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Greetings from The Center for Lesbian
and Gay
Studies in Religion and Ministry!
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| African American Convening |
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Report Available June 1
Thirty-five prominent African American
pastors, theologians, and activists gathered
in Baltimore for the CLGS African American
Roundtable Convening April 23 -- 25 to plan
strategies for creating positive change for
LGBTQ people of faith in historic Black
Christian denominations. A total of 24
individual leaders addressed this convocation
of women and men from throughout the United
States and spoke of new ways to advance the
welcome and inclusion of LGBTQ Black people
of faith in various Christian denominations,
congregations, and seminaries. The Convening
also discussed next steps for the CLGS
African American Roundtable Project, an
eight-year old program sponsored by the
Center. A full report on the proceedings of
this Convening will be available by June 1 on
the CLGS website. For more information on the
African American Roundtable project, go to:
http://clgs.org/3/3_3
_1.html.
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| Listen to the Press Conference on the Pope |
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Stories from Lesbian and Gay Catholics online!
The March issue of this e-newsletter
described an upcoming press conference on the
occasion of the visit to the U.S. by Pope
Benedict XVI. The press conference, conducted
last month by New Ways Ministry of the Roman
Catholic Church, featured the stories of
lesbian and gay Catholics. That event is now
available as audio files here: www.newways
ministry.org.
The seven tracks include: the introduction by
New Ways Ministry executive director; the
talks offered by Gregory Maguire, Heather
Mizeur, and Deborah Mizeur; and three
questions from journalists, followed by the
panelists' responses.
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| OutFront on the West Coast |
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Portland, OR, Walla Walla, WA and Burlingame, CA
CLGS continues to bring its popular OutFront
Conferences to locations across the United
States. On April 3 - 6, CLGS teamed up with
Oregon's Community of Welcoming Congregations
to offer a conference entitled Transforming
Faith: Divining Gender at The First Unitarian
Church in downtown Portland. This was a great
success with roughly 100 participants and
featuring keynote speaker, Virginia Ramey
Mollenkott.
Walla Walla, Washington, is the site of an
OutFront Conference being held the weekend of
May 9-11. Hosted by the First Congregational
Church (UCC) of Walla Walla, the theme of
this conference is "Expanding Our Welcome: A
Christian Conference Exploring LGBTQ
Congregational Inclusion." (To see the
conference schedule and/or to register go to:
http://outfrontww.eventbrite.com/.)
In late May of 2008 the CLGS Asian/Pacific
Islander Roundtable (NRJ) will offer a
retreat in the San Francisco Bay Area for API
pastors on "Creating LGBT-Affirming API
Ministries. (To see the conference schedule
and/or to register go to: http://nrjretreat.eventbrite.com/.)
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| Summer Session Courses at PSR |
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Register today to ensure course availability!
Go to: http://summer.psr.edu/index.html
A new line-up of courses is available this
summer that will fulfill requirements in
PSR's Certificate in Sexuality and Religion
program. These courses are available on a
course-by-course basis and students do not
need to be enrolled in the Certificate
program to take these courses. Each of the
following courses is worth 1.5 credit hours
and is offered over one week.
To ensure that each of these classes reaches
its enrollment minimum, please register by
June 6! More information on these courses and
registration procedures can be found online
at : http://summer.psr.edu/index.html.
The Week of July 14-18
1. Queer Religious Activists
Bernard Schlager, 8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
The Week of July 21-25
2. Queering the Use of the Bible
Timothy Koch, 8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
The Week of July 28-August 1
3. LGBT Religious Issues in Postcolonial
Perspectives
Elizabeth Leung, 8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
4. Sexuality in Sacred Art
Justin Tanis, 1:00-5:00 pm
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| LGBT Advocacy at Church Conventions |
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LGBT Advocacy at Church Conventions
From the UMC and the PCUSA to the ECUSA and ELCA
This "alphabet soup" of Christian
denominations points to a a number of
upcoming church conferences, assemblies,
conventions, and generally "gatherings" of
institutional church representatives to
deliberate over the church's business. As has
now become commonplace, "homosexuality" will
once again feature prominently in each of
these gatherings. The following list offers
some web resources for who is meeting where
and the kind of LGBT advocacy that is
underway in these deliberations.
