When the Church Fails Homosexuals

I have a problem with us Christians. The problem spans denominational divides and it's "Christians' response to homosexuals." The gospel is pretty clear what this response should be since it's the same response Christians are supposed to have toward anyone - Love.

Boom. Blog post over.

Or if you want some clarification, keep reading.

This is not a post about Leviticus and exegesis. It's not a post about St. Paul's letters and Biblical support of or opposition to homosexuality or other alternative sexualities. Not really. Those are important conversations to have but this post isn't theological. It's practical. This post is about how we're failing one segment of the human population, one part of the divine creation in which God is fully present.

We are failing homosexuals by rejecting them. We are failing them by demonizing them, by arguing with science (does Galileo ring a bell?), and by not supporting them in the obvious ways all Christians can agree we should.

Imagine for a moment that when people started to openly identify as gay and they were victimized, violently assaulted, locked out of employment and their livelihood, ostracized from their neighbors like lepers, driven underground, and turned away from every part of "respectable society", imagine that Christians had met homosexuals there. Imagine if we had thrown open our doors, not to say "you are perfect", but to say "God loves you, and so do we." Imagine if we had promised to stand by them to end violence, end employment and benefits discrimination, end victimization, end cruelty. Imagine if Christians, the natural allies of the lowly and the disenfranchised, had partnered with homosexuals and fought for these common beliefs. What a witness we could have been! What bonds of friendship and unity we would have built!

But no, we judged them. Worse, we made conformity the litmus test for inclusion into Christian communities where homosexuals would actually have had a chance to see solidarity, experience a loving community, and hear the message of the gospel. I remember once watching an old documentary about the Civil Rights Movement in white churches. The pastor was trying to convince his parishioners that integration was a good thing. One white woman implored on camera with something like, "Pastor, I mean them [blacks] no harm and I wish them every good. But I just don't want them sitting next to me." If that comparison makes you uncomfortable, it's meant to.

Before homosexuals could be "real" Christians, we demanded sexual purity, a standard most of the adult population in our churches (married or otherwise) couldn't meet. I've been using the past tense here but not much has changed. Just a few weeks ago, Jason Collins became the first openly gay NBA player. Chris Broussard, another "Christian" NBA player responded by going on national television to declare that if Collins identified as a homosexual then he obviously wasn't a real Christian.

Even today, very compassionate Christians who neither condone nor condemn homosexuality still insist sexual orientation is ultimately a choice, despite the mounting empirical evidence to the contrary. Research also suggests sexuality, rather than an either/or distinction of heterosexual or homosexual, is actually a large spectrum with people falling in between the heterosexual/homosexual (and other?) poles with various degrees of proximity to either one.

Catholics have learned the hard way that we should listen to reason. (Remember my Galileo mention?) And this is why Catholicism, among other denominations, has said there is nothing wrong with being born homosexual. This from one of the most conservative religious bodies on the planet. (For the record, Catholicism makes a distinction between a homosexual nature and homosexual acts.)

But even if you throw out that research and that view, we can all agree that there is a very large number of cases of assault, hatred, and discrimination against homosexuals. And most of this isn't coming from the secular world or atheists. Most is coming from individuals who would identify as "Christian." What does that say about us?

Now homosexuality is a hot button issue with everyone racing to either legalize or outlaw gay marriage. And Christians are leading the charge on the latter. And not just political groups made up of Christians, of course, but identifiable Christian communities, like the bishops, Catholic groups, and evangelicals.

The "Defense of Marriage" is their battle cry. But defense from what? What is the real danger to marriage?

No Christians are protesting, legistlating, or publicly defending marriage by standing against pornography, the oversexualization of women and girls, messages of domination to men, promiscuity, infidelity, rampant divorce, disregard for procreation, messed up notions of what marriage means, our culture's overemphasis on romantic love, frequency of sex as the measure of a marriage's health, and the lack of formation and preparation before marriage. These are all problems of which Christians are well aware. And we're much farther down a dangerous road with respect to all of these other problems than we are with gay marriage. But I don't get letters from the bishops telling me to write my congressman about loose laws on the creation of and access to pornography.

