Tag Archives: Religion

Books, Religion

Forget the mountain, I’m headed for the beach: Exploring a Journal Prompt from Chapter 14 of “Changing Paths”

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Happy Friday, dear readers! This Friday marks my exploration of the final chapter in Changing Paths by Yvonne Aburrow. I thought I’d offer a few musings on the following journal prompt from the book:

Do you believe that all religions are paths up the same mountain, or up entirely different mountains?

As I think about this question, I suppose that all religions might have the same goal in an extremely broad sense, the sense that religions attempt to connect us with the numinous. But the nature of what the numinous actually is and the reasons to connect to it can be vastly different.

In certain forms of Christianity, such as evangelical Christianity as practiced among white people,1 the goal seems to be to cozy up to the Christian god in order to secure one’s place in a pleasant, satisfying afterlife. In extreme cases, this kind of theological framework views this life and this earth as completely unimportant, enabling some such Christians to not care about protecting the environment or making the world a better, more just place.2

Compare this to Judaism, where the message of the religion is mainly about building community and sticking together in this life as well as making this world a better place for everyone. Or consider the many Pagans who view this earth as sacred — or at least close to it — and life something to be celebrated in a religious context.

I think things get even more varied and nuanced when you consider how different religions perceive and talk about the numinous or even the Divine. Religions that are authoritarian and expect unquestioning obedience to their deities are quite different from religions that view deities as beings one can negotiate and argue with and possibly even enter into a mutually beneficial relationship to achieve common goals together. When you add in religions that might seek out connection with the numinous but not specific deities or similar entities, I think the possibilities become even more numerous and varied.

The reality is that such different conceptualizations of the Divine and/or the numinous further impacts the goals of a given religion. As my title for this post suggests, I’m not even sure we’re all traveling up the same mountain. Some of us may be headed toward and traversing different geological features entirely.

Footnotes

  1. I should note that many non-white people take a similar view, especially those who attend churches that are predominantly led by white people. However, I think it’s important to note that there are non-white evangelical churches — most notably Black churches — that see things very differently. They tend to be deeply influenced by liberation theology (mainly because they developed it). This can best be seen by studying how the Black church was a key driver in the Civil Rights movement and continues to advocate for racial justice, as compared to white evangelicals who have tended to downplay racial justice issues, even suggesting it’s something that will only be resolved “when Christ returns and establishes his kingdom.” ↩︎
  2. Again, I’m painting with a broad brush pointing out trends. There are Christians who take a completely different approach to their theology and the implications of what it means to live out a Christian life. I’d say that different Christians are even “traveling up different mountains” from one another. So if you’re a Christian and you’re getting ready to tell me I’m not describing what you believe as a Christian, relax. I’m not talking about you. It’s the whole reason I’ve been trying to use precise language here. ↩︎
Paganism, Religion, Religious Discrimination

“Religion” and “Christianity” are not synonyms: Why it’s important we don’t surrender words the the hegemony

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Yesterday, I ran into the following image over on Threads:

For those who cannot see the image, it’s a lovely block of text written by Witch Joseph. The text reads as follows:

Dear Religious People…I don’t know what I believe and post about offend you…it’s not like I follow a book that teaches that you will be torture in flames for eternity for not believing as I do…now that would be offensive.

Over all, I think it’s a powerful statement and one that I agree with. However, the fact that it’s addressed to “religious people” bothered me a bit. You see, I’m religious myself. In fact, a lot of witches are.

Witch Joseph and I had a brief conversation about that fact and I think was a productive one. To summarize, he acknowledged that he too is religious and that he’s using “religious” in the context of the above statement to mean a very particular kind of religiosity. In many ways, I can respect that. After al, I’ve written more than a few answers about what people possibly mean when they say they’re “spiritual but not religious”1 over on Quora and those answers usually involve acknowledging that people using a very particular definition of “religiosity as well.”

