Lutheran (Confessions) and LGBTQIA+ (Inclusion)
This past week the ELCA Youth Ministry Network’s annual Extravaganza took place in New Orleans. A friend who was there texted me during the gathering and remarked (after I’d sent them a link about our summer Queer Camp), “I feel like I'm at queer camp. Nearly every session has focused on LGBTQIA+ issues.”
My response was an image:
But more seriously, it truly is time, and as pastor in this church in 2024, I’m so thankful there’s widespread interest among youth ministers in our church for the work of LGBTIA+ advocacy.
We have this tremendous opportunity to discover and recover queer virtue.
And…
We're also all making up for a lot of lost time.
Clearly, the Extravaganza (which gathers about 1000 youth and family leaders/pastors in our denomination from around the country) is taking a stand, making it clear to anyone and everyone where they are in terms of queer inclusion.
As a church, we are leading in this.
Two of the general session speakers have authored books previously reviewed here at Lutheran Confessions: Ross Murray’s Made. Known. Loved. Developing LGBTQIA+-Inclusive Youth Ministry, and Jamie Bruesehoff’s Raising Kids Beyond the Binary: Celebrating God’s Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children.
Personally, I’m here for it. When I realized that I still have 20-somethings in my own congregation who grew up in a church (the same church) that, just a decade ago, made them uncertain whether they could even come out, we truly are making up for lost time, and need these overt, centering, celebrating moments at our biggest events.
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This weekend (January 28th) ReconcilingWorks: Lutherans For Full Participation, is celebrating its 50th (!) anniversary. It’s hard to believe the movement is fifty years old!
At our local congregation we’ll be praying the liturgy provided by ReconcilingWorks and featuring the testimonies of LGBTQIA+ members of our community. Increasingly congregations in our denomination are becoming Reconciling In Christ, a designation given by ReconcilingWorks to churches who make clear statements of inclusion and do the work as church to overcome (always an ongoing process) exclusion.
There could and should be far more churches in our denomination who work toward RIC status. But we can celebrate how far the movement has come in these 50 years, and look forward with joy to what’s next.
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So here’s the question: What does this have to do with Lutheranism, or the Lutheran “Confessions”?
I mean, you’d be hard pressed to find something in the Lutheran confessional documents specifically on LGBTQIA+ inclusion. It was simply not a matter of theological inquiry in that era.
Intriguingly, the early Lutheran movement was “radical” around matters of human sexuality. Their clergy were marrying rather than remaining celibate. This was a matter of sexual orientation (could we call it sex positive?) radically at odds with Roman Catholic practices of clerical celibacy.
In fact, there’s a whole article in the Augsburg Confession specifically on the marriage of priests. The gist of the argument in that article of the confessions is that a) it’s hard for almost everyone except for a few to remain celibate so b) clergy should be free to marry, and c) the church was hypocritical because while it enforced puritanical practices like celibacy for the clergy, in actual “practice” such celibacy was being broken all over the place.
Much like today, repressive sexual demands by the church were accompanied by widespread sexual abuse.
For a modern comparison, see Karen Swallow Prior’s poignant recent post:
Philip Melanchthon wrote in the apology to the article on marriage, “Enforced celibacy and depriving priests of marriage (which God Himself has instituted and left free to all) has never produced any good results, but has brought on many great and evil vices and much iniquity.”
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Without going into great detail, I think we can accept the truism that most of the anti-queer church’s accusations against the LGBTQIA+ community are always just confessions.
That’s probably the most important confession to make.
Additionally, if we’d like to garner further insights from the actual Lutheran confessional documents on issues related to human sexuality, we can take the lead from the article on marriage, which was highly reluctant to make use of “natural law” arguments to enforce spiritually abusive abstinence on clergy.
Also additionally, we can acknowledge that although the confessions are not overtly queer affirming or “sex positive,” and simply don’t have the requisite tools to address issues that have become more pressings in 2024 (like the recognition of a non-binary shape to gender identity), nevertheless the hallmarks of the Lutheran confessions as they address human sexuality are a focus on freedom, an understanding of sexuality (and marriage, etc.) as a gift, and a warning against repression.
Latent in the statement is one more profound insight: that both celibacy and marriage have their unique strengths. Sometimes I think we overlook some on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum from whom we can learn: there’s a reason “asexuality” is in the acronym.
But the article on marriage in the Lutheran confessions is also very much influenced by human experience. The move that has been made in recent years of queering Christianity is of tremendous value, primarily because it shifts the emphasis from “whether” LGBTQIA+ and Christian can hold together and instead celebrates what the LGBTQIA+ community can bring to deepen awareness of and commitment to Christian faith.
As we celebrate RIC Sunday and affirm full inclusion, I’ll conclude with a press release. A friend and journalist, Jacqueline Froehlich, has over the past year quite faithful produced a multimedia series featuring an array of trans teens, young adults and professionals willing to go public in these politically fraught times discussing their realizations and acculturation as trans-Arkansans.
The important series is a project of the Listening Lab in the studios of KUAF Public Radio.
Below is the press release.
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Press Release
Date: January 23, 2024
Subject: KUAF Public Radio launches new 8-part film/audio series: TEA: the Transgender Experience in Arkansas
Contact: Producer Jacqueline Froelich 479-409-5865
Fayetteville, Ark. – TEA: the Transgender Experience in Arkansas is a collection of filmed curated conversations with seven transgender youth, women and men who reside in northwest Arkansas. A University of Arkansas - Fayetteville gender studies scholar provides cultural context, anchoring the series. Audio versions of the film series are scheduled to air on KUAF's news magazine, Ozarks at Large.
The series premiere digital release this week will be followed by two-episode releases per month thru early May.
TEA was filmed over the span of six months last year in KUAF's Listening Labin the studios of KUAF. TEA is directed and filmed by Emerson Alexander, hosted by Taylor Johnson and Sophia Nourani. The series was edited by Sophia Nourani and produced by journalist Jacqueline Froelich.
Last summer, the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit LGBTQ+ civil rights organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., declared a national state of emergency citing over 525 anti-LGBTQ+ measures proposed in 16 states, with 75 bills signed into law. HRC also reports that an epidemic of violence against transgender and gender non-conforming youth and adults is occurring across the country as a consequence. Arkansas's hate crime law excluded gender identity and sexual orientation two years ago.
An additional 275 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in 32 state legislatures in 2024 so far, according to ACLU.
Two years ago, Arkansas banned gender-affirming medical care to trans minors, a measure currently stayed in the courts. Another law blocks trans individuals from participating in public school and college athletics. In 2023, state lawmakers mandated parental approval for Arkansas teachers to address transgender students by the preferred pronouns. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders last year signed a law blocking public school bathroom accommodations to trans students. And a 2023 Arkansas law, under appeal, aims to implicitly block access for minors who patronize public and school libraries to LGBTQ+ reading materials.
But rather than dwell on rising trans oppression and erasure in Arkansas, we ask our TEA guests, which include several trans teens, trans adults, a drag queen and drag king, to provide insight into their lives by revealing their trans self-realization, medical integration, and social acculturation.
You can follow TEA: the Transgender Experience in Arkansas on the Listening Lab at https://www.listeninglabkuaf.com/tea