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SoulForce Equality Ride 2006
The Visit to Wheaton College

Reflections by Jay E. Johnson
CLGS Programming and Development Director

April 2006

The SoulForce Equality Riders have certainly earned their LGBT merit badge. In Christian parlance, they have definitely added some jewels to their crowns. For two months thirty-two intrepid young people, fashioning themselves after the freedom riders of the 1960s, have traveled to nineteen Christian college and military academy campuses with a simple message: stop discriminating against LGBT people. (For more information on SoulForce and the Equality Ride, visit www.soulforce.org.)

On some campuses they were arrested; on others they were allowed to speak with students, faculty and staff, and even conduct a campus-wide forum on human sexuality and gender identity. At one stop, their bus was defaced with hateful graffiti. With only that bus and a string of motels to call home, they made a remarkable personal commitment to telling the truth about their lives for the sake of justice but also for the sake of hope and love. (One of the riders is a student here at Pacific School of Religion, Kayla Bonewell. She has written about her experiences and produced a booklet about them, including supportive as well as hateful emails she received during the trip. Write to her at kaylabonewell@hotmail.com to request a copy.)

I had the privilege of joining the Equality Riders toward the end of April for their visit to my alma mater, Wheaton College, just outside of Chicago. I was both pleased and surprised to learn that Wheaton would not only allow the riders access to the campus to speak with students but also provide space for two campus-wide events to discuss human sexuality. (Months before the Equality Ride began, SoulForce contacted and worked with each of the institutions on the itinerary to make arrangements for the visit and to request such access.)

Returning to Wheaton for that kind of occasion proved remarkably healing; I put some personal ghosts and demons to rest on that visit. I grew up in Wheaton; my father taught in the communications department of Wheaton's graduate school. I also came out as a gay man when I was student there - or more precisely, I was "outed" by my sophomore year roommate before I was really "out" even to myself.

To say that experience as a college student at Wheaton prompted a crisis is putting it a bit mildly. I was in danger of being expelled; I lost some friends; I imagined my life in ruins as it seemed utterly impossible to reconcile my sense of sexual identity and my commitment to Christian faith. A bit later, toward the end of my senior year, I came out to some friends on my own terms as I began to find resources to integrate my sexuality with my faith. Later still, I helped to facilitate a quickly growing Wheaton College Gay and Lesbian Alum Association (about which the college was not particularly happy, to say the least).

I had no idea what to expect from this particular "homecoming." It's one thing to be "out" and quite visibly so as the programming director for PSR's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry - a "professional homosexual," as I often like to say, only partly tongue-in-cheek. It's quite another to go "home" and be so visibly out, to return to such a familiar place where many people still remembered me from my childhood.

Ironically, the day before I was to travel from the Bay Area to Chicago for this visit, I received an email from Wheaton's president, Duane Lifton, which had been sent to all Wheaton alums. The email requested prayer as the college prepared to grapple with the arrival of "homosexual activists." (The text of his email is included below as well as the response I sent to it.) I had also learned from the Equality Ride website of an email the equality riders received from an anonymous student at Wheaton, a lesbian, who couldn't be out on campus but was grateful for the upcoming visit. The stage, in other words, was set.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the gracious hospitality the college extended. While Wheaton is certainly not a "safe place" for openly LGBT people, it seemed to me that the atmosphere had changed a bit compared to my time there back in the 1980s. Nevertheless, that shift is a bit beguiling. The official policy of the college still considers "homosexuality" incompatible with scripture, and students, faculty and staff must agree with that perspective or risk being asked to leave.

More importantly perhaps, the slightly more open atmosphere I sensed on campus reflects a broader shift in Evangelical Christianity generally: rather than "condemnation," the byword is now "compassion" and for the sake of "healing" - reparative therapy, in other words. And indeed, the college-wide forum in which I participated during this visit included an "ex-gay" student who testified to having left the "homosexual lifestyle." (The text of my remarks, considerably condensed for that forum, is also included here.)

So this was a significant homecoming for me for several reasons. Not least among those reasons was the further insight I gained into the importance of the work CLGS undertakes. Those two days on Wheaton's campus helped me to see that the task before us extends well beyond interpreting a handful of problematic bible verses; the task is much broader, on the scale of worldviews.

On the second day of the visit I was able to sit in on a New Testament class. I realized from the conversation in that class that "homosexuality" is only just a symptom of a much deeper suspicion of human sexuality itself. This broader suspicion of sexuality is of course not new in the history of Christian traditions, but I was rather astounded by how explicitly it was expressed by both students and the teacher in that classroom.

So, for example, the exhortation by the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians that Christians really ought to stay single if at all possible seemed perfectly reasonable to this classroom full of college-age Wheaton students. Why? Because even married couples risk making their spouse more important than God. And that's why Paul condemns same-sex relationships in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans: without the possibility of procreation (apparently the only thing marriage is good for), homosexual relationships are clearly idolatrous; same-sex couples replace God with their partners, which is exactly the risk all couples face.

