Lady Gaga may look fashionable in a dress made of meat, but certain images don’t translate well into every medium. Exhibit A: this collection of balloon-sculpture crucifixions at Matthew Paul Turner’s showcase of Christian absurdities, Jesus Needs New PR.
I’m sure glad they included that loincloth – wouldn’t want to risk any phallic symbols here.
Integrity USA is the main group that advocates for GLBT inclusiveness in the Episcopal Church. The Western Massachusetts chapter has been holding a series of discussion forums throughout our diocese, to foster dialogue and educate parishes about where we are in the process of creating official blessings for same-sex couples.
At the 2009 General Convention (the most recent policy-setting conclave of the entire national church) the bishops and lay deputies approved a sort of “local option” for dioceses to develop official rites for same-sex couples. Though nothing was mandated, some gesture in that direction was particularly encouraged for dioceses where gay marriage or civil unions are legal (e.g. Massachusetts). Ordination of GLBT candidates was similarly permitted but not required.
The next decision point for Western Mass churches will occur at the annual Diocesan Convention in October. The local chapter of Integrity is sponsoring a resolution that our diocese “initiate a process to develop pastoral and clergy resources that would accompany and support the forthcoming national church SCLM-authorized liturgies for the Blessing of Same-Gender Relationships”. (SCLM is the national church’s Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music.)
However, it’s up to us to make sure this resolution doesn’t die in committee, but is brought to a floor vote. Integrity chapter chairman Steve Symes needs affirming Episcopalians to register as delegates and sign on in support of the resolution. If you live in Western Mass and can attend the convention in Springfield, email him at swsymes@msn.com.
I’d like to share two excerpts from the materials Steve gave us at our workshop at St. John’s last weekend. These are taken from the report of the Task Force on the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts.
Legal and Cultural Considerations:
The church has rightly been reluctant to discuss marriage, for either straight or gay couples,
using the language of rights such as is employed in legal discourse. Like the discussion of
ordination of women in the 1970s, we have held to the language of vocation. A couple is
“called” to the estate of marriage, and this calling is first heard by the couple. When the blessing
of the Church is desired, this calling is tested by the community, in the representative of the
priest, and then, more broadly, if “banns” are published. The publishing of banns invites the
community to affirm and pray for the couple as they prepare for their vows and also allows the
community to assert concerns if one’s history would indicate that marriage is unadvisable.In the
view of the Church, Christian marriage is not a right in the sense that civil rights are understood.
Rather, in the Church, marriage is seen as a particular calling, discerned initially by two persons
and then confirmed and supported by the prayers, material and emotional support of the church.
Marriage is understood as one means by which a person pursues a course toward holiness — as
one learns to live together in times of both prosperity and adversity, sickness and health,
harmony and conflict, one has the opportunity to grow more and more into the full stature of
Christ.We find the deliberation of the marriage or blessing of partners of the same sex tends to devolve
into the contentiousness of the society at large when we forsake the language of the Spirit’s
calling two persons to a holy covenant for the language of two persons demanding their rights in
the church. Such language is foreign both to the scriptures and the tradition of the Church.
Consequently, we have come to an awareness that marriage between two people is a gift from
God bestowed in order to further the mission of the church: to restore us to unity with God and
each other in Christ. Seen in this light, Christian marriage is a powerful and effective “school for
Christian holiness” where unity can overcome estrangement, shame, isolation so pervasive our
culture.
…****
On the Care and Nurture of Children:
The rite of Holy Matrimony states as one of the purposes of marriage “the procreation of
children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.” The modern social situation
and advances in technologies related to reproduction extend the concept of “procreation” well
beyond the fruit of sexual union between a man and a woman. We have also come to see
families created by adoption and remarriage as more prevalent. We therefore hold that the
nurturing of children in the knowledge and love of the Lord is a calling open to all couples called
to marriage. Furthermore, it is a calling in which the Church has great interest. Not only we
must always preferentially protect the weak and innocent, we desire to support parents in their
challenging calling to raise children, and to help especially in their spiritual nurture and care of
their souls. The Church, through her clergy and trained laity, stands ready to assist all couples
in discerning their call to parenthood, and to support couples as they nurture their children to the
abundant life promised them in Jesus Christ.
