Nate Knows Nada

I got the following in my e-mail inbox this previous afternoon.

“I don’t usually read Christianity Today, as it has too many articles about the Satanic dangers of celebrating Halloween and such….”

Ted Olsen
Online Managing Editor, Christianity Today

Ted’s right. They don’t run articles like this, and they’re not really a bunch of reactionaries.

But it’s less than a simple disagreement about the status of gay priests that’s at issue here. What’s really at issue is much larger than that.

First off, I don’t think I can agree that Christianity Today is entirely irenic (peaceful) toward gay Christians. From the bottom of the aforementioned Books and Culture page, there’s this:

Homosexuality Bible Study Course
Read the news headlines and you’ll see something covering homosexuality. Now you can learn how to respond from an evangelical Christian perspective. This course helps answer questions like, “What does the Bible say about homosexuality?” and “What is the proper reponse of Christians to homosexuals?”

Two problems: first, I do not have any belief or evidence that convinces me that “what the Bible has to say about homosexuality” either a) exists (that is, I’m not sure that Scripture really has anything to say about homosexuality) or b) is a clear, unambiguous, only-understood-in-one-way sort of thing. Second, since when is it the case that “Christian” and “homosexual” are exclusive categories?

Here are the further details:

Overview

Our Unholy Blessing of Same-Sex Unions
Sometimes loving a denomination requires you to leave.

Briefly, the “gay transformation ministry” movement only has credence within conservative evangelical circle (yes, you can be liberal evangelical, but no one seems to recognize that). The mainstream psychological establishment rejects the “therapy” as harmful, and the evidence that does exist (and many of these groups refuse to participate in the sort of controlled studies that would validate their claims) indicates that the success is mixed at best. Also, the well-known falls of many “ex-gays” like John Paulk, people who had been so tranformed that they were now happily straight by God’s grace and were able to serve as models for the rest of us, makes me at least suspicious of such claims.

But again, the claim that this course sets up (and it’s a part of the CT website, not a separate site, at least from its looks and links) is that Christianity and homosexuality are incompatible. And I know that from CT’s perspective, they are.

(I was once a conservative evangelical myself. I guess I should mention that.)

But the approach that this part of the site takes is less than irenic, and it’s hardly about just a disagreement over gay priests. It’s oppositional and creates the impression for the poor soul who’s gay and this sort of Christian that there’s only one understanding of the problem before him or her. And no matter what, I’d have a hard time beleiving that Ted or CT would countenance the idea of reading Scripture in only one way.

Setting up an opposition of choice between sexual orientation or faith foments war within the soul. How do you deal with the understanding that sexual orientation is not a choice or an action but an intrinsic element, like one’s fingerprints? If you’re asked to choose between your fingerprints and God, what do you do?

And it’s not over just gay priests — again, it’s about an entire way of reading Scripture, of understanding the individual’s relationship to God and the community.

What’s more, although I don’t think CT itself is condoning the hatred of GLBTQ people that can turn into physical or verbal violence, the materials it offers can give safe religious haven to plenty of people who do take that step. And I don’t think that they can be completely absolved of their responsibility in this.

So Ted’s right. CT is not drivel or bilge. It is actually written by intelligent people who have thoughts in their heads and don’t seem to be reactionaries, from what I can see. I’m glad he wrote me to let me know.

I think that some of what CT says or does, even though wrong in outcome and probably misguided (at least as far as this issue is concerned), is good in intent and done in love. And that gets credit from me. As I say to my students, even partial credit is better than no credit.

And the Books and Culture section has some interesting pieces, even if I disagree with much of the analysis and conclusions, mostly for their confabulation of conservative evangelical Christianity with all of or true Christianty (possibly an interesting elision). I’m not shy about reading those who disagree with me or whom I disagree with (that is my job after all), so I will likely check back in on that section in the future.

However, I won’t be subscribing or providing financial support to Christianity Today as long as it helps to foster an environment that gives religious sanction to hate or self-hatred of gay people. That’s too important to me (and I know God probably thinks something entirely else) to be cavalier about it.

More than not, even if this post seems to indicate that CT and I disagree about everything, I think we’d all be pleasantly surprised about what we do agree on. It might not be much, but it’d probably be the things that actually matter. As St. Augustine said and many have repeated, “Unity in what is essential, liberty in what is not essential, and in all things charity.” I think that in knowing God, many fewer things than we human beings get worked up about are essential.

Yesterday, BF and I got out of town for our usual Wednesday attempt at “date day” (one nice thing about being a grad student is that you can schedule your leisure time not to coincide with the vast majority of others’ leisure time, thereby avoiding weekend crowds).

So we went up to Ogunquit, Maine. Stopped at a New hampshire liquor store along the way to buy some cheap booze (I love that they cater to Masachusetts there, advertising the salel of alcohol on Sunday; this Puritanism of Massachusetts is actually counterproductive, as the commonwealth is losing possible tax revenues…). We got to Ogunquit, and we walked around a bit, looking at the sheer New England touristy atmosphere. Then we had lunch (fish and chips and fried clams and chips) and walked around a bit more.

As we were eating, fog started to roll in off the ocean, turning the atmosphere colder and driving the less hearty beachgoers away. BF complained of the cold, and I relished it, for it felt secretly like being back in Berkeley early on a summer evening, when the temperature is dropping to sweater weather…. Then we began to hear some thunder to the north, and the lifeguards (some of which were cute, but who displayed a very different body aesthetic than I’m used to seeing in a lifeguard) told everyone to get out of the water until further notice.

The thunderstorm, accompanied by green sky and swirling clouds, rolled in quickly, hurling lightning bolts down upon the ocean. Nature put on a light show for a few minutes, and then the sky opened. We watched from the bluffs overlooking the town shore and lagoon for a few minutes, and then made a run to the car to avoid the soaking. We got a bit wet, but within 10 seconds of making into Rosie (my car’s name — yes, I’m somewhat insane), the gushing started.

We wanted to see more of the light show, so we drove down the coast to York Beach, parked at their Brighton-esque town beach, and watched the storm come in there.

Lightning’s bloody incredible. Especially by the seashore.

On the way back, some lightning stuck quite close to the side of I-95, panicking the traffic for few seconds. Scary as it initially is, I love the sound….