A Theology of Gay and Lesbian Inclusion

Love Letters to the Church

Donald G Hanway

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136441233
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Encourage the Church to address the gift of human sexualityhow to view it, how to deal with it, and how it relates to spirituality

A Theology of Gay and Lesbian Inclusion: Love Letters to the Church challenges traditional church teachings that brand homosexuality as immoral, using pertinent scripture from the central Gospel to promote a full acceptance of gay and lesbian Christians. This powerful book questions the assumption that gay Christians are morally inferior, presenting testimony from gay men and lesbians about prejudice they've experienced at the hands of the Churchand its straight members. Written as a series of ten letters, the book addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the church and appeals for a new understanding and commitment to the acceptance of its gay members.

From the author:
The purpose of this book is to equip you, Christian warrior of the Gospel of peace, to stand against those who use the Bible to resist changeeven that change of which our Lord would approve. In one sense, there is nothing revolutionary about this book. It is a book that respects traditionbut only up to a point: that point where tradition has to change, to give way to what the Holy Spirit is showing us in our day of the mind of Christ. And this is not revolutionary, because tradition has had to change before; it is a developing truth, born of the corporate experience of the children of God, and open to our claiming the exercise of our God-given gift of reason.

A Theology of Gay and Lesbian Inclusion includes a series of letters that progress from establishing the purpose and credibility of the author, to developing grounding in Scripture and experience, to appealing to the reader to act as an ally of gay and lesbian Christians. The letters include:

• Dear Christian Believer, which aims for the bull's-eye of the reader's faith
  
• Dear Sexual Being, which offers a fresh look at a sensitive topic
  
• Dear Confused Church Member, which discusses what gay people are really like
  
• Dear Concerned Church Member, which discusses what gay people really want
  
• Dear Bible Explorer, which discusses what the Bible really says
  
• Dear Person Trying to Do the Right Thing, from being to doing
  
• and much more

A Theology of Gay and Lesbian Inclusion provides a friendly and informal Biblical rationale for alternatives to traditional church teachings, encouraging the acceptance of gay and lesbian people as fully moral and fully Christian.

Letter 1

Letter of Introduction

Dear Prospective Reader:

“I love you. Is that okay?”—God

For my last few years as a parish priest and college chaplain, I had that message on my bulletin board. It’s the Bible in brief, and it’s also what I want to say to you.

I love you—though my love is derivative and imperfect. I love you because God has loved me, and love isn’t a gift one can keep to oneself. Whoever you are, I am convinced that God loves you too, and God wants to enrich your life by loving others through you. We need a lot more love in this world.

I’m writing to you because I believe in you, and I believe in the Holy Spirit. I believe that most people want to do the right thing, once they know what that is. Knowing the right thing to do depends to a great degree on how you understand God.

When I was in eighth grade, our Sunday school class was taught for a time by a young graduate student in philosophy. One day he challenged us by asking, “How do you know there is a God?” Finally we turned the question back on him: “How do you know?” He said, “I know there is a God, because I have him at home in a bottle.” That baffled us, and he offered no explanation. Perhaps he wanted us to think about it. I’m asking you to do something similar: Not to think about whether God exists, but about the nature of God, and how your view of God affects the way you treat other people.

Asking what we think about God is a question nearly always worth considering again. What we learned about God in Sunday school may not be adequate to the complexities of adult life. Many voices have presumed, and are presuming, to speak for the Church universal. It may be that you have not yet heard some voices you need to hear.

The Church is floundering right now and not because it is divided. The Church in this world will always be divided, both on many small points that do not really matter, and on some large ones that really do. The Church is floundering because many sincere and well-meaning Christians have been misinformed or are currently in a state of confusion about what is true and what is important, about what needs preserving and what needs changing. I’m writing in an effort to dispel some of that misinformation and confusion by telling some true stories, including my own. I’m writing because I have lived my life inside the Church and still love her, even though in some ways I know her too well. In spite of her many flaws, she is still the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ.

At the age of sixty, I am newly retired from full-time ministry. Over the span of more than three decades in ordained ministry, I have learned a lot about human nature, as well as about God’s goodness. Among the many who have been my teachers are faithful men and women who happen to be homosexual. Their orientation was not chosen, as though it were a “lifestyle.” Life dealt them a challenging hand, and these people I know have played it about as well as anyone could. I want to tell a bit of their stories. However, their stories are only part of a larger one, which I think the Church needs to hear. It is a story about what matters most, and how we can lose that if we aren’t careful.

The Church is floundering because many other stories are being told and uncritically received—stories that disagree with the one I am going to tell. My wife, who has listened to me preach for thirty-two years, likes that story of “God in a bottle” well enough that she tells it herself every now and then. For her, it’s a reminder of how easy and how tempting it is to think we have God figured out, or to think that God can be domesticated to support our puny presumptions of reality.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, who is God among us, not domesticated at all. God did not stop communicating in the first century, when the last writings in the sacred canon were composed. God is always communicating with us. We are not always able to hear or willing to listen. There is Truth with a capital “T,” but it does not belong to us. Our little truths are at best approximations, stages on our journey to where we will finally meet the Truth face to face.

