The Prodigal Sheep

This past week I’ve been reflecting on memory and remembrance. I’ve been thinking about why we remember what we do and why we forget other things. The following is a collection of musings inspired by some of my reading.

We take our memories for granted, but what if they were suddenly gone?

The movie Memento follows the story of Leonard, a man with short-term memory loss – someone for whom each moment, each event is experienced in and as a ‘now’ unconnected with previous instances of himself. He wakes up each day not knowing how previous moments led to the present he is now in. The movie runs backward from the present, each scene leading to the moment before, cause and effect turned upside down. Leonard struggles to communicate with his future self through notes and even tattoos. I can’t imagine what it would be like to suffer that kind of amnesia, not to remember, not to have a past, to only be aware of myself in the present, the here and now.

Memory is important to society as well. If our ability to bring the past to remembrance and consciously organize it into meaningful memories is an integral part of what makes us human, the more so this must be true of societies and cultures.

There are more and more indications, however, that our culture is sliding into a kind of collective amnesia. I think this is very evident in our mass media and entertainment, as well as in our churches. Who wants to hear about the past any more? How many people care whether the past is remembered? How numb are we becoming?

Dennis Patrick Slattery once visited the Terezin Ghetto and concentration camp, 25 miles north of Prague. In the May issue of The Progressive Christian, Dr. Slattery writes about being there and how it impacted him:

A fine museum there is filled with descriptions of the camp—empty suitcases, children’s drawings, musical scores, journals, shaving utensils, clothing—all serving to pull the horrors of the project out of abstraction and into fleshy reality. All of it serves to trigger a single act for those who encounter it: the act of remembering. It was the act of remembering—and forgetting—that framed what happened next.

I once visited the ruins of the Gestapo prison in former East Berlin. The exhibit and tour were entitled ‘Topography of Terror.’ Walking among the ruins and excavations created a palpable sense of the terrors that must have taken place there, of the people that suffered as a result of so great an evil. It had a lasting impact on me.

Caring is not synonymous with a sentimental feeling towards another or others. Caring is metaphysical in its depth and authenticity. If one stops caring for others, or even for one’s self, one may lose the memory of that same self. The Terezin camp is there to be remembered or forgotten. To deny its presence and its history based on feelings of discomfort about how one might respond—that is immoral.

Slattery goes on to make the connection between individual memory, memory of oneself, and collective remembrance:

We each have our own personal memory. But we also are obligated, I sense, to participate in a collective memory that lifts us out of our narcissistic tendencies and places us in a larger vessel of belonging. What an individual, a culture, a people or even a species chooses to remember and forget, where it makes the cut between what will be allowed in and what will remain outside, defines that entity even more than one’s fingerprints or biological heritage. Our identities are bound up with what we—as people and a culture—choose to forget as well as what we select to remember.

Jesus instinctively knew this, it seems. At the last supper he blessed the cup and passed it to his disciples, saying ‘Do this in remembrance of me…’ He draws us into a collective act of remembrance of his life, death and message that draws us into ‘a larger vessel of belonging,’ each time we participate in the Eucharist, and as we participate in the community of faith.

In A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren describes this deep remembering as:

…the kind of  inwardly formed learning that Jesus, as master, teaches his apprentices; a knowledge about how to live that can’t be reduced to information, words, rules, books or instructions, but rather that must be seen in the words-plus-example of the Master … one learns the way of the master most fully by being in community of other students, including those who can remember and tell the stories about members of the community long departed.

It all seems to tie together in the act of remembrance. Food for thought.

Posted by Mark Poole at 11:10 PM in Philosophy, Theology
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Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

by Bart D. Ehrman

I recently read two wonderful books by Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew and Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.

Lost Christianities charts the development of different branches of early Christianity/ies, through an examination of various lost gospels and other early Christian writings. It also presents a framework for understanding the emergence of 'proto-orthodoxy', that stream which eventually triumphed over other versions and established itself (post-Constantine) as orthodox Christian faith.

Misquoting Jesus examines the development and transmission of the canonical New Testament texts, discussing the way in which thousands and thousands of copyist errors and deliberate changes accumulated over time. Ehrman explains how many of the letters traditionally ascribed to Paul are in fact later forgeries, introduced for various theological reasons. He debunks the fundamentalist notion of a received text (textus receptus) and describes the methods used by biblical scholars to reconstruct the earliest versions of the text and thus take us a close as possible to the original meaning of the biblical authors.

Both books are fascinating introductions to New Testament studies. I'd studied the literary and textual development of the Hebrew bible but had never really delved into the New Testament. As a result I've decided to learn Koine Greek, so that I can begin to read the NT in the original language.

I started self-paced lessons a few weeks ago, using Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar. I'm just starting to get into Greek grammar and nouns. I thought it would be impossible to learn a new language at this stage in my life, but it's actually progressing nicely so far. I'm looking forward to being able to perform my own exegesis.

