An "orthodoxy" that cannot last
Andrew Brown says that the current evangelical orthodoxy about gay people cannot last because there are just too many gay Christians, but progress is heartbreaking.
It is through the individual splintering of stony hearts like that mother's that the current evangelical orthodoxy about gay people will break up, at least in countries where people dare come out at all. There are some other signs that this is happening: a long piece at Fulcrum, a site that is meant to represent the moderate mainstream of evangelical opinion in the Church of England – ie it's wrong about gay christians but not nasty about them – which reviews in ecstatic terms an American book suggesting that gay people have reason to distrust the church, and perhaps the most important thing about them is that they are people, rather than that they are gay. Well, duh. But it's earthshaking in an evangelical context.It is one of the fundamental untruths of the evangelical position on sexuality that there aren't really any gay people in the church; or that if there are, they would be known. And that's where the third piece of news this week is surprising.
Read the rest here.
I remember going home to West Texas when I was 23 years old to tell my parents their only son was gay. I steeled myself for the possibility that I would never see them again. I told them that I needed to tell them the truth. I said it was not a declaration of independence, but an invitation to know me fully.
My parents were Southern Baptists. It must have been very difficult. I told them separately, but their responses were amazingly, wonderfully consistent. My mother said something like, "I don't know what to do with this, but I love you and I will make sure you can always come home." My father, eating his breakfast, set his fork down, looked up, and said (approximately), "You are my son. This is your home. It always will be. Not sure how your mom will take this, but I will make sure she is ok."
Each of them, in what must have been a difficult moment in their own lives, shifted immediately into protective and loving parent mode. As we discussed the theology of what we were facing it was clear that they didn't approve or understand, but they looked at life and our relationship through the lens of love, and that shaped everything that came after.
Over time, their theology of sexuality changed, and they came to see my difference as a gift. When Gene Robinson was consecrated, I asked my mom why people had such a hard time with gay people? Why couldn't everyone be like her and dad. She said, "Because not everyone has a Jimmy in his or her life."
The exceptions we make for those we love are often the chinks the Holy Spirit widens to open minds and hearts. Dad has been dead now for 2 years. Reading this article made me grateful again that my coming out experience was so gentle. We must build our church into a hospital for the people wounded by the experiences described, parents and children.
Jim Cowan
episcotexan.blogspot.com
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August 14, 2009 8:01 PM