The biblical logic at work in this argument actually took my breath away. Apparently the Wheaton folks in that classroom approached their own sexuality as something to put up with and rather grudgingly, if not actually as a symptom of humanity's fall from grace. Listening to that conversation as someone who grew up in that religious tradition I could remember what it was like to adopt that approach to Christian faith. I realized in that moment just how far I had traveled in my own faith journey since graduating from Wheaton.

I also realized the severity of the gap between worldviews into which I had stepped during that visit. In my own theological work I take as axiomatic that human sexuality is a divine gift and one of the key locations for reflecting on the divine desire for intimacy and communion. For me, in other words, sexuality is not "merely" about ethics; it is a deeply theological issue with implications that extend into nearly every other aspect of Christian faith and theology, from notions of sin and salvation, to the work of the Spirit, life in the church and eschatological hope. The folks at Wheaton would say the same thing but with very different results.

I don't know how to bridge that gap; I wish I did. But this particular homecoming certainly convinced me of the challenge in engaging in this kind of conversation. It also convinced me of the importance of setting priorities and of discerning the variety of gifts among us, to evoke Pauline language.

Some of us are particularly well suited to engage with Evangelical Christianity on this topic. Others might be called to more modest but in some ways more urgent work - to prevent LGBT Christians from killing themselves (I was shocked to learn recently that roughly 1,200 LGBT people commit suicide every year for religious reasons). Still others have gifts for pioneering theological work among emerging LGBT faith communities and employing such work for civil rights and social justice.

These are just some of the tasks before us at the intersection of religion and sexuality, and each of us needs to discern how best to use our particular gifts and where to spend our time and energy. CLGS is committed to providing resources for all of these various tasks and not just within Christian traditions - a daunting commitment to say the least, but the urgency of which was only made clearer to me on the campus of my alma mater.

Email Exchange with Duane Lifton
President, Wheaton College

-----Original Message-----
From: Wheaton College President's Office
Sent: Apr 18, 2006 2:12 PM
To: Jay Johnson
Subject: Request for Prayer

Dear Jay,

I write to ask you for your prayers.
On Thursday and Friday of this week we will be visited by a group of homosexual activists traveling on a bus tour across the United States to various Christian college campuses. Their agenda is to draw negative media attention to institutions who maintain an historic biblical stand on the issue of homosexuality. This, of course, Wheaton does. (See Wheaton's Community Covenant) Hence our place on their list of targeted institutions.

We did not invite these visitors to our campus. But since they are intent on coming anyway, we decided to make a virtue out of a necessity by turning their coming into a teaching opportunity for our students. Given the ongoing changes in our culture, today's students are potentially facing a lifetime of confrontations over the issue of homosexuality. What should be their Christian response? We have endeavored to prepare our students to respond to these visitors with the biblical balance captured in the injunction to "speak the truth in love."

Wheaton's provost, Dr. Stan Jones, a psychologist who has done extensive work in the area of human sexuality, has prepared a biblical rebuttal to the false teaching of this group. (See "CACE Resources on Homosexuality") These and other written materials, along with various scheduled meetings and chapels, have been devoted to helping our students understand the many issues and shape a balanced Christian response. This process has been highly educational for all involved.

After this event is over, we will let you know how it went. In the meantime, please pray for us, asking that God will be glorified, His truth will be upheld with grace and humility, and our Christian witness to a watching world will be an effective one.

Thank you.
Duane Litfin
President
Wheaton College

From: drjay1@earthlink.net [mailto:drjay1@earthlink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 6:13 PM
To: Wheaton College President's Office
Subject: Re: Request for Prayer
Dear President Litfin:

Thank you for this prayer request email. I wanted to let you know that I, a proud Wheaton alum, the son of a Wheaton faculty member, and an Episcopal priest, will certainly be praying about this upcoming event. And I will be doing so because I will be one of those "homosexual activists" you mention in your email who will be on campus this week.

But I must respectfully disagree with your characterization of the "agenda." I have no intention or desire whatsoever to bring "negative media attention" to my alma mater. In fact, my goals are the very same as yours -- that "God will be glorified, His truth will be upheld with grace and humility, and our Christian witness to a watching world will be an effective one." In my view, that witness to the world will be strengthened when Christians demonstrate their love for one another even when, and especially when, they disagree with each other.

It's been too long since I've had a chance to be back home in Wheaton. I'm looking forward to the visit this week and to what I hope and trust will be a fruitful time of prayerful conversation.

Faithfully yours in Christ,

The Rev. Jay Emerson Johnson, PhD (Class of 1983)
Pacific School of Religion
Berkeley, California

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