what I wish our churches taught us...

From reactive to proactive. Where does your church land on this scale? When it comes to controversial matters like abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and hell, many tend to be reactive, which means most of the time they ignore such matters. And then when there’s a pressing reason like proposed changes to legislation, an adult club renting the building next door, or a Rob Bell asking questions about heaven and hell, they marshal their resources, preach sermons, picket and boycott, and tweet tweets which they sometimes later regret.

A current example of this is the response churches are giving to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the U.S. or the granting of same-sex blessings in Canada, where gay marriage is already legal.

Take my church, for example.

 At its recent meeting, our diocese held a vote to allow the bishop to give permission to priests who want to provide a blessing to same-sex couples who are in civil marriages. To say it another way, if a legally married same-sex couple asks the priest to give them a blessing, the priest must first ask for the bishop’s permission. Note that this resolution does not oblige any priests to provide such blessings; it simply gives the bishop permission to say “yes” if a priest asks. Now, the church we attend officially has a conservative view on marriage and was not pleased that the vote passed, in fact by a significant margin. In response to this, the leadership discussed the matter at the church’s semi-annual meeting, and will have a task group consider what response to make.

They also discussed it with the youth. And when our children came home from a youth day, one of them expressed that they didn’t know why the church was making such a big deal about blessing people who love each other when there’s more important things like KONY2012 happening in the world.

Some people might suggest that the leadership needs to do a better job of explaining how this really is a significant issue, and that the church should have been proactive in teaching its beliefs more clearly before a resolution like this one came up.

I would suggest that there’s a bigger picture that’s being missed here. And while it involves being proactive, it’s not about clarifying “what’s right and what’s wrong” before it becomes critical. It’s about perspective, respect for others, and God’s heart for people.

Here are four things that I wish pastors and others in church  leadership were teaching, with some recommendations for each point:


1.  The reality that God loves gay and lesbian people

Of course we are told in church that God loves everyone. When said generally like this, it is easier to forget this reality when we encounter people we don’t like or who are different from us. But when it is said with a specific people group in mind, it has more impact and is harder to ignore.

• State clearly that God loves lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Repeat on a regular basis.
• Affirm that Jesus gave his life for gay people and straight people and transgender people and everyone else.
• Emphasize that loving our neighbours includes loving LGBT neighbours, relatives, and colleagues. Give a similar emphasis to other particular neighbours depending on current events, your city or neighbourhood, etc. For example, emphasizing God’s love for Muslim neighbours would be particularly helpful after 9/11. The goal is not to single out a people group, but to emphasize God’s love for people whom we might find it easier to ignore or hate.

Related to this is the concept that the self of the other person matters more than my truth. As Miroslav Volf says, “I may not sacrifice the other at the altar of my truth. Jesus, who claimed to be the Truth, refused to use violence to ‘persuade’ those who did not recognize his truth.” (Exclusion and Embrace, page 272).

nothing nice to say

I'm sure my mother told me this in my childhood too, as the saying is definitely sunk deep into my brain. However, a reading of some of the cartoons on this blog might lead some to suspect that it hasn't sunk deep enough....

Then again, Ezekiel and the other prophets regularly said things which aren't nice. So why can't a regular guy like me, especially when it's for the purpose of provoking thinking about our attitudes and actions.

The balance? As Jamie Arpin-Ricci says, "The prophet rebuke must always point to the redemptive possibility." That's the challenge for me too, in writing this blog.

[some thoughts about hospitality]

“Hospitality means the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.”

Henri Nouwen

"So, what does true hospitality entail? I think it’s twofold: receiving someone as they are and generously extending whatever it is you have to share. It might be a banquet, or it might be your tears. Either way, the Apostle Paul says it should be offered in love, without grumbling (1 Peter 4:8-9).
...
Diana Butler Bass, again in A People's History of Christianity, writes that for the first few centuries of Christianity—starting with the church in Acts—"hospitality was the primary Christian virtue." It was "fundamental to being a person of the way,” and it was the "main motivator for conversions" (italics mine)."

Kristin Tennant in "Hospitality Outside of Pinterest" article

"I pray that none will be offended if I seek to make the Christian religion an inn where all are received joyously, rather than a cottage where some few friends of the family are to be received."