The General Conference of the United
Methodist Church. As of the writing
of this e-newsletter, the General Conference
is underway in Ft. Worth, Texas. The
Reconciling Ministries Network, the LGBT
advocacy group in the UMC, offers briefings
and snapshots of the issues and the latest
news at www.rmnetwork.org.
The General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church (USA) . Recent
rulings from judicatory bodies in the PCUSA
have caused even further confusion concerning
the ordination of LGBT Presbyterians. The
General Assembly, meeting the third weekend
in June in San Jose, California will need to
sort through what this means for the
denomination more generally. Both the
Covenant Network and That All May Freely
Serve work on behalf of LGBT Presbyterians.
For more information go to:
www.covenantnetwork.org
and www.tamfs.org.
The Lambeth Conference of Anglican
Bishops.. This once-a-decade
gathering in England of bishops from around
the worldwide Anglican Communion has been
billed by some as the last such gathering
before the Communion itself splits over the
ordination of LGBT people (Bishop Gene
Robinson has not been invited to this
gathering). A variety of LGBT advocacy
groups, both here in the U.S. and
internationally, will have a robust presence
at this summer's Lambeth Conference, held
from mid-July to the beginning of August. Go
to: www.integrityusa.org.
The Triennial Convention of the
Episcopal Church (USA) . More than a
year away, preparations are nonetheless
underway for this gathering (scheduled for
July 8-17, 2009, in Anaheim, California),
which will likely need to address whatever
transpires this summer at the Lambeth
Conference. Integrity USA, together other
LGBT advocacy organizations in the Episcopal
Church, is conducting preparatory workshops
for the convention. Go to: www.integrityusa.org.
The Biennial Churchwide Assembly of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America. This meeting also takes
place next year, in Minneapolis, August
17-23. Meanwhile, Lutherans Concerned in
North America (the denomination's LGBT
advocacy group) will be holding its biennial
meeting this year, in San Francisco. "Hearts
on Fire," July 3-6, will take place on the
campus of San Francisco State University. For
more information go to: www.lcna.org.
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| Revolutionary Reading |
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God, Sex, and Politics, by Dawne Moon
Sociological and ethnographic studies of
religion are not usually considered
"revolutionary reading." But they could be if
they were more regularly considered in the
theological deliberations of church
conventions. Some denominations are better at
this than others, but for the most part
sociological research does not often play
much of a role in ecclesial debates where the
parameters for discussion are set by what
counts as "theology."
Dawne Moon's God, Sex, and Politics:
Homosexuality in Everyday Theologies (The
University of Chicago Press, 2004) is one of
only a handful of sociological and/or
congregational studies of LGBT people in
faith communities. Studies like this one
carry the potential, if not to resolve the
debates over human sexuality in our churches,
then at least to recast how those debates are
conducted. Even after many decades of church
struggles on this question, there's
surprisingly little data available for how
LGBT people negotiate their sexual/gender
identities in faith communities and how their
presence inevitably changes those
communities. Moon chose to study two
congregations in the United Methodist
Church-one that identified as liberal or
progressive and the other as conservative or
Evangelical-and how they constructed their
theological beliefs about sexuality as well
as how they dealt with differences of opinion
over those beliefs.
Among the results of her interviewing and
data collection, Moon realized that the Bible
itself does not always play the central role
in church controversies over sexuality. This
will be surprising to some, especially those
who think the Bible is entirely what these
debates are all about. Instead, the Bible is
only one among many diverse sources people
draw from to construct their "everyday
theologies." Better biblical exegesis, in
other words, will not suddenly resolve the
debate. Moon also noted (to her surprise)
that both congregations exhibited an almost
universal disdain for "politics." This, she
supposed, may be a significant factor in the
discomfort both congregations expressed in
dealing with "homosexuality" as this topic
inevitably leads to "political" divisiveness.
