s enemies, that servant leads all the nations instead to God’s holy mountain where they learn war no more and beat their swords into ploughshares (Isaiah 2:4).

In the gospel according to John, that choice is described as nothing less than the glory of God. Resisting the violence of imperial (read “white”) male privilege and choosing instead a deep solidarity with all those who are oppressed by such violence is, for John, the quintessential revelation of divine splendor.

In the light of that glory, recommitting ourselves to ending white male privilege is a recommitment to saving this planet from the ravages of imperial patriarchy. How could that not mark a week that Christians insist is “holy”? I should surely hope that Christians the world over would find that kind of path as marking our way toward Easter.

Women [and] Archbishops: Lent & Liberation, Part 4

Brackets matter. Take the title of this blog post, for example. It signals two things at once: 1) the topic of women in relation to archbishops; and 2) the tantalizing possibility of women as archbishops. The title manages both of those meanings with the nifty little conceit of brackets.

But there are other kinds of brackets, the kind that aren’t spoken but are clearly operational nonetheless. Like this: “For the sake of Church unity there are certain things [women’s ordination] that we really can’t talk about right now.” Or this: “Accepting gay people in our churches would break centuries of traditional Church teaching [about the all-male priesthood].”

Brackets are [functionally and politically] handy and [spiritually] dangerous. If we can’t say what we really mean and talk with each other about what really counts, does it really matter what kind of [political or religious] conversation we’re having?

Unless very skillfully used, I find brackets annoying. So let’s take the recent resignation of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury as an occasion to consider the insidious use of bracketing in Christian churches.

The circles in which I tend to run are abuzz about brother Rowan’s failure during his tenure fully to embrace lesbian and gay people. Anyone who has read his brilliant theological essays knows that he actually does affirm LGBT people. The real problem here has been his inability fully to embrace women. That failure is at the root of the “gay problem” – and it’s usually bracketed.

All of us engaged in the struggle for sexual inclusion need to be very clear that the entire struggle rests, not on sex and sexuality, but on gender – and especially on the status of women and women’s bodies.

So on this Lenten journey toward new life, I would like to share just three [further] observations about this struggle, which may seem arcane at first. Trust me; these matter, just like [insidious] brackets.

1. Raping Men is Worse [in the Bible] than Dismembering Women

The next time someone trots out the story of Sodom in Genesis 19 to oppose equal marriage rights – a story about rape, not “homosexuality” – ask that person about the strikingly similar and horrifying story in Judges 19.

sodom_destruction2 — Destruction of Sodom. The dismemberment of a woman apparently doesn't warrant divine pyrotechnics.

In that biblical story from Judges, a host is faced with the same dilemma as Lot was in the story from Genesis. In Judges, however, no angelic intervention prevents the sexual sacrifice of a woman to fulfill the requirements of a hospitable household. The woman in that story, an anonymous concubine, is brutally raped by Benjamite men in Gibeah and is later ritually dismembered to prompt retributive military action by Israel (see Judges 20:6-11; and for goodness’ sake, don’t let your children read the Bible!).

So why have no Hollywood films been made depicting the fate of that concubine at the hands of the Benjamite tribe in Gibeah nor of the swift retribution inflicted on the Benjamites by Israel? No European legal statute or Medieval penitential category emerged to describe the rape and ritualistic dismemberment of that nameless concubine. There is no sin of the Benjamites referred to as “Benjamy” or sinners as “Gibeahthites” as there are “sodomy” and “sodomites.” Why? (I’m grateful to the books on sodomy by Mark Jordan and Michael Carden for that essential question.)

The answer is painfully clear: biblical writers were truly horrified by the prospect of raping men. Dismembering women? Eh. Not so bad, really…

2. Polygamy Protects Women [Who are Submissive] in Households

colenso_rightfacing — Bishop John William Colenso

Only the most historically astute Anglican Christians today will recall that John Colenso was a 19^th century Anglican bishop in South Africa. He got into trouble by permitting new converts to Christianity to continue in polygamous relationships. This prompted a crisis in the Anglican Communion that didn’t get “settled” (if it really ever did) until the late 20^th century.

Even though both the 1988 and 1998 Lambeth conferences grudgingly accepted polygamy for the sake, ostensibly, of the economic well-being of women, something far more patriarchal is at work here. The (limited) tolerance of polygamy in all these decisions is directly proportional to the lack of any threat it poses to the gendered order of marital relations, more particularly to the patriarchal ordering of a household.

As long as there is a man in charge, we can live with a bit of [ethical] wiggle room.

3. Same-Gender [Non-Hierarchical] Marriage would Destroy the Ozone Layer

Think back to 2003. Remember all those objections to the election of openly gay and partnered Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire? Those objections were not about “homosexuality.” The voices objecting to that election made some rather revealing rhetorical shifts. They no longer referenced the biblical story of Sodom (that’s so 20^th century). Instead, they started insisting on the earlier Genesis accounts of the supposed “complementarity” of women and men as essential in God’s design of creation.

In a 2003, Peter Akinola, the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, declared that setting aside the “divine arrangement” of marriage as between a man and a woman is an “assault on the sovereignty of God.” In a rather startling rhetorical move, Akinola compared this assault to the human depletion of the ozone layer insofar as “homosexuality” marks a “terrible violation of the harmony of the eco-system of which mankind is a part” (See Steven Bates’ great account of all this.)

The “harmony” in question is none other than the gendered ordering of the patriarchal household.

Those are just three among countless instances of bracketing the dignity of women for the sake of preserving patriarchy. They call me to fervent repentance in this Lenten season for failing to do more to dismantle patriarchy. They also beg a question, at least for me: Why am I still a Christian? I do have reasons for embracing this peculiar faith, and I’ll try to articulate them as we move on toward Easter.

