Bigotry in the Name of God Is Blasphemy

Senators Tim Scott, Kamalah Harris and Cory Booker, sponsors of the Anti-Lynching Bill

Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates a brother or sister is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.
I John 2:9-11

For Christians, this is Epiphany, the season of light. We celebrate the light of the world, which we see in Jesus. And we remind ourselves that we believe in light rather than darkness.

Regardless of our religious affiliation or lack of it, light is a powerful image which speaks to the heart of our spiritual journey. We are always seeking more light; always doing our best to choose light over darkness; reminding ourselves that we can trust the light.

It is a struggle, because we are tempted by the darkness. Often the world seems to love darkness more than light. And there are some who will try to make us believe that darkness is light, and light is darkness.

Sometimes the campaign against the light is led by people who call themselves Christian.

In an online article for NBC News, Brooke Sopelsa reports that the Liberty Counsel, a self-proclaimed evangelical nonprofit that opposes gay rights, is opposing a bill that would explicitly make lynching a federal crime.

Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver explained that the group opposes the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act because it specifically includes protections for LGBTQ people.

"The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can't stop them from coming the rest of the way in," Staver told the conservative Christian news outlet OneNewsNow. “This is a way to slip it in under a so-called anti-lynching bill, and to then to sort of circle the wagon and then go for the juggler [sic] at some time in the future."

The anti-lynching bill was introduced in June by by the Senate’s three black members, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. It addresses lynchings motivated by a victim’s “actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.”

In a statement after the bill passed the senate unanimously, Senator Booker remarked:

“For over a century, members of Congress have attempted to pass some version of a bill that would recognize lynching for what it is: a bias-motivated act of terror. And for more than a century, and more than 200 attempts, this body has failed. We have righted that wrong and taken corrective action that recognizes this stain on our country’s history.”

One might think that an anti-lynching bill was at least a century too late to make any difference, but the opposition proves it is still needed.

Mat Staver and the Liberty Counsel hope they can stop it before it passes the house where they are lobbying Lawmakers to remove protections for “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” before taking a vote.

They want to make it clear: they oppose lynching. They simply object to including the specific protections for LGBTQ persons.

The Liberty Counsel is not promoting liberty or Christianity. They are darkness rather than light.

In the words of John’s letter, “whoever hates a brother or sister is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.”

Epiphany is a good time to remind ourselves that Christians are always called to walk in the light, and choose light over darkness. Bigotry is always wrong.

But Christians have a special responsibility to reject bigotry in the name of God.

Bigotry in the name of God is blasphemy.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Collateral Damage

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!”

Matthew 23:23-24

We need to be absolutely clear that in the Christian Church’s war on LGBTQ persons, our LGBTQ siblings have borne the overwhelming weight of the suffering. The Traditionalists often claim that they have had no desire to hurt anyone, but that does not mitigate the pain they have inflicted.

But there has also been collateral damage.

And the collateral damage should not be underestimated. It is wide and deep and it will have lasting effects on the whole church.

We have trivialized our understanding of the Bible.

We are straining out gnats and swallowing camels.

There are seven passages in the Bible that are typically used to “prove” that the Bible condemns same sex relationships. They consist of a few hundred words; a small fraction of the total word count of nearly a million.

And these seven “clobber verses” are all problematic in one way or another. When Christians act as if an authoritative biblical witness can be found by lifting these seven passages out of context we trivialize the whole Bible.

Those who read the Bible this way become de facto literalists and they make it much more difficult to appreciate the Bible as a guide to faith. It becomes a rule book rather than an inspiring narrative. Instead of being a book of big ideas, it becomes a book of isolated verses.

And those who have tried to counter the condemnations of the traditionalists have typically joined the debate on those same terms. We counter one series of passages with another. We cite verses. And even though we may be using those verses as illustrations rather than as proof texts, to the secular world it looks like proof-texting.

It is more like a game of biblical trivia than an honest exploration of the biblical witness. And the result is that we diminish the meaning of the Scriptures.

We appear to care more about archaic and anachronistic rules than we do about actual human beings. The traditionalists may claim to be honoring Scripture. And that may be their honest intention. But in practical terms, they achieve a high view of Scripture by making a few verses more important than the people for whom the whole biblical witness is intended.

We have trivialized the meaning of sin.

Paul Tillich, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth (or any other) century, questioned whether the Christian concept of sin could survive in the modern world. He argued that for modern people a more helpful word for sin is separation.  In his famous sermon, “You Are Accepted,” he described sin as a state of separation: separation from God, from others, and from ourselves. And he defined grace as the acceptance which overcomes that separation and reunites us with God, with others, and with ourselves.

If sin was a difficult concept in the middle of the twentieth century, it is nearly impossible now.

The traditionalist focus on the “sin” of same sex relationships is spectacularly unhelpful.

In the 21^st century we do not see sex as inherently sinful. Forced sex is sinful. Unfaithfulness we can see as sinful. But sex between consenting and committed adults is not seen as sinful. Almost every couple I have married has been living together. And those that weren’t living together were typically splitting time between houses or apartments.

Focusing on the sin of same sex relationships comes off as hypocritical.

But that is not the biggest problem.

When we try to identify sin with same sex relationships we lose focus on the sins that are central to the biblical witness: economic and social injustice. The Bible is far more concerned with how we treat poor people than with our sex lives.

The focus on sex is petty and hypocritical and it takes away from issues that really should concern us as Christians.

We have made it look like we do not believe in science.

The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a mental illness from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) approximately twenty minutes after the United Methodist Church declared it to be “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Those of us who actually believed in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience) assumed it would not be long before the Book of Discipline caught up with the science and revised our understanding of same sex relationships. But we underestimated the growing influence of right wing theology and selective biblical literalism.

We are at odds with the best insights of science and medicine.

We appear backward, primitive, and superstitious.

And United Methodists find themselves lumped together with those who think the world was made in seven days five thousand years ago, and evolution is a hoax. Not surprisingly, this costs us credibility. But it goes far beyond sex and biology. The bad science undermines the biblical witness across a broad spectrum of ethical and moral issues.

It makes us appear irrelevant.

And then. Finally. We just look stupid.

Traditionalists can talk about being counter-cultural, and that could be a good thing. We should be counter-cultural in our rejection of violence, and greed, and selfishness.

At its core, Christianity is profoundly counter-cultural.

But this. Is just. Stupid.

As a wise person once observed, “Just because you are a fool does not mean you are a fool for Christ. Sometimes you’re just a damned fool.”

Those of us who are still affirming a faith that is open and accepting might hope that we would not be affected by the loud condemnations of the traditionalists. But it just doesn’t work that way.

Those who condemn our LGBTQ siblings do not speak for the whole church. They certainly do not speak for the whole of the United Methodist Church.

They do not speak for the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, The Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalists, and others.

And in a broader faith context they do not speak for Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist Judaism.

But to much of the secular world, and among many casual Christians, those voices of condemnation sound like the official voice of Christianity. And, in a general sense, condemnation seems like the singular voice of organized religion.

In the war on our LGBTQ siblings, Christianity is just collateral damage.

*It is important to read the 23^rd chapter of Matthew within the context of our understanding that Jesus was himself a Pharisee and that what he describes is an internal conflict.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.