And yet, I’m still personally uncomfortable with it. After all, I’m not convinced that people who read the text in the image are aware that the author is using a very particular definition of “religious people” or “religion” or that there are other definitions out there. As the title of this blog post suggests, it feels to me as though it helps to further embed the idea that “religion” and “Christianity” are synonyms. In a society where Christian hegemony is rampant and often goes unrecognized, I think that’s concerning.

I think it’s a bad idea to let Christians define what it means to be “religious” and surrender the word to their mechanizations. As someone who is a member of a minority religion, I think it’s important to point out that “religion” and “religiosity” comes in many shapes, sizes, colors, and flavors. Otherwise , we help pave the way for those who want to say that our religions are not “real religions” because they’re nothing like Christianity, the “gold standard” of religions in many people’s minds.

Relatedly, I want to draw people’s attention to Yvonne Aburrow’s series of videos in which they advocate for Pagans reclaiming certain words (including “religion“). I think it’s important to show that these words have other meanings and remind everyone that there are ideas in the “religious marketplace” that are substantively different than (a particular kind of) Christianity.

Footnote

  1. Personally, I find that phrasing troubling as well, and for many of the same reasons. I think this is important to note that my issue is not with Witch Joseph (in fact, I think he’s awesome). My problem is with a broader trend that I find concerning because it’s so common. Joseph merely provided a recent example of that trend. ↩︎
Books, Introspection, Religion

My religious deal-breakers: Exploring a journal prompt from chapter 5 of “Changing Paths.”

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Hello readers and happy Friday! Time to tackle another journal prompt from Changing Paths by Yvonne Aburrow. This week, we’re looking at chapter 5, which is titled “At the Crossroads.” Unlike the previous two chapters, I easily fell in love with the thought of blogging about one of the journal prompts at the end of this chapter. And boy, is it a doozy!

Make a list of features that any religion or philosophical system that you would consider getting involved in should not have. Your list could include beliefs, values, rituals, metaphors, and practices.

Before I start pulling out my “laundry list” and discussing it, I should note that this is today’s list of my deal-breakers. I’m not sure everything would have been on my list back in 1998 when I was making my break from Christianity. After all, my only goal in 1996 was to make peace with the fact that I was gay. I didn’t plan on changing any other aspect of my faith at that time. But that’s the thing about such lists. They change and grow as we do. We need to allow them to change. Maybe we’ll add new items to the list. Maybe we’ll take some items back off it, or at least clarify what exactly it is we’re opposed to. But let’s get on with my current deal-breakers.

Homophobia and Transphobia

Homophobia would have definitely been on my list of deal-breakers back in 1998. In fact, it was the original deal-breaker that kicked off my deconstruction process. Being a gay man who had realized that denying my sexuality and denying myself fulfilling sexual experiences and relationships was unhealthy for me, I realized that I needed a religion that accepted, embraced, and celebrated my sexuality instead.

Back then however, I did not know much about tans issues. In fact, I’m not sure I had even heard of being trans. If I had, I probably thought it was some sort of “extreme gayness” rather than something different (though often related) to sexual orientation.1

But as I got to know trans people, I saw how their own struggles were often similar to my own. Furthermore, my own trials, tribulations, and harms at the hands of my religious upbringing caused me to experience empathy and compassion for trans people. As such, I want a religion that accepts, embraces, and celebrates them as much as it does me me. In fact, this leads to my next deal-breaker.

Bigotry, Exclusion, and the Establishment of Second Class Members

That same compassion for myself and trans people continued to expand outward, causing me to oppose all bigotries and the various ways a religion might exclude certain groups of people or even treat them as second class members if they were accepted into the religion at all. So I began to see ableism, racism, and sexism as deal-breakers as well.

I will note that I don’t understand these issues and how they express themselves as well as I’m familiar with homophobia, its manifestations, and its effects. I’m still learning about transphobia too, for that matter. So this is an ongoing process for me and one that I doubt I will ever truly complete.