Posted by Mark Poole at 3:28 PM in Theology
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Today's readings from the daily office include Revelation 17. This passage and chapter 18 describe the punishment and fall of mystical Babylon, the mother of abominations who rules over all the nations of the earth:

Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries. (17:1-2)

To the first or second century readers of Revelation, Babylon of course was imperial Rome. But what interests me more than a historical-critical interpretation of this imagery is the idea of the embodiment of idolatry. Babylon is incomparably wealthy, riding upon the beast of imperial military and political power, drenched in the blood of the innocent, with all the nations are under her spell.

What particularly potent imagery for what Walter Wink refers to as the Domination System — an idolatrous system of power and privilege based on imperial culture and the myth of redemptive violence. In The Powers That Be (which I started reading a few days ago), Wink interprets the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish as the archetypal narrative of the myth that social order and cohesion must be maintained and reinforced through repeated sacrificial violence.

The Romans were the first century inheritors, through the Pax Romana, of the myth of redemptive violence. The Domination System ruled through Roman imperial power and through its descendants in Christendom and later the modern nation state.

One does not have to look too far to see Babylon's modern sons, who continue to insist it is necessary to destroy entire societies through suffering and bloodshed in order to save them. These days however, redemptive violence is waged under euphemisms like 'structural adjustment', 'collateral damage' and 'staying the course'.

They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers. (17:14)

The great promise of Revelation is that such oppression and violence will be overturned, ultimately and nonviolently, by the Lamb. Might is not right, and ultimately will not prevail.

Posted by Mark Poole at 3:49 PM in Justice, Politics, Theology
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I was reading the story of Iowa mother Noreen Gosch, whose 12-year old son Johnny was abducted in 1982. As the 24th anniversary of his disappearance neared, somebody left two photographs at her front door of Johnny bound and gagged, apparently taken within hours of his abduction.

I have no idea how credible the stories are concerning how and why Johhny disappeared (you can read them here). But what struck me was the absolute perserverance of this woman in the face of tremendous loss for the past two and a half decades. She helped change the law in Iowa, and was instrumental in setting up the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She has never given up hope not only for her own son but for those many other children that go missing each year.

I thought of Noreen as I was reading some of the parables of Jesus last night. The story of the widow who searched for the lost coin. That of the father whose son wandered off and squandered his inheritance and lost everything he had. That of the shepherd who sought the lost sheep. The man who wanted to purchase the pearl of great price.

The widow kept searching until she found that precious coin. The father never gave up hope that his lost son would return, and celebrated joyously and extravagantly when he did. The shepherd risked his flock and livelihood, all that he had, to go after the one sheep that was lost. The man sold all that he had in order to obtain the precious pearl.

Not simply memorable stories, these parables give us insight into the extravagant heart of God. Jesus tells us stories about widows and fathers and shepherds and others who never give up seeking that which is lost, to show us the way God is toward us. Over and over again in the gospels Jesus describes a God who is not harsh and judgmental, not one who accounts for our every fault and failure, but one who is overflowing with love and compassion for every one of us and who never, ever gives up on us for a moment.

God is like all these, and God is like Noreen Gosch. Only infinitely more so. As Paul says to the Romans, nothing in all the universe will ever separate us from the love of God. Not adversity, not war, not suffering, not intolerant bigots. This is the message of Jesus, the true gospel that shines in the darkness and sorrow of this world.

Posted by Mark Poole at 9:30 AM in Inspiration, Theology
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Saturday's Star Tribune has an interview with Randall Balmer, evangelical author and professor of religious history at Columbia University.

Well, thank God Katherine Kersten doesn't write for the religious pages... if she did, I'm sure that instead of this fine piece we'd be getting yet another installment of her argument as to why "Minnesotans" (by which she presumably means we taxpayers) should for "the common good" foot the bill for renovating the landmark Catholic Cathedral of St. Paul. Which sounds remarkably like an argument for the establishment of religion by the state, but I digress...

Balmer's new book is Thy Kingdom Come: How The Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament. Not a book Ms. Kersten would enjoy reading, I imagine.

On the historical legacy of evangelicalism, now abandoned by the religious right:

I am a traditional evangelical Christian in that I honor the teachings of Jesus as well as the noble legacy of evangelical activism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Evangelicals throughout most of American history engaged in political and social activism on behalf of those on the margins of society. I'm thinking here of the antislavery movement, the temperance crusade (a progressive cause in the 19th century), public education, advocating equal rights for women and trying to mitigate the effects of predatory capitalism around the turn of the 20th century. Only relatively recently, with the rise of the religious right in the late 1970s, have evangelicals drifted toward the political right.

