Building spiritually-grounded spaces that honor the worth and dignity of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people demands of us a willingness to transform both ourselves and how we conceive of our relationships with one another. This is hard work not only for those who are challenged by LGBT relationships but also for LGBT people of faith. All of us are stretched to move beyond the cultural messages we’ve received, messages that often serve as a mirror for how we see ourselves. We are also required to push beyond what is comfortable. Push to see how we’ve barricaded ourselves from one another out of fear of judgment and rejection.
In an age when the marketplace defines so much of who we are, how we spend our time, how we present ourselves to the world, how we engage in friendships and sexual relationships, it is essential to have alternative spaces where our humanity is valued over our status or productivity. Creating welcoming spaces in our congregations and communities does this by requiring us to stay committed to one another when we are not particularly loveable or beautiful, when we are at our most vulnerable and raw.
By keeping this basic commitment to being authentic and in community, it is impossible to limit our understanding of who deserves our love. For me, this has meant that I’ve had to expand how I conceive of what relationships are sacred. I’ve become aware recently, for instance, of the gifts my single friends have given to my understanding of holy relationships as their love for their friends challenges the insular nature of our culture’s fixation on sexual relationships modeled on the nuclear family.
Jesus asked us not just to love our neighbor but also to love our neighbor as ourselves. To do this requires tremendous risk. We cannot get there by easy altruism but only by personal transformation in the company of others. There can be no more holy work than this, and I am blessed to be part of a movement that is engaged in it.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
The Issue of Tithing
A recent Wall Street Journal article, The Backlash against Tithing, discusses how many churches are abandoning the idea of tithing, including conservative congregations. I’ve been intrigued by the question of tithing as I’ve been slowly working my way out of debt and toward a tithing practice at my church. It is a good subject for reflection as we enter the biggest holiday shopping season of the year.
Many churches look to the Bible as requiring tithing. Citing Jacob in Genesis “and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you” (Genesis 28:21) these congregations insist that giving 10% of their income to the church is a biblically scripted requirement. In Mormon congregation’s members are bared from entering church if they don’t tithe and many conservative mega churches offer financial planning to help members learn how to manage their finances and tithe at the same time.
Yet, as the Wall Street Journal article points out, the idea of tithing is being challenged. In such unlikely places as the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C professor Andreas Kostenberger argues in his New Testament class that “if you add up all taxes paid by the ancient Israelites, they exceed 10%, and that in the New Testament there's no percentage rule.”
I think biblically-literal interpretation of scripture (whether for or against tithing), miss the point. I have been persuaded about the importance of tithing not because the Bible requires it of us, but because it is a way of participating in the world; it is a way of saying our humanity counts.
The best article I’ve read on tithing comes from Rebecca Ann Parker’s book, Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now. In her chapter, “What Shall We Do with All this Beauty,” she connects honoring the Sabbath and tithing as the best practices in a global capitalist marketplace for spiritual deepening.
She argues that in a culture where global consumerism increasingly defines who we are, we need to find ways of being human that aren’t tied up with buying and selling goods. Without concrete practices that affirm our humanity we “lose our awareness that we have intimate and meaningful relationships with one another, that we are connected to and dependent upon the earth, that we have interests that transcend our personal lives.”
The spiritual practice of observing the Sabbath asks us to stop participating for one day in the ways that the dominant culture has determined for us. This is not simply about our own personal need for renewal but an understanding that we can not really comprehend injustice and be agents of change if we aren’t taking time to let ourselves feel the implications of injustice in the world. Similarly and connectedly, Parker argues that we should tithe not only because it helps sustain the causes we care about but it is a way of honoring our role as participants in creation, as stewards of the earth. As one congregational member claims, “to tithe is to tell the truth about who I am. . . I am a person who has something to give. I am a person who has received abundantly from life. I am a person whose presence matters in the world, and I am a person whose life has meaning because I am connected to and care about many things larger than myself. If I did not tithe, I would lose track of these truths about who I am.”
Many churches look to the Bible as requiring tithing. Citing Jacob in Genesis “and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you” (Genesis 28:21) these congregations insist that giving 10% of their income to the church is a biblically scripted requirement. In Mormon congregation’s members are bared from entering church if they don’t tithe and many conservative mega churches offer financial planning to help members learn how to manage their finances and tithe at the same time.
Yet, as the Wall Street Journal article points out, the idea of tithing is being challenged. In such unlikely places as the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C professor Andreas Kostenberger argues in his New Testament class that “if you add up all taxes paid by the ancient Israelites, they exceed 10%, and that in the New Testament there's no percentage rule.”
I think biblically-literal interpretation of scripture (whether for or against tithing), miss the point. I have been persuaded about the importance of tithing not because the Bible requires it of us, but because it is a way of participating in the world; it is a way of saying our humanity counts.