Indeed, another straight ally at our St. John’s meeting said she welcomed the same-sex blessings debate as an occasion for the church to rethink and modernize the theology of all marriages. How can Christians reclaim the meaning of marriage from its chauvinistic origins as a transfer of female “property” from father to husband, and also from the crass materialism and sentimentality of contemporary weddings? For personal reasons, I also welcome the notion that a nonprocreative marriage can bear spiritual fruit in other equally valuable ways.
Not to forget the “T” in GLBT, we also discussed the need for strengthening nondiscrimination provisions at the local level. This past May, in response to pressure from Integrity, our diocese added “gender identity and expression” to the protected categories in their human resources manual. However…this only applies to hiring by the diocese itself, and is not binding on individual parishes, which seriously limits the rule’s usefulness.
Similarly, at the parish level, nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is merely encouraged, not mandated, by the diocese. Integrity argued that Massachusetts civil rights protections for gays and lesbians override this policy, but the diocese does not believe that these laws apply. At least with respect to non-clergy hires, I personally think the state law should control.
Contact Steve to find out how you can help.
Attendees from the Integrity W. Mass. meeting at St. John’s in Northampton
I’ve just begun reading Kathryn Joyce’s expose of evangelical doctrines about female submission, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. Simultaneously, I discovered the Random Poem Generator. The “poemized” ad copy for Vision Forum’s Heroines of Christ’s Kingdom Paper Doll Set reveals some interesting subtexts:
Doll voices inside list,
catalog mullins site bluebehemoth!
jackson two switch wrist,
an adams as behemoth.
Christ stock adelina six,
daughters stock older paper.
eliza shopping women fix,
calvin paper for taper.
Online god online six,
retail outlet reviews stock.
dolls wives anne fix,
regular jackson vision cock.
I frequently quote Poetry editor Christian Wiman on this blog because he is a Christian writer in the true, thorny, mysterious, raptured and tormented senses of the phrase, and on top of that, an eloquent observer of his own mental processes. His recent article from The American Scholar, “Hive of Nerves”, is one example. Reflecting on the constant internal and external noise that pervades modern consciousness, and our attendant anxiety, Wiman proposes that this is a spiritual problem, not merely one of scheduling more “down time” into our days.”How does one remember God, reach for God, realize God in the midst of one’s life if one is constantly being overwhelmed by that life?” he asks:
…Christ speaks in stories as a way of preparing his followers to stake their lives on a story, because existence is not a puzzle to be solved but a narrative to be inherited, and undergone, and transformed person by person. He uses metaphors because something essential about the nature of reality—its mercurial solidity, its mathematical mystery and sacred plainness—is disclosed within them. He speaks the language of reality—speaks in terms of the physical world—because he is reality’s culmination and code, and because “this people’s mind has become dull; they have stopped their ears and shut their eyes. Otherwise, their eyes might see, their ears hear, and their mind understand, and then they might turn to me, and I would heal them.”
I don’t think the “answer” to the anxiety felt by everyone at that dinner party is Christianity. In fact I’m pretty sure that is not the case, as we represented several different traditions (including no tradition)—and anyway Christ is not an answer to existence but a means of existing, and I am convinced that there is no permutation of man or mind in which he is not, in some form, present. (This from the Catholic nun, Sara Grant, speaking about, and quoting from, the Kena Upanishad: “Brahman is not ‘that which one knows,’ but that by which one knows, as though a crystal bowl were aware of the sun shining through it. ‘When he is known through all cognitions, he is rightly known.’” But it seems to me you could quote Christ himself in support of this idea: “To believe in me, is not to believe in me but in him who sent me; to see me, is to see him who sent me.”)
I do think, though, that both the problem of, and the solution to, our individual anxiety is a metaphysical one. Some modern philosophers (Heidegger, Kierkegaard) have argued that existential anxiety proceeds from being unconscious of, or inadequately conscious of, death. True, I think, but I wonder if the emphasis might be placed differently, shifted from unconscious reaction to unrealized action: that is, our anxiety is less the mind shielding itself from death than the spirit’s need to be. It is as if each of us were always hearing some strange, complicated music in the background of our lives, music which, so long as it remains in the background, is not simply distracting but manifestly unpleasant, because it demands the attention we are giving to other things. It is not hard to hear this music, but it is very difficult indeed to learn to hear it as music.
Who is it that clasps and kneads my naked feet, till they unfold,
till all is well, till all is utterly well? the lotus-lilies of the feet!I tell you it is no woman, it is no man, for I am alone.
