Struggling in Good Faith: LGBTQI Inclusion from 13 American Religious Perspectives

by Mychal Copeland MTS, D'vorah Rose BCC, Ani Zonneveld (Afterword), Gene Robinson (Foreword by)

Overview

A multifaceted sourcebook telling the powerful story of reconciliation, celebration and struggle for LGBTQI inclusion across the American religious landscape.

"No matter what stage in the process of change, religious belief is unveiled in all its dynamism in this book.... Wrestling with issues and struggling for better understanding of one's fellow human beings is at the center of every religion, no matter how old or new, narrow or expansive, Western or Eastern, that religion is. The struggle itself is a sign of life in these religious endeavors, and with life there is hope."
—from the Foreword by Bishop Gene Robinson

We are at a critical turning point in American religious and political life over LGBTQI inclusion. How each spiritual community approaches the question will profoundly impact the American political and social climate of the future. This accessible resource explores thirteen faith traditions that wrestle with LGBTQI inclusion, documenting the challenges and transformation of American religion.

Faith Traditions Covered: The Black Church • Buddhism • The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) • The Episcopal Church • First Nations (Native American) • Hinduism • Judaism • The Lutheran Church • Islam • The Presbyterian Church • Protestant Evangelical Traditions • The Roman Catholic Church • Unitarian Universalism

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594736025
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	12/02/2015
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mychal Copeland, MTS, speaks and writes about the inclusion of LGBTQI people and interfaith families in religious life. As Bay Area director of InterfaithFamily, she helps couples navigate diversity of religious and cultural backgrounds, and as rabbi at Stanford University, she led multifaith and Jewish student groups exploring the intersections between religion and sexuality. She also served at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City, the world's largest LGBTQI synagogue.

D'vorah Rose, BCC, a multifaith healthcare chaplain, rabbi and palliative care and hospice nurse, consults with and advises healthcare institutions throughout the United States and internationally on the intersections of religious and cultural diversity, pluralism and healthcare status, with a specific focus on historically underserved communities, including LGBTQI patients and healthcare providers.

Ani Zonneveld is founder and president of Muslims for Progressive Values. She is also coeditor of Progressive Muslim Identities: Personal Stories from the U.S. and Canada.

The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson was the ninth Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, being the first openly gay, partnered priest to become a bishop in historic Christianity. He is currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

A Brief Overview of LGBTQI Terms
Foreword
Bishop Gene Robinson
Introduction
Mychal Copeland, MTS, and D'vorah Rose, BCC

The Black Church
Minister Rob Newells
Buddhism
Acharya Rita M. Gross, PhD
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon)
John Gustav-Wrathall
The Episcopal Church
Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge
First Nations (Native American)
Alex Wilson, EdD
Hinduism
Ruth Vanita, PhD
Islam
Shehnaz Haqqani with Laury Silvers, El-Farouk Khaki, and Troy Jackson
Judaism
Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman
The Lutheran Church
Beth Ann Doerring
The Presbyterian Church
Marvin M. Ellison, PhD, and Sylvia Thorson-Smith, MS
Protestant Evangelical Traditions
Ryan Bell, DMin
The Roman Catholic Church
Sister Jeannine Gramick, SL
Unitarian Universalism
Annette S. Marquis
Conclusion
Mychal Copeland, MTS, and D’vorah Rose, BCC
Afterword
Ani Zonneveld, founder and president, Muslims for Progressive Values

Acknowledgments
Notes

Editorial Reviews

This interfaith collection shows how [thirteen] religious groups face the challenge of including LGBTQI people. Faith traditions covered are the Black Church, Buddhist, Mormon, Episcopal, Native American, Hindu, Jewish, Lutheran, Muslim, Presbyterian, Protestant Evangelical, Roman Catholic and Unitarian Universalist. A stong line-up of contributors includes Cameron Partridge, Jane Litman and Jeannine Gramick. Editor Mychal Copeland is the Bay Area director of InterfaithFamily and her rabbinate includes having served Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the world's largest LGBTQI synagogue. Editor D'vorah Rose is a multifaith healthcare chaplain, rabbi and palliative care and hospice nurse who consults nationwide.

Jesus in Love Blog

As the long and frustrating effort to liberate gays and lesbians from cultural and religious oppression has moved from stage to stage in the U.S., most of the attention has been focused on how various branches of Christianity have dealt with the issue.

Which is understandable, given that a large majority of Americans still identify as being part of the broad Christian household.

But a new book reveals there is much to learn by recognizing how other faith traditions have approached this subject.Struggling in Good Faith: LGBTQI Inclusions from 13 American Religious Perspectivesopens up a wide discussion that is sure to be enlightening to everyone touched by these matters. Which, of course, is almost all Americans. The book, edited by Mychal Copeland and D'vorah Rose, has pieces in it covering the Black Church, Buddhism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), the Episcopal Church, First Nations (Native Americans), Hinduism, Judaism, the Lutheran Church, Islam, the Presbyterian Church, Protestant evangelical traditions, the Roman Catholic Church and Unitarian Universalism.

This is a collection of essays and explanations that reflects a desire for liberation from oppression. If you are part of a faith community that considers homosexuality a sin and believes the U.S. Supreme Court betrayed you when it ruled in favor of gay marriage earlier this year, you will find precious little comfort in this book. Instead, you will be challenged by many faith traditions to re-evaluate your position.