The best article I’ve read on tithing comes from Rebecca Ann Parker’s book, Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now. In her chapter, “What Shall We Do with All this Beauty,” she connects honoring the Sabbath and tithing as the best practices in a global capitalist marketplace for spiritual deepening.
She argues that in a culture where global consumerism increasingly defines who we are, we need to find ways of being human that aren’t tied up with buying and selling goods. Without concrete practices that affirm our humanity we “lose our awareness that we have intimate and meaningful relationships with one another, that we are connected to and dependent upon the earth, that we have interests that transcend our personal lives.”
The spiritual practice of observing the Sabbath asks us to stop participating for one day in the ways that the dominant culture has determined for us. This is not simply about our own personal need for renewal but an understanding that we can not really comprehend injustice and be agents of change if we aren’t taking time to let ourselves feel the implications of injustice in the world. Similarly and connectedly, Parker argues that we should tithe not only because it helps sustain the causes we care about but it is a way of honoring our role as participants in creation, as stewards of the earth. As one congregational member claims, “to tithe is to tell the truth about who I am. . . I am a person who has something to give. I am a person who has received abundantly from life. I am a person whose presence matters in the world, and I am a person whose life has meaning because I am connected to and care about many things larger than myself. If I did not tithe, I would lose track of these truths about who I am.”
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Transgender Day of Remembrance
Today, November 20th, is set aside throughout the world for people to pay respect to those needlessly killed by transgender hate crimes and to call attention to the threat of violence faced by gender variant people. Of all groups targeted for hate crimes, crimes against transgender people are often the most violent, most underreported, and thus most often ignored by law enforcement and our communities.
Numerous cases of transgender deaths due to hate crimes have been reported this year. People like Kaia Ladell Baker from Nashville Tennessee was killed as a result of blunt force to the head and Erica Keel of Philadelphia was killed in March by a car that repeatedly struck her. In many cases, crimes like these go unsolved for years.
Sometimes deaths like Victoria Arellano who died in July of HIV/AIDS in San Pedro California happened because of neglect. She and many in similar predicamentes died after being denied treatment in HIV/AIDS clinics because she was transgender.
In popular culture the common perception of transgender people is of a white male-to-female transgender person with the financial means to afford expensive operations. The reality is that most of the hate crime violence against trans people is perpetuated against sex workers, cross dressers, immigrants, people of color and the homeless. These are the most vulnerable in our communities and hate crime legislation is desperately needed to begin to bring attention and justice to their situation.
For the 9th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance I was fortunate to work with two extraordinary transgender pastors, Rev. Dr. Erin Swenson from Atlanta and Rev. Drew Phoenix from Baltimore to create videos to commemorate the day. Please watch Drew Phoenix, pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Baltimore, MD and Presbyterian minister Rev. Erin Swenson.
Numerous cases of transgender deaths due to hate crimes have been reported this year. People like Kaia Ladell Baker from Nashville Tennessee was killed as a result of blunt force to the head and Erica Keel of Philadelphia was killed in March by a car that repeatedly struck her. In many cases, crimes like these go unsolved for years.
Sometimes deaths like Victoria Arellano who died in July of HIV/AIDS in San Pedro California happened because of neglect. She and many in similar predicamentes died after being denied treatment in HIV/AIDS clinics because she was transgender.
In popular culture the common perception of transgender people is of a white male-to-female transgender person with the financial means to afford expensive operations. The reality is that most of the hate crime violence against trans people is perpetuated against sex workers, cross dressers, immigrants, people of color and the homeless. These are the most vulnerable in our communities and hate crime legislation is desperately needed to begin to bring attention and justice to their situation.
For the 9th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance I was fortunate to work with two extraordinary transgender pastors, Rev. Dr. Erin Swenson from Atlanta and Rev. Drew Phoenix from Baltimore to create videos to commemorate the day. Please watch Drew Phoenix, pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Baltimore, MD and Presbyterian minister Rev. Erin Swenson.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Outsourced Connectivity
You know that feeling of juggling too much to the point that everything begins to unravel? I had one of those days this past weekend. I left a bag of books on the train in Boston, my luggage didn't arrive when I got to the airport, I almost lost my plane ticket, and I left a scarf on the plane. This sort of thing has happened before--just like an overloaded circuit, I had a meltdown.
Others have car wrecks, get sick or worse, but when I suffer from the deadly combination of too much information streaming in, too many demands, and too little sleep I forget things. It's a rather scary place to be and clearly part of the modern condition.
So, while in the midst of this predicament last week, I read an article about Tim Ferris’s new book The 4 Hour Week that made me think maybe I had found a way to address my situation. Ferris argues we can get our work life under control by drastically cutting down our availability to others. Ferris has been making waves in the business world by proposing the radical idea that we need to be "less connected." He doesn't read the newspaper, he has cancelled all his RSS feeds, and he even has outsourced his dating service.
He manages all this and keeps a lucrative business in operation by relying on others to deal with his e-mail traffic-- mostly by hiring highly-skilled, low-wage workers that you can find in places like India and Bangladesh. He isn’t actually interested in transforming how we think about technology; rather his is a model of globalizing the responses to technology so that people like him (lucrative executives) can enjoy more time for themselves. This model has picked up a following by the same class of people who dream of making massive amounts of money while young and then retiring early to a life of leisure. Ferris simply makes the fantasy better by showing how you can have it all right now.
For the progressive minded among us, Ferris’s model, with its blatant exploitation of others, is pretty hard to swallow. However, I would suggest that there is an uncomfortable resonance between Ferris’s model and that of the “simplicity movement” often touted by the spiritual left. Similar too Ferris, the simplicity movement speaks to a need to radically rethink our addiction to 24 hour accessibility which keeps us overly stimulated while depriving us of a rich spiritual life essential to developing our humanity. Yet, while this model is based on checking out of the high stress work world rather than hiring others to take care of our needs, the problem still remains that we can’t really think about “downsizing” our lives if we aren’t in a position of economic privilege in the first place. You can’t simplify if you are trying to make enough money to put your kids through school or if you have a chronic health care condition, or if you have to rely on food banks to get through the week.
This said, economic disparities don’t diminish the problem of our being overextended and overly available, they just require us to look at the issue differently. Without a real model of community, “being connected” becomes just another commodity in a capitalist system. The problem isn’t being connected; it’s the nature of the connection. We might ask instead: What is the quality of our connectedness and how wide is its range? Is our ability to be in touch in a moments notice actually shielding us from the deep connections that come from being in community with those different than ourselves?
Others have car wrecks, get sick or worse, but when I suffer from the deadly combination of too much information streaming in, too many demands, and too little sleep I forget things. It's a rather scary place to be and clearly part of the modern condition.
So, while in the midst of this predicament last week, I read an article about Tim Ferris’s new book The 4 Hour Week that made me think maybe I had found a way to address my situation. Ferris argues we can get our work life under control by drastically cutting down our availability to others. Ferris has been making waves in the business world by proposing the radical idea that we need to be "less connected." He doesn't read the newspaper, he has cancelled all his RSS feeds, and he even has outsourced his dating service.
He manages all this and keeps a lucrative business in operation by relying on others to deal with his e-mail traffic-- mostly by hiring highly-skilled, low-wage workers that you can find in places like India and Bangladesh. He isn’t actually interested in transforming how we think about technology; rather his is a model of globalizing the responses to technology so that people like him (lucrative executives) can enjoy more time for themselves. This model has picked up a following by the same class of people who dream of making massive amounts of money while young and then retiring early to a life of leisure. Ferris simply makes the fantasy better by showing how you can have it all right now.
For the progressive minded among us, Ferris’s model, with its blatant exploitation of others, is pretty hard to swallow. However, I would suggest that there is an uncomfortable resonance between Ferris’s model and that of the “simplicity movement” often touted by the spiritual left. Similar too Ferris, the simplicity movement speaks to a need to radically rethink our addiction to 24 hour accessibility which keeps us overly stimulated while depriving us of a rich spiritual life essential to developing our humanity. Yet, while this model is based on checking out of the high stress work world rather than hiring others to take care of our needs, the problem still remains that we can’t really think about “downsizing” our lives if we aren’t in a position of economic privilege in the first place. You can’t simplify if you are trying to make enough money to put your kids through school or if you have a chronic health care condition, or if you have to rely on food banks to get through the week.
This said, economic disparities don’t diminish the problem of our being overextended and overly available, they just require us to look at the issue differently. Without a real model of community, “being connected” becomes just another commodity in a capitalist system. The problem isn’t being connected; it’s the nature of the connection. We might ask instead: What is the quality of our connectedness and how wide is its range? Is our ability to be in touch in a moments notice actually shielding us from the deep connections that come from being in community with those different than ourselves?
Thursday, November 8, 2007
ENDA victory in the House
Last night the Employment Non Discrimination Bill (H.R. 3685) passed in the house with 235 members voting in favor and 184 opposed.
This was a difficult vote in many ways. The House leadership made the calculation that the only way the bill would pass was if gender identity and expression were stripped from it. They felt that a victory in the House was essential in order for an inclusive bill to have a chance in the next few years. If the bill had gone down in defeat or had been pulled from the floor it would make it nearly impossible for it to come up again in the next couple of years and our efforts would be set back at least 10 years. By giving members of Congress the "good feeling" that they had moved civil rights in this country one step forward, it will be easier to convince them of the importance of including the whole LGBT community in the near future when we have a new President who may sign it into law.
This calculation has caused friction within the LGBT community and there is an enormous amount of healing that now needs to occur.