Self-Denigration

This was another deal-breaker that I had back in 1998 and likely the second one I added. My evangelical upbringing had stripped me of any sense of self-worth with its constant messaging that I was a sinner in desperate need of grace, which I had been literally taught was “mercy that I did not deserve.” It was this messaging and the toll it took on my self-esteem that eventually made me realize that I needed a clean break from Christianity altogether. 2

I need (and fortunately found) a religion that embraced me as the wonderful person I am, full of inherent value and worth. Sure, I’m not perfect and needed to improve in many ways. But I am valuable and am worth improving due to that value. My improvement as a person has become a gift I give myself rather than something I have to do to try to appease some deity (and then grovel before that deity when I fail to meet his standard.)

Hell (or Any Other Eternal Punishment)

This is another deal-breaker that was quickly added if it was not on my list in 1998. As I made friends outside of Christian circles after coming out as gay and relying on them for emotional support, I struggled with my belief that these same people were going to be condemned to suffer for eternity simply for believing the “wrong” things. It seemed unfair and cruel, especially considering how much they were helping me keep myself together at the time.

Later, I began to think about the whole idea of hell and realized that in general, the idea of tormenting anyone (or allowing any to be tormented) forever was pure cruelty. I could not believe any deity worth respecting — let alone worshiping — would do such a thing.

This line of thinking eventually led me to thoughts that caused me to add the next two deal-breakers.

A Focus on Retributive or Punitive Justice

As I got thinking about the cruelty of hell, I also began to question what justice was altogether. I began to realize that retributive justice and punitive justice made no sense to me.3 It does nothing to restore those harmed by injustice or improve their circumstances. And even the argument of reform does not make sense if the punishment only comes at the end of the wrongdoer’s life. There’s no time for them do anything positive with their newly reformed ways.

A Focus on the Afterlife

I came to realize that there had to be more to this life than treating it as a test for getting into the preferred afterlife or gaining more converts to join you there. I began to sense that this life was what is important and what we did here matter for what the results here mattered. As such, I realized I needed (and thankfully found) a religion that not only offered insights into how to live a good and happy life here, but sought to celebrate that life for itself.

Divine Command Theory

Divine Command Theory is the moral philosophy that morality is noting more than the divine dictates of God or a group of deities. I am not a fan of this model, because it makes the entire concept of morality arbitrary. I also find it strange — and a bit of circular reasoning — that some religious people will tell you that God declares what is good and also that God is good. If God gets to declare that he is good like that, it is a meaningless statement.

I prefer to find a standard of morality that exists outside of the arbitrary dictates of an authoritarian figure. And that brings me to my next deal-breaker.

Authoritarianism

As someone who values critical thinking and independence, I am not a fan of authoritarianism. I certainly don’t want it in my religion. i want a religion where i can think for myself, grapple with the beliefs and values presented to me. I want the freedom to question and argue with the religious leaders — and even the deities themselves. And it’s even better if they celebrate me for doing so.

I like to think of my relationships with my deities as being centered on dialogue and cooperation, not subservience and unquestioning obedience.

Exclusive Claims to Truth and Totalizing Systems

Aburrow introduces the concept of totalizing systems later in the book (Chapter 7) and defines4 it as “an exclusive or sectarian system that also subsumes all other paradigms rather than accepting that other paradigns exist alongside it.” I have seen too much value in other religions — including religions that I probably would never follow personally — to just discount them as unimportant, let alone invalid. I much prefer approach that states “this is what we do/believe and others are free to believe/do as they please.” Which brings me to my next deal-breaker.

Proselytization

I have no desire to have people convince me to join their religion, nor do I wish to convince others to join mine. I strongly believe that the search for meaning and a connection with the numinous is a deeply personal one driven by an individual’s needs and context. Trying to force people to fit their personal journey into some predefined box strikes me as a sort of violence.

This is not to say I won’t share information about my religion with others. And if someone expresses a desire to follow my religion, i will gladly help them along in that process. But that is only if they come to me seeking such aid. I do not wish to go out actively seeking converts, let alone trying to convince people they need to convert.

Monotheism

I”m not sure this is a deal-breaker so much as just something I no longer believe. I don’t think I could believe it at this point. I think a polytheistic or animistic view of the numinous makes far more sense.

A “Three-O Compliant” Deity

This term is my own invention and a bit of a nod to my career as a software engineer, which is full of such jingoistic buzzwords. What I mean by it is the qualities that some monotheists attribute to their god: omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.5 I actively reject the notion that any deity possesses the first two qualities and I have my doubts about the third.

Again, I’m not sure this is a true deal-breaker as it is something I just cannot believe anymore. I think the deities have their limits.6 I also believe that the deities are still growing and learning, so they can’t possibly be omniscient.

Closing Thoughts

That’s quite the list. I’m not sure it’s complete (after all, I didn’t cover sexual ethics in general), but I think it’s a great first attempt. As I noted, I reserve the right to update this list (possibly in a future blog post) in the future.

As I wrote this post, I also thought it might be interesting to explore what I want in my religion now that I’ve indicated a bunch of things I don’t want. I may have to do a future blog post on that subject.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from my readers. Do you agree any of my deal-breakers? Do you disagree with them? Do you have other deal-breakers? Feel free to share them and your reasoning in the comments below.

Footnotes

  1. I will note that this has often been the position that anti-gay Christians — especially the conversion therapy proponents — have taken, either explicitly or implicitly. Often, their ideas about homosexuality and being trans is deeply rooted in strict gender roles and gender stereotypes. So everything that breaks from patriarchal cisheteronomativity tends to get homogonized into the same bucket. ↩︎
  2. I want to note that this statement is describing what was the best choice for me at the time. This is not a prescriptive declaration about what others should do. I fully acknowledge that others have managed to find a version of Christianity that affirms their inherent worth and value. That just isn’t my story. ↩︎
  3. This applies to more than just my theology, by the way. I’m deeply troubled by the way our criminal justice system seems to focus on punishing criminals. Sometimes, proponents of the current system will argue that they’re actually trying to reform criminals. However, research has shown that punishments are not a good method of reform. So that argument falls flat in my opinion. ↩︎
  4. I suspect this is actually a definition they got from another source, but I don’t recall what that source was or whether they cited it. ↩︎
  5. Recently, I’ve noticed some people — mostly atheists criticizing the Christian god — also mentioning omnibenevolence. It’s a term we never used when I was an evangelical Christian, but we certainly believed God was omnibenevolent. We just phrased it as “God is love.” So I have considered re-branding my term as “Four-O Compliance.” Also, for anyone wondering I have my doubts about whether any deity is truly omnibenevolent, either. I tend to think that the nature of the Divine is more complex than that. ↩︎
  6. This is where I note my controversial opinion that I don’t think any theist actually believes that their god is omnipotent. For example, start asking Christians about the problem of evil or how they justify eternal conscious torment and they’ll start saying things like their “all-powerful” god can’t be in the presence of sin. That sounds like a limitation on their god to me. ↩︎
Gender and Sexuality, Religion, Sexuality

Thoughts about the first Content Warning Event

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Image from the event’s website.

This past weekend, I attended the 2024 Content Warning Event online. This was an event hosted and sponsored by the Thereafter and Go Home Bible You’re Drunk podcasts to discuss purity culture, the various ways it has harmed people, and ways to move beyond it. It was an excellent conference, consisting entirely of panel discussions and the panelists represented a diverse range of sexualities and racial backgrounds.

I loved the fact that the event consisted solely of panel discussions rather than including lectures or presentations given by solo speakers. It made it clear that the goal was dialogue rather than a one-way communication of ideas. Given who authoritarian purity culture and the larger Christian cultures that promote it tend to be, I thought that in itself was a nice act of resistance.

I also appreciated the diversity of topics and perspectives that the event tried to cover. This was not merely a conference about how purity culture demeans sex (which is a true statement) and creates guilt, but one that explored the white supremacy inherent in purity culture, the damage purity culture does to the way people understand their own gender, and how purity culture harms relationship — including non-romantic relationships. One of my favorite moments was when Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers gave her introduction during the first panel discussion and brought up how purity culture harms relationships between parents and children.

Some panel discussions interested me more than others. For example, I was not particularly engaged with the panel discussion about queer inclusion, since that focused primarily on queer inclusion within Christianity and I’m not interested in being included in Christianity. In fact, I appreciated Chrissy Stroop, who facilitated that particular panel discussion, for noting that she was happy to just avoid theology altogether. Chrissy and I differ in that I still enjoy theology, but we both have little use for Christian theology.

(I want to quickly note, that the above is a personal opinion. I understand that many queer folks are Christian and remain to be so. I’m sure they appreciated that particular panel discussion far more than I did. And not everything needs to be nor should be about me.)

While I’m talking about my own religious views, I will note that one thing I would love to see see more diversity of religious thought in the future. The panelists seemed to be mostly Christian, Christian adjacent, or non-religious. And while that probably reflects the demographics of most people who have escaped purity culture pretty well, a bit more representation of those of us who “are still religious, but not Christian anymore” would be nice. Plus I think that exploring the ways that other religions view sex and sexuality would be beneficial for everyone. For example, my own spiritual tradition has a lot to say about sex as sacred and even a religious rite.

Some of my favorite panels were the ones that looked beyond purity culture and talked about building new ways to see sexuality and even think about the morality of sex. These panels included discussions of sex work and porn consumption, non-monogamous relationships and sex, and decolonizing purity culture. I’d love to see more such panels in the future. I think “where do we go from here” is an important question to ask and there are plenty of ways to explore it.

I also appreciated that some panel discussions– most notably the one on decolonization — spoke to issues and ideas beyond purity culture. I think this is important because purity culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but is part of a much bigger system. I suspect that the whole system must be tackled and keeping that in mind even when discussing a particular sub-component or constituent part is important.

At the end of the event, they announced that the next event will be held next year over President’s Day weekend in Atlanta Georgia. It’s not clear to me if that one will also be focused on purity culture or if they might cover a (slightly) different topic. Either way, I look forward to it and hope it’s as delightful, uplifting, and educational as this one was.

Religion

Meditation: The Web of Wyrd

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I originally received this meditation as a working to do with my coven during our first year together.  I thought I’d share it on my blog.

Cosmic WebClose your eyes.  Breathe in slowly and deeply.  When you lungs are full, hold in the air for just a moment, then allow it to leave your body, exhaling fully.  Then pause and breathe in once again.  Continue this pattern, allowing any tension, negativity, and distraction to leave your mind and body with each breath expelled from your lungs.  Each time you breathe in, draw in light and life and divine blessings.  Allow your body to become filled with these things.

Become aware of fiery red and gold strands of energy that criss-cross all around you and touch you.  These are the strands of wyrd.  See how they support you and make up everything around you.  Appreciate the substance and energy of them.  Study these strands of energy as they flow away from you, connecting to other people in your life.  Family.  Friends.  Coworkers.  These strands are what hold the universe and connect all things together.

Notice how your actions, your choices, affect these strands.  Notice how each choice you make is woven into their web and change the energy that flows through them.  Consider how these changes affect everyone and everything else through their connections to you in this web.  Watch how their choices and changes to the web of wyrd likewise affect you.

After a few moments of studying the web of wyrd and appreciating how it connects you with the rest of the universe, allow the image of the web to fade from your mind’s eye, knowing that it is still there.  Allow yourself to become once again more aware of your body and your present circumstances.  Become more connected to your body as you return to regular consciousness, never forgetting your experience.

Religion

Musings on following life-affirming gods

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All Your HeartOne of the things that I love about being a devotee of Freyja is that she is extremely life-affirming.  Her embrace of passion and raising the idea of a life lived fully and joyfully to the point of being sacred is something that says, hey this life is more than a mere training ground for the next life.  It’s not something that is to be endured as a test for worthiness.  It is something that is supposed to be celebrated and lived out for its own sake1.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Freyja promotes a purely selfish and narcissistic form of hedonism.  After all, one can enjoy the joys and pleasures of this life and still find a framework for morality — even one suggested by the desire to enjoy such things.  One of the things that I love about serving a goddess who delights in and encourages such celebration of life is that she also often offers advice on how to do so in a way that is good for everyone involved.

Of course, life still has it’s down sides.  Sometimes the tears come.   But one of the things I have also learned is that sometimes, the tears come because of the joys and show just how precious those joys have been.  In some ways, I think that if the loss of the good times don’t drive us to a certain amount of wailing, we should really wonder how good those times really were.

So today, I offer this toast to life.  May you live yours to the fullest and find it well worth living.

1I suppose this is why I tend to gravitate toward a view that reincarnation is a desirable outcome rather than something to be escaped, as I mentioned in another post earlier this week.

Religion

Morality, the Afterlife, and other disjointed thoughts.

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A couple months ago, I sat through a religious service as part of my family obligations.  You know, one of those things I go to because the vast majority of my family is Christian and being part of the family sometimes involves participating in their observances to some level.  Fortunately, it’s not something that I have to do very often and I’m able to manage through with ample amounts of patience and graciousness.  This particular service was particularly difficult for me, however, as it included a sermon that was hypothetically geared toward evangelism1.

One of the stories that the minister told was about an exchange between a couple of people during a lunch break.  He talks about one person who says that it’s not possible to be “make up for all the wrong we’ve done,” only to have another person, a woman, respond with “Well, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.”  The minister told the story from the point of view that found the woman’s response mystifying.

I didn’t find the comment mystifying at all.  In fact, I found myself in total agreement with the woman’s sentiments — or at least what I perceived them to be.  I do believe in doing everything I can to make up for whatever wrong I have done.  This is because justice is a central theme of my understanding of morality for me.  If I have done something wrong, then I have hurt another person.  It is my duty to do what I can to if not completely undo that damage, at least mitigate it to the best of my ability.  That is the moral thing to do.

I also consider it my duty to do what I can to help mitigate and even undo the damage that other people have done.  That’s another part of justice.  I do this kind of justice and seek to act morally because I believe that by doing so, I am helping to make this world a better place a little bit at a time.  Quite frankly, I want to live in a better world than we currently have, so I do what I can.

No, I can’t make everything perfect.  Some scars I’ve created will always be there, even if I help make them fainter than they originally were.  And being a fallible human, I’m still going to screw up from time to time and cause more wounds.  But that doesn’t mean that I won’t keep trying, just like that woman in the minister’s story.  If I stop just because I can never get it perfectly right, then I have “made perfection the enemy of good.”  And neither my sense of justice nor my sense of morality will allow me to do that.

The reason the minister found the woman’s statement mystifying and confusing is that he was looking at the statement in a different context.  He heard the original statement as “we can never make up for all the wrong we’ve done well enough so that we can go to heaven.”  He assumed the woman’s statement was her way of saying she was going to try to do enough good to cancel out the bad she’s done so she can earn her way into heaven.  Now, I don’t know if the woman meant it that way or was more thinking along the same lines I was when I heard her statement.  I’m not sure the minister really knows.  The point here, though, is that the minister — and at least some of the “unsaved” people he doesn’t understand — are coming from completely different contexts and understandings and that the minister doesn’t even seem to realize that.

For me at least — and I suspect for many others — acting morally and making up for those times our actions hurt others have nothing to do with trying to “earn” their way into an afterlife.  My understanding of the afterlife doesn’t work that way.  Morality is about the here an now.  Justice is about the here and now, not some future judgement with pie for the moral (and/or pardoned) people and whippings galore for the immoral people2.  While I believe in an afterlife, I do not believe its nature is determined by how moral or immoral I was in this life3.

In effect, the minister’s story looked completely different to me than it did to him.  And his failure to understand how and why it looked differently to me is the reason it didn’t have the “desired” effect on me.

1I say “hypothetically” because (1) I find it hard to imagine that anyone attending the service beside myself actually needed to be “evangelized4” and (2) as part of the alleged “target audience” of the sermon, I found it hard to believe that the arguments had actually been successfully tried out on anyone who either wasn’t already “saved” or at least highly sympathetic to evangelical thinking and theology anyway.

2One of the things I’ve noticed about many — though not all — evangelicals is that their idea of justice differs in mine int hat they seem focused almost solely on a system of justice in which the righteous (and/or pardoned) are rewarded and the unrighteous are punished.  To me, justice is about restoring dignity and well-being for all.  I don’t care that they person hurt someone else is punished.  I care that the person who got hurt is restored and the person that hurt them is prevent from hurting them again.

3In fairness, I tend to think we’re reincarnated and that this reincarnation is a desirable outcome, not something to be escaped.  I will also admit that one of the reasons I believe in making the world a better place is so that it’s a much more enjoyable place to celebrate the cycle of life in my future incarnations.

4Well, barring that whole thing that a lot of evangelical churches and ministers tend to think that half the people in their pews aren’t really “saved” and are just “going through the motions” of being a Christian.

Gender and Sexuality

About that Tim Keller quote (Part 2)

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Yesterday, I blogged about the following statement by Tim Keller:

If you say to everybody, ‘Anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin is a bigot,’ . . . you’re going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You’re basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door.

In that post, I talked about the quote from the perspective of seeing the fear that seemed to motivate and permeate it.  Today, I want to talk about it from the perspective of seeing the privilege that seems to motivate and permeate it.  Because if I may be honest — and I’ll try to do so as graciously as I know how — I find something deeply ironic about an evangelical minister objecting to the fact that other people might be asking him to change the way he thinks or even “kick his faith out the door.”

Dear readers, that’s exactly what every single evangelical Christian is asking of every single person who follows a different religion or no religion at all:  “Give up your faith and what you believe and believe what I think is right instead.”  So effectively, Tim Keller is objecting to other people (allegedly) asking him to do exactly what he calls upon every Jew, Wiccan, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Santerian[1] to do without giving it a second thought.  That’s boilerplate unexamined privilege right there.

It also underlines to me the biggest problem with unexamined privilege:  It’s often the enemy of empathy.[2]  Here’s an opportunity for Tim Keller to consider how (feeling like he’s) being asked to give up something so important to him feels to him and try to imagine how those he evangelizes to might often feel the same way.  And yet, because I suspect he doesn’t even make that connection (or avoids it by insisting it’s somehow different), he’s missing out on an opportunity to (1) empathize with those he’s trying to evangelize to and (2) think about how that empathy might influence how he handles his attempts to do so.

I don’t necessarily want Tim Keller or others like him to quit sharing his beliefs or inviting others to join his faith.  However, now that he and those like him have experienced being on “the other side” of the conversation, I’d like them to let that experience and their capacity for empathy to inform their mission.

Also, it would also be nice if their empathy would help them to understand that yes, if they really want others to be open to their message, they’re almost certainly going to have to be likewise open to others’ messages.  Otherwise, they’re expecting something from others that they are unwilling to offer up to others.  And one thing I that think is near-universal if not truly universal among humans is that we tend not to like double standards.

Note:
[1] Not an exhaustive list, I assure you.  But hopefully I’ve named enough religions and non-religious people to make the point that it’s a lot of people he’s asking this of.

[2] Or maybe the lack of empathy contributes to one’s failure to examine privilege.  Personally, I suspect it may be a bit of both, not to mention a self-reinforcing cycle.

Gender and Sexuality

About that Tim Keller quote (Part 1)

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During her Saturday morning address, Wendy drew attention to the following statement made recently by evangelical minister Tim Keller:

If you say to everybody, ‘Anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin is a bigot,’ . . . you’re going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You’re basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door.

One of the thing I noticed about this quote was the fear involved.  Some evangelical Christians fear that if they allow themselves to question their views on same sex sexual relationships — any one of a host of other issues — they might end up losing their faith altogether.  In a lot of ways, I get that fear.  I experienced it once upon myself at times, too.

And I get it because, in some ways, I represent the realization of those fears.  I started out as a devout Christian.  When I allowed myself to rethink my views on homosexuality, it also gave me the freedom to grapple with a number of other questions.  The end result of that process, which only started with my struggle with my sexual orientation, was that I eventually chose to follow an entirely different path altogether and serve other gods.

It’s easy for someone like Tim Keller to point to me and others like me and say, “See, this is what happens when you start down that path!”  And I can understand their tendency to do that, at least to some degree.

The problem is, people like Tim Keller think that what happened to me is inevitable for anyone who starts asking those questions.  I don’t think it is.  I sat in a room with roughly fifty other people this weekend, most of whom serve as living evidence that a journey that begins by asking the tough questions and reconsidering what they’ve been taught doesn’t have to lead one down the path I took.  It’s just as likely that one could change their mind about same sex sexual relationships — or any other single topic — and go no further.  It’s just as likely that after one does all the thinking and reconsidering, one ends up back at the same conclusions they held before then.  So people like Tim Keller are fearing something that’s not inevitable.

I would like to suggest that the fear people like Tim Keller are feeling is the exact reason I think they need to rethink something about the way they do faith.  Because right now, the way they’re doing it causes them fear, and I don’t think that’s healthy for them.  So I’d personally like to see them to start asking some hard questions — and maybe not even questions about human sexuality — in an attempt to restructure and firm up their faith so they don’t have to worry about it unraveling on them so much.  In short, I’d like to see them develop a faith — and a way of doing and having faith — in which they can actually have more faith.

Gender and Sexuality

Soon, I’ll be Canada-bound

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Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be headed to a Christian retreat center in Canada.  There, I will spend the weekend hanging out with other people at the Generous Spaciousness Conference Retreat.  Here’s a brief description of the retreat:

A safe place to be
authentic, to share, to worship, to learn and to grow! All are welcome
to enter this experience of Christian community with generous hearts, a
listening and humble posture, to experience God’s outrageous love and
grace!

The retreat is being organized by New Direction Ministries of Canada.  I’m looking forward to it for a number of reasons, including the fact that attending means I finally get to meet Wendy Gritter, with whom I have conversed online for two (three? four?  I’ve lost track!) years now.  Wendy is one of the driving forces behind the concept of Generous Spaciousness and has done a great deal of blogging about it.  Her thoughts on the topic are great.  I’m not sure if this particular description was written by her, but I think it accurately reflects her vision of Generous Spaciousness:

What is Generous Spaciousness? GS is a relational posture
that acknowledges the reality of diverse perspectives on the question
of faithful discipleship for same-sex oriented people. These differences
have polarized the church, hindered our public witness as the Body of
Christ, and alienated LGBT people from the church.

This posture prioritizes nurturing a safe and encouraging environment for gender and sexual minorities to explore and grow in faith in Jesus Christ,
entrusting each individual to the leading of the Holy Spirit while
encouraging them to be a part of a Christ-centered community.

Generous Spaciousness seeks to build bridges, to find unity in our diversity, and to pursue peace.

I’ll admit that earlier this week, I was very skeptical about the concept of Generous Spaciousness, or at least whether it could ever be successfully applied.  To be honest, between reading material that called me and other LGBT people to tell our stories and educate Christians in spite of the fact that many Christians are poor listeners at best and actually hostile to the listening process at best and being faced with some Christians who are unwilling to let go of their overpowering need to “answer the morality question,” I found myself disillusioned.

But then I remembered that people like Wendy have demonstrated both an eagerness to listen and engage with LGBT people and have even been willing to set aside the “morality question” or at least accept it as a disputable matter which Christians can disagree on in good faith, allowing them to focus on hospitality and fellowship.  As I considered these things the past couple days, my hopes for finding Generous Spaciousness and the retreat to be something worthwhile have returned.

I’ll blog about how it went and my thoughts sometime after I get back.