And I fall asleep with the gods, the gods
that are not, or that are
according to the soul’s desire,
like a pool into which we plunge, or do not plunge.The operative word in these lines from D. H. Lawrence, who wasn’t a conventionally religious person, is soul. It’s a word that has become almost embarrassing for many contemporary people, unless it is completely stripped of its religious meaning. Perhaps that’s just what it needs sometimes: to be stripped of its religious meaning, in the sense that faith itself sometimes needs to be stripped of its social and historical incrustations and returned to its first, churchless incarnation in the human heart. That’s what the 20th century was, a kind of windstorm-scouring of all we thought was knowledge and truth and ours—until it became too strong for us, or we too weak for it, and “the self replaced the soul with the fist of survival” (Fanny Howe). Anxiety comes from the self as ultimate concern, from the fact that the self cannot bear this ultimate concern: it buckles and wavers under the strain, and eventually, inevitably, it breaks….
****
…The meanings that God calls us to in our lives are never abstract. Though the call may ask us to redefine, or refine, what we know as life, it does not demand a renunciation of life in favor of something beyond it. Moreover, the call itself is always comprised of life. That is, it is not some hitherto unknown voice to which we respond; it is life calling to life. People think that diagnosing the apostle Paul with epilepsy or some related disorder nullifies any notion that God might truly have revealed something of himself on that road to Damascus. But God speaks to us by speaking through us, and any meaning we arrive at in this life is comprised of the irreducible details of the life that is around us at any moment. “I think there is no light in the world / but the world,” writes George Oppen. “And I think there is light.”
There is a distinction to be made between the anxiety of daily existence, which we talk about endlessly, and the anxiety of existence, which we rarely mention at all. The former fritters us into dithering, distracted creatures. The latter attests to—and, if attended to, discloses—our souls. And yet it is a distinction without a difference, perhaps, and as crucial to eventually overcome as it is to initially understand, for to be truly alive means to feel one’s ultimate existence within one’s daily existence, to feel one’s trivial, frittering anxieties acquiring a lightness, a rightness, a meaning. So long as anxiety is merely something to be alleviated, it is not life, or we are not alive enough to experience it as such.
…
Read the whole essay here.
One of my favorite GLBT activist groups, Soulforce, counters religion-based homophobia through nonviolent activism in the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Their annual Equality Ride takes GLBT youth and straight allies on a bus tour of U.S. colleges whose official policies include discrimination against non-heterosexuals. The Riders initiate dialogue with school administrators and offer support to sexual minorities on campus. Since the first ride in 2006, several Christian schools (including Mormon heavy-hitter Brigham Young U.) have softened their anti-gay policies, and Gay-Straight Alliances have formed on a number of campuses.
Soulforce, a nonprofit, pays for all the expenses of the Equality Riders. Besides food, lodging, and transportation, the program includes training in nonviolent activism, so that the young people can remain peaceful and spiritually safe when confronted with hate speech during their silent vigils and sit-ins. The Riders raise money for their work through sponsorship pages on the Soulforce website.
This year, those of us who are too old to get on the bus can still be part of this courageous campaign as a Virtual Equality Rider. The sponsorship idea is the same, and the money goes to the general expenses of the ride.
Please visit my page and make a contribution! If I raise $1,000 by March 2012, they’ll put my name on the bus.
Earlier this summer I blogged about courageous straight allies Rev. John Makokha and his wife Anne Baraza of Other Sheep Afrika-Kenya, and their charity Children of Africa Hope Mission, which offers food and education for the poorest children in Nairobi. The mission school was founded in 2009 by the women of Riruta United Methodist Church. In addition to providing free education, this school is often the children’s only source for regular meals and health care.
Their web presence is currently under construction so no online donation page exists. Carol Berg from First United Methodist Church of Wabash, Indiana is their U.S. relief coordinator. Donations can be sent to Carol at 529 Bryan Avenue, Apt. C, Wabash, IN 46992. She is working on setting up a direct bank account for the school. Below, Carol shares her thoughts about the mission and its needs:
“One of the things that some people do not understand is that without food, there is no school. Some of the kids at the school have nothing to eat from the time they leave in the afternoon until they arrive again the next day. I would imagine there are a few of them who have nothing to eat from Friday afternoon to Monday morning.
“As I see it, those kids need more than rice, cornmeal, oatmeal, kale, and tomatoes in order to thrive. I have not yet figured out how a child can grow a good body, let alone a well-functioning brain, without proper nutrients. As we both know, it cannot happen. I am hoping that we can send enough money for good, nutritious food so that Anne does not need to worry about feeding the children. She will have the opportunity to worry about other things. I think that people of good will can feed those kids and lift that burden from Anne and company.