Richard Hooker

"Can we hold a Christian identity in a way that sends us toward the other with love and hospitality rather than with fear and hostility?"

Brian McLaren in video

"The opposite of cruelty is not simply freedom from the cruel relationship, it is hospitality.”

Philip Hallie, “From Cruelty to Goodness”, The Hastings Center Report 11 (1981): 26-27

'A century ago, William Booth recognized the importance of friendship with the poor when he wrote, “One of the secrets of the success of the Salvation Army is that the friendless find friends in it.” True hospitality involves friendship which “brings to the other what no law or revolution can: understanding and acceptance.” Hospitality, while certainly being insufficient in efforts for justice and transformation, is essential, very essential.'"

Christine D. Pohl commenting on and quoting W. Booth, in Making Room, p. 84

'Jean Vanier writes that “Welcome is one of the signs that a community is alive. To invite others to live with us is a sign that we aren’t afraid, that we have a treasure of truth and of peace to share.” He also offers an important warning: “A community which refuses to welcome—whether through fear, weariness, insecurity, a desire to cling to comfort, or just because it is fed up with visitors – is dying spiritually.”'

Christine D. Pohl quoting Jean Vanier, in Making Room, p. 160

"Hospitality will not make us safe, but it will lead us to risk joining in the work of mending the creation without requiring those who are different to become like us."

"This call for hospitality provides a clue to the possibility of welcoming difference, rather than creating a "cheap unity" built on compliance to one interpretation of faith in Christ."

"Difference is the gift that challenges us to practice such hospitality by resisting oppression and working for full human life and dignity for those with whom we stand in solidarity."

 ~ three quotes from Letty Russell  (Just Hospitality)

"... the act of hospitality is fundamentally an act of human recognition and embrace. If exclusion is fundamentally dehumanizing, hospitality acts to restore full human status to the marginalized and outcast.

Richard Beck, Unclean, pp. 122-123

"Hostage-taking is just another form of hospitality."

Jonathan Larson, Making Friends among the Taliban:

A Peacemaker's Journey in Afghanistan. p. 41

"Thus, the welcoming of the stranger is an eccentric encounter.

Consequently, a hospitable community will be eccentrically oriented, moving out from the center toward the edges and then past the boundaries to the area "outside" the faith community."

Richard Beck in "Eccentric Christianity: Part 3,

Welcoming God in the Stranger"

The people who feel welcomed are the people who you have set a table of hospitality for.

Doug Paul

If your church is a house, is everyone an owner? Or are some people guests? The difference is that owners can move the furniture, do renovations, etc. without having to ask anyone other than the other owners. Guest need to be polite.

adapted from Misty Irons

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Note: This page is an ongoing collection of brief thoughts about hospitality that resonate with the goals of this blog. It will be expanded on over time. Other posts will contain more extensive quotes on hospitality.

peter's crazy vision

Acts 10 - 11 give the account of Peter's vision. In the dream, he, a Jew, is instructed to eat all kinds of creatures. He declines to do so, on account of these things being impure or unclean according to Old Testament laws. Then the same God who gave these laws, tells him not to call anything that God has made unclean. Shortly thereafter, some Gentiles arrive at his gate, having been sent by an angel.

It would appear that God has changed His mind here, or is at least indicating clearly that certain laws from before do not apply anymore. This frees Peter up to reach out to the Gentile visitors.


Might there be other things which God said before, which He does not want us to hold to anymore? And what if our reply is "You're crazy! That's not what the Bible says"?

[the good son first to see prodigal]

Are we ready to invite others? Jay Bakker writes:

Imagine for a minute how differently the prodigal son story would have played out if the father hadn't been there to intervene. What if instead it had been the good son who greeted the prodigal?

There would have been no happy reunion. No hugs and kisses. You can be damned sure there'd be no fattened calf or homecoming party. The good son would have lain back and watched his brother approach, his indignation growing with every approaching step.

