MOSAIC

You know what’s really hard? Trying to get twelve people to travel abroad in a place without luxuries, talk to people living there, and get along with each other. I recently led a service-learning trip of fellow university students to Thailand’s border with Burma (side note: do not believe everything you read). And it was wonderful. It was also exhausting and exasperating.

Honestly, I don’t know how Jesus did it. Not only did he prevent discord among his disciples in such a way that no one just ran home after two weeks, but he just called and they came. How incredible is that? He didn’t have to promise them shopping excursions or waterfalls or bike rides or yummy food. If anything, he probably would have done the opposite, talking about even he had no place to rest his head.

With this in mind, I would like to take a moment to thank all the leaders of the movement to make this church fully embody Christ’s message of love and radical inclusion. From the top dogs (if you can have top dogs in an anti-establishment kind of thing) to the unrecognized heroes (who gently prevent everyone from giving up or make sandwiches for folks or offer a couch for someone to sleep on, etc), let’s face it: You. People. Rock. And better than that: God loves you. All.

Which is more than I can say I feel for the airline that lost my luggage on the way to Thailand.

I’ve been waiting for my showdown with the Westboro Baptist Church since I was eight years old. It was then that I was introduced to the hate group through an episode of 20/20, of all things. This was around the time I realized I had funny feelings for my peewee football coach, and so I remember vividly hearing about the group. I also remember approaching an adult, one I trusted, and telling them about this groups whose main message was that God hates gay people. I remember, as well, when this adult responded, “well, they’re not wrong.”
I was eight. And it’s still one of the proudest moments of my childhood that I looked up to her and responded, “No, God loves everyone.”

Ever since then I’ve known, on some level, that at some point I would have to confront them. Not to shame them or react violently, but just so I can tell them that they’re wrong. That our God is not one who hates and who rejoices in violence, death, and moral indignation.

Which is why, earlier today when I found out they were protesting fifteen minutes away from my building, I put on my boots, grabbed my bible and headed for the Harvey Milk school, a public high school in Manhattan which exists to give students who do not feel safe in other schools a place to pursue their education.

I missed them by about an hour, but I left, bible in hand, Gaga in headphones, knowing that the day was drawing near when I could stand in front of the people who told me as a child that I was unloved, who gathered today specifically to tell other children that the are unloved. And I could approach them and tell them, “he who loves not does not know God, for God is love.”

I realize I wouldn’t change anything. I wouldn’t even be the first to say it to them. They are another group among many who refused to listen to the prophets (or in this case, the Messiah). Perhaps this means that I’m foolish for expending so much energy trying to finally track them down, but on some level I just need to say it.

I think it’s an important part of our faith to stand up and speak truth and love to those who refuse to hear it. I think it has been since Moses. And even though I know their hearts are hardened, like those of many in the church, against their queer brothers and sisters, I can’t help but hope they can change.
Honestly, can you imagine what that would look like if the most hateful, vitriolic protesters against queer rights were suddenly allies? It would change so much.

Anyway, I suppose what I’m getting at is that I need to speak out against authority (or in this case, against people who have no authority, but have pretty big mouths and large, colorful posters). I need to speak out just as Moses needed to speak out against the Pharaoh. Just as Jesus needed to speak out against the Pharisees. As Christians, it is part of our inheritance, the need to speak out against those who would oppress God’s people, even those who would oppress God’s people in God’s name. In fact, especially those. They do wrong by God and by his people.

So I’ll keep planning for that day when the WBC and I finally stand in front of each other. And until then, I’ll speak out to anyone else who needs to hear it.

Three members of MoSAIC recently participated in a post in a queer voices blog about the holy trinity. We repost it here, with love to inourwordsblog.com, for your consideration.

What you are about to witness is what happens when four nerds, all of whom happen to be United Methodists, former, present, or likely future seminarians, and members of Queerville have a conversation. Audrey, David, Johnny, and Kara are good friends, and when any or all of the four of them are together, madness ensues. And, believe it or not, conversations like the following happen.

Kara Crawford:

About a month ago, I saw a video floating around Facebook that was being posted and re-posted by a number of my progressive United Methodist friends. It was a song called “God is Not a White Man,” which is an idea which I’m totally on board with, but the video/song made me want to beat my head against the nearest hard surface.

It was full of wonderful statements that I found totally agreeable during the verses, but then came the chorus: “God is love, God is love, and he loves everyone.” Um, hello? If you’re trying to say that God is not a white man, why do you use masculine pronouns for God?

Now, I’ve had a good friend explain to me that she prefers to use masculine language for God because she had a terrible relationship with her biological father, and so growing up, God was her “father figure,” and at that, one which she could look up to and respect. She also told me she completely respects other people’s choices to use gender-neutral or feminine terminology for God.