“As you probably know, the school needs everything…including a floor that doesn’t get muddy when it rains. Everyone understands that the ultimate goal is self-sufficiency, and step by step I believe that will occur…and I pray that it happens. The kids deserve good food and an education. They have no chance at all without both….
“I have a number of people who give $10.00 or more a month so that the school has money for food coming in monthly. Without food the school cannot exist. I send the money to Anne Baraza, the director of the school at the beginning of each month. I ask the monthly givers to get the money to me by the last Sunday of the month. I consider the money well spent. We are not only feeding the children, but we are also making certain they get an education as well. Without food, the school closes. It is just that simple. God has given me this task…to feed these kids so they can learn. It is difficult because people give for awhile and drop out. Therefore, I continue to search for giving people just to keep $200 a month going to the kids for food. Of course, they need more than that to have a nutritious diet which they deserve in order to have healthy bodies and brains. They also need mosquito nets because of all the malaria. The school needs all the school supplies you can imagine…especially paper and pencils including some of the larger ones for little hands….
“It seems that it wouldn’t take too many people of good will to feed those kids and their teachers well. I received a message from a kid named Melvin. He said that he likes to go to school because that is the only time he eats….from one day to the next day at school he doesn’t eat; from the end of the school on Friday to his return to school on Monday, he doesn’t eat. Melvin isn’t the only child in that situation, but he is the one who wrote about it in such a specific way. Other kids said they liked to come to school because they had something to eat.”
Megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll has been attracting heat in the blogosphere for a Facebook status update in which he invited people to make fun of “effeminate anatomically male worship leaders”. Driscoll is known for his over-the-top macho pronouncements, which he justifies as necessary to attract men to the church, but which his detractors describe as bullying of non-gender-conforming men and women.
For instance, he’s said that liberal Christians “recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in his hair”, which must be wrong because “I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” (See Dianna Anderson’s theologically astute takedown of this remark on her blog Be the Change.)
When former National Association of Evangelicals leader Ted Haggard’s longstanding relationship with a male prostitute was exposed, Driscoll said it was the responsibility of pastors’ wives to keep them from falling into such temptations:
“It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.” (Quote courtesy of Huffington Post)
With this as context, I am pleased to share this satire written by a friend who wishes to be identified only as “Chorisande Davita”. My friend is a devout, contemplative woman with quite conservative views on the Bible and sexuality. She’s also passionate about naming and stopping abuses of power in the church.
Mark Driscoll’s Guide to Nutrition for Real Men
by Chorisande Davita
Transcription from YouTube video . . .
Mark Driscoll adjusts his headset, and leans his meaty forearms on a lectern. His adam’s apple bulges beneath a necklace made from a strip of leather, and his furrowed brow and flushed face are ominous signs of what’s to come. Either that, or signs of high blood pressure and a suppressed urge to scratch the scrot rot on camera. He clears his voice and fairly shouts:
“It’s been brought to my attention that there’s stuff circulating on the Web where some poser’s pretending to be me and telling dudes about the diet of real men. He supposedly claims that fries and ketchup are the only masculine vegetables that I say a real man should eat. That’s a damn lie! The God-fearing farmers in this country work hard to make a living, and I’m not some pinko pansy who won’t support them! There are a lot of vegetables that men can eat, and I’m about to tell you which. So stop accusing me of being unpatriotic!
“First off. There are absolutely no fruits a man can eat. If you eat them, you’re not a real man. There are no exceptions. So stop asking. So. Stop. Whining. . . Wash a vitamin C down with your stout or something, but stop crying about it. Suck it up and get a masculine perspective! Elijah ate locusts, you ninnies! I’ve put a lot of thought into the matter of masculine vegetables, and I want you men to pay careful attention. Women, you need to listen as well so you can be blessed wives and not disrespect your man with what you’re cooking and serving him. Single women, pay careful attention if you want a manly husband and want to know how to recognize one.