So, yes, I am a traditional evangelical; it is the right-wing zealots of the religious right who have hijacked my faith. They have taken the gospel, the "good news" of the New Testament, which I consider lovely and redemptive, and turned it into something ugly and punitive.

On the absence of outrage from the religious right concerning the use of torture in the war in Iraq:

I happen to think that's morally reprehensible. These are people who claim to be "pro-life," who profess to hear a "fetal scream," yet they turn a deaf ear to the very real screams of fully formed human beings who are being tortured in our name ...

I suspect that when Jesus asked us to love our enemies, he probably didn't mean that we should torture or kill them. 

On the establishment of religion by the state:

Religion always functions best from the margins of society and not at the centers of power. When it is too closely aligned with the power structure, it loses its prophetic voice.

On faith in God:

 As a person of faith, I decided years ago that I would refuse to allow the canons of Enlightenment Rationalism to be the final arbiter of truth. I elect to live in an enchanted universe where there are forces at work beyond my understanding and control -- and where faith, not empiricism or complex apologetic proofs for the existence of God, serves ultimately as my guide ...

I sometimes describe myself as a "lovers' quarrel" evangelical. By that I mean that I have been, and I continue to be, profoundly shaped by evangelicals and by evangelicalism. I take the Bible very seriously as the word of God, and I believe in the transformative power of Jesus, in part because I've witnessed that transformation both in myself and in others.

On what is "biblical" Christianity:

Would Jesus, who summoned his followers to be "peacemakers" and who invited them to love their enemies, jump at the chance to deploy military forces, especially at the cost of so many civilian lives? Is the denial of equal rights to anyone -- women or immigrants or Muslims or gays -- consistent with the example of the man who healed lepers and paralytics and who spent much of his time with the cultural outcasts of his day?

In the past couple of years I've developed a new respect for cutting edge evangelicals like Balmer, Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis and Brian McLaren. They, along with liberal writers like John Shelby Spong and Marcus Borg, have helped me rediscover a rich and meaningful faith in God. One that has developed in counterpoint to the religious extremism and moral bankruptcy of the religious right and much of what is stands for (and against).

I hope more and more people read books like this. The crux of this issue is much more than a mere disagreement over theology or Christian piety. The religious right has hijacked the Christian faith, and we must understand how this has happened and what to do to take it back -- if we want to be able to continue to live in a world where all people are honored as children of God, where democracy is both a possibility and a reality, where the gospel of Jesus continues to work in and from the margins to transform the world, and where "peace on earth, goodwill among men" is more than a platitude written on Christmas cards.

Posted by Mark Poole at 11:31 PM in Progressive Christianity, Religious Right, Theology
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I have to admit that I have fallen behind on my Bible reading. I think the two week experience of seminary in June was so much that it overcharged my sensors. I need to get back to it.

I've often heard the Bible referred to as the record of humanity's search for and experience of the Divine. I don't remember who it was that said they take the Bible way too seriously to take it literally, but that resonates for me as well.

I came across a blog today where a Presbyterian pastor describes an outline of a "metaphor for the Bible that progressive Christians can find credible." Here is an extract:

What approach, lens, angle of vision, or metaphor might we take toward the Bible [...] I consider the Bible to be the family history of our spiritual ancestors. It is a collection of the record of human experiences canonized by various family historians. Our family history gives us rooted-ness. We have a story. We have a past. Our ancestors do have wisdom. I believe that they caught a glimpse of the fire. If we are wise, humble, and courageous, we can see that fire as well. It is out of respect for our ancestors, our need for rooted-ness, and our need to listen to the wisdom of the ancients that we “open and read.”

As we discover the great diversity of our Christian past, we who are charged with adding to the family history for our descendants, will now be obligated to include these voices as well.

This reminds me of Jesus statement in John 14 that in his Father's house are many rooms (or mansions). 

Posted by Mark Poole at 2:09 PM in Theology
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Lowell Grisham is an Episcopal priest whose daily reflections on the scripture readings from the Book of Common Prayer are often thought provoking and inspiring. He also writes the daily devotions some months on explorefaith.org.

Today in his blog he reflects on the broader implications of Paul's affirmation (in Romans 11) that the chosen people's rejection of the Gospel opened a great door and opportunity for the Gentiles:

I guess it is always this way when God reaches out more broadly to bring grace. We see it in the church. Around 30 years ago our branch of the church acted to recognized God's presence through women in ordained leadership. Some of our people rejected that decision and still do. More recently, we have moved to recognize God's presence in our gay and lesbian members and their relationships. Some of our people reject those decisions.

What I found striking in the scripture text was in relation to what Paul said earlier, in Romans 10. Many in Israel could not accept the good news of justification by grace. Their belief in their own righteousness, or obstinacy and disobedience as Paul calls it, led to a spirit of stupor, making them blind and deaf to the new thing God was beginning to do among the Gentiles. Their table became a snare to them, a trap and a stumbling block.

