Mark 1:41, Describing Jesus's Healing of a Leper
Earlier today, I wrote with regard to the pastoral letter issued today by the bishops of the Church of England and Pope Francis's homily to a consistory of cardinals last Sunday,
What I don't hear is any real acknowledgment of the way in which the churches themselves have long permitted "furious religion" to drive the treatement of LGBT human beings as lepers to be shunned and cast out. What I don't hear from either the pope or the bishops' pastoral letter is any gospel promise that in any direct or effective way lifts from my shoulders or the shoulders of other gay people the kind of oppression we who are gay are now experiencing in places like Arkansas.
The Anglican bishops and the pope appear to be calling for welcome of those long treated as lepers and outcasts by the churches.
Now, as the day ends, I read Kevin Eckstrom reporting the following for Religion News Service:
An up-and-coming evangelical pastor has been told his denomination will no longer support his new church in Portland, Ore., because of his support for gays and lesbians.
The church in question is Christ Church, pastored by Rev. Adam Phillips, an affiliate of Chicago-based Evangelical Covenant Church. Eckstrom writes,
On Feb. 4, Covenant officials told Phillips they were dropping support for Christ Church because of his "personal convictions and advocacy for the full inclusion and participation of LGBT Christians in the church at all levels of membership and leadership," he said in a statement.
Covenant officials have told Rev. Phillips that they are, in essence, turning Christ Church into an evangelical outcast church, because of Phillips's "advocacy for the full inclusion and participation of LGBT Christians in the church at all levels of membership and leadership."
Do you hear what that sentence is saying? It's saying, in the plainest way possible, that LGBT Christians cannot be fully included, cannot be full participants, in the church at all levels of membership and leadership. There can be no real welcome of LGBT Christians in the church.
LGBT Christians are, at best, to be tolerated — if they dare to show their faces at all in the church. In such a case, they should expect to be treated as what they are: lepers who cannot possibly expect to be treated like normal people, like the people around whom the church revolves and for whom it exists.
And as lepers, as half-persons, they must not expect to exercise leadership in the church or to be treated as full members of the Christian tribe. This is just how things are, in the Christian church, given, well, Jesus and the gospels . . . .
And so I'll say again to Pope Francis, the bishops of the Church of England, whoever has a leadership role in the Christian churches today: in almost all calls for "welcome" and "inclusion" that I hear issued today as a gay member of the church,
What I don't hear is any real acknowledgment of the way in which the churches themselves have long permitted "furious religion" to drive the treatement of LGBT human beings as lepers to be shunned and cast out. What I don't hear from either the pope or the bishops' pastoral letter is any gospel promise that in any direct or effective way lifts from my shoulders or the shoulders of other gay people the kind of oppression we who are gay are now experiencing in places like Arkansas.
Or Alabama. Or Idaho. Or Portland. Or you name the place.
Because the places are everywhere. And it takes far more than words to address what they're doing to a segment of the human community, in the name of God.