Still, as we move forward and try to figure out the best strategies toward getting a fully inclusive ENDA to the desk of a President who will sign it, we also need to stop for a moment and reflect on the historic nature of this victory. It has been nearly 30 years of massive education on the part of LGBT groups around the country that has gotten us this far. We now have to roll up our sleaves and start doing the same level of education on transgender issues.
Even though this victory is bittersweet the win is still enormous. It signals to the public that gay and lesbian people ought to have basic civil rights protections and not to be fired or live in fear of being fired simply because they are gay.
To follow the live blog from the debate in the House go to HRC's Back Story.
This was a difficult vote in many ways. The House leadership made the calculation that the only way the bill would pass was if gender identity and expression were stripped from it. They felt that a victory in the House was essential in order for an inclusive bill to have a chance in the next few years. If the bill had gone down in defeat or had been pulled from the floor it would make it nearly impossible for it to come up again in the next couple of years and our efforts would be set back at least 10 years. By giving members of Congress the "good feeling" that they had moved civil rights in this country one step forward, it will be easier to convince them of the importance of including the whole LGBT community in the near future when we have a new President who may sign it into law.
This calculation has caused friction within the LGBT community and there is an enormous amount of healing that now needs to occur.
Still, as we move forward and try to figure out the best strategies toward getting a fully inclusive ENDA to the desk of a President who will sign it, we also need to stop for a moment and reflect on the historic nature of this victory. It has been nearly 30 years of massive education on the part of LGBT groups around the country that has gotten us this far. We now have to roll up our sleaves and start doing the same level of education on transgender issues.
Even though this victory is bittersweet the win is still enormous. It signals to the public that gay and lesbian people ought to have basic civil rights protections and not to be fired or live in fear of being fired simply because they are gay.
To follow the live blog from the debate in the House go to HRC's Back Story.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Can I Get a Witness?
“Can I get a Witness” expresses God’s presence in the shared lives of marginalized people and dates back at least as far as Nannie Helen Burroughs, the early twentieth century African American educator and proto-feminist reformer in the Baptist church. As we memorized the spirit of the dead in my Church’s All Souls Day ritual this past Sunday, I thought about Burroughs and her circle of Baptist Church ladies calling for a witness as they shared their stories of suffering and liberation. Burroughs’ spirit lived on in Atlanta Georgia this past weekend and I was privileged to witness its power at the 2007 Covenant Network of Presbyterians Conference in Atlanta.
The Covenant Network, made up of clergy and lay leaders in the Presbyterian Church USA, proclaims a vision for an inclusive Presbyterian Church embodied in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. I must confess that in the past when I’ve imagined somewhat stogy, somewhat aloof Mainline Christians, I’ve thought first of Presbyterians. Yet, if this weekend’s conference is any indication of how the spirit is moving in the Presbyterian Church USA, such stereotypes will soon be obliterated from our collective consciousness. I have rarely seen a group of people so committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and so thoughtful in their witness to his presence among us, than I did in the company of this group.
The Covenant Network has been working for change in the Presbyterian Church for 10 years and while they have suffered defeat they exude a spirit of hopeful promise not built on pie in the sky fanaticizing but grounded in faithful listening to the pain of so many Presbyterians who have been deeply harmed by the Church. By bearing witness to one another’s stories—stories such as Rev. Andy Cullen’s, a conservative Evangelical Presbyterian pastor who changed his mind about LGBT people and lost his parish as a consequence; or Ann Speer, a lifelong Presbyterian who was shunned by her Church community when she told members her son was gay—they have discovered in themselves a transformational love that is infectious and life giving and rings of Jesus’ spirit.
The Covenant Network, made up of clergy and lay leaders in the Presbyterian Church USA, proclaims a vision for an inclusive Presbyterian Church embodied in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. I must confess that in the past when I’ve imagined somewhat stogy, somewhat aloof Mainline Christians, I’ve thought first of Presbyterians. Yet, if this weekend’s conference is any indication of how the spirit is moving in the Presbyterian Church USA, such stereotypes will soon be obliterated from our collective consciousness. I have rarely seen a group of people so committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and so thoughtful in their witness to his presence among us, than I did in the company of this group.
The Covenant Network has been working for change in the Presbyterian Church for 10 years and while they have suffered defeat they exude a spirit of hopeful promise not built on pie in the sky fanaticizing but grounded in faithful listening to the pain of so many Presbyterians who have been deeply harmed by the Church. By bearing witness to one another’s stories—stories such as Rev. Andy Cullen’s, a conservative Evangelical Presbyterian pastor who changed his mind about LGBT people and lost his parish as a consequence; or Ann Speer, a lifelong Presbyterian who was shunned by her Church community when she told members her son was gay—they have discovered in themselves a transformational love that is infectious and life giving and rings of Jesus’ spirit.
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