How aptly this seems to describe those who would deny the gifts of grace today, those who would close their 'table' to modern-day Gentiles, whether it be GLBT people of faith, so-called 'illegal' immigrants, women bishops, or whoever. Not only does their table (or refusal of table to others) becoming a stumbling block for their own spiritual development, I believe it becomes a stumbling block for the world. People look at the church and often see a room full of private, sparsely furnished tables, not realizing that God's banquet table is abundant and open to all.

It's easy for people like me who live on the margins to remain caught up in anger or frustration with those Christians who refuse to see or hear what God is doing in my world, and who refuse to grant me a place at 'their' table. But it's refreshing to be always and often reminded of the "much greater riches" Paul promises. Lowell says,

As Paul is anguished for the separation of the Christian movement from his own source -- "I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin" -- so we are anguished by the conflicts and divisions the church lives with. Like Paul, we can rejoice at the wider grace of God being experienced by those who were once excluded. Like Paul we can also anticipate the reconciliation and reunion of those who have rejected this stage in God's work of salvation. The expectation is for full inclusion. Jew, Gentile; male, female; gay, straight.

Posted by Mark Poole at 9:51 PM in Progressive Christianity, Theology
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Today was the last day of our course. This is going to be a brief reflection, not because the content wasn't stimulating and thought provoking, but because it's late on Friday night and I need to finish this off before getting to bed so I can catch my flight home in the morning!

We discussed the difference between beliefs, morals/values and ethics. In my view each informs the other, moving from the abstraction of beliefs through specific moral or cultural values through to specific actions as they occur in community. For instance:

BELIEF: God requires that all men obey His will

MORAL: Homosexuality should not be tolerated by society, as it against the will of God

ETHIC: Actively working to deny equal rights to my homosexual neighbor

Although it was agreed that there is generally a lot of confusion between the three in social discourse.

A few key points Penny wanted us to take away, with regard to what might constitute the kernel of a queer ethic:

1. If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred (Whitman)
2. The ethical battleground is the human body
3. All bodies matter (this is the meaning of the incarnation)
4. We need to make sex (not just sexuality, but sex) sacred again
5. Ethics need to deal with the essence of relationships, not with their form
6. Ethics must involve truth-telling about our lives and our bodies

Now, to get home and put all of this into practice.

Posted by Mark Poole at 10:32 PM in Course Reflections, Ethics, Queer, Theology
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Today we looked at HIV/AIDS as an ethical issue. My reflection today, however, is on the significance of the "AIDS years" both for MCC and for me personally.

The "AIDS years" in the US queer community and MCC were those years when the pandemic raged unchecked by life-extending treatments — that period of fifteen years from the beginning of the pandemic in 1981 to the advent of protease inhibitor treatments in 1996. One of the cities worst affected was San Francisco.

Rev. Jim Mitulski was pastor of MCC San Francisco from 1986 to 2001, during which time he officiated at over 500 funerals for those who died from AIDS-related illness. One part of Jim's story that struck me was his sense that God gathered MCC together in the 60s and 70s so that there would be a church for such a time as this. MCC (especially MCC-SF) became known both within the queer community and in ecumenical circles as the Church with AIDS.

Jim talked about the authenticity of worship and community experienced during those years. The church with AIDS was not an unjoyous place. It was "a community where it didn't matter what you looked like, in the midst of a community where appearance was everything."

In both The Samaritan's Imperative and The Church With AIDS, we read about the joyful and spirit-filled AIDS healing services, and how experiencing these moved ecumenical leaders to reflect on the meaning of the marks of the "true church" in a time of AIDS. What does it mean to be "one, holy, catholic and apostolic"? MCC embodied, and continues to embody, these marks in its witness, worship and community.

Continue reading "Wednesday reflection: The AIDS years" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 3:31 PM in Course Reflections, HIV/AIDS, MCC, Queer, Theology
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The readings for today were about heroic myth and transformed consciousness. Dying and rising gods, ritual shamanism, and all that. It was all a bit dry and academic for my liking (perhaps it reminded me too much of those know-it-all anthropologists I had to read for my honors class in religious studies all those years back in university).

In class we devoted far too much time to two exercises that annoyed the hell out of me (way more than they should have). These revolved around identifying the queer stories in scripture and in the queer/postmodern 'canon' (you know, the kind of pop culture analysis that is grist for the mill in any number of college cultural studies courses). Here again I could feel the gravitational pull of so many heads about to disappear up their own asses.

Sometimes I want to shout, "hey, that cigar really is just a cigar, nothing more!" The Samaritan woman just had a bad life, she ain't no lesbian! But on reflection I realized it is very easy for someone with my healthy level of self-acceptance (and relative privilege) to be critical of the need for validation. It is important that people find their stories in scripture, even if I don't agree with their reading of it. Give me Queer Eye for the Good Book over Left Behind theology any day!

