Tag: Christ followers

New Year’s Worship

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This was supposed to be published on January 1, but that slipped past. To kick off the new year, I want to discuss how we should handle a situation where we find that the “orthodox” belief of religion does not agree with our own sincerely held belief. Peace be with you all and have a blessed new year.

A Queer Theology of Inclusion Part 1

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This will be a seven part series that will first introduce Queer Theology as a concept and then systematically work through the four sources of theology in order to craft a basic theological statement for the inclusion of LGBT(QIAP), really all individuals, into the church community.

For a basic introduction to Queer Theology, Patrick Cheng’s “Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology” is a great place to start. The book is cited in this work and is an easy read. Also, this article written by Greg Daly of the Toronto School of Theology provides a good introduction to the topic: https://www.academia.edu/14179386/The_incarnation_of_Christ_and_Queer_Theology

With that, let us begin.

The question of whether or not to accept, fully, partially, or not at all, LGBT persons into congregations is one of the biggest questions facing the church today. Many of the more conservative churches tend to say that LGBT persons are, for all intents and purposes, not welcome at all and if they are only under conditions of absolute celibacy. The most liberal of churches are already to the point of full inclusion where there are LGBT pastors and all rituals and ordinances of the church are available to all persons regardless of sexual orientation. Moderate churches fall in the middle to various degrees and this has led to some high level discussions and disagreements within the denominations. For the time being, there will almost certainly be no consensus of views between various denominations, perhaps not even within congregations. The purpose here will be to look at the four sources of theology, scripture, reason, tradition, and experience, and determine how, and in what form, those combine to form a Queer Theology of Inclusiveness for the church today.

**Citations available upon request**

LGBT Issues in the Anglican Communion

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As you might have read this past week, the Episcopal Church was sanctioned by the wider Anglican Communion due to its recent changes in acceptance and ordination of LGBT individuals. A report can be read here (New York Times) or you can do a search to find one of the hundreds of other reports. I think this is a highly telling event in the history of the Anglican Church and the wider Christian Church in general.

First, I do not believe this has come as a result of some kind of big lobby from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This has come from lobbying from the Anglican Churches in the Global South. In the NYT piece, it’s noted that the Bishop of Uganda walked out of the meetings. Given the general acceptance of LGBT individuals in the Church of England, there are reports about a transgender priest, it makes no sense that this comes from the Church of England. No, I believe this is coming from the large body of churches in Africa, Asia, and South America. In these places, having attended school with some African students, my general impression is that those who would be considered “conservative” on LGBT issues in America would be “liberal” in the extreme in many of these nations. This has significant implications for the global church.

There has been concern expressed, though maybe not publicly, in the United Methodist Church about this upcoming General Conference and how the African Conferences will react to potential changes on the UMC’s position on LGBT issues; this beyond issues that will be faced in America. While there can be no crystal ball for us to glance upon in order to try to get answers on all these issues, the conservatism seen in the Global South will likely complicate issues and proposed changes for global churches. It will also have an impact on those inclusive churches who would want to grow out into more global denominations.

This is a big issue for the various churches. American and European churches are expanding into the Global South and now those churches are finding themselves often at odds with the political, moral, and theological positions of those southern Churches. In the case of the Anglican Communion, the historical Church of England is still numerically superior in numbers to the rest of the church (when adding in churches in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, and the USA even more superior) yet if one looks at the make-up of the Anglican Communion, the politics seem dominated by those churches in the Global South based on the number of voting Bishops. This should be something for other global churches to view with care. It will be interesting to see this summer how the Global South conferences work within the UMC General Conference.

The Global South is a huge power in the modern church. I’m not sure if the English, Western European, and American institutions are ready to truly acknowledge that fact.

Ask me in Ten Years and Politics in Church

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So, as a preliminary comment here, this is the weekly reflection I most worried about posting when I started posting these each week. I didn’t know how I would edit the original text to fit into this format and still seem fairly friendly. I ended up just removing about a paragraph worth of stuff. Congregational politics are tough. Sadly, I think many church goers are apt to blame the victim when he or she stops attending church rather than taking a long look in the mirror and asking what caused them to leave. People, generally, don’t leave church for no reason. Some people find information about a church’s history and that causes them to leave; those are difficult situations. Some are wronged by other members of the congregation, yet we choose to blame the person who stops attending for being offended by the comments. “Well, he/she chose to be offended” some might say. And while that is true to a certain degree, there must still be some hard looking in the mirror to determine what went wrong. In this particular case below, a person was wronged in ways I won’t mention, he was shunned, and stopped attending. Yet many want to place blame on him for leaving even though he was wronged by a huge portion of the congregation. The details don’t really matter. It’s the concept. Ask why people leave the church…I just deleted a sentence…I was going to say, again, that “you” should look in the mirror to determine if you did anything to cause this person to leave, but then I remembered that you’re perfect and that you’d never under any circumstances do anything that would cause a person to leave church. So, don’t worry about looking in the mirror, just point some fingers and find out how everyone else caused this person to leave, and then make sure to place the blame back on the person who left because he dared by offended by your perfection.

OK, on to the original text…

I read some interesting passages in different books. The first passage was in James Cone’s Black Liberation Theology. I got a very strong through the chapter that I read that Cone was doing everything he could to change God into a 1970’s African-American. To me he was walking a very, very fine line of molding God into his own image rather than working to mold himself in God’s image. When we do that in our own lives, I feel like we start walking a dangerous path. I also suppose this is why there are so many different denominations out in the world. Each group interprets God just a little differently. The question, however, is whether or not denominations or individuals are trying to mold God into their personal theological image or if they are molding into His? I have to remind myself of this. God is not necessarily who I want Him to be. He is who He is and has always been. I have also had to try to separate my own personal views from my theological views.
Second, in my Christian Ethics class, we read about genetic embryo modification, in vitro fertilization, and other forms of “unnatural” pregnancy. One of the questions our professor asked was how would we deal with a person in our congregation or our lives who came to a different moral/ethical conclusion than we hold? This question is very relevant for me given that my goal is chaplaincy. I may have individuals come into my office seeking council who have very different ideas of what is moral or immoral. Within this context, I think I will have to recognize that my moral/ethical opinion really does not matter. It does not matter if I think a particular situation a person is going through fits into my definition of what is moral or immoral, so long as it does not violate any regulations or laws, of course. My job will be to make sure each person gets the help that he or she needs regardless of whether or not that persons moral/ethical standards line up with mine. That was the comment I made in the discussion online with the semi-humorous side comment about asking me in ten years how this approach has worked for me as a chaplain. I really hope that this is one of those ideal views I can hold onto and remember as I go about ministry. It doesn’t matter what I think is moral, it matters that I can give a person the help that he or she needs at a given time.
Keeping in line with this, I made another comment in that same class about how we must simply be someone who facilitates the Spirit guiding others. We are not able to cause a real conversion in someone, we simply have to give them the “water” so that they can drink it. But if they decide not to drink it, we simply have to keep providing for them until they make the decision to change. We have to show each person that we are there for them and care about them unconditionally.
Beyond this reading, I met with a man this week who has not been to church in several years. His reason for not coming is that he was driven off several years ago by a particular family in the congregation and how they treated him. [comments removed] This is really my first experience with how congregation politics can damage others. It really is quite sad to have to sit and listen to a story like the one I heard and not be able to do anything to change the local culture going forward. I wish there was more a I could do to change things.
It was very interesting how the different readings came together for me this week and how I can see how relevant those readings and principles will be for me in my ministry. I certainly think the ministry involves much more gray area than I had originally anticipated.