I have been a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ("ELCA") for over seven years after leaving the Roman Catholic Church in which I was raised because its hierarchy still describes LGBT individuals as "inherently disordered" - talk about the pot calling the kettle black - and accepts us in the Church only so long as we condemn ourselves to a lifetime of celibacy - in short, a cruel life sentence without love and physical intimacy. Two weeks ago the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly took the major step of allowing partnered gay clergy, thereby bringing the ELCA in line with modern medical and mental health knowledge on the immutability of sexual orientation. I have discussed this issue a great deal and now Queerity has several relevant follow up posts that look at the split between homophobic elements in the ELCA who selectively apply a literal application of a few passages in the Bible (while utterly ignoring many others) and progressives and gays within the Church. One post is by a straight pastor who makes a stab at what this change means for LGBT Lutherans and he does a pretty good job:*
It's easier to hate people when you don't have to look across the table and say “pass the salt” to them. But the witness of the Gospel of Jesus (when we are getting it right) is that everyone means everyone, all are welcome at the table—and that means anti-gay folks as much as gay folks, as hard as that may be. What the “magical homo” did was a very difficult act of justice, kindness, and humble walking with God, when nobody would have been surprised if he were to have acted in vengeance instead (as one queerty.com commentator said: “kick some ass”) and many would have cheered him on. And what I saw again and again on that assembly floor was that gay and lesbian people and their allies (including me) were surprised by the feeling of pain and compassion they experienced when the thing they had longed for finally was reality.
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Leading up to the vote I wrote all of the voting members attending from the Virginia Synod trying to explain the spiritual harm the denial of full membership in the Church did to its LGBT members. I refer to it as a form of spiritual murder since the message is that if one is gay, you can never, ever be good enough. Thankfully, a majority at the Assembly figured that out. One voting member sent me the following note:
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Thank you for the communications you provided over the past several weeks. You should know that testimonies like yours were offered throughout the assembly. You should also know that the work on the floor of the assembly was accompanied by many people who sat in the adjacent halls praying for the work of this church. I do not underestimate the power this prayer had in achieving the results of last week. Our work as voting members was only part of the story (albeit the only part reported by the press).
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The most recent Queerity post on the ELCA is from the perspective of a lesbian pastor from Houston, Texas. She does a great job of holding the Church - that's all Christian churches - for the harm done to LGBT individuals over the centuries. Hopefully, pastors like this one will get the message across to those who would prefer to cling to a few Bible passages and continue to inflict spiritual and psychological harm on other human beings. Here are some highlights:
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The church, including the Evangelical Church of America, has done great harm to people who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender. Not only has it denied our callings and refused to bless our relationships, it has provided a theological framework for homophobia. This is more than causing pain to us; this is participating in our discrimination.
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Homosexuality is not wrong, sinful, or deviant. But homophobia is deviant. Heterosexism is sinful. Remaining silent in the face of discrimination is wrong. Homophobia, Heterosexism, and silence have caused many of us to lose our livelihoods, our families, our safety, and even our lives. By providing theological reasons for these sins, the church has participated in this discrimination.
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The church has also tried to teach us that the love at the center of our beings is sinful, that our sexualities are not created by God, and that the church’s acceptance of us is conditional. The harm caused to our relationships with God is even more violent than the beatings, the murders, some of us have endured. I won’t pretend to know what Pastor Ryan Mills feels [a pastor contemplating leaving the ELCA due to the vote]. But to equivocate the suffering he, and other like him, may be feeling to the queer experience is false and perpetuates discrimination.
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Mills . . . does now know the pain of having his church profoundly disagree with him on the issue of sexual orientation, and perhaps he knows the pain of wondering whether to go or stay. . . . But to equate those two experiences to the discrimination that LGBT people face is to show that you cannot understand the depth of queer experience.
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Because we need to truthfully, lovingly, tell those anti-gay sisters and brothers not only that they are wrong, but that they are sinful. I expect my straight allies to take up this work, not ask to be congratulated for the small steps we have taken. And I don’t expect non-Lutheran queer people to celebrate when we reach a compromise that still falls short of the church apologizing for the sin of homophobia, heterosexism, and silence.
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Personally, I cannot understand anti-gay pastors. Accepting gays - and modern knowledge - costs them nothing other than perhaps taking away the ease with which they have been allowed to feel privileged and felt free to look down on others. In contrast, LGBT Lutherans have been told after years of pain that they are after all fully human. I hope and pray that in time the homophobic elements will come to realize these horrific harm they have done to others and cast aside their anti-gay crutch. Also, with younger generations increasingly rejecting homophobia, these pastors need to realize that their message of exclusion may in time jeopardize the continued existence of their parishes.
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