During one discussion I was misunderstood as defending a primitive resuscitation theory of Christ's resurrection (as opposed to the classic liberal view of it as symbolic or mythical). I need to state that I do not believe in the literal resuscitation of dead bodies (any more than I believe in snakes and asses that strike up casual conversations).

There are many different views of the resurrection of Christ. Some take resurrection quite seriously as a real event in cosmic time, without relying on the concept of the resuscitation or revival of corpses. You can be liberal/progessive and even queer in your theology without having to compare the resurrection of Christ to the memory of Judy Garland. Resurrection is one of the great mysteries of faith; it doesn't have to be explained away or downgraded to a 'living memory'.

Continue reading "Tuesday reflection: Resurrection, death and dying" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 8:51 PM in Course Reflections, HIV/AIDS, Theology
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Today we talked about MCC being a queer church movement rather than merely welcoming or open and affirming (ONA).

This is a controversial topic and may rouse some suspicion within even some MCC congregations, who probably do see themselves as welcoming and not necessarily queer.

However, it seems to me that there are at least two key differentiators:

1. Individual local congregations (and in some denominations, conferences) may choose to become open and affirming. Which means of course that this is a choice that at some time in the future may be reversed. It is not an essential part of their church polity and is not universally recognized or supported at a denominational level.
   
2. Open and affirming congregations welcome, invite, accept or tolerate queer people in their midst and may even (in some polities) ordain them as clergy. This is not the same as understanding and practising church, doing theology and living Christian ministry from a distinctly queer perspective.
   

MCC is the only church movement that speaks consistently and always from and for the margins of heteronormative society. We are no more likely to fade away with the slow dawn of mainstream tolerance than are the black churches going to close any time soon.

There was also discussion about queering liturgy and preaching. As an exercise we broke into small groups to conceive of specifically queer rites of confirmation, laying on of hands and blessing. My group developed a laying on of hands liturgy specifically designed to invoke God's Spirit in the recongition of someone's coming out process.

With a minimum of time and resources, it was amazing to witness the liturgies that each group was able to devise. Each rite spoke powerfully to the experience of queer folk in their relationship with God and the community. This reinforced for me the power and importance of imagining and developing new transformative rites in and for the queer community.

The open communion practised in MCC is one such example of a transformative rite or sacrament. The occasional voluntary practice of rebaptism after coming out (as undergone by me at the age of 21) may be another. But we have only begun to touch the surface of how we might use liturgy in new transformative ways.

Posted by Mark Poole at 10:22 PM in Course Reflections, MCC, Progressive Christianity, Queer, Theology
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It seems that I managed to piss off the editor of Purple Pew today, as a result of my recent journal entry on queering sacred texts.

VL Carey took umbrage at my reference to Take Back The Word as groundbreaking, retorting that "scholarship such as this pollutes the already dung-filled cesspool of Biblical Interpretation".

The problem with the “queer” (re)interpretation is that is sets the mind up to allow the possibility of any interpretation to enter in. In other words, when we give any credence to these reinterpretations, we leave the mind’s door ajar, allowing for the possibility of any interpretation to come in; thus, we invite deception, and not just any deception, but Scriptural deception, which is nothing more than the work of the enemy. Because it’s precisely this kind of deception that will cause us to unwittingly walk away from God. This is why the Bible tells us to be of sound and sober mind, and to question all doctrines and biblical interpretation to see if they are truly of God.

In Carey's eyes, queer scholars are (literally) shitting on the Word of God. None of this contextual social-location crap for her; true Christian salvation is available only by casting off queer theories and submitting ourselves to the (male) God revealed in the scriptures.

Now if we believe that God is Truth, and therefore can neither contradict Himself nor oppose Himself, that is, He cannot lie, then we have validation in the Word of God that we too, we queer Christians, are saved and receive eternal salvation by the grace of God when we trust in His Word and believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We need not the validation of men, or their unscriptural and deceptive “queer theories” to know that we too are of the children of God.

Continue reading "Seeing purple" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 4:34 PM in Course Reflections, Queer, Theology
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Today's session was on sexual transgression as a path to spiritual insight, to "redemption, revelation and/or a deeper relationship with ourselves and the Divine."

We looked at this primarily in the context of expressions of BDSM within the queer community. The discussion was rich and provocative on many levels, although I don't plan to detail everything we discussed.

First of all, BDSM is not evil, bad or sick. Most important are the concepts of mutual consent and mutual enjoyment. If these characteristics are missing we are talking about sexual abuse, not BDSM. BDSM can also be understood as play, and as sexual roleplaying involving consensual power exchange.