“Since fries and ketchup were mentioned, let’s start there. Some say tomatoes are a fruit, but I say they’re not, so that’s that. Mark Driscoll says they’re a vegetable, dammit. Ketchup is a masculine vegetable, the poser got that right, but there are other tomatoes which are OK–heirloom and beefsteak varieties are okay, but only if they’re sliced thickly. And preferably sitting on top of a burger. A real burger, one made out of beef! By the way, watch out for those 5 dollar foot long meatball subs–they’re mostly soy, those lying bastards. I’ve half a mind to sue those pansies, but there’s not enough cash in the coffers right now. Anyway, tomatoes. Sissy varieties like cherry and grape are out! Got that? Can you imagine Peter and Paul tucking into a plate of baby lettuce with tiny grape tomatoes? No!!!
“Fries are very manly. Tater tots are not. Home fries are okay, hash browns are not. Other forms of potatoes can be okay, depending. Scalloped potatoes are for low-rise, stove-pipe jeans wearing wimps who floss their teeth and get out of the shower to take a piss. Baked potatoes are okay, but only if they’re sitting on a plate next to a steak that’s at least 12 ounces. On their own, you have to be careful. With chili on top they might be okay, but you have to exercise discernment and insist on chili with chunks of beef, not bits of mystery meat. Topped with broccoli and cheese sauce, no way . . .”
There is some kind of disturbance in the audience. Mark quickly looks out over the people and someone shouts,
“But what about cheese in a can?!”
Mark blinks thoughtfully and says, “OK, dude, spray cheese in a can is definitely masculine. But none of that gruyere or brie or swiss crap in a sauce, okay? Think like a man. Where was I? Baked potatoes. Sprinkled with minced chives–do I even need to say?”
Laughter and snorts of derision throughout the audience . . .
“So, let’s try to get through the rest of this quickly. Onions and peppers–these can be okay if they’re balanced or outweighed by the amount of meat. You know–fajitas, pot roast, manly meals like those. Greens are real tricky. Watch out! Mesclun is not for dudes, lettuce and spinach are not for dudes. Popeye was part of a conspiracy to promote the convenience of canned goods while giving the appearance of masculinity–don’t take the bait. Frisee, endive, leeks, and arugula are for chickified, hanky-carrying, herbal tea-sipping eunuchs who’d be too afraid to scratch their spuds if they had any. Kale, mustard and some other greens can be masculine, provided they’ve been sufficiently stewed with ham hocks.
“Corn is only okay if you’re eating it on the cob at a fourth of July cookout with a sufficient amount of fireworks and flags on display, and everyone there can see that you’ve got serious animal flesh on the rest of your plate. But be very careful to watch what you’re doing with your little fingers while you’re handling the cob! I don’t ever want to see some dude from my church holding a corn cob with his pinkys sticking out–if I do, you’ll be mocked at the next leadership meeting and called out on our next retreat. Those baby corns they put in Asian food? No way. If you’re eating out, let your daughter pick them out of your Chinese food. If the wife brings them to the table, send it back and remind her of your headship.
“Cukes are not to be consumed. They’re for alternative purposes–see This is Spinal Tap. Carrots are very feminine, and not for real men to eat. Exercise careful discernment here. Like, if you’re outside building a snowman with your kids, of course make sure they see you doing the heavy lifting. When it’s time for the nose, have your wife hand your daughter the carrot and then lift her up so she can put it in and no one sees you handling a carrot, dude.
“Squash is masculine only if eaten on Thanksgiving in front of the game and there’s enough poultry on your plate to warrant fiber tablets with the pie. Don’t even think about squash filled ravioli with sage leaves and brown butter, dude. Only if you want people to think you wear lace anklets, push back your cuticles, use body wash, and get your chest waxed. (Guffaws throughout the audience.) Hey, you know it would happen. This is why you came! It’s why you brought a friend. I’m entertaining, I know it, it’s a gift, what can I say. . .
“Real men should stay away from anything that can be broken into florets, described with the word “nibblets,” or prefaced by the adjectives “baby,” or “sweet.” Legumes are complicated. Eating someone’s liver with fava beans and a little Chianti was cool for Hannibal, but you need to be cautious about what you pair with your choice of liver. (Groans and deep chuckles from the crowd.) Now, beans mixed with lots of pork or beef is good, honest, masculine food. Popping edamame is for incense sniffing castrati who order curdled cream and scones and wish they could wear their Spanx in public. I could punch those skipping hippies in the throat! Put down that can of mousse and listen to me, you long-haired gardenia-scented fuschia-wearing ponce! Eat like a man! Be a man! Don’t act like being a Christian means singing love songs to Jesus and noshing on sprouts! It doesn’t! This makes me so mad . . .
