A prominent theologian changes course on LGBTQ+ issues
The 'integralism' movement is another threat to democracy

This church finally abandoned anti-LGBTQ+ theology

When I grew up in a small Northern Illinois town in the 1950s and early '60s, children like me learned almost nothing about homosexuality except, eventually, to make fun of people we suspected were, as the derogative -- but now rescued -- term puts it, "queer."

Sanctuary-bookOur churches were of no help with this at all, though some of them were worse than that by declaring homosexuality sinful. As far as I can remember, the subject never came up in my Presbyterian congregation, even though at the time our denomination refused to ordain LGBTQ+ folks as pastors or allow pastors to do same-sex weddings.

There still are Christian churches of various denominations that teach that homosexuality is always and everywhere a sin against God. These churches are -- as I argue in this longish essay -- sincerely wrong or misguided (sometimes willfully) or just hateful.

The good news is that it is possible to change such teaching. My denomination did that -- after a decades-long battle -- almost 15 years ago. Other Mainline Protestant denominations beat us to it. Some other branches of the faith and independent churches are yet to get there, though the United Methodist Church became a fully inclusive denomination recently at the cost of a painful schism.

But a small congregation in Iowa City, Iowa, once known as Vineyard Community Church, instead of waiting for the leadership of Vineyard USA churches to change its restrictive teachings on this subject, moved slowly but carefully toward rejecting such teachings and eventually declared itself to be fully inclusive of LGBTQ+ people. Which meant it would operate outside of Vineyard membership and oversight.

This inspiring story is told in a book to be published this coming Wednesday, Sanctuary: Queering a Church in the Heartland, by Adey Wassink, Katie Imborek and Tom Wassink, the pastoral leaders of the Sanctuary congregation. (The book can be ordered now.)

It's an unusual book in some ways, especially in how the authors take turns telling the often-painful story of how they came to change their minds and hearts about this matter. There's a lot of personal anguish here along with human drama and trauma, and when they reached their decision it was not without regret about the people who would leave their congregation because of the choice to embrace LGBTQ+ people.

But sometimes doing what's right means that some people will feel betrayed, especially those who think that God is on their side.

The authors say that because of the decision to leave Vineyard and become fully inclusive, "our church came out on the other side not just alive, but bigger, healthier, happier. . .We did not implode or plunge into the abyss. We lost duplicitousness and gained sanity."

The first step in this transformation, of course, was the one that is always first -- recognizing that there's a problem and defining it.

As Adey writes, "Most in our church had inhabited homophobic cultures, which had then been sanctified by conservative evangelical theology." What was needed was for people "from the LGBTQ community (to) teach us, shape us." Such people tentatively showed up and the transformation of the church began. One of them was Katie, one of the co-authors of this book.

As Adey began to see this matter in a new way, she sought to bring along her husband, Tom, who writes this, "(T)he only reason that I took the time to understand how my Christianity had caused me to be able to exclude queer people, and to then repent of that, was because she (Adey) insisted."

As church leaders were deconstructing their anti-LGBTQ+ theology, they also were forced to challenge Vineyard's male-dominated approach to ministry. And did, though that wasn't an easy journey, either.

Adey puts all of that this way: "We only became who we are now because we, out of necessity, against our own will, and mostly unaware of what we were actually doing, had to leave our beloved thing and begin building a new thing."

Understandably, there were ups and downs to this process, but Tom eventually found a measuring stick: "When I am confused about who Jesus would currently champion, whether in a dispute or in culture writ large, I just need to identify the ones being castigated by Christianity, and there's my answer."

That hurts to hear because it's true. As the authors write about Jesus, "We came to see his person and agenda quite differently as our turn toward inclusion unfolded. He was more attuned to systems and privilege than we had previously perceived, tearing down temples of the status quo at every turn. He relentlessly centered innocent victims while marginalizing power."

Adey and Tom were blessed in this journey to have Katie along to guide them into how LGBTQ+ people understood themselves and their need for a connection to the divine -- questions that she, too, struggled with.

As Katie writes, "The option was never to stop being gay if the Bible said it was a sin; the only option then was to give up on Christianity because the whole thing must be bogus and Jesus wasn't it. I honestly don't think I ever doubted who I was or that a divine power out there was working for good in my life and loved me. I was just trying to determine if it was in fact Jesus."

One reason this story is so useful is that the authors eventually figured out how complicated the question they were trying to answer was:

"(O)ur Sanctuary Community Church story of inclusion is not that we realized we got it wrong with calling queerness sinful, and so we had to recant of that. Our story is that we constructed and propagated a system in which sinfulness was an organizing principle that we used to label people so that we could suppress them. Our repentance was not to admit that we were in error on one particular assessment, but rather that we had to demolish our nefarious system and build up a new one in which the construct and consequentiality of sinfulness had nothing in common with what we had practiced previously."

In the end, Sanctuary church leaders told congregational members that "we have come to embrace full inclusions for LGBTQ persons. . .We believe this approach reflects the heart of God for LGBTQ persons and for our faith community, and that it represents a faithful reading of scripture."

The stark lesson of this book is that when faith communities adopt beliefs and practices that turn some people into second-class citizens or worse, that denigrate them, that fail to affirm their full humanity and their status of being made in the image of God, they will inevitably injure others whom God loves without reservation. Nearly all humans and faith communities fail at that at times, but repentance and recommitment to the right path is always an option. Unless, of course, the leaders and structures of a faith community are convinced of their own infallible righteousness.

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FAITH GROUPS RESPOND TO 'HELENE,' OTHER CATASTROPHES

When disaster strikes in the U.S., many citizens know that help will come from many governmental directions, including FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). What they may be less aware of is all the help that faith communities mobilize to offer. As this RNS story reports, several faith-based disaster assistance groups are at work to help victims of hurricane Helene in North Carolina and elsewhere.

Among them is the Mennonite Disaster Service. As the story notes, "relief workers from Mennonite communities around Ohio and Pennsylvania arrived outside Asheville, North Carolina, with chainsaws and earth-moving equipment to help clear the back roads as government services focus on main thoroughfares as well as search and rescue." Agencies representing other faith traditions also are pitching in. And as this Baptist Press article notes, for lots of faith groups, it's a matter of responding again and again and again.

You can find a long list of faith-based disaster assistance agencies here if you want to contribute to the vital work they are doing after Helene -- and will be doing in response to future catastrophes.

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