Evangelical ethicist Lewis B. Smedes has died at age 81. A best-selling author who had taught at both Calvin and Fuller Theological Seminaries, Smedes was an outspoken advocate for gay Christians. In the mid-90s he served as a keynoter at both the eastern and western summer conferences of Evangelicals Concerned.
Gay and women’s issues have been the defining American religious trends for over a decade. This is a conclusion of historians Edwin S. Gaustad and Leigh E. Schmidt in their recently released book, The Religious History of America: The Heart of the American Story from Colonial Times to Today (HarperSanFrancisco).
A major conservative Catholic weekly criticizes the “ex-gay” movement as unrealistic. Writing in the National Catholic Register [Nov 17-23, 2002], Eve Tushnet says recent Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays’ “posters exemplify some of the problems with the `ex-gay’ movement.” She cites this PFOX ad copy: “I make choices every day … Where to eat. What to wear. [so] I chose to change from gay to straight.” Another ad reads: “If someone changes their address … you’d still respect them, right? So why not respect me when I decide to leave homosexuality? I chose to change from gay to straight.” Tushnet asserts: “The important problem with the ads, and with the `ex-gay’ movement more generally, is in the way the struggle with homosexual temptation is presented. Living a chaste life is presented as a matter of switching teams, becoming an “ex-“ something … a switch from the Bad Team (homosexuals) to the Good Team (heterosexuals).” She says this minimizes the fact that “the struggle with same-sex attraction doesn’t go away” [a fine-print acknowledgement even within the “ex-gay” movement]. She recommends the Catholic group, Courage, for homosexuals dedicated to living a chaste life. She mentions someone’s describing a group of her friends as Dos Equis (double X) – ex-ex-gays. “The Dos Equis are the practical consequences of a movement that, despite its admirable desire to help people struggling with homosexual temptations, ultimately does not provide a realistic model of Christian life.”
Ex-“ex-gay” leader Jeff Ford tells of his journey through the reparative therapy movement in the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy. The former director of the Outpost “ex-gay” ministry, now associated with a psychotherapy center in Minneapolis, says he feels “grief and responsibility for the misguided direction I offered many sincere and wonderful people. I continue to trust in the sovereignty of God and believe all things work together for good. … Although my partner and I survived our years in the ex-gay movement, I would not wish them on anyone.”
The Exodus “ex-gay” network is in financial trouble according to its December report. Executive Director Alan Chambers states that “current operating expenses are $15,000 a month above what we are bringing in.” He says that the organization’s savings have been drained and still there are “unpaid conference bills.”
Exodus network head Alan Chambers tells Charisma magazine that “there is a danger” if Tammy Faye Bakker Messner never tells homosexuals that homosexuality is a sin. The charismatic Christian monthly quotes him in an article on the former PTL co-host’s ministry to her gay fans. According to this report, she tells gays who ask: “Follow what you’re hearing from God and read the Bible” but adds, “it’s best not to take a chance with your soul.”
Tammy Sue Bakker is interviewed in A&U, “America’s AIDS Magazine” (December). The interviewer says that “hers are not the words and actions of an over-the-top evangelical Christian fanatic, which is how her family [parents Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker] has oft been portrayed. Instead, Tammy Sue speaks plainly, respectfully and intensely, making it clear she wants to use her time, her gifts, her faith and anything else she can muster to help any and everyone she can.” She is quoted as saying: “One of my best friends from high school lost his partner to AIDS and I saw not only the pain his partner went through, but the pain that Michael went through watching the person that he loved more than anything in this world pass away.” She sings in churches and at AIDS fundraisers (sometimes with her mother) around the country. Her latest CD is Peaceful Journey, which she describes as “very peaceful, methodical gospel.”
An ecumenical GLBT periodical has ceased publication. After 17 years, Open Hands is no longer “structurally or financially possible” according to an official announcement in November. The liberal project was sponsored by six “welcoming” groups within the mainline denominations in the US and Canada. Its last editor was Chris Glaser, longtime Presbyterian gay activist.
A Calvin Seminary grad has been hired as chaplain to a gay support group. Gays in Faith Together will now employ Jim Lucas for work he has been doing as a volunteer for several years. Lucas has recently spoken at Reformed Bible College, Hope College, and Calvin College. He has been a keynoter at EC’s summer connECtion in the west.
