Gifted by Otherness: Gay and Lesbian Christians in the Church
176
Gifted by Otherness: Gay and Lesbian Christians in the Church
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Overview
Proactive and self-affirming book provides new hope for those who feel that it is impossible to be both gay or lesbian, as well as Christian.
Gay and lesbian Christians are in the awkward position of trying to explain themselves to two mutually hostile audiences. On the one side, the gay-lesbian community is often deeply suspicious of anyone connected with Christianity. On the other side sits the church, which often wishes that gays and lesbians would go away, or at least disappear into the woodwork quietly. But the gay and lesbian community has a unique vocation in today’s church, one of challenging the church’s to be inclusive of all God’s children—the central message of the Gospel.
Based on retreats they have presented to churches and seminaries, authors L. William Countryman and M. R. Ritley explore what it means to affirm, not merely accept, being gay and lesbian, as well as being Christian. This pro-active and self-affirming book provides new hope for the LGBT community, their families, and confidently appropriating and retelling the Biblical story of this unique and gifted minority’s spiritual journey.
“[A] powerful Magna Carta for gay and lesbian Christians and a compelling call to the church not to stand in the way of Jesus’s unconditional love.”—Malcolm Boyd, author of Are You Running with Me, Jesus?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819225375 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Morehouse Publishing |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2001 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Sales rank: | 312,212 |
| File size: | 492 KB |
About the Author
L. William Countryman is a retired professor of New Testament from Church Divinity School of the Pacific. He has authored numerous books for scholars and laity, including How Can Anyone Read the Bible?: A Little Book of Guidance,Calling on the Spirit in Unsettling Times, and Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Read an Excerpt
GIFTED BY OTHERNESS
GAY AND LESBIAN CHRISTIANS IN THE CHURCH
By L. WILLIAM COUNTRYMAN, M. R. RITLEY
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2001 L. William Countryman and M. R. RitleyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2537-5
CHAPTER 1
WHOSE PROBLEM ARE WE?
A Question of Perception
M. R.: Several years ago, a friend who knows my sense of humor very well sent me a card for no occasion in particular, just on the assumption that (a) I would get a good laugh out of it, and (b) I probably needed one. The front was designed to look like one of those egregious tabloids that I am unable to keep from picking up in the checkout line. In this case, instead of "Mom, 7, Gives Birth to Elvis-Lookalike Space Alien," the headline shrieked "Shocking Secrets of.... The Gay Lifestyle!" It was illustrated with a 1950s couple, eyes wide in horror, mouths agape. The picture had probably come from a movie poster for a grade-B horror flick.
Beneath the scandalized couple, smaller headlines screamed:
"See Them ... mow the lawn!
"Hear Them ... order Chinese take-out!
"Watch Them ... do the laundry!"
Inside, my friend had written, "The truth is out at last! I always wondered why, if my life is such a scandal, it's so dull? Happy Monday, Vicki."
And there it is in a nutshell, I thought: Vicki, a longtime vestry member in her parish, lay eucharistic minister, former youth group leader, and regular volunteer at a parish-run feeding program, knows perfectly well that her picture of her life as a lesbian Christian and her church's picture are light-years apart. She knows, moreover, which picture is true, though she will probably never convince her co-parishioners, much less her church. Like most of us who know ourselves to be gay, she has had to find her way to a spiritual center from which to define her own life and faith, refusing the definitions that the straight majority confidently uses to describe her. The reality of this is not nearly as humorous as the card suggests, but those who have survived several decades of church life know that sometimes only humor keeps them from becoming as aberrant as their coreligionists frequently tell them they are.
In fact, it is always astonishing to discover how many healthy and self-affirming gay women and men are to be found in the churches, and how much humor and courage they bring to the task of being Christians in a world that views Christians with suspicion and to the task of being gay in Christian churches that view being gay with condemnation, fear, or anger. Somehow, they have managed to remain faithful Christians, genuinely devoted to their various churches, trying to live out both the gospel imperative and the truth of their own lives.
But there are so few compared to the larger number of gay men and lesbians who either become refugees from churches that will not accept them or remain in their communities, hidden and silent, either fearful of being known for who they are or brainwashed into believing that the church is right in condemning them in the first place.
Redefining the "Problem" of Gay and Lesbian Christians
It is not that the church ignores the question of how to deal with gay and lesbian members: far from it. Like other minority groups, LesBiGay Christians have been part of the larger liberation movements that, since the early sixties, have rejected the majority's assumptions and definitions, challenged both the morality and truthfulness of those definitions, and insisted on the right of self-definition.
To many people, gay and straight alike, it seems that little else has taken center stage at church conventions, councils, or synods in the last decade, so that for many genuinely engaged gay and lesbian Christians, these meetings have become what one gay man, with more imagination than delicacy, called the "annual faggot-flaying." The difficulty is that this attention is overwhelmingly focused on what others see as the "problem" of gay and lesbian Christians, rather than the problem that heterosexual Christians pose to us. This latter is far more severe a problem, given the damage it inflicts on gay and lesbian lives, or encourages others to inflict.
Over the past few years, in fact, the discussion has definitely escalated, and in proportion to its escalation, it has become more and more charged with animosity. Many perfectly ordinary gay and lesbian Christians discover, to their amazement, that they are apparently the greatest threat to Christianity since the Emperor Nero. Moreover, the very fact that they are asking the church to bless same-gender marriages as it does cross-gender marriages is somehow seen as proof of how dire a threat they are to marriage and family.
In the midst of this discussion, debate, and ever-more-desperate attempt for one side or another to achieve an absolute victory (one of the most aberrant of all twentieth-century obsessions, by the way), the genuine pastoral and emotional needs of gay and lesbian Christians are simply ignored, while one more discussion, dialogue, or debate takes place. These needs—and the freight of human pain and human need they represent—continue unabated while the church decides what to do about the problem. Clearly, the divided church itself is in no position to offer either moral or spiritual leadership here, or at least in any way timely enough to matter to a great many gay and lesbian Christians whose pain, confusion, and anger can certainly not be put on hold while the discussion goes on.
To be fair, the church has its own troubles over the question of sexuality, gay or otherwise. Sincere Christians are committed to remaining at the discussion table, unwilling to break fellowship with other Christians, however hotly they disagree. As a Christian, I appreciate their willingness to continue the dialogue; as a gay woman, I deplore this substitution of discussion for ministry, particularly when the real-life needs of men and women are flagrantly ignored.
There lies the central difficulty, it seems: one community waiting while another (which has too often shown itself to be ignorant or illinformed at best and hostile at worst) decides its fate and meaning. Whatever the dominant community's answer is, the process in itself is both unacceptable and unchristian. It is the right of a community to define itself, a lesson that the church is only slowly learning in the cases of other minority groups and that it has as yet failed to apply to the gay and lesbian Christians in its midst.
Dealing with the "problem," then, is actually a matter of devising ways in which the gay and lesbian Christian community can begin a deeper process of self-definition, placing itself not only in the community-at-large, but specifically defining its role in the church—and doing it, moreover, not simply in the church's terms, but in terms that it has already redefined in the light of its own experience. This is a central task of what gay and lesbian Christians must undertake on their own behalf. Moreover, it must rest solidly on the gay-lesbian community's refusal to be defined as the problem: there is clearly a problem, but it is a problem of attitude on the heterosexual community's part, and one of the first steps in healthy gay and lesbian self-definition is the rejection of the role of "problem" and the refusal to be punished for the heterosexual community's failure to deal with its own problem.
What does it look like when gay men and women appropriate and interpret the biblical story, act out the gospel message, and draw on their own cultures (including gay humor) to give them color, meaning, and texture? This is, I believe, a task that must be done by gay men and women as well as with gay men and women, not something the church does for gay men and women. This kind of appropriation has been a major strength to other minority groups, notably the African American community and third-world Christians. Gays and lesbians must consciously frame such a spiritual foundation.
Whether the church decides at length that LesBiGay people should be here—lay, ordained, single or coupled—we already are here, and what is needed is not simply and passively asking for the church's acceptance, but creating a gay spiritual understructure powerful enough to reshape the very terms in which the church perceives and understands us. Such a reversal is not easily achieved, either in an individual's life or in the awareness of a larger community. Hence, the emphasis of this book: a proactive stance, not a mere rebuttal of the church's teaching, but a means of reeducating both the gay and straight communities.
A Peculiar Kind of Ministry
Gay men and lesbians have an astonishing degree of tenacity: they must, just to persist in being faithful to themselves in a world that has shown itself to be hostile, untrustworthy, and dangerous. Their continuing presence in the church century after century is a fairly impressive feat in and of itself. Like other oppressed communities, the LesBiGay world has been shaped by the need to "hide in plain sight." To this end, it has developed its own language—especially words and phrases used only in gay settings and by gay people—particular styles of dress, gestures, and especially a certain kind of humor that have kept gay people's spirit, dignity, and self-determination alive.
Oddly enough, in a church increasingly aware of the need for sensitivity to the cultural contexts of other groups it seeks to minister to, there is a peculiar blindness to gay cultural contexts, as if they had neither legitimacy nor respectability, and could therefore safely be ignored while a version of Christianity approved by the majority was superimposed on this minority. Such a strategy in dealing with any other minority would be horrifying to mainstream churches nowadays, a legacy of nineteenth-century cultural imperialism. It may take a significant amount of education to convince the churches that, just as they should not treat Asians, Africans, or Native Americans as defective Europeans, neither should they pretend that gay and lesbian Christians are defective heterosexuals.
What does it mean, what does it look like, when gay and lesbian Christians can come to understand themselves as God's gay people, exploring God's love and wisdom in gay lives, gay relationships, and gay communities? Granted, this is a peculiar ministry when viewed by many straight Christians, but most cultures are strange when viewed by ethnocentric outsiders.
Caught in the Middle
Bill: Lesbian and gay Christians often find that we are trying to explain ourselves to two different and mutually hostile audiences. On one side, the gay- lesbian community is often deeply suspicious of anybody connected with Christianity. Many of us, individually and as a group, have excellent reason for such feelings, having been treated very harshly and dismissively by churches. Some people who claim to speak for Christianity really do have an anti-gay agenda, and they sometimes take an active political role in trying to keep gay and lesbian people from sharing the rights that other citizens of modern democracies take for granted—the right to freedom of speech, for example, the right to basic security in habitation and employment, and the right to form legally recognized families. Given all this, many gay men and lesbians have a hard time understanding why we would still be engaged with the Christian faith.
The churches, on the other hand, even when they are not actively hostile to us, often seem to wish that we would go away or at least disappear quietly into the woodwork. They wonder why we cannot leave well enough alone and just be grateful that we're no longer being denounced, expelled, or even executed. A good many of our heterosexual co-religionists think of us as creating a problem by our presence. We belong to the ranks of the "tolerated," and the classic fantasy of toleration is that the tolerated ought to be so grateful for that status that they meekly submit to whatever lingering indignities may go with it. Churches, then—with some happy exceptions—wonder why we have to be gay at all; or, if it's really unavoidable, why we have to talk about it.
One may well wonder why we put up with living in this particular spot, under suspicion from both the communities that we identify with. At bottom, I think it's a matter of congruence; our sexuality and our faith actually do go together. Whatever the church may say, we have found in our gayness something that connects us with ourselves and with God. Churches may have given Christian faith a bad name in our community, but our own experience of that faith has helped us understand and rejoice in who we are. God has enriched us in creating us as the lesbian and gay people we are.
In a corresponding way, our experience as gay men and lesbians enables us to see our Christian faith with new eyes. Some of the things we were told about Christianity turn out to have been wrong and harmful; other things turn out to be amazingly and unexpectedly life-giving. Our sexual orientation—or rather our whole life experience, which includes our sexual orientation—has actually been the occasion of our faith coming awake and giving us life. We bring to the churches, then, a perspective that renews and revives the central message of the gospel, the good news that forms the foundation for everything that is legitimately Christian.
Each aspect of our identity as lesbian and gay Christians offers gifts to the other. And each side needs the gifts that the other side brings. We persist in living on this awkward boundary not out of some inability to give up childhood religious training, not out of some reluctance to be fully gay or fully Christian, but out of a sense that this is the richest place we could possibly live. That doesn't mean, of course, that it is free from problems. There are moments for all of us, I suspect, when we would really like to belong simply to one community or the other—but the losses would be too great.
The Vocation of Being Caught in the Middle
From the perspective of Christian faith, this awkward business of living on the boundary looks very much like vocation—a call from God. When you answer such a call, you discover the meaning of your life. God has drawn us to this difficult place in order to reveal God's grace to us and in us and through us. The boundary where we're living, however inconvenient, is a place rich in spiritual discovery—which means, of course, that it is also largely uncharted territory. No ready-made tradition tells us how to be gay and lesbian Christians. This is a vocation God has created in our own time to bring about a new enrichment of the gospel.
Not that there haven't been gay men and lesbians in the church from the very beginning. Undoubtedly there have been, even though they're largely invisible in the record. A generation ago, churches depended heavily on closeted gays to fill the ranks of clergy. They still do, in those places and denominations where it isn't safe to come out of the closet. The difference today is not that lesbians and gay men are part of the church, but that we are open about being part of the church. And that is a big difference. It changes the situation radically because it forces churches to deal with something that they have wanted to avoid.
Even if there is no specific tradition about how to be gay or lesbian and Christian, however, there is a long tradition within Christianity about living a life of integrity, a life of hope, a life in loving communion with God and with our neighbors. The basic principles of this tradition, the guideposts of Christian spirituality, have as much to offer to lesbians and gay men as to anyone else. The difference is that, in the past, churches discouraged us from bringing our full lives into direct relationship with these principles. The whole erotic side of human existence, in our case, was forbidden. The result was to make any real spirituality very difficult to formulate. Now that we have begun to bring our whole selves into relationship with the gospel, we open up all sorts of new possibilities.
Vocation is about how we find the meaning in our own lives. It gives us the opportunity to discover God's grace anew in our own context. We can learn a good deal from the past, but what we learn has meaning only insofar as we can link it to our own experience. Neither our experience nor the tradition is enough by itself. Both can be distorted. Both can do evil as well as good. We can interpret our own experience in merely self-serving ways. Or we can make the tradition an instrument of repression and marginalization and use it against those we do not like or understand. Only when tradition and experience come into dialogue with each other and with God do we find out who we really are.
But vocation is not just about ourselves. It is also about how we contribute to the larger world. What we bring, in the long run, to both our communities—the gay-lesbian community and the church—will be the result of our own spiritual growth. We blaze trails. We identify landmarks. We construct, in effect, a kind of map to allow two previously isolated realms of human experience and understanding to come into conversation with each other—to our own benefit and theirs.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from GIFTED BY OTHERNESS by L. WILLIAM COUNTRYMAN, M. R. RITLEY. Copyright © 2001 L. William Countryman and M. R. Ritley. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Whose Problem Are We?
2 M. R.: A Queer Sort of Journey
3 BILL: Finding the Good News of Being Gay
4 M.R.: A People Defined by Desire
5 BILL: The Church and Sex: A Checkered History
6 M. R.: God's Flaming Laughter
7 BILL: Grace as Surprise
8 M.R.: The God Who Loves Surprises
9 BILL: Erotic Spirit
10 M. R.: Telling the Story, Shaping the History
11 BILL: Reading with New Eyes
12 M.R.: God's Gay Tribe
13 BILL: Hanging Out with the Church
14 BILL: Our Particular Priesthood
15 M. R.: Icons, Prophets, Fire Dancers
Notes
Bibliography
What People are Saying About This
"Ritley and Countryman have written a thoughtful and provocative book for anyone who has struggled with what it means when gays are a part of the church."
—Publishers Weekly
"A powerful Magna Carta for gay and lesbian Christians and a compelling call to the church not to stand in the way of Jesus Christ's unconditional love."
—Malcolm Boyd, poet/writer-in-residence, Cathedral Center of St. Paul, Los Angeles
"With wit and candor and hard-won depth of insight, Countryman and Ritley help the gay and godly (but often church-damaged) recognize and reclaim the holy ground that belongs to them!"
—Marilyn McCord Adams, Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology, Yale Divinity School and Religious Studies Department
"Gifted By Otherness is written with the authority of lesbian and gay disciples who happen also to be articulate theologians and priests. They do not seek to justify lesbigay spirituality, but rather manifest it and encourage the spirituality of everyone, straight and gay. Any church unsafe for these two bright canaries is a coal mine unsafe for any pilgrim."
— Louie Crew, Founder of Integrity, Member of Executive Council of the Episcopal Church
"This warm, intelligent series of essays by two gay Episcopal priests, a woman and a man, frankly and compassionately examines the peculiar, difficult, yet vital relationship between the Christian church and its gay parishioners over the centuries....From cover to cover, their voices are friendly, engaging, quirky, occasionally humorous, and always thought-provoking."
—Fearlessbooks.com
"Gifted by Otherness is a source of both encouragement and empowerment for those traveling a difficult and usually lonely road, and it offers lessons to the broader Christian community."
—Joseph Wakelee-Lynch, Crossings
"Those who want to rehash old arguments will doubtless need to look elsewhere. The authors consistently refuse to engage them. But those who want to pause in wonder at the utter strangeness of God's summons will be delighted to find a book that finally speaks to and for them."
- Charles Allen, Anglican Theological Review
"...Countryman and Ritley explore what it means to affirm, not merely accept, being gay or lesbian, as well as Christian. Writing primarily for the lesbigay community, and for their families and communities, they explore the ways in which the gay and lesbian community can appropriate and re-tell the biblical story, and find confidence in their unique spiritual journey and gifts. This proactive and self-affirming book provides new hope for those who feel that it is impossible to be both gay or lesbian, as well as Christian"
- Cokesbury Good Books catalog
"If you are a spiritual director looking for a book that gives you a faithful and sometimes humorous look at our subculture, this book is for you. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered directee currently involved in a faith community."
—Rev Dr. Rich Rossiter for Presence
"This book is intended as a guide for a 'gay spiritual understructure' to affirm sexual orientation as a 'God-given gift'."
- Philadelphia Gay News, Jan. 4-10, 2002
"...Countryman and Ritley have done to perfection what they set out to do. They have depicted lesbian and gay otherness as 'windows through which God's working in the world is glimpsed,' as role models of courage to be what God intended us to be, of vulnerability as freedom and spiritual strength, of the wholeness of being both sexual and spiritual, and of the willingness to go on loving no mater what the cost. And for those gifts, thanks be to God."
- Virginia Mollenkott for The Witness
"Gay and Lesbian Christians are in the awkward position of trying to explain themselves to two mutually hostile audiences. On the one side, the gay-lesbian community is often deeply suspicious of anyone connected with Christianity. On the other side sits the church, which often wishes that gays and lesbians would go away, or at least disappear into the woodwork quietly. But the gay and lesbian community has a unique vocation in today's church, one of challenging the church to be inclusive of all Gods' Children - the central message of the Gospel....Countryman and M. R. Ritley explore what it means to affirm, not merely accept, being gay or lesbian, as well as Christian."
- Out Front Colorado
"...Gifted by Otherness is a springboard to generate discussion and action in today's Christian communities."
- Echo