These are just a few of the findings and
observations Moon offers in this accessible
and readable book. This is no dry
presentation of research data; it's actually
a fascinating read, especially as Moon
employs concrete data to propose ways to
shift the debates in our churches over
sexuality toward more fruitful conversations.
And that would certainly qualify as
"revolutionary reading."
(If you order this book through the Amazon
portal on the CLGS website, CLGS will receive
a portion of your purchase price!).
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The work of CLGS depends on the
generosity of
individual donors. You can make a gift in
honor or in memory of friends or family,
which we'll include
on the Center's website "Honor Roll"! Click
here
to Donate Today!
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The "Mind of the Church"? |
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As an Episcopal priest I have heard often
various Anglican clergy (usually bishops)
refrain from taking a stand on lesbian and
gay inclusion by deferring to the "mind of
the church." Anglicans aren't the only ones
who employ this strategy, but it does seem to
crop up quite frequently when church-wide
meetings loom on the horizon, such as this
summer's Lambeth Conference of world-wide
Anglican bishops.
If I understand it correctly, this strategy
works something like this. "Even if I were
inclined to welcome openly lesbian and gay
people," a bishop might say, "and perhaps
even ordain them, I simply cannot act alone;
the 'mind of the church' is not clear on this
matter." When you think about it, this is a
strangely disembodied, vaguely mysterious
image. Whose "mind" are we talking about
here? Where is it, exactly? How does it
communicate to the "body"?
I may be just quibbling with a metaphor, but
if so there's still a more serious issue to
consider. "The church" is not just clergy,
and it's not just clergy and laity meeting
together in synods, conventions, assemblies,
and conferences. The "church" is comprised of
all of its members across many denominational
configurations. As Paul made clear in writing
to the Corinthians, "all" really does mean
all, without exception (1 Cor. 12). For that
matter, and as Paul also wrote, the "mind" we
should be consulting here is the mind of
Christ (Phil. 2:5).
A number of church bodies are currently
preparing for what will likely be (yet again)
some contentious gatherings. In addition to
Anglican bishops meeting in England this
summer (to which, by the way, Gene Robinson
has not been invited; he's pictured here at
his ordination as bishop of New Hampshire),
as I write this United Methodists are meeting
in Ft. Worth, Texas for their General
Conference; the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church (USA) will be meeting in
San Jose, California in June; and plans are
already underway for the triennial General
Convention of the Episcopal Church, in July
of 2009 and for the biennial Assembly of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in
August of 2009. (See the related item in this
newsletter for more information on these
gatherings.) Each and every one of those
church bodies includes gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgender people as members;
some of them serve as ordained clergy.
However we construe the "mind of the church,"
all those LGBT people contribute to it, not
just with their thoughts but also their lives
of faithful witness and service.
I don't know how much further this "mind"
metaphor can be pushed, but I'll hazard
taking it to one more level. Like a lovely
tune that keeps repeating in one's head long
after it's heard, LGBT people will not be
forgotten by the "mind of the church" anytime
soon, and probably not ever. Both open and
closeted LGBT people have been well-ensconced
in nearly every church body for a long time
now, regardless of institutional policy
statements. And if the "mind of the church"
needs some clarity of thought about all this,
that's precisely what we offer at CLGS.
Working with denominational caucus partners
and advocacy organizations, CLGS provides
sound scholarship and effective training and
education throughout all of our programs at
the intersection of sexuality and religion.
All of this work is made possible by the
generous financial support of our donors and
by the gifts of time and energy from our
volunteers. Please help the "mind of the
church" achieve new clarity of thought and
vision by contributing to CLGS today.
Meanwhile, let us hope that United
Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and
Episcopalians will realize that their
deliberations are not about "others," but
their own brothers and sisters in faith and
ministry.
The Rev. Jay E. Johnson, PhD
Senior Director, Academic Research & Resources
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