No room in the tent
Once again…“interfaith” understanding runs afoul of other values, and loses.
As a committed Christian and a queer atheist who both work to advance interfaith and intercultural understanding, we’ve watched with heavy hearts as Sojourners and its evangelical founder Jim Wallis have been taken to task in the blogosphere this week for declining to run an advertisement sponsored by Believe Out Loud, an organization committed to full LGBTQ equality in Christian churches. The overwhelming reaction so far has mostly consisted of resounding condemnation, including from many people we both know and deeply respect.
That’s been my reaction, certainly. It’s a no-brainer. The issue at stake is: is it ok for religious people to shun people who want to attend their church, solely because the people in question are two women and their little boy? The answer seems pretty obvious: no. It’s not ok to shun people who are not, say, war criminals or mass murderers. It’s not “controversial” to say you shouldn’t shun people for being gay and that you should welcome them instead. Sojourner doesn’t agree – so Sojourner gets a lot of criticism. That seems fair to me.
Those who question the integrity of an organization that adopts a moderate position make it more difficult for many evangelicals to find common ground with the LGBTQ community, in the same way that bullying tactics used by conservative organizations like Focus on the Family under the leadership of James Dobson made it difficult for many of our queer friends to ever believe that they could build authentic relationships with or find common cause with evangelicals.
Well here we see the problem with this “finding common ground” obsession. Finding common ground is all very well, but there are limits. Clearly for a lot of people, one of the limits is refusing to accept a “let’s welcome gay people” ad. Comparing that to Focus on the Family is one comparison too many (to bastardize Bernard Williams).
The two of us may be very different — a heterosexual man committed to Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and a queer atheist who spends his spare Sunday mornings dreaming up new tattoos — but we share something more significant than our differences: a common desire to see compassion and reconciliation in the world between people of all religious and nonreligious perspectives. Sadly, controversies like these make it more difficult, rather than easier, to build these bridges and participate in the important work of healing the world’s bitter divisions.
We trust that Sojourners and Jim Wallis know this, and attempts to publicly shame them for trying to build broad coalitions make their job, and all of our jobs, that much harder.
Again – building bridges all very well, healing bitter divisions all very well, but not at the price of giving up core principles.
James Croft has a very nice post on the subject.
That’s an awfully twisted definition of “finding common ground,” where one side gives up their entire position, and the other side agrees not to burn the first side at the stake. I don’t see how not compromising in the slightest makes for a “moderate” position either.
Someone needs a new dictionary, and I don’t think it is me…
My favorite part from Croft’s reply:
Well said.
Wait, am I understanding this right? Chris Stedman is not only supporting Sojoner’s decision but comparing our condemnation of them to the bullyinh tactics of the right wing evangelicals?
Isn’t he, like, gay?
Am I the only one here who is supremely unimpressed with religious moderates? Christian moderates refuse to run an ad promoting inclusiveness of homosexuals. Muslim moderates like Tariq Ramadan still haven’t made up their mind regarding stoning adulterers to death.
Fundamentalists life in crazy town. Moderates live in the ‘burbs.
Gobsmacked. Utterly gobsmacked at Stedman. Let no one say a word the next time I or anyone else accuse him of extreme naivete and the stupidity of youth with not a jot or tittle of knowledge of the world for queers before they were born.
There’s a term for gays like him: Uncle Mary.
Julian – yes. James strongly protested that comparison in his post.
Oh. My. God. I’ll give it to Stedman; he’s consistent.
He’s got a blog post up expressing “concerns” about the next iteration of Everyone Draw Mohammed Day. Why is he concerned:
1. Because chalk drawing on sidewalks depicting stick figures labelled “Mohammed” are “targeting” an already marginalized minority.
2. Because Molly Norris, the cartoonist, had to go into hiding “because of the controversy.”
No. No. No. She had to go into hiding because of death threats from muslim fanatics. One does not make that less likely to happen, and less socially acceptable, by conceding to the unreasonable demands of people who threaten your life.
