From Sin to Amazing Grace

Discovering the Queer Christ

Patrick S. Cheng

• Publisher: Seabury Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781596272385
• eBook ISBN: 9781596272392
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Throughout the history of Christianity, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender ("LGBT" or"queer") people have been condemned as unrepentant sinners who are in dire need of God's saving grace. As a result of this condemnation, LGBT people have been subjected to great spiritual, emotional and physical abuse and violence. This issue takes on a particular urgency in light of the ongoing harassment and bullying of LGBT young people by their classmates.

Cheng argues that people need to be liberated from the traditional legal model of thinking about sin and grace as a violation of divine and natural laws in which grace is understood as the strength to refrain from violating such laws. Rather Cheng proposes a Christological model based upon the theologies of Irenaeus, Bonaventure and Barth, in which sin and grace are defined in terms of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

This book serves as a useful resource for all people who struggle to make sense of the traditional Christian doctrines of sin and grace in the context of the 21st century.

Part I

From Sin to Amazing Grace

Chapter 1

Why a Book on Sin and Grace?

Before I started my doctoral studies in systematic theology, I served as the Assistant Pastor for Congregational Life at the Metropolitan Community Church of New York (MCCNY) in New York City. MCCNY was an amazing congregation. The liturgy was moving, the music was uplifting, and the preaching was powerful. The church was committed to serving the least among us;¹ it ran a food pantry as well as outreach programs to a variety of marginalized communities, including transgender folk and homeless LGBT youth. MCCNY was committed to social justice issues, it used gender-inclusive language in its liturgies, and it was one of the most diverse congregations I have ever seen in terms of race, ethnicity, and culture.

One of the things that puzzled me about MCCNY, however, was that sin or grace was rarely discussed from the pulpit. Yes, there was a condemnation of the evils of homophobia within religious and secular institutions. And yes, there was a condemnation of structural evils such as racism, sexism, poverty, and violence. However, there was little to no discussion about individual sins that separated us from God, our neighbors, or our true selves. Nor was there much discussion of the amazing grace that made us whole. As I deepened my theological studies, I found it more and more challenging not to have a language to critique the ways in which we all missed the mark—the senior pastor and myself included—and not just with respect to our sexualities and gender identities, but also with respect to the other aspects of our lives.

1. LGBT Aversion to Sin and Grace

Given the reluctance of LGBT faith communities such as MCCNY to use the language of sin and grace, why do we need an entire book on sin and grace from the perspective of LGBT people? It would seem that such a book is the last thing that the LGBT community needs. In general, sin and grace are highly unpopular subjects for contemporary Western society as a whole. In 1973, the psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote about the general disappearance of sin-talk in American culture in his popular book Whatever Became of Sin?² Two decades later, in 1993, the Yale Divinity School theologian David Kelsey wrote an article in Theology Today asking a similar question: “Whatever Happened to the Doctrine of Sin?”³ Little has changed almost another twenty years later. If anything, our culture has become even more secularized and allergic to sin-talk, as well as to its companion topic, grace.

Many LGBT people have a strong aversion to talking about sin and grace. This is not surprising because so many of us have been wounded deeply by these doctrines. Many of us have left the faith communities of our childhood because of the abusive ways in which these doctrines have been used against us. Some of us have even tried to kill ourselves—and, in some cases, succeeded—because of the belief that we are unredeemable sinners and that we are forever excluded from God’s saving grace.

At best, I have found that LGBT Christians try not to think too much about the issues of sin and grace. Some of us convince ourselves that same-sex and gender-variant acts are not sinful based upon contemporary biblical scholarship, and we move on. Or we convince ourselves that the doctrine of sin has outlived its usefulness and therefore join “progressive” or LGBT-friendly denominations or communities that downplay or avoid the topic. Or we think about sin in terms of structural issues (such as racism, sexism, or homophobia) but not individual sin. And, of course, many LGBT people simply leave the church altogether because of the suffering that we have experienced—and encountered—from the church’s sin-talk. Once we have dispensed with the notion of sin, however, there is little need for the doctrine of God’s grace.

Similarly, I have been surprised at the silence with respect to the doctrines of sin and grace in the LGBT theological academy. Although there have been numerous LGBT theological works written in the last few decades, very few of these works address the doctrines of sin and grace head-on.⁴ Indeed, even though I have read literally hundreds of books and journal articles about queer Christianity and theology, I have found few sustained queer reflections on such doctrines.

This silence is understandable because, as I mentioned earlier, many LGBT people have been deeply wounded by sin-talk from homophobic religious leaders and communities. Furthermore, what kind of sadistic God would give LGBT people the amazing fruits of the Spirit—such as love, joy, peace, and patience—through their same-sex friendships and relationships,⁵ and nevertheless still condemn us as sinners? Where is the grace in that? How can that ever be understood as Good News? For many LGBT Christians it is simply easier to remain silent about sin and grace.

2. Breaking the Silence on Sin and Grace

Notwithstanding the above silence with respect to sin and grace within the LGBT community, I am becoming increasingly convinced that we, as LGBT people of faith, must address the doctrine of sin—and its companion doctrine of grace—head on. We can no longer avoid or ignore the subject. In fact, the silence within the LGBT Christian community about sin and grace ultimately is not helpful and may in the long run even be harmful to us. By this I do not mean continuing the endless biblical arguments over a handful of LGBT “texts of terror” about what does or does not constitute allegedly sinful same-sex or gender-variant behavior.⁶ Rather, we must engage thoughtfully the larger doctrinal questions of sin, traditionally classified as hamartiology (which is derived from hamartia, the Greek word for sin).

Why, then, is talking about sin and grace so important for the LGBT community? I believe there are at least four reasons as to why we must break the silence about sin and grace. First, sin-talk remains at the heart of the oppression and suffering of LGBT people today. Second, sin-talk is the primary reason why LGBT people of faith are denied full participation in the life of the Church. Third, ignoring the doctrines of sin and grace deprives us of the theological tools to describe the true state of the world. Fourth, LGBT Christians need a more fully developed theology of sin and grace in order to better dialogue with the broader Christian community. Let us examine each of these four points in turn.

First of all, sin-talk remains at the heart of the oppression and suffering—emotional, spiritual, psychological, and physical—that LGBT people experience today. Despite recent political advances in the United States such as the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the legalization of same-sex marriages in states such as New York, the religious right continues to describe same-sex and gender-variant behavior as “sinful” and uses this sin-talk to justify the denial of equal protection under the laws for LGBT people. In some cases, this can result in brutal hate crimes and other forms of violence against our community.⁷

Sin is not just a matter of abstract debate for LGBT people. Sin-talk has justified the persecution, imprisonment, torture, and even execution of LGBT people by governments around the world.⁸ Sin-talk has resulted in suicides by young people and adults who are condemned by their families, communities, and churches for their sexualities and gender identities.⁹ Sin-talk is also at the heart of discredited attempts at changing sexual and gender identities through “ex-gay” or reparative therapy that purports to “pray away the gay.”¹⁰ Grace, in this context, is characterized as the so-called “gift” of abstaining from same-sex or gender-variant acts, which in the end is not only unrealistic, but harmful, for many self-actualized LGBT people.

Second, sin-talk is the primary reason why LGBT people of faith are denied full participation in the life of the Church, including the denial of sacraments and rites such as same-sex marriage and ordination. We are taught very early on that same-sex and gender-variant acts are sinful, and that we will be condemned to eternal punishment if we fail to repent and abstain from such acts. Sin-talk forces religious leaders into the closet even though they themselves may be engaged in same-sex or gender-variant acts.¹¹ Ignoring or dismissing this sin-talk will not make it go away. We must move beyond narrow biblical arguments and challenge, from a larger theological perspective, what the religious right is saying when it uses sin-talk. It is time for LGBT people to take back the words “sin” and “grace” in the same way that we have taken back the word “queer”!

Third, ignoring the doctrines of sin and grace deprives us of the theological tools to describe—and critique—the true state of the world. As the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was so fond of stating, the doctrine of sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine in the Christian faith.¹² How can we adequately describe and critique this world of ours that is filled with violence, terrorism, economic inequity, and sexual exploitation without sin-talk? And, on the other hand, how can we express our deepest hopes of reconciliation and healing without grace-talk? For example, Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest and writer, has argued that the language of sin is not something to be avoided. Rather, sin-talk is precisely what allows us to move to grace-talk.¹³

As an out, gay man who has been a member of various LGBT communities for over twenty-five years, I have experienced a great deal of love and amazing grace from m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author