We began the course with a presentation today by Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, MCC's new Moderator since Troy Perry's retirement last year. Nancy shared some of her story and discussed the history of MCC, touching on various subjects covered in more depth in her 1995 book, Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus & the Bible.
Nancy credited Troy Perry's pentecostal roots, personal openness and early life experiences for much of the charismatic energy and positive buoyancy of the early MCC movement.
Because Troy and many of MCC's prominent leaders have hailed from evangelical or fundamentalist backgrounds, many not so well informed outsiders (including those within the LGBT movement) often mistakenly assume that MCC is a fundamentalist or evangelical church. Nothing could be further from the truth really.
Troy, from the very first church service, embodied and practiced an openness to the Spirit that transcended denominational, theological and liturgical categories. This openness has permeated the MCC movement in profound ways. For many of us, God's radical, inclusive love shattered the rigid categories we had built up in and around our lives. Yes, some of us are or were pentecostal, but not everybody who raises their hands in an MCC service is pentecostal. MCC has taught me and many others to respect and embrace diversity, not only in sexuality and gender expression but also around liturgy, theology, race, cultural background, ability, age, economic status, and so on.
Things are not always as they seem on the surface in MCC; we are truly a melting pot. It's kind of weird to hear the world's most liberal/progressive and theologically diverse Christian denomination referred to as "evangelical."
On this same point, Nancy repeated what I have heard Troy Perry also say — our movement is like a new book of Acts, a new Pentecost. As I reflect on this, it seems that this is true not just from the perspective of the excitement and energy and marginality of our movement. It's also true because there has been a great movement of Spirit (beginning in October 1968) that has made it possible for all of us to hear of the wondrous works of God in our own "language", in our own "various mother tongues" (Acts 2:8).
Nancy described our inclusiveness as a "great umbrella." MCC was, from the start, ecumenical, evangelistic and eucharistic. Each of these characterize MCC today as well. Each of these terms is packed with latent meaning and possibility. What does it mean, for instance, to be "eucharistic"? To me this is more than the fact that an open holy communion is the centerpiece of our worship and ritual. It also means an embodied spirituality, sexuality and spirituality reconciled and integrated, putting legs to justice, celebrating oneness in diversity, and so on.
We read an historical article about the 1973 firebombing of a New Orleans gay bar and MCC meeting place, a hate crime that killed 32 people, half of whom were MCC members. This was the worst human tragedy in New Orleans in almost two centuries, and the first great tragedy of the modern gay rights movement. But as far as the media was concerned in 1973 it might not have happened at all. Local mainline churches refused to allow MCC to use their buildings for funeral services for the dead. Some parents refused to collect their children's bodies.
Reading this story reminded me that this was how MCCs still met in some parts of the world over a decade later, when I attended my first MCC service in 1996 in an "upper room" above a store in the red light district in Brisbane, Australia. You never could be sure who might come up those stairs and disrupt the worship. You could never be sure of your safety (from attackers or from the police) when coming to and from this neigborhood. In parts of the world today, MCCs still face the same challenges and dangers. The more things change perhaps for some of us, the more they stay the same somewhere else in the world. Our work and our calling is never finished.
Nancy views the history of MCC in three phases: the early years (1968-1982), the AIDS years (1983-2001) and then the present period of restructuring, growth and global outreach.
HIV/AIDS really was MCC's baptism of fire. In many ways, it might be said that MCC died during these years, not once but thousands and thousands of times. Every death (over six thousand in all) a staggering blow and yet each bearing (however faintly) the promise of resurrection and hope for a new world. AIDS brought the women and men together and thrusted the leadership of the movement largely on the shoulders of its women.
I am reminded of Michelangelo's Pieta, with Mary cradling the lifeless Jesus in her arms. When you look closely at Michelangelo's Mary, you suddenly realize she is much larger than life. As a result of the pandemic, more of our clergy and Elders today are women than men. We are a movement led, nurtured and sustained by extremely wonderful women.
HIV/AIDS set us back in the development of a sexual theology. Not because of the virus itself, and certainly not because any of us thought it was God's judgment. Just caring for the living and burying the dead was just about all many MCCs could manage during the worst years of the crisis. We were often too busy fighting for our lives to stop and reflect. The work of doing theology really only began to take off in the mid-nineties.
Nancy spent the last hour talking about the future of MCC. About her vision of a new era of growth, justice and generosity. She urged us to think of sexuality as "bodily hospitality" — and to be wary of falling into the trap of trying to become too "mainstream" or socially and conservative as a misplaced strategy to obtain some imagined legitimacy or to appear respectable.
This is a really critical point for me. The "circumcision party" (Galatians 2:3-5) is alive even in Metropolitan Community Churches. As a church we have a duty to celebrate the freedom we have in Christ and not allow ourselves become slaves again to legalistic moral conventions.
We heard about the call to Justice-Love, and how MCC is being viewed in Europe not as the "predominantly gay and lesbian church" (or whatever), but as the human rights church. I had heard this before but it is really amazing to hear some of the stories. Rev. Dianne Fisher is going to be with us in a couple of days, so I'm really looking forward to learning more about this. If we are the human rights church, what does this portend for our future role in the world?
The session concluded with discussion of some of the challenges we face as a movement, as we move from what we were and are today into what we are being called to become. There is an urgent need to get beyond our North American-centric polity and thinking. Certainly the current models of evangelism and church planting are not going to work in the majority world beyond US borders (they don't necessarily work in every context within the US). Our message needs to seek a global audience. Local churches may not yet necessarily be equipped to face these challenges or to become a springboard for growth. We also need to better understand the markets we are called to minister to, especially in our own local communities.
Some of the works discussed and recommended by Nancy were:
- Jesus, the Bible, And Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church
A new book calling for unequivocal equal rights for LGBT people, by evangelical theologian and former Presbyterian Church (USA) Moderator, Rev. Jack Rogers. Rogers is basically someone who changed his mind, and is apparently stirring up quite a bit of controversy in evangelical circles. Nancy said this book is thoroughly researched and well written, so I might have to find time to read it soon. - Out For Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America
MCC (and people of faith in general) are often missing from secular histories of the LGBT rights movement. This volume recognizes MCC's part (and leadership) in the struggle and includes some of our stories. We read the chapter on the New Orleans fire mentioned above. - Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds
A bit dated now probably, I read this book in the late 1980s when I was studying with Samaritan College in Sydney. One reviewer on Amazon describes it as "a luminous tapestry uniting strands of cultural history, folklore, the queer collective unconscious and autobiography, woven with superlative skill in which is recounted everything of importance about us as a people: who we are, where we've come from, and why we are special." Nancy also refers to it in Our Tribe in reference to her belief that we are a special people and that "we" have always been here.
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