One of the first thing readers will want to know is what all those letters—LGBTQI—stand for. Didn't we used to talk just about gays (males) and lesbians (females)? Well, the list has expanded as society has begun to get a better grasp of the complexity of sexual identity. B is for bisexual; T is for transgender; Q is for questioning or self-affirming queer; I is for intersex (a term that refers topeople born with a reproductive anatomy that seems not to fit the typical definitions of female or male).

What this helpful book makes clear is that every faith tradition is confronted by the complications of human sexuality and that they often do unwise things before they begin to treat people the way the core of their traditions say people should be treated. Sometimes those poor early decisions are based on a particular reading of sacred texts. Later, deeper scholarship will suggest ways in which those texts can be understood as culturally restricted or not binding on all people for all time. My own essayhere on the blogabout what the Bible says and doesn't say about homosexuality will give you a sense of that from a Christian perspective.

I won't go through all 13 faith perspectives represented in this book but let me give you a few conclusions and insights the book offers of a few of those traditions:

• "Although sexuality receives attention in religious texts and from religious communities, until recently most Buddhists have not widely discussed or even recognized alternative sexual orientations and identities."
• "The black church with its heterosexism serves to continue a system of oppression using some of the same arguments that white people have used against black people and that men have used against women throughout history."
• "Hinduism has no history of persecuting gender-variant people or same-sex relations, but in the last two centuries, as a result of internalizing the attitudes of Victorian British colonizers, many Hindus have become embarrassed about sexuality in general and same-sex sexuality in particular."
• "Many Muslims who would be typically characterized as 'homosexuals' deny the term as an imposition of binary Western modes of sexual and gender identity, preferring to understand themselves in more culturally traditional terms of spectrum gender and sexual identity. . .But it should be made perfectly clear that the social organization of these genders and sexes is not without terrifying repercussions in their particular communities, even in supposedly tolerant countries such as Turkey."
• "Unlike the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic legal texts explore at least four and perhaps as many as six gender categories."
• "With the recent Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional, the pressure is mounting for evangelical churches.Will they change their views and be seen as accommodating themselves to an unbelieving culture or will they hold their ground and risk being seen by the culture at large as bigoted?"
• "The official Catholic position does not use the Bible as the basis for opposing same-sex acts, as some Christian churches do. In Catholicism, the teaching appeals to the church's tradition about natural law and the purpose of sexuality, incorporating scriptural texts such as the Genesis account of creation and the heterosexual thrust of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures to support or buttress the argument."

So here we have one more issue in the Culture Wars that, because people react viscerally, tends to demand quick and easy answers. But human sexuality is enormously complex, often misunderstood and difficult to contain within the bounds of religious rules and dogma. One value of this book is that it makes the truth of that complexity clear and suggests we not settle for simple answers to complicated questions.

On Faith - Bill Tammeus

For better or worse, religious and spiritual communities have played a major role in national conversationssurrounding LGBTQI individuals. Struggling in Good Faith enlists 13 different authors, each with aunique background in LGBTQI issues who happen to come from 13 different spiritual traditions, amongthem Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Native American spirituality. Each essay follows a similarformat: an introduction to the broad spiritual tradition, easily understandable for those outside the tradition;an overview of that tradition's historical treatment of LGBTQI individuals; and a description of how eachspiritual community is embracing LGBTQI individuals today. Throughout the essays, there is a recurringtheme of seeking to transform each faith from the inside out. It is a brief overview but a comprehensiveone, and each chapter helpfully includes lists of resources for further reading. The collection of essays is agreat springboard for understanding where the religious and spiritual communities came from and wherethey may need to go.

BookList - Christine Engel

"A timely exploration of the grappling all faith communities must engage in to survive and thrive in modern pluralistic America.... Powerfully outline[s] the challenges and opportunities ahead."
—Rick Davis, western regional director, Lambda Legal

"A wonderful compendium of resources.... Religion and LGBTQI rights are not at odds with one another and this book helps to show that."
—Rabbi Denise L. Eger, president, Central Conference of American Rabbis; founding president, Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Interfaith Clergy Association

“Honest, compelling and hopeful faith leaders ... share their views on the issues that matter most. If we will hear them and respond to the divine spirit of love together, the struggle will be well worth it.”
—The Rev. Peter Wallace, Day1, radio host; author, The Passionate Jesus: What We Can Learn from Jesus about Love, Fear, Grief, Joy and Living Authentically

“A strong addition to the fields of theology, religion and LGBTQI studies.... Of particular use and interest to those who regularly work in multifaith environments such as chaplains and pastoral counselors.... Clergy of all faith traditions will also find this a valuable resource.”
—Rabbi Stephen B. Roberts, MBA, BCC, editor, Professional Spiritual and Pastoral Care: A Practical Clergy and Chaplain's Handbook

“An invaluable resource. This richly textured treasury will enlighten your mind, expand your heart and show you ways to engage more fully with the uniqueness of each person and the complexity of each religious tradition.”
—Diane M. Millis, PhD, author, Deepening Engagement: Essential Wisdom for Listening and Leading with Purpose, Meaning and Joy

From the Publisher