Similarly, one does not make it less socially acceptable to shit on gay people by scorning gay people who are reasonably offended that an organization that claims to be on their side rejects an ad that depicts them as Not Evil.
Is he a pod person? Is he being paid to be this perverse?
Picks up head that’s spinning like a top on the floor.
Chris Stedman seems like a pretty awful person. Just, wow. I feel sick to my stomach.
So we’re supposed to tolerate intolerance because there are other religious people out there who are more intolerant? That doesn’t make much sense to me.
Some Infinitesimally small chance exists that everyone in the world might be my ally at some unknown time and for some unknown reason, therefore I should never criticize anyone… but wait, Chris Stedman criticized new atheists. Does that mean he thinks we could never be his allies under any circumstance?
so full of Fail (for all the reasons well explained already in the original post and in the above comments)
I really dont get why gay people still want to go to church(they could ofcourse believe in Jesus all they like).
Its “moderate” position supports churches excluding members of the LGBTQ community.
The contradiction isn’t that hard to understand.
And if the organization lacks integrity, it is morally right to question it. Oh, wait, atheists, no morals, silly me…
Is this a specific and technical term “shun”? I assume it is, as the vulgar or loose meaning seems like a mostly harmless thing.
Josh, I think there can be a reasonable argument that drawing the stick figures labeled Mohammed on the pavement is different from doing a cartoon on a website or publication because one has no choice regarding viewing the pavement art whereas to see the cartoons you will have to specifically seek out the website, newspaper or magazine that contain them. Both are protected by free speech but the pavement one is more akin to shouting since those who want to avoid exposure to the pictures have no choice in the matter.
In other words one could argue that a Draw Mohammed Day might better be confined to places you have to choose to view the pictures (like, as suggested, websites or magazines – Go ‘Jesus and Mo!’).
I’m not sure if Chris Stedman meant it that way – I tend to doubt it, the accomodationist stance is generally that it is unacceptable to do something that is offensive to members of powerful religions whether it is in public or semi private (like on the internet).
As for this anti gay accomodationism – I’ve argued in the past that this is the real danger with accomodationism – they end up supporting religious influenced policies that are currently damaging to many sectors of society for the simple reason that they want to keep those politically powerful groups sweet.
It’s not even a good-cop, bad-cop policy. I could understand that, but when the good cop spends half his time trying to report the bad cop to the ethics board and the other half filing down the bars for the suspect to escape I think its time to rethink the whole strategy.
What peculiar column. It’s one thing not to join Sojourners critics; I can understand the politics of that. But to denounce those critics? Damn, that’s a whole ‘nother level of accommodation. At least the authors of A Call for Unity were all white guys.
On this issue, everybody’s talking about evangelicals, I guess because of Jim Wallis, but I’m thinking of the Catholic left, who have previously sought to establish their bona fides by opposition to women’s choice.
@ Ken
Oh yeah.
There was this liberal catholic in my shop (voted for Obama, pro choice, college educated, whole shebang) who refused to hear anything about the Church’s policies in Africa. It was so frustrating trying to get thru to him.
What got to me was this:
Didn’t Sojourners miss a tremendous opportunity to show compassion and reconciliation towards one particular group of people? Then why are you defending them?
But this bit is stupid too:
Sojourners isn’t criticized for building coalitions. They are criticized for refusing to build a particular coalition.
Don’t be silly!
We’re talking about coalitions between important groups, like rich evangelicals and interfaitheists, not with some piddling nobodies like a lesbian couple with a kid!
Geez, I used to be a fan of Wallis and Sojo, back when I was a recovering fundy. This just makes me realize how far I’ve come, while Wallis has hit a hard wall he can’t pass. Can’t help still admiring their work on economic justice, but…..
On matters of economic justice, the hodge-podge we call the Bible is amenable to a number of parsings — thus, we get both leftist and rightist readings. On sexuality, though, it’s a bit harder to find anything but married heteronormativity, notwithstanding the cherry-picking engaged in by the LGBTQ Christian movement.
Eamon,
Heteronormative standards have changed since the days of the Old Testament, what with its polygamy, men’s sexual access to their female slaves, capturing women (usually after slaughtering their husband and children) for one’s sexual pleasure, and so on.