The First Christian Reformed Church in Toronto now accepts Christians into leadership positions though they may be “living in committed relationship” with a person of the same sex. This move has alarmed many antigay members of the conservative denomination. Says one such minister: “Our deepest concern is that the very salvation of people is at stake.”
The InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter at Central College in Pella, Iowa, has forced one of its leaders to step down because he would not disavow his homosexuality. Brad Clark, 21, who is also president of the student government, has now left the group altogether. Asked by The Advocate why he’d joined InterVarsity in the first place, Clark replied: “I am a Christian, and this really was the only Christian organization on campus.” The college is affiliated with the Reformed Church in America.
“[O]ne should not use Romans 1 as a guide in developing a Christian position on contemporary homosexuality(ies).” This is the conclusion of Charles H. Cosgrove, professor of New Testament studies and Christian ethics at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. He discusses “The Rule of Romans 1 on Homoerotic Behavior” in his new book on hermeneutics, Appealing to Scripture in Moral Debate (Eerdmans, 2002).
In early November, over 2,000 people protested the recent approval of a gay-straight alliance in an Ashland, Kentucky, high school. Almost half the student body boycotted classes in protest. Opponents of the alliance claimed that homosexuality was being promoted. An alliance supporter commented: “If [the high school] needed any more proof that its students need a safe space to be themselves and talk about sexual orientation issues, the hostility and fear behind these actions has made it abundantly clear.”
The Disciples of Christ denomination’s National City Church in Washington now approves same-sex unions. Though the denomination has no policy on same-sex unions, this move by the congregation of the denomination’s moderator is significant.
Ordaining homosexuals “is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent” according to an opinion from the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments. The document, drafted by Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, in cooperation with the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, added that to ordain homosexuals would be, “from a pastoral point of view, very risky.”
“The majority lead chaste lives.” This is America magazine’s editorial opinion on gay priests. The Jesuits’ periodical states: “One reason the public sees little evidence of healthy gay priests is the implicit restriction on a gay priest publicly admitting his sexuality.” The editorial goes on: “Their experience of suffering persecution, for example, can often make gay priests more compassionate toward others; and their sometimes hard-won battle for self-knowledge can serve others in confession, spiritual direction and counseling.”
Q Syndicate columnist Paula Martinac thinks “gay lefties can be – and have been – self-righteous, judgmental, patronizing and P.C.-to-an-extreme.” She is quoted by Planet Out’s Rex Wockner as saying further: “To be honest, the dogmatic `screeching’ of the gay left (to quote [one critic]) has alienated many in our community and made gay progressives an easy target for derision.”
“Why do GLBTs remain United Methodists?” This is what Jamie Bigham Stroud asked hundreds of self-identified gay, lesbian or bisexual United Methodist in her doctoral dissertation research. She received responses from 358 people, including 72 ordained UM clergy. Among the most frequent answers to her question: acceptance by their local congregation (33 percent), their denominational heritage (22 percent), connection to John Wesley, founder of the Methodists.
The openly gay minister of music at the Evangelistic Center Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal church in Tacoma, has published his book called, Love Lifted Me in Spite of the Church. K. Godfrey Easter recounts his personal story of hard struggle and concludes: “Knowing that there is nothing I have ever done, or I can ever do to cause God to stop loving me, and that it’s up to me to separate myself from God’s love, changes everything. Cognizant that because of his unlimited grace, God will never separate me from his embrace is as powerful as love can get. This truth brings me peace.” He says that “the bottom line” is this: “This joy, peace, hope, and spiritual contentment that I have been gifted, the world didn’t give to me. Since the world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away.”
Easter serves on the Seattle Police Department Sexual Minority Advisory Committee and has served on the board of the People of Color Against AIDS Network.
“Get in touch with your feminine side.” That’s what’s printed on the back of the bright pink “Bride of Christ” t-shirt worn by Jon Trott, the beefy, shaved-headed editor of Cornerstone, the Jesus People periodical. Trott also sports shades, tattoos and two earrings in a photo in the Fall, 2002, issue of Mutuality, the Voice of Christians for Biblical Equality.
In The Soul Beneath the Skin, author David Nimmons, says the gay world “looks like an experiment in a free-living spirituality. The values so beautifully attested here are precisely the values the spiritual traditions teach.” Nimmons, who has been the president of New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, claims this “free-living spirituality” is evidenced in lesