Loved Before We Are Labeled

What Baptism Gave Me That Queerness Couldn't.

Photo by Norbu GYACHUNG on Unsplash

Back in the 90s, a lot of denominations and congregations were coming to terms with the role of LGBTQ people in the church. In my own life, I was coming to terms with my own sexuality. I can remember someone I knew who was openly gay saying that they didn’t want to be simply tolerated in church-they wanted to be celebrated.

That statement came across as rather odd to me. I didn’t have the words for it back then, but it didn’t feel like the church was the place for someone to be celebrated.

Those words operated at a few levels. I knew the person was saying they wanted to be in a community where they were known fully as a gay person. I could get behind that. But I also felt there was this sense that church could be a place where you were lauded for being you. Where people would celebrate you.

But was that the purpose of church? Was that the goal of inclusion?

That statement has been with me for over 30 years and it still feels off.

There has been a lot of pushback to Matthew Vine’s essay in the New York Times. I tended to agree with his take. Reading his essay, it felt like he was talking about my own journey as someone who accepted his sexuality and yet wanted to hold on to orthodox Christian theology. There were several responses to the article, and I wanted to focus on one response from Brendan Robertson. His post is actually the basis of a chapter in a book he wrote, so it isn’t a direct take on Vine’s op-ed, but it does show who or what is the thing that Robertson centers in his theology.

As I read his post, “How should I engage with traditionalist LGBTQ+ Christians?” Something was interesting about it all. Before I explain, let’s look at an excerpt:

I firmly believe and have stated in this book that the problem for queer Christians and our allies is not the misinterpretation of the six clobber passages but the entire paradigm of “traditional” or “orthodox” Christianity. Despite what traditionalists claim, the “orthodoxy” that has become mainstream in many branches of Christianity today is not reflective of the actual teachings of Christ or the beliefs of the authors of the Bible. You’d be hard-pressed to find any New Testament Scholar or historian who would claim that Jesus, Paul, or Peter would be in full agreement with the creeds, catechisms, and dogmas of “traditional Christianity”- these doctrines did not develop until hundreds and in some cases thousands of years after the authors of Scripture lived and represent an evolution in Christian thought over those long swaths of time. Even something as basic as the so-called “Apostles Creed” comes from the sixth century, and even the earlier Nicene Creed was not developed until 325 AD, centuries after Jesus and the Apostles walked the earth. There have been tomes written throughout history about how Christian “orthodoxy” developed and the movement to silence all dissenting voices by the early proponents of “orthodoxy.”^[3] While many claim that these creeds faithfully represent what the Apostles taught, we have a lot of reason to be skeptical about any creed that emerges from the very Empire that persecuted Christians for hundreds of years prior. The reason I bring up the creed (which says nothing about sexuality or gender) in this discussion is to demonstrate the kind of skepticism that naturally emerges for many people when they realize how poorly the Bible has been translated and interpreted on the issue of sexuality and gender/. Why would we assume that a group of fallible humans, called together by the Roman Emperor, under threat of being declared a heretic and thus being expelled from the church (and society) and even prosecuted, created a faithful and reliable set of beliefs that define what all Christians must believe for the rest of time? Why wouldn’t that be worth questioning? Why would any aspect of our faith not be worth reexamining?

So the church, especially orthodox Christianity, hasn’t been very good to the gays. So, what are we to do? Let me share one more paragraph:

And this is the precise point of departure for many queer Christians from “traditionalist queer Christians”- once we begin reexamining the ways Scripture has been misused and abused to condemn queer people, we are empowered to examine the ways Scripture and tradition might have been used to promote other ideas that are untrue and harmful. Many queer Christians have used modern science, history, psychology, and philosophy to reexamine the claims of traditional Christianity and propose new, more progressive understandings of the Christian faith entirely. Many queer Christians, influenced by queer theology, see questioning and resisting normative interpretations as a vital and holy task. After all, we are called to resist conformity by the Apostle Paul himself. (Romans 12:2) But the traditionalist-queer approach is not interested in this endeavor and, in fact, views it as counterproductive to the efforts of queer inclusion in the Church.^[4]But from where I stand, such reexamining is not only inevitable, but it is necessary. This critical rexamining and queering of Christian theology happens in virtually every liberation theology tradition because of the legitimate suspicions that arise once we understand the ways that the Bible and the Christian faith have been shaped not by God, but by fallible and flawed human beings with their own biases and agendas. Many discover that much of what is understood to be “traditional Christianity” is not a faithful reflection of the faith embodied by Jesus and many in the early Church, which should cause anyone who seriously desires to be a disciple of Jesus to rethink and reform their faith.

What’s interesting here to me is who is centered in this faith. Spoiler alert: it isn’t God. When I read Robertson’s post, what is interesting is how it is the gay or queer person that is the judge and jury of the church. They are the ones who determine if the church is doing the right thing.

Notice who isn’t speaking: God.

Robertson deconstructs the traditional faith and creeds, looking at how the church has been used to oppress gay people. You’ll have no argument from me on that matter. But then he talks about how “modern science, history, psychology, and philosophy” can be used to propose new understandings of the faith. Okay, but couldn’t those endeavors also be used to oppress people? Indeed, haven’t they done just that? Modern science has been used to hurt people of color and queer people. History has been written to hide the lives of gay folk. And while psychology and psychiatry are similar but not the same, it was only in 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association said homosexuality wasn’t a mental illness. I’m not saying these methods can’t be used, but they are just as flawed as the church.

Robertson looks at the church and its history and finds it wanting. Again, if you are LGBTQ it’s hard not to think that way. But the church isn’t about the people. I mean it is made up of people, and people can make a difference, but the church in the end is about God. Robertson is right about the church, but when it comes to LGBTQ people, is he right about God?

We don’t really know, because God seems secondary to the argument. The church is about the people, but God doesn’t seem to be present.

Reading Robertson makes me think about Andrew Root’s latest book, Baal and the Gods of More. Root notes that the god Baal in the Bible is a fertility god. If you do more then there will be rain for your crops. The problem is that it never ends. You have to spool up and up in order to keep up.

In the life of the church, this means there are two people: techno-optimists and identitarians. Identitarians are what you think they are: people who are centered on a certain part of who they are. Drawing on the work of Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, Root notes that there are three distinct takes on identity. The first is a legitimizing identity. This is the kind of identity tied to something larger than you: a church, a seminary, or a nation. It’s the second kind of identity that I want to talk about. Legitimizing identities trust the structures and forms in civil society. They might fall short; they might need reform, but this group still believes in these structures. A resistance identity doesn’t trust in the structures of civil society.

Root notes this identity started in religious fundamentalism, but with the rise of social media, it started to be found more and more in marginalized communities and in politics. As Root shares:

Because there is such distrust of civil society, these groups create what Castells calls “trenches of resistance.” These trenches allow for shots to be fired against civil society but without reform ever really occurring. Such resistance identities offer little in the way of how to reshape civil society and find necessary compromises to reshape a shared social life. Inside resistance identities, there is often no sense of justice but only the pursuit of more and more affirmation for personalities by the act of resistance to all unwelcomed or despised structures. The point is not to live together but to win personality-bound power. All structures perceived as unwelcoming to affirmation of these resistance identities must (and immediately) be torn down.

The whole point of resistance identities is to “burn it all down.” More Root:

The overall point of resistance identities is to disturb and tear down. That’s the best they can do…there is no other purpose. The goals of resistance easily become captured in the objective to increase escalate) personality value and produce attention capital or fall into nihilism.

As I said before, you don’t hear a lot about God from Brendan Robertson in his post, but you do hear a lot about queerness. Queerness is what is centered in his world. Queerness judges the church, and queerness decides if it wants to be a part of the church…or not.

The problem with this centering of queerness is that it puts this first and foremost. What matters is not that we are loved by God and a child of God, but that we are queer. Being queer is primary; being loved by God is second, if it shows up at all.

In Robertson’s view, the church is just a human institution. But the church is not just a human institution. In Acts 2, we see the church starts in wind and fire. It is empowered by the Holy Spirit. All throughout the book of Acts, we see the church in action, but it is the Holy Spirit who moves people to preach to people across barriers. The church is gathered by the Spirit. What this means when it comes to LGBTQ justice is that God acts despite how the church, an institution filled with imperfect and sinful people, acts. This doesn’t excuse the church’s history towards gay people. The church must act justly. But in the end, the church is always going to fall short because it is filled with sinners.

As I look at my own coming out journey, I’ve wondered why I never left the church. I mean, somehow I became a pastor. I don’t think it’s because of my fortitude. It’s not that I never doubted my faith, because I did that; a lot. What might have made the difference is something I didn’t do nearly 50 years ago. On a Sunday night in December 1976, I was baptized at seven years old. I didn’t understand everything that went on during that time, but I tend to think it was implanted in me that I was loved by God no matter what. Even when I doubted this promise, I knew that. When I was immersed in the water, I was given a new identity that wasn’t queerness: it was being a child of God. That never negated being gay; in fact, it made that part of my life part of the life of God. Years later, I had an experience where I felt the presence of God and was able to be open (as open as I could at the time) to who I was. I felt this sense of warmth that I can only explain as the love of God.

What I needed, what so many LGBTQ people need, is to know they are loved by God. Not when they change, but for who they are. They need to know they are forgiven, not for being LGBTQ, but because so many are weighed down by guilt and shame. Yes, Brendan is right that there needs to be liberation from the forces of fear and hate, but we also need liberation from sin, death, and the devil.

Matthew Vines isn’t denying his gay identity. He knows who he is as a gay man married to another man. But that identity is under a larger identity, a larger story. Being a gay man, a black man, and a Latino man are all important to who I am. But they are under a larger identity: a child of God.

For Christians who believe LGBTQ people have a place in the life of the church, we need to remember that this isn’t about queerness as much as it is about letting people who think God could never love them, are told in no uncertain terms that they are loved as a child of God, that those who are baptized can trust in the promise that they are part of the family of God.

Look back at that statement of being celebrated; what matters is not that we are celebrated, but that we are loved by the church and, most importantly, by God.