For now, I’ll just say this: there actually is a woman archbishop. Her name is Katherine Jefferts Schori. For some complex political, cultural, and religious reasons, she is not called “archbishop” but instead the “Presiding Bishop” of the Episcopal Church. But she is, in fact and in effect, an archbishop. Thank God.

I don’t mean that she alone will somehow erase the patriarchal past. I don’t even mean that she is a feminist (she might be, I don’t know). Given Christian history, those issues don’t matter nearly so much right now as the mere fact that the Archbishop of the Episcopal Church is a woman.

That gives me hope. I know it does for many others as well. And wouldn’t it be great if Queen Elizabeth II found hope in that, too? She, after all, will decide who will replace Rowan Williams. Let us pray…

Life After Patriarchy: Lent & Liberation, Part 3

The promise of new life marks the Lenten journey toward the cross and the empty tomb. I believe that journey is incarnated right now in the struggle for life after patriarchy. That’s not how most Christians think about such things. So how might we recalibrate Lent toward liberation?

The struggle to liberate women and women’s bodies from the power of white male privilege will take as many resources and tools as we can collect and figure out how to use, all of them bathed in fervent prayer and compelling worship. The effects of white male privilege are complex and deeply entrenched in daily life and they won’t simply dissipate just because anyone says they should.

Lent is a great time to reflect on those complexities and consider them carefully as we journey toward the promise of Easter. (In addition to these blog posts during Lent, I also recently offered a version of this particular post at All Saints’ Church in Pasadena; you can watch a video clip of it here.) I have some ideas about how all of this relates to the traditional biblical passages we so often hear during Lent, but for now I want to offer a bit more framing for this struggle.

First, I think it’s important to reiterate that I engage in this struggle as a white gay man. I am, frankly, perplexed and dismayed by the near-deafening silence from so many of my white gay brothers about the twin poisons of sexism and racism that infect western society, both today and historically.

We must all note carefully that “homophobia” is not the cause but the result of an insidious confluence of white supremacy and male privilege. I hereby confess my failures in recognizing that confluence in the past and call on all my white gay male comrades to do the same. I urge this not to wallow in white male guilt (which is totally wasted energy) but instead to re-energize our commitment to building a different world.

By committing myself to this struggle, I need not (and actually must not) denigrate being white, gay, or male. We’ve witnessed far too much of that “zero-sum-game” rhetoric of late, to wit: if someone else has rights, I’ll lose some of mine; if “those” people get married, my marriage is weakened; my success depends on your failure. None of that is actually true.

Moreover, I actually enjoy being gay, male, and white. That’s not the issue. The issue, rather, is this: My status as a beloved and cherished creation of God isn’t diminished in the least by insisting that others are, too.

I also believe we must keep the historical trajectory of this struggle over women’s bodies in view. There are so many milestones in that history, but here I offer just five to keep us grounded in the broader struggle.

Greco-Roman Culture. Christianity emerged in the crucible of empire, traces of which have lingered in our churches ever since. Not least among them is the tight bond that emerged among household arrangements, religious institutions, and the political ideologies of empire. This was especially true after the Emperor Constantine wedded Christianity to imperial sensibilities in the fourth century. Note this well: the State will never consider household arrangements a purely private matter; how households function, especially with respect to women and male privilege, is part and parcel of imperial ideology. That was true in the fourth century; it’s true today.

Basic Biology. Let us not forget that the 18^th century witnessed the discovery of the vagina and the uterus. Yes, that would be the eighteenth century after Christ. We can, of course, be thankful that those vital organs finally had a name of their own, but this served to provide a supposedly empirical basis for women’s “natural” domesticity. Thomas Laqueur wrote a truly eye-opening book on the history of gender and sex in western culture, which I highly recommend: Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. This is, among other things, an important cautionary tale for anyone who thinks “science” alone will save us.

Anti-miscegenation Statutes. White people mostly prefer to forget those laws in the 19^th century forbidding mixed-race marriages, which suddenly necessitated the need to refine what in the world race is. Moreover, those statutes were often applied unevenly depending on the gender of the parties. It was, for example, far more egregious for a black man to try to marry a white woman that it was for a white man to try to marry a black woman. Why? The reason in part, both then and today, is the need to emasculate black men for the purpose of propping up white supremacy. Notice the logic: a black man would become the white woman’s superior by virtue of being her husband; this is repugnant from both a racial perspective and a racially gendered perspective (the black man would then be considered an actual man). I recommend Peggy Pascoe’s recent book on this, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America.

U.S. Jurisprudence. It was only in 1979 the last state in the U.S. finally repealed its “Head and Master” statutes, which gave husbands ultimate control over all household decisions. Can you imagine something worse? How about this: it wasn’t until 1993 that marital rape became a crime in every state of this country – 1993! Prior to that time, it was simply the wife’s legal obligation to have sex with her husband whenever he demanded it.

Gendered Bullying. Increased media attention to bullying in our schools is a good thing, but I have yet to read any incisive analysis of its cause. The bullying of “effeminate” gay men and “masculine” lesbian women and increasingly transgender people has nothing to do with whom these people love; it has everything to do with violating the gendered order of things in which men are dominate and women are submissive. The war on women is a war on everyone.

Those and many other historical markers should, and I believe must, inform how any Christian preacher preaches during Lent. I have some ideas about that for Lenten themes, which I’ll offer in future posts. For now, I would urge all Christian faith communities to embrace the struggle for women’s liberation as a fundamental Lenten discipline. After all, what kind of resurrection life do any of us really imagine? If it isn’t marked by the full thriving and flourishing of women, then it’s not really Easter.