That's because we've failed the homosexual community. Again, you don't have to be a Christian who supports that lifestyle. You just have to be one who can see past it to the reflection of God's image before you and know that it deserves your peaceful, no-strings-attached love.

When Christians start having LGBTQ outreaches and standing with the marginalized and oppressed, we'll be seen as the true followers of Christ. We're called to stop judging homosexuals and stop creating campaigns against them. I'm not saying definitions of marriage aren't important. But it's honestly hard to imagine Jesus on a picket line supporting Prop 8. It's much easier to imagine him amazing everyone (even his followers - us!) by his kindness, by his subversion of our cultural norms, and by his unfailing ability to meet the marginalized where they are. And that's where I want to be too. I want to be in that unexpected, life-giving, radical meeting space.

"Revival," "Alive," & "Dead"

I have a pet peeve when it comes to certain words and phrases. We all do. And sometimes pet peeves are just annoying for arbitrary reasons. But the terms "revival," "alive," and "dead" when used for churches really irk me because they say much more about human judgments than they say about the reality of God.

Alive v. Dead 
First, I can think of few things more insulting than calling a church "dead." No self-respecting Christian would do this to the face of a member of one of these "dead" churches, mind you, but they'd nevertheless think it was true. And what makes a church dead? Well it's not growing for one! How could God be anywhere that wasn't gaining momentum? But of course, by this logic we'd have to say that God must therefore be most present at churches with tremendous growth, like those of Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, or Rob Bell. Are these the epicenters of God's presence in America?

When I was young my family used to visit our grandparent's church about once a year in rural Indiana. They were Quakers but the church service looked very traditional for Protestants. But it was small. And it wasn't growing. The youngest congregants were 50 and there were only a dozen or so who attended. But I'll tell you that God was no less present there than at Saddleback.

At a party recently, I spoke with someone from a large church in Chicago that wanted to plant churches in every neighborhood. Either plant them or partner with existing churches. But it was explained to me that they only wanted to partner with "alive" churches, not with "dead" ones, i.e., only with ones that were growing and contemporary. I find this sort of judgment unusual, to say the least. It's bad theology at worst.

Another problem is that "dead" churches aren't just shrinking but they're not very fiery. They're not charismatic. Their music isn't contemporary. They aren't seen as relevant. And everyone knows the message of the gospel is to be relevant!... That's probably a topic for another post.

Revival
Revival implies death first and then having new life breathed into a church or place. But I think the whole philosophy of revival is inaccurate, as if God eventually leaves churches who aren't charismatic enough or who don't attract new visitors. Or leaves when people don't respond to the gospel.

Growing up in a charismatic, Pentecostal church, we would often go to "revivals." We'd travel around to wherever it was happening: "There's a revival in Kalamazoo!" "There's one in Indiana!" They were events, unpredictable, that just happened. As if the Holy Spirit were a rock star who traveled incognito and then appeared at random places. And we'd all flock to get a taste!

The problem with all these labels - "alive," "dead," "revival" - is that it says everything about our judgments of God and others and nothing about God's nature. If the Church is the Body of Christ, can any part of it ever be dead? Isn't it always alive? And does it have to meet our standards of growing, contemporary, relevant, young, etc. just to deserve our attention?

The Holy Spirit doesn't appear at different places at different times like a fairy. God is present to us and in all churches at all times. The difference is how are we responding to God? When are we opening up to Truth and seeing God in new ways so that our understanding is changed? That is the only kind of revival. The Holy Spirit isn't gracing some with its presence and denying it to others. No, we are all constantly given a choice of saying Yes to God, especially in and at our churches. And what makes us so sure every other church should look like ours? Not judging includes churches, people. Let's be more Christian than that.