By the time the prodigal reached the front door, the good son's anger would have been boiling over, and his first words might have been something like this: "Look at you come crawling back. Why did you even bother? You used up your share of the inheritance. And what do you have to show for it? Nothing. Well, don't think you can share mine. There's nothing for you here. Everything Dad left is for me. I did all the hard work while you blew it off. I earned it and you don't deserve it. Dad wanted me to have it. Now go away and don't come back.....ever!"

In some ways the good son's mistake (thinking that he has earned his own salvation) is the more problematic one, because it makes it harder for the prodigal to return. Versions of this scene play out every day in real life between Christians. Half the reason people stay away from the church is because they know that the good sons and daughters are waiting at the door to judge and reject them when they try to enter.

From Jay Bakker's book Fall to Grace: a revolution of God, self and society, pages 91-92

Have you ever felt unwelcomed somewhere, because of who you are or what you've done?

How can the reality of the father, waiting with arms wide open, be lived out by those who follow Jesus?

[resource on "finding our identity in Christ, not sexual orientation"]

The Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Evangelicals for Social Action's Prism magazine is on the overall topic of "Beyond Labels: Finding our identity in Christ, not sexual orientation".  It features articles and stories from a wide range of perspectives on this topic, and I highly recommend it. Mind you, some parts of it I agree with, and others I do not, but it is enlightening in any case and helps me better to understand this key matter.

Here's a sample quote from an article by Joshua Gonnerman:

The stories offered to gay people by mainstream religion and secular society are enticing, offering hope of acceptance, fulfillment, pride, and, most recently, marriage. The stories the more traditionally inclined churches have offered have tended towards either heterosexualization or stories focused on burden/struggle. As long as matters are framed thus, the gospel will continue to be outside the realm of possibility for most gay people. How far this is from the gospel where Christ declares, “I have come that they might have life, and that more abundantly”!

Read more at http://prismmagazine.org/currentissue/

There is also a downloadable version along with study questions if you wish to use this in other contexts.

cycle of 21st century life

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush writes in LGBT Rights -- Getting on the Right Side of History:

A vivid religious example is the United Methodist Church, which recently reaffirmed the idea that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. They did this while formally apologizing for the denomination's support of segregation and the oppression of native peoples in the past. Oh, the irony!

At the same time the Methodists throw one group under the bus, they extend a hand towards the groups that still have tire tracks on their backs. Of course, we know what comes next. In a few more decades, the Methodists will be having rituals of repentance for how they treated LGBT people.

Here's an idea. Why don't we just skip the "more oppression" part and move straight to the reconciliation and full communion? (source and full article)

the right side of history

"Here's the funny thing about history: sometimes you can't tell you're on the wrong side of it, especially when it's being made."
John Boyle, Citizen Times, Aug 11/12 (source)

Here is a review of history, and some of the times that the church has been on the wrong side of it. Note that in most cases, there were also believers on the right side of history, but it seems it took quite some time before that became clear to all involved.


Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, in an article about Evangelicals and the Wrong Side of History, says the following:

While evangelicals used Bible verses to deny women the right to vote, a very religious Fredrick Douglass and the suffrage movement used the Bible to support the full enfranchisment of women.

... the largest and most powerful evangelical denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist Convention, does not allow women to serve as pastors and through its lobbying arm has supported anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, and anti-immigrant agendas.

Rev. Billy Graham is another example of the evangelical tendency to lag behind in social progress. Rev. Graham, the undisputed leader of American evangelicalism for the past five decades, used a biblical argument to support the passage of North Carolina constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.... In the same manner, Graham refused to denounce segregation after a direct appeal from Dr. King in 1957. (source and full article)

150 years ago	100 years ago	50 years ago	Today
Abolishment of slavery	Suffragette / right to vote	Desegregation	Marriage equality / civil rights for LGBT people
Churches used the bible to defend slavery	Churches used the bible to keep women "in their place" and deny the right to vote	Churches used the bible to justify lesser status of blacks	Churches use the bible to put down lgbt people

Most Christians, looking back at history, would be loathe to return to the days when black people were enslaved, aboriginal people were beaten down, women had no vote and so on. In other words, they now accept that history was right. Yet in today's current hot issue – the acceptance of gay and lesbian people, they fight and object and "stand firm".