And I respect her reason — because it indicates to me that she has thought critically about the language she is using for God. What drives me crazy is when people don’t think critically and simply use masculine language out of habit or simply finding it easier or more agreeable than the alternative, namely if the individual using that masculine language is someone who definitely has access to feminist, queer, and inclusive theologies.

On one friend’s post of the song, I commented something regarding my frustration with the song’s usage of masculine God language in the chorus, and my friend responded saying something like. “Wouldn’t it be great if gender-neutral pronouns became more commonplace in dominant society?

And that got me thinking: What if people started using gender-neutral pronouns for God? Of course, I’m a big fan of feminine God language if I feel forced to use a pronoun, particularly drawing on what feminist theologian Mary Daly is often reported as saying to her classes at Boston University – that there has been 2000 years of masculine God language, and so it’s only fair to have 2000 years of feminine God language.

But what if we began using gender-neutral God language? What if we queered God? Maybe then people who feel disenfranchised from religion for its apparent sexism and heterosexism [1] would feel more included. Maybe it would even make society more accepting of queer folks, particularly those who are not cisgender. Then we could all [2] proudly sing together – “God is love, God is love, and ze loves everyone.”

Johnny Gall:

Of course, after God, the “Father”, typical Christian theology dictates that we move to Jesus, the Son.

I remember, during the six weeks I worked at an orphanage in Honduras, that one of my biggest disappointments was that, even though I was one of three gringos in a ten mile radius, Jesus was still white. Every picture of him had Italian features. To the point that, when coloring him, the ten-year-old children would make him pale — and often blond.

So, before we move on, let me first establish that anyone with even the slightest actual theological knowledge recognizes that Jesus was a Jew of Middle-Eastern descent, and could feasibly have been black, though there’s really no way of knowing.

My point here is that middle-class, white Amerkans have done a fantastic job of convincing themselves, and the rest of the Church, that Jesus is exactly like us. The surface of this is that Jesus is a white man, but beyond that, we’ve appropriated Jesus and managed to make the rest of the world think his theology is identical to our theology.

Though, of course, Jesus never said a word about queer people. He also never mentioned abortion, but I suppose there weren’t many Planned Parenthoods in Nazareth. He never married, that we know of, which would suggest he doesn’t believe in the power of the nuclear family. And, of course, one of his major teachings was that you can’t get to Heaven unless you give everything you have to the poor. Try trotting that one in front of the religious right.

In queering Jesus, I have no interest in questioning whether or not he liked boys. That case has been made, but honestly, it wouldn’t make me feel a mite more validated as a gay man. Even if it were possible for me to feel any more validated than I already do.

But what I think is important to remember is that he is nowhere near the white, capitalist, American moralist he’s been made out to be. If anyone is the capitalist moralist in the Gospels, it’s the Pharisees. Those are the bad guys.

More often than not, Jesus’s role in the Gospels was to question the normative structure of the day. This is not to say that he never taught anything conservatively. His views on marriage were actually pretty conservative leaning, which is probably why he didn’t question the Pharisaic idea that when a man dies, his younger brother then has to take his widow. I mean, honestly, homeboy went up against the sanctity of the Sabbath. That’s not playing around. And it’s something he did with nearly every normative structure. In fact, if you read the Gospels, a catchphrase of sorts is, “You have heard it said…but I tell you,” which roughly translates to, “This is what those high priest brothers said, but I’m about to drop a bomb on y’all, so listen up.”

And even past that, most of his teachings are paradoxes. The first will be last; you have to lose your life to save it. He uses them every fifteen lines or so. So we constructed a religion around a guy who couldn’t give a single speech without defying the rules of logic itself, and somehow we put him on the side of tradition?

I blame Constantine.

But whomever the culprit, it seems clear to me that the spiritual inheritance of Jesus Christ is not the folks sitting in the pews taking notes on sexual immorality and wine drinking. It’s the people who question the rigid structure and dogma of the church and make way for more compassionate and less moralistic theology. It is the people who question the normative who follow the example of Christ.

Audrey Krumbach:

At first glance, it might seem that the easy part of queering the Trinity comes when we begin to think about the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the creative one, the one less restrained by images of being the Father, the judge, the creator, the historical man, et cetera.  The Holy Spirit is the one who inspires humanity, who sustains creation, who lives with and in us.

But the Holy Spirit is also often forgotten or presumed to be least important.   When drawn in stained glass or icons, the Spirit is mostly likely a dove, a flame or a wind.  We too often describe the Spirit as impersonal at best, or at worst, we deem it merely an extension of the “real” persons of the trinity — Father and Son. Therefore, we see the Spirit is at risk of being understood as disembodied, subservient and without any moral agency of “her” own.

This exact place of trouble is a huge invitation for us to enter into the life of the Trinity.  The Holy Spirit is not merely a flame or a breath but is a fully real person — with will and agency.  More even than simply well thought and spoken, the Spirit is a must be embodied.  How else could God in her wisdom enter into Mary and impregnate her?  The Spirit is the one who heals, who takes us by the hand and walks us into new things.

As people whose bodies and loves are demeaned or, at best, simply disregarded, we must use our own bodily knowledge to claim our wisdom, and the wisdom of the Spirit in our lives.  The Spirit calls us back into our bodies where we listen to the wisdom in our hearts and our arms.

David Chastity:

So that’s it, that’s the Trinity, right? All queered up for your pleasure.

Not so fast. As long as we’re throwing traditional readings of the three parts of Christianity’s One God out the window, we should probably question the very idea of Three.

You see, it wasn’t always three-in-one. Back in the early days, Christians couldn’t even really decide if Jesus was God or was just like God, much less how this whole “Holy Spirit” idea fit in. And then there were those crazy Gnostic Christians you’ve probably heard about — they’re very trendy these days — among whom numbered those who insisted God was not one in three, but one infour. This fourth persona is none other than Holy Sophia, Divine Wisdom personified, and, you guessed it, 100% female.

Sophia’s not just some made-up Gnostic deity, although there are literally hundreds of those. She’s in the Bible! Jesus mentions her by name in Matthew 11. Most translations just put “wisdom” but can’t avoid when he goes on to describe “her children.”

While other Christian traditions don’t attempt to personify Wisdom, some Gnostics required all deities to appear as male-female pairs, and so Sophia is the female Bride of Christ. We can spend lots of time speculating why Sophia didn’t make it into the final version of the Trinity, and it’s as much avoiding Gnostic Heresy as sexism, I’m sure, but let’s skip all that and get straight to the fun part: What does it do for our faith to have a female Divine Wisdom right up there?

First off, it implies that Knowing Stuff is an inherently female concept. That certainly undoes some centuries of nasty sexism about the intellectual ability of women, doesn’t it? Try telling a woman she can’t preach because she just doesn’t embody Divine Wisdom like a man can. Second, we can stop doing such somersaults about God’s gender. We’ve now got proof right there in the Trinity that God can manifest in the Female as easily as the Male and a fully-sanctioned Female Aspect for anyone who wants to invoke in prayer and worship.

And now that we’ve got one Female God-face, it doesn’t seem as heretical to broaden the other ones, does it?

So, there we have it: A four-part trinity complete with God the Mother, Jesus the activist, a spirit with a body and undeniable proof that knowledge is a female concept. Not your Holy Father’s religion. But this should serve as proof that there are many sides to every theology, that Christianity is not without its queer tendencies and that when four Meth-o-nerds get together, any doctrine is possible.

I was in the Senate gallery when the filibuster was broken on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) repeal on December 18, 2010.  I was there to see DADT be repealed.  However, I left with mixed emotions.  It is a day I will never forget.

The DREAM act was also being voted on.  I did not know the Senate would be debating both the repeal of DADT and the DREAM act at the same time and then voting on them back-to-back with no debate in between the votes.  The DREAM act vote was first.  Most of the people sitting around me were there to see the vote on the DREAM act.  There are strict regulations in the Senate gallery: no talking, no expressing approval or disapproval of votes, etc.  However, there was something the people could do.  They held hands in solidarity while the votes were taken.  There was a young man who was next to me.  He held out his hand towards me.  I took his hand and held it in solidarity with the group.  There is something very powerful about touch.  The spiritual and physical senses are heightened.  Suddenly, they and them became us.  Suddenly, this man from the state with the least population of immigrants in the entire United States, West Virginia, had a deeper understanding.  As key Senators voted against the DREAM act disappointment settled in.  Breaking the filibuster failed.

The repeal of DADT was next.  So many emotions were running through my mind.  Do I get up and go talk to this man who held out his hand?  Do I give him a hug?  Before I could do anything he was gone.  The vote rote was taken to break the filibuster on the repeal of DADT and it was broken.  I walked out of the gallery and walked around the hallways just stunned.

I have thought much about this day over the past year.  Before these votes were separated in a lame-duck Congress they were together in a defense spending bill that failed.  I attended a workshop hosted by queer and undocumented students several months later.  There I learned both sides sometimes blamed each other.  The queer and undocumented students had to literally run to different phone banks to support both pieces of legislation.  I thought, “What would it look like for both sides together?”  This is a great thought in theory; in reality, one side has to be vulnerable enough to extend their hand out and risk rejection.  Yes, we might have both failed if the DREAM act and the repeal of DADT had not been separated.  I could have accepted that.  I am glad that one man choose to be vulnerable, hold out his hand, and choose love over fear.