Driscoll’s voice fades under the sound of loud rap music, while images from a butcher shop flash to the pulse of the beat . . .
Some Christian friends and I were recently talking about what it means to “give your heart to God”. The one thing we could agree on was that we worried we weren’t doing it thoroughly enough! Perhaps, we thought, the first step is simply surrendering those spiritual performance anxieties into God’s hands.
Whether the object of our devotion is God or an earthly beloved or vocation, we sometimes confuse surrender with renunciation. Is devotion best measured by how much you push other things out of your heart to make room for God? Unless those affections have become disordered in some way (selfishly possessive or addictive), I would say not. The God of the Bible persistently asks us to rethink the scarcity mindset that makes us see interpersonal relations through the lens of desperate competition. In my Father’s house are many mansions.
Surrender, on the other hand, could be about trusting God to protect and give meaning to the life we already love, and thereby coming to see God’s presence in more and more places. We go from being Martha, who is anxious about many things because she thinks it all rests on her shoulders, to Mary, who sees that only God keeps the cosmos in existence from one second to the next.
For me, giving my heart to God starts with remembering that (1) I have a heart and (2) there is a God. That is, it’s about re-opening, yet again, to the vulnerability of joy and trust and hope, which requires me to rely on the God who has guaranteed that those qualities will ultimately triumph over cruelty and meaninglessness. I might think that that kind of God is a nice idea, but I can’t say I believe in Him until I actually act as if He were there to catch me when I fall (or am pushed).
That inward softening often happens when I sing worship songs. Something about opening to the flow of breath relaxes my emotional center as well. This simple, powerful song by Keith Green always moves me in that direction. I hope it warms your heart as well.
Read more about Keith Green on the Last Days Ministries website. He devoted his talents to spreading the gospel through music until a plane crash tragically took his life at age 28.
Oh Lord, you’re beautiful,
Your face is all I seek,
For when your eyes are on this child,
Your grace abounds to me.
Oh Lord, you’re beautiful,
Your face is all I seek,
For when your eyes are on this child,
Your grace abounds to me.
I want to take your word and shine it all around.
But first help me just to live it Lord.
And when I’m doing well, help me to never seek a crown.
For my reward is giving glory to you.
Oh Lord, please light the fire,
That once burned bright and clear.
Replace the lamp of my first love,
That burns with Holy fear.
I want to take your word and shine it all around.
But first help me just to live it Lord.
And when I’m doing well, help me to never seek a crown.
For my reward is giving glory to you.
Oh Lord, you’re beautiful,
Your face is all I seek,
For when your eyes are on this child,
Your grace abounds to me.
Oh Lord, you’re beautiful,
Your face is all I seek,
For when your eyes are on this child,
Your grace abounds to me.
(Lyrics courtesy of www.sing365.com)
At least since the Scientific Revolution, Christians have been on the spot to explain how, exactly, the soul coexists with the body. Should we try to locate the divine element in a specific organ, as Descartes argued for the pineal gland in the brain, or in a behavior supposedly unique to humans, such as abstract reasoning or moral sentiments? Suggestions abound, their common feature being the attempt to separate some pure substance from the biological muck. We find it difficult to picture spirit and matter truly commingling.
The Incarnation poses similar imaginative challenges. I believe in the “wholly divine/wholly human” character of Christ, partly because the church has fought to keep alive a belief that so fundamentally disrupts our preferred dualistic thought patterns. There must be something in this concept that we really need, that keeps us searching for truths beyond our current evolutionary level of understanding.
Yet we often put Jesus through the conceptual centrifuge, once again wishing to sift out the human features so that the divine element can be untainted and obvious. Did Jesus sweat, pee, lose his temper, have sexual feelings, misjudge people, make factual errors? The gospels themselves suggest that he did. If he was human, he must have done.
The more we admit this, though, the more we become anxious that we can no longer isolate the “God part”. And if we can’t isolate it, we worry it doesn’t exist — never considering that perhaps the overcoming of dualities and the all-pervasive sanctifying of mortal existence is where God resides. This is what God is most passionate about communicating to us status-obsessed monkeys.
I was led to these thoughts by my ongoing conversations with Christian friends about the authority of the Bible. As I study how women’s inequality has been built into the societies that wrote Scripture and is perpetuated today by communities that cite these texts, I feel strongly that we must not gloss over the Bible’s embeddedness in all-too-human hierarchies. Then where, my friends might ask, does the Logos come in? By what standards are we to pick and choose the passages that are “more inspired” than others?