Where is the spiritual insight in this? We discussed how BDSM can provide a structure for negotiating and talking about sexual desire. Many people find liberation from sexual guilt and shame as a result of their involvement. Naming and owning our desires, we can reclaim and celebrate the power of our bodies. As feminist Susie Bright says in one of the readings, "sex doesn't lie."

Pastorally, we in queer ministry need to recognize the prevalence and significance of BDSM practices within relationships and within our communities. We don't need to practice or promote it (unless we're inclined that way) but we need to be able to relate authentically in our ministry to those who do. By opening our minds to the possibility of sexual transgression as spiritual insight, we might even learn some things ourselves.

There is also the need to be senstive to those experiencing or recovering from real abuse, sexual or otherwise, and to be able to minister appropriately in that context. There was a very helpful handout highlighting the differences between BDSM and abuse.

Posted by Mark Poole at 4:22 PM in Course Reflections, Queer, Theology
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This morning we reflected on the emergence of postcolonial queer theology. Last night's reading was on the theology of sexual stories, from Marcella Althaus-Reid's Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics.

Althaus-Reid asserts that theology, especially liberation theology, "is a passionate and dangerous business," akin perhaps to sticking your tongue in a wall socket. She compares the passionate commitment to justice and solidarity with the poor to sexual passion, where "desire is intense, and carries that of life in itself."

She talks about how "abnormal" stories (those of women and sexual minorities) may be ignored or suppressed in liberation theologies. There is the story of Father Mario, a young gay Roman Catholic priest working in a Christian base community. Mario is murdered by a rent boy, the police allude to him being a faggot, and the church covers things up as usual. But the local community have embraced Fr. Mario as one of their own. They care not whether he was gay, only that he had to suffer alone. They speak to the TV media of his love and generosity of spirit, and how they wish they had been able to help him in his loneliness. Althaus-Reid approvingly refers to this resistant telling of his story as "indecent theological thinking."

Elsewhere in the reading she talks of the sexual pyramid, the invisible hierarchical privileging of some people's sexual stories over others. The class broke into groups to draw up our own sexual pyramid based on our perception of privileged story-telling in our own society.

The obvious truisms emerge: rich, white, powerful, heterosexual males sit at the apex of the pyramid; poor, disenfrachised women, queers and people of color near the base. But it is difficult to draw such a pyramid on paper, since there are so many different intersecting axes of privilege. At a minimum these might include: race, assigned gender, sexuality, adulthood, class, wealth, beauty, health.

Continue reading "Thursday reflection: Queer postcolonial theologies" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 8:42 PM in Course Reflections, Queer, Theology
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Today's class started with a discussion of the Queer Commentary on the Bible, to be published in the fall (Mona West and Bob Goss, editors). Several of our readings for today were from this new commentary. I look forward to obtaining the entire volume, I'm sure it will be a very useful resource.

Bob made a statement to the effect that queer commentators are exegetical activists. He quoted from Foucault, who spoke of the insurrection of subjugated knowledges. This places queer theory and queer theology within the context of action, of praxis. Arguably, exegesis that is not activist, that is static, is blasphemy, for the Spirit blows wherever it wants to.

There was discussion of erotophobia as the root of misogyny, and both as the root of homophobia. Bob sees homophobia as based on a fear of women and of women's sexuality. To be queer in heteronormative society is to usurp the proper socially assigned roles of male and female. A man who is willingly penetrated by another man is "as a woman" and has turned the "natural" order on its head.

It was good to be reminded that, while we may see others "like ourselves" everywhere and throughout history, homosexuality and heterosexuality as binary modes of sexuality are relatively recent social constructs. When these concepts were first developed in Germany in the late nineteenth century, they were both labels for pathological sexual behavior (i.e. sexual intercourse with the same or opposite sex for the sole purpose of pleasure).

Somehow, heterosexuality was depathologized and granted normativity, while homosexuality was extended to apply all kinds of same-sex attraction and behavior (and still remains pathologized to an extent within modern society).

Continue reading "Wednesday reflection: Queering sacred texts" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 5:48 PM in Course Reflections, Queer, Theology
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Today we had a whirlwind introduction to queer theology and queer biblical hermeneutics by Rev. Dr. Mona West. Dr. West is co-editor with Rev. Dr. Bob Goss of a ground-breaking work of queer biblical scholarship, Take Back The Word: A Queer Reading of The Bible.

I have to say that reading this book was a very worthwhile experience. A detailed chapter by chapter review can be found here. There are so many diverse ways to read the Bible, all of them according great respect to the sacred text while at the same time queering, or subverting, the heteronormative interpretation.

One of the most interesting and inspiring chapters for me was Rev. Michael Piazza's "Nehemiah as a Queer Model for Servant Leadership." It pictures Nehemiah as a privileged queer man risking imperial privilege in order in order to carry out God's work in rebuilding Jerusalem. I also enjoyed reading Victoria Kolakowski's "Throwing a Party: Patriarchy, Gender, and the Death of Jezebel" and her discussion of court eunuchs as transgendered women. This contrasts with Nancy Wilson's view of enuchs as representative of all queer folk.