@Sigmund: yes, and with “important” defined as “big, wealthy and/or powerful”, not by how progressive they actually are.
My experience with my parents leaving the Lutheran Church because it finally adopted some pro-gay policies (committed gays can become pastors) showed me that the ‘moderate’ churches are actually labeled that more because they haven’t taken any stand, rather than actually being truly ‘moderate’. Churches and organizations that take neither pro or anti homosexual stances aren’t trying to bridge a gap, they’re trying to keep as much wealthy, older, bigoted money in their church without generating controversy that would lose younger members. All it is is cowardice, plan and simple, either they are too afraid to loose wealthy anti-gay members, or to lose younger members who would never associate with a church that is anti-gay. But the silence isn’t helping anyone.
@21: Granted, and I should have said “New Testament”, which is taken as normative by most Christians. But with or without the OT, you’d have a hard time coming up with any affirmation of same-sex relationships, same as you’d have a hard time coming up with an unambiguous condemnation of slavery (maybe even less so).
In Christianity, shun is a loaded word more or less equated with excommunication or disfellowshipping. The person is considered an outsider who may or may not in future be saved.
There is a Presbyterian church near my house that has on it’s sign: “an inclusive community” and a little rainbow icon. I’ve often wondered if this was a kind of quiet code inviting gay people.
@jay … Yes.
In fact, the denomination voted to allow gay clergy.
Makes them slightly less odious in my book — though you’ll have a schism of anti-gay presbyters coming to a neighborhood near you next week.
@27: I’d say definitely a LGBTQ-invitation. In the United Church of Canada there is actually an official title “Affirming Congregation”, meaning full acceptance of LGBT, same-sex couples, performing marriages, etc.
The Facebook discussion of this is very interesting – anyone who can see it should check it out.
Maybe we should make the case that the people who only want to draw Mohammed are the nice moderate ones, compared to something like this.
Where’s the compassion in telling a young couple and their son “get out of our church”?
I’ve seen genuinely welcoming congregations: one of my partners is a practicing Jew, though what she believes in is mostly community and a “set the wheels in motion a long time ago” deity. On the couple of occasions I’ve gone to services with her, I’ve been welcomed as her partner and asked if I was moving to the area.
Sojourners don’t get “welcoming” or “bridge-building” points for telling us to go wait at the toll plaza, because have to make sure the troll doesn’t feel silenced or have to hide under the bridge instead of on it.
Like Eamon, I used to be a fan of Wallis and Sojourners. But it looks like these days Sojo’s commitment to justice has been subjugated than their commitment to solidarity with other Christian believers. Would Sojo stand against an ad that showed a mixed-race couple and their children similarly shunned in church? I think not.
What I got from that HuffPo article: “Sure they give us a smack from time to time, but the rest of the time they’re kind of nice, and they don’t beat us as badly as some people might. Therefore we should tell them that the occasional slap is OK.”
And Rosa Parks should have been happy that she was allowed to ride on the bus at all – why was she complaining about having to sit at the back?
As I was hoping he would, slacktivist has weighed in on this. His take (which I suspect is exactly right) is, it’s all about Wallis continuing to display the minimal totems of proper Evangelicalism, namely being anti-abortion, and not toooo friendly towards Teh Gay. The more reasonable evangelicals (ie. the ones who notice that Jesus didn’t put an exception clause on “Love your neighbour”) are against discrimination in secular matters, and willing to allow the apartheid of same-sex civil union — just don’t let them in the church unless they repent first.
Of course, there really isn’t a way out of this, for the Sojo constituency. They can’t welcome Teh Gay into the church without compromising their theological view of the nature of “humanity”. Sometimes that theology happens to produce practical results that we can agree with — but other times, we get crap like this, that demonstrates that, at base, theology is an irrational way to determine proper human rights and proper human conduct.
Here’s another atheist perspective. My favorite part:
Hey Chris: you want to show solidarity with progressive Christians while holding on to humanist values? This is a way better way to do it.