I have some ideas about this, centering on the ethics of Jesus as the standard for our interpretations, but I’m beginning to wonder if we’re asking the wrong question. If the Bible is a gateway to divine connection — as it continues to be for me — perhaps that connection does not reside so much in any particular passage, least of all in the effort to shield the text from political critique. Could it not reside in the truth-seeking passion that motivates us both to learn gratefully from the Biblical writers and to challenge their limitations? Could it be something that proceeds from the loving, reciprocal accountability of believer and text, the way the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son?
Yesterday, the New York State legislature passed and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that will give same-sex couples the right to marry! According to the Vermont Freedom to Marry press release: “Joining Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., New York becomes the most populated state to achieve marriage equality, and more than doubles the number of both same-sex couples and of Americans living in a state with marriage equality.”
Other organizations that deserve your thanks and financial support for their hard work on this legislation include the Human Rights Campaign, GetEqual, Courage Campaign, Freedom to Marry, and Other Sheep. If you live in Buffalo, give a shout-out (and your vote) to Sen. Mark Grisanti, a Catholic Republican who cast one of the swing votes for the bill in the Senate last night.
The full text of the legislation is here. An excerpt:
Marriage is a fundamental human right. Same
sex couples should have the same access as others to the protections,
responsibilities, rights, obligations, and benefits of civil marriage.
Stable family relationships help build a stronger society. For the
welfare of the community and in fairness to all New Yorkers, this act
formally recognizes otherwise-valid marriages without regard to whether
the parties are of the same or different sex.It is the intent of the legislature that the marriages of same-sex and
different-sex couples be treated equally in all respects under the law.
The omission from this act of changes to other provisions of law shall
not be construed as a legislative intent to preserve any legal
distinction between same-sex couples and different-sex couples with
respect to marriage….***
…A MARRIAGE THAT IS OTHERWISE VALID
SHALL BE VALID REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE PARTIES TO THE MARRIAGE ARE OF
THE SAME OR DIFFERENT SEX.
2. NO GOVERNMENT TREATMENT OR LEGAL STATUS, EFFECT, RIGHT, BENEFIT,
PRIVILEGE, PROTECTION OR RESPONSIBILITY RELATING TO MARRIAGE, WHETHER
DERIVING FROM STATUTE, ADMINISTRATIVE OR COURT RULE, PUBLIC POLICY,
COMMON LAW OR ANY OTHER SOURCE OF LAW, SHALL DIFFER BASED ON THE PARTIES
TO THE MARRIAGE BEING OR HAVING BEEN OF THE SAME SEX RATHER THAN A
DIFFERENT SEX. WHEN NECESSARY TO IMPLEMENT THE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBIL
ITIES OF SPOUSES UNDER THE LAW, ALL GENDER-SPECIFIC LANGUAGE OR TERMS
SHALL BE CONSTRUED IN A GENDER-NEUTRAL MANNER IN ALL SUCH SOURCES OF
LAW.
…
It remains to be seen how broadly the religious exemptions will be construed. The relevant text reads:
A CORPORATION INCORPORATED UNDER THE BENEVOLENT ORDERS
LAW OR DESCRIBED IN THE BENEVOLENT ORDERS LAW BUT FORMED UNDER ANY OTHER
LAW OF THIS STATE OR A RELIGIOUS CORPORATION INCORPORATED UNDER THE
EDUCATION LAW OR THE RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS LAWS SHALL BE DEEMED TO BE
IN ITS NATURE DISTINCTLY PRIVATE AND THEREFORE, SHALL NOT BE REQUIRED TO
PROVIDE ACCOMMODATIONS, ADVANTAGES, FACILITIES OR PRIVILEGES RELATED TO
THE SOLEMNIZATION OR CELEBRATION OF A MARRIAGE.
Few would argue that clergy should be forced to perform marriages that don’t meet their denomination’s doctrinal requirements, or to use church property for the same. I would imagine that even without this provision, a First Amendment claim would be resolved in the church’s favor. But what other “privileges” or “accommodations” might they try to withhold? Could a religious hospital block a gay spouse from visiting and making medical decisions for an incapacitated partner? Hopefully, courts will construe this clause narrowly as only applying to the actual ceremony (“solemnization or celebration”), not to the legal status (“a marriage”) that follows from it.
All in all, a great day for justice and freedom! Hooray New York!