There are different ways of understanding the eunuch historically, socially and theologically — I believe we can embrace various understandings without silencing one or the other viewpoint. A lot of queer theologians focus (appropriately in my view) on the social role of eunuchs and how this allowed them to move fluidly across gender, sexual and social boundaries — just as many queers (in all our variation) are able to do today.

In today's class we discussed what it means to queer the sacred text.

Queering <=> Querying <=> Questioning
[Resisting convention]

Continue reading "Tuesday reflection: Queering sacred texts" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 9:18 PM in Course Reflections, Queer, Theology
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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).

Continue reading "Monday reflection: MCC as a social movement" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 8:35 PM in Course Reflections, MCC, Progressive Christianity, Queer, Theology
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Somebody asked the question this week in an online forum about the appropriateness of allowing a church youth group to stage a drag show in the ‘sanctuary’. Apparently some people felt that the ‘sanctuary’ should be reserved for ‘sacred’ activities, and presumably drag does not quite make the grade.

To hear this concern expressed was interesting for me, to say the least. Those raising the objections to drag were members of a Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). MCC is an inclusive and predominantly GLBT denomination that, among its many celebrations, commemorates Pride and the Stonewall riots (the infamous night in 1969 when New York drag queens and trannies joined with gays and lesbians to fight back against centuries of oppression and silence).

The responses from forum participants were thoughtful and well informed. Some spoke of the universal and inclusive nature of the sacred and how the house of God should be open to all people for all kinds of events.

From a personal perspective it was interesting to see this question come up, given a related experience of my own last Sunday. I was making announcements at the start of our own worship service. Our church is holding a 'Prom' in a couple of weeks. One of our young adult leaders came up to the front to make a special announcement about the event — wearing drag. The idea was to promote ticket sales while getting people to think about how they might ‘dress up’ for the event.

Now this should not have been a shock to any in our congregation...

Continue reading "Spiritual trans/gression" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 1:32 PM in MCC, Progressive Christianity, Queer, Theology
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A few months ago I posted on the confusion surrounding fundamentalist misinterpretations of the story of Sodom. Shortly thereafter there was a lively discussion on the same topic in a Yahoo group I subscribe to. The following essay is reprinted with the permission of the author, Peg McMahon:

Understanding Ezekiel 16:49-50 is central to understanding Sodom

The important thing to take away is the idea of what God looks at when judging a nation:  societal attitudes of pride (hubris) and complete indifference to the plight of the poor. This is a very different criteria than that of promoted by the religious right. They concentrate almost exclusively on personal behavior — a misreading of scripture, in my opinion.

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom:
She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned;
They did not help the poor and needy.
They were haughty and did detestable things (toevah) before me.
Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

I also agree with Mary-Ann Tolbert completely (I encourage reading her entire article).

As a woman, I can attest that the connection between sex and aggression and between penetration and power is alive and well. Think about what people really mean when they say "F*@k you!".

I often think that this attitude lies at the heart of both society's institutionalized hatred of women and its extreme reaction to male homosexuality — a reaction far more emotional and negative than that toward female homosexuality.

If the penetrated partner is debased, well, women are born for it. In a sense, they are born debased. But it's unthinkable that a man would give up his privileged position (on top, if you will) to willingly become degraded in this manner. Macho men find it frightening and repulsive.

Reading Tolbert's exegesis of the Sodom story, I would take it one step further. Part of the function of many of the stories in Genesis is to explain why things are the way they are.

Continue reading "Scripture as propaganda" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 10:27 PM in Theology
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I just happened upon these wonderful quotes from the twentieth century Catholic mystic, Simone Weil:

"Yet I still half refused, not my love but my intelligence. For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms ...

But perhaps God likes to use castaway objects, waste, rejects. After all, should the bread of the host be moldy, it would become the Body of Christ just the same after the priest had consecrated it."

— Simone Weil, Waiting on God (1951)

Posted by Mark Poole at 9:00 AM in Theology
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The Southern Baptists recently excommunicated Faith Harbour Baptist Church in Baytown, TX in a move that highlights the growing contoversy within evangelical circles over what constitutes the mission of the church.

Is the church essentially a private association of like-minded believers called to maintain a code of holiness and to purge itself (and the world) of moral impurity? Or is it the body of Christ, a living mission and witness to the whole world of God's fathomless love and transformative grace?

The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention expelled Faith Harbour for its refusal to bar a gay Christian support group from using its facilities. The SBTC views the gay group as 'a church that they are hosting in their building which has a female pastor and basically affirms the homosexual lifestyle'.

