A Christian FAQ On Queer Affirmation
For the friend struggling to accept people "because there's that one verse in Scripture that says..."
I’m still waiting for the day my inbox is filled with this query: “Help! My friend wants to know why it’s okay to loan money with interest since the Bible is totally against it.”
Alas, it hasn’t happened yet.
But… I do get a lot of these types of messages about Pride and LGBTQIA+ inclusion.
Although I’ve by and large moved beyond a paradigm where we’re constantly having to explain why we don’t prioritize six Bible verses over the lived experience of millions of Christian queer people, for the sake of doing the work and posting for posterity something I can link to when people ask again, I offer these contrarian points.
Point Number One: If you are cisgender or straight or both and are not currently active in a Christian community that's clearly inclusive and affirming, it will be very difficult for you to, with any kind of integrity, respond to your friends questions. They're asking you to explain on the basis of Scripture why their simplistic understanding of a few verses isn’t valid, and the most important way to counter their assumptions is through your bodily solidarity.
In fact, if you try to debate the biblical points with them, meanwhile overtly contributing to a church that proclaims the opposite, what you do will speak much more loudly than what you say.
Point Number Two: I tend to direct people toward books written on the subject. I don't need to write a whole book as a blog post because much better books, many by queer authors, have already been written (top of this list include Liz Edman’s Queer Virtue, Justin Lee’s Torn, David Gushee’s Changing Our Mind, and Colby Martin’s Unclobber).
You may respond (or your friend may respond): Why do I need to read a whole book?
Again, I'll point out that your friend and all of their queerphobic assumptions about what the Bible “clearly says” are based, themselves, on many books (and sermons, etc.) not the least of which is a poor mid 20th century translation of Scripture itself, on which topic you can also watch a movie.
My point is that everything they believe the Bible so clearly says has only been made “clear” to them because dozens of Christian preachers and teachers have read a lot of anti-queer books, which haved helped them weave those very few texts together into some kind of coherent whole and apply them in the 21st century. Which takes us all the way back to the point I made at the beginning of this blog about loans with interest. Want to “unlearn” a bunch of bias? You’ll need to read a lot of alternatives.
Point Number Three: Your friend may not be convinceable. They may be baiting you. I would encourage you to take a break from your friend and engage the many amazing resources in our world today in order to deepen your appreciation of the witness of Queer Christians. There are so many theologians and people of faith who illustrate, it is more than okay to be queer, and Christian, AND that actually queer perspectives bring unique insights to Christianity that make theological reflection and church practice far more interesting and humane.
I'm inviting you to enter a conversation on the other side of the equation from your friend and rest yourself there first for a while. You will be a better ally and a better conversation partner for your friend if you yourself have some expertise in the beauty of queer theology. Show them why you love it, and what you love. Check out, as some starter resources, Queer Theology, Reconciling Works, Gay Church, much of the work of James Alison, and my favorite deeply theological and exegetical book, Sex and the Single Savior.
Point Number Four: About Pride. Pride is listed in some Christian tradition as the greatest sin. “Pride cometh before the fall” etc. But you might ask yourself when pride is challenged for being “sinful” whether in fact the challenges are sufficiently nuanced.
First of all, there's been a lot of feminist theological work problematizing identifying pride as the primary sin because for many people, their struggle is the opposite of pride. Their struggle is self-abnegation.
If you look at Christian theology, and examine how pride plays out in Scripture, you realize that people are both celebrated and challenged in specific ways: so for example, Paul in his epistles will boast in his sufferings (2 Corinthians 11) and actually even makes a long list of those things he's boastful about, and in some ways, they're not far off from many of the posts made during Pride by the queer community, about the things they've undergone that have made them stronger and better people.
But also, there is a strong thread throughout Scripture identifying people as good, as very good. God calls a beloved people, God’s sheep, and often in the Psalms and prophets proclaims who the people can be, how beloved they are, and that thread all the way through Scripture is what's picked up in Christian theology when people claim, rightly, that in many ways how they were made is itself good.
A responsibility of Christians is to work hard trusting that what God has called good is good, and when others call it something else, that we push back against that and say, No, I'm proud of who I am and who God made me to be.
Point Number Five: There's a problem in elevating scripture, and prioritizing it over everything else. When we go to that extreme, and we turn scripture into a “god” to be heeded, no matter what, we fail to heed what is in Scripture itself, which repeatedly challenges itself internally and in particular the glorification of Scripture (2 Corinthians 3:4-6). When leaders and groups use sacred Scripture to manipulate and harm, it's no wonder that many people want to dismiss scripture outright, because it seems that’s the only effective way to undermine the elevation of Scripture.
A better approach to Scripture is to see it as one resource among many, a beloved one and God-breathed, sure, but also complex and ancient and at times in profound internal dialogue/tension with itself. I mean, I love scripture. And I want people to engage it, study it. Read it with me. But it's much better read as one voice rather than a commanding dead voice from a book. And specifically, on the topic of queer identity when millions of our siblings in Christ say so clearly, that they can be both queer and Christian. The starting point is not six short Bible verses, but their testimony. When someone is standing in front of you and shares with you they love Christ and also their same-gender partner, prioritizing a dead letter over the living person in front of you is, well, pretty heart-less and verging on idolatry.
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If you made it this far, I invite you to go back to point number one. Evaluate what you do. Move in ways and among communities that prioritize bodily solidarity. This is where you will learn even more how to answer your friend’s question, and in the meantime make many new friends of your own.
Happy Pride!