It is the spirit of the living God who brings to life the words of holy scripture and convinces us of the truth of what God is doing in our lives today. I am willing to trust you, dear reader, to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking in your own heart, and then to decide whether what I am telling you is true and important—even, perhaps, most important of all.

Why am I presenting this message as a series of letters? In the early Church, pastors wrote to believers near and far to encourage them, to strengthen their relationship with the wider Church, and to remind them of teachings in peril of being lost, as well as to answer questions and to correct misunderstandings. My reasons include those purposes, as well as the fact that I enjoy writing letters—it’s comfortable and natural for me. I will not be making an academic argument, but a personal appeal. I am asking you personally to listen to the Holy Spirit and then to do the right thing.

I am passionate about the stories I have to tell. I agree with Christians telling stories opposing mine on one key point at least: The integrity of the Church and the integrity of the gospel is at stake. How the Church deals with gay and lesbian people is a test case in our day for fidelity to the message of Jesus Christ.

What my experience has equipped me to do is to provide a working rationale or theology for the many faithful church members who have not had the time or taken the time to work out for themselves all the implications of the present situation, in which some old assumptions about God and the Bible are being challenged, and rightfully so. If I learned anything in getting the second of my four academic degrees, an MA in philosophy, it is to take a close look at the hidden, gratuitous assumptions that so often and so easily slide in under the radar at the beginning or during the course of an argument. Most faulty conclusions arise not so much from faulty logic as from assumptions that are blurred, slippery, or flat-out wrong. Why do such assumptions pass without challenge? Because people give them the benefit of the doubt and never go back to look at them more closely, and because those who make use of them are more focused on an end to be served than on the veracity of the means employed to arrive there.

I’m also aware that another mechanism is often at work, which may be stated in this way: “Don’t bother me with any new facts; my mind is already made up.” Most of us resist changing familiar patterns of thinking and behaving, especially as we get older. It’s too much effort, especially when there doesn’t seem to be any reward.

So this book is for you, earnest church member—and for you, if you are among the many who are not currently drawn to the Church. Perhaps you hope the Church might become more than it has been. Perhaps you long for a church more in touch with the pain and needs of people today. Perhaps you yearn for a church more willing to engage the unpleasant truths of how power is wielded, and how the Church has so often been an accomplice to injustice.

This book is for you and your own process of reasoning—but also for Frank^*, now age seventy, who recently wrote to me:

I am not ashamed to be gay. I did not choose it, but I accept it. All I ask is to be treated equally and be given the same equal rights as heterosexuals. I want to be liked for who I am and what I contribute….

This book is for you, and for Jesus, and also for Elena, who told me in an interview this past year: “Many, many gay and lesbian people have a church-shaped wound: they have a steeple hole in their hearts.”

This book is for you, and for Rory, who told me, “Before I knew that I was gay, I both knew that I was gay and knew that I was not gay—I couldn’t be gay, because that was mental illness.”

This book is for you, and for all the people you love and don’t love, and for Michael, who gave ten years of his life in vain attempts to change his sexual orientation, under the earnest tutelage of well-meaning Christians, and who now says, “I don’t know what I believe anymore, about God or the Bible.”

Here is a quick overview of these letters, followed by a personal summary of what the Gospel means to me, so that you can decide if we are talking about the same subject, and so that you may begin to grasp why I want the Church to be passionate about the Gospel as well. I think the logic of my order of presentation will become evident.

After this letter of introduction, I describe, as well as I can, what is at the heart of our faith as Christians. Then I write about what love means and what gets in its way. I’ll be talking about sin, but not necessarily in the way many are accustomed to thinking about it.

From there I write about both sides of the Church—its human side and its divine side. Then I address a huge topic that the Church has barely begun to address—the gift of human sexuality, how we view it and deal with it, and how it relates to spirituality.

In two letters, I share some stories of gay and lesbian people—how they have suffered at the hands of the proclaimers of God’s love, and what their “agenda,” as some have called it, actually is.

No book about the Church and homosexual people is complete without some discussion of what the Bible says, what it doesn’t say, and what it assumes. After this discussion, I set forth a biblically based outline of ethics for Christians, as a way to bring some clarity out of the prevailing confusion. All biblical quotations in this book are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Finally, I appeal to the Church, including you, dear reader. I ask you to decide whether what I have shared is cogent and compelling, and I urge you to follow your decision by writing your own love letters on behalf of the Good News that truly is good news for all people.

Here in brief is what I have come to believe, after many years of servant ministry, study, teaching, and preaching; thirty-seven years as a husband; thirty-two years as a father; six years as a grandfather; and approximately forty-six years since my hormones kicked in and I became a flaming heterosexual. I’m setting forth this personal testament in hopes that you may decide that we are not so very far apart in what we think is true and important. Here is what I believe about life and love and the fundamental reality in this universe and beyond.

My Testament

Life begins and ends beyond the curtain of our comprehension. We come out of mystery and move toward mystery. Yet within that all-encompassing mystery we dare to address as personal, there is light.