Continue reading "What is the church called to be?" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 12:08 PM in Queer, Religious Right, Theology
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"The Church must denounce rebellion as of all evils the greatest ... I do not shrink from uttering my firm conviction that it would be a gain to the country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion than at present it shows itself to be. ... Rationalism is the great evil of the day."

— John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864) 

"The vice of Bigotry has been so indiscriminately imputed to the religious, that they seem apt to forget that it is a real sin. To the millions of Europe, bigotry has been a confutation of all pious feelings. So unlovely has religion been made by it ... that now, as 2,000 years ago, men are lapsing into Atheism or Pantheism."

— Francis William Newman (the Cardinal's wiser brother), Phases of Faith (1854) 

Posted by Mark Poole at 11:10 PM in Psychology, Theology
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Göran pointed me to a wonderfully succinct article by Father Tobias Stanislas Haller concerning the general poverty of 'one man, one woman' religious arguments against homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

A chief strategy of fundamental/ist religionists is to assert their pronouncements to be fundamentally and unequivocally rooted in scripture and natural (or divine) law. Many hold the Christian bible to be the 'inspired, inerrant word of God'. Yet their use of scripture generally betrays a lack of reverence for an instrument held to contain such a divine revelation. Interpretation and exegesis is largely 'unsophisticated and sub-critical', as Father Tobias points out:

For example, the relevance of the “Sodom” story to male homosexuality (apart from assault) has surely been widely debunked — even among reasserters.

More problematical is the casual mixing of the two creation accounts in a way that fails to acknowledge that in the second account there is no sexual congress until after the Fall. The procreative and unitive functions are therefore clearly separable: human society requires procreation for its propagation, but unity for its well-being; nor does the church forbid marriage to those incapable of fertility, nor does it terminate marriages at the onset of infertility. It is also clear that the command to multiply, which is also given to the wild creatures in Genesis 1, is supplemented and crowned by the command to loving society established in Genesis 2, which endures in the absence and beyond the cessation of any capacity to procreate; and which indeed also allows for the recognition of celibacy as a legitimate way of life, contrary to the explicit command of Genesis 1:28.

Continue reading "Arguments from scripture" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 8:30 PM in Marriage Equality, Queer, Theology
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Minneapolis-St. Paul Catholic Archbishop Harry J. Flim-Flam advised the faithful on January 5 that "now is the time to recommit ourselves with all of our energies to the ideal of marriage as intended by God: the lifelong union of one man and one woman with an openness to welcoming new life." Pope Rat-Zinger, in June, insisted insisted that marriage “is not a casual sociological construction,” and that, “in accordance with the plans of God, marriage and the family are irreplaceable and do not allow for other alternatives.”

Not all Catholics agree, and some had the personal courage to speak out in the online diocesan newsletter, Catholic Spirit.

I'm thrilled that God communicates his intentions so clearly to Harry and Rat-Zinger. But I'm wondering if God has a habit of changing his mind, or if Harry and Rat both are telling a little zinger about marriage. You see, I can't find their 'ideal' and 'irreplaceable' version of marriage in the Bible, the divine revelation upon which church teaching and tradition supposedly rest.

In Genesis, the first 'marriage' was between Adam and... Eve, his own flesh. Now Eve was made from Adam (not as a separate act of creation, and not the result of human conception), so the exact nature of their relationship to one another is somewhat murky. By virtue of being the first humans it is difficult to describe their partnering as 'traditional' in any sense. We do not know if they were 'married', that's for sure. It could even be argued that the relationship was a little too close, since both shared the same DNA. I'm told these sorts of relationships are popular in parts of Tennessee, but I don't see the church encouraging it at all these days.

Continue reading "Marriage as God intended it" »

Posted by Mark Poole at 5:00 PM in Marriage Equality, Religious Right, Theology
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The discussion continues on the topic of homosexuality over at Emergent Voyageurs. Some of my original comments to Jamie's post have been quoted in the new post.

It is always difficult when engaging 'orthodox' Christians on this subject. Often times people want to constrain the discussion to biblical 'certainties', and sometimes the most progressive or liberal Christians can display a remarkable obsession with proof texts and 'natural law' arguments when it comes to their understanding of sexuality and sexual minorities. It is difficult to bring the focus forward to the lives and experiences of real people (like the one in my preceeding post).

In my view, theology is a living process of dialogue with and about the Divine. Theology that is not contextualized through dialogue with real people (both inside and outside the church) is at its best scholasticism, and at it worst, philosophical tyranny -- witness the false 'discussion' within Catholicism about 'intrinsically disordered persons'. While theology may engage in the process of discussing and elaborating beliefs and convictions it is only authentic if it leads to theopraxis, which is the living out of our understanding of God's grace and what it means to follow Christ in the community and in the world.

Posted by Mark Poole at 10:54 AM in Progressive Christianity, Theology
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