The essential message of Christianity is stated eloquently in the prologue of the Gospel according to St. John (John 1:1-18), where the evangelist sums up his own witness and gives voice to what has come to be called the doctrine of the incarnation, God taking human flesh, as in these verses: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9).… “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

My view of reality is that the origin of that light and that word embraces all living beings, conscious and unconscious, believing and unbelieving, bathing them in a generous energy we can best describe as unconditional love. As a Christian, I subscribe to the truth of incarnation, the underlying message of Christmas, and am bold to say that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the living embodiment of that light and that word. He articulated in his life, death, and resurrection the nature and intent of what we call divine, and also what it means to be fully human. He showed us what it means to love and to grasp the significance of our lives.

The Church as an organism human and divine flows out of the person and message of Jesus. The human side of the Church, as oppressive as that often can be, is forgivable in the long run because Jesus embraced all people, even in their sinfulness, and chose to work through any who responded, in whatever degree, to his message. The Church is divine because it is an extension of the incarnation; it is, for better or worse, the body of Christ in this world, constantly in need of redemption, yet carrying also within its life the means of redemption.

The proper work of the Church is sharing the message of Jesus by living that message and sharing the life of Jesus by extending the benefits of loving community to an ever-wider circle. In my own tradition, which is both catholic and reformed, living in community involves gathering around the altar (a sign of the sacrifice of Jesus) to share the sacraments, which are signs of the life of the risen Lord in our midst.

The word “gospel” means more than just a record of the life and message of Jesus, and more than just preserving an essential truth. Our word “gospel” comes from a Greek word meaning “good news,” and the only way we can preserve the essential truth of that message is by retaining what is good and life-giving about it. Sadly, the way the Gospel has been preached and practiced has made it extremely bad news to many. It is an irony that might be laughable, were it not so horrifically sad, that the word which is life and light has brought the death of hope to many who have found themselves excluded by human arbiters speaking in the name of the almighty. The ultimate irony, if anything in this world can be described as ultimate, is that the spokespersons of love are often the most unloving of all.

I believe that all who dare to speak on behalf of the Good News—including myself—must know their own blindness, their own denials and perversions of the Good News, the “log” in their own eyes (Luke 6:41-42), their own tendencies to justify themselves while denouncing others, and their own reluctance to listen to those who would point out their blind spots and their areas of willing ignorance to the pain of their fellow human beings. In short, all who would be purveyors of the Good News must be users of the Good News, not on the one-time basis of “I’ve seen the light,” but on a daily basis of repentance, openness to new learning, and the deeply held conviction that love is greater than any of its denials.

I believe that sin as refusal to love is more pervasive than anyone in the Church would like to admit, yet is ultimately unable to separate us from a loving God. In other words, I believe that love has won and will win, against all detractors. Yet suffering remains and is part of the mystery of our life in this world, and it is not only the unjust who suffer; in fact, they seem to suffer the least.

I believe that this world is a school, a character-building academy in the sacred art of loving, the art of caring for others. We are not in a position to make a definitive judgment about how others are learning and growing. Our task is to focus first on our own learning, and then to share, if we can, any wisdom we have gained. That is my purpose in writing. It’s not that I am inherently wiser than anyone else. I have had the benefit of many years of schooling, including some experiences and awakenings not granted to everyone. I have been close to the suffering of many people, and also to their joys. If one hangs around long enough, and pays some attention, wisdom does come. Some of that wisdom, for me, is about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (referred to collectively by the acronym GLBT) persons. “Bisexual” refers to persons who can be sexually and affectionately attracted to persons of either sex. “Transgender” refers to persons whose inner sense of gender identity is at odds with the outward, biological characteristics of their sex. For them, a sex “change” in the eyes of the world is a coming home.

Let me conclude this letter with my view of what lies beyond; that is, where our schooling in this world is leading us—to a life in union with the source of all life, or toward a rejection of the Good News and its source. In other words, here is my view of heaven and hell.

This world, which places us on a bumpy ride alongside a variety of prickly persons, is preparing us for life in perfect community: for a realm where all gifts are freely offered and graciously received, and where fear does not exist. From birth onward, we are learning both to embrace and to let go of gifts. It’s not easy to do either, whether we are facing what is new and strange or learning to hold less tightly to what is comfortable and familiar. The Good News gives us courage to believe in ourselves and our creator, and challenges us at every turn to be honest and courageous. It does not encourage us to pretend to be that which we are not or to deny the possibility that we may become more than we have been and find a larger Truth than we have yet seen.

The mo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Letter 1. Letter of Introduction
• Letter 2. Identifying the Core of Our Common Faith
• Letter 3. What Gets in the Way of Love
• Letter 4. Recognizing the Church As Both Human and Divine
• Letter 5. Humans As Sexual Beings: A Fresh Look at a Sensitive Topic
• Letter 6. What Are Gay People Like?
• Letter 7. What Do Gay People Want?
• Letter 8. What the Bible Really Says
• Letter 9. From Being to Doing
• Letter 10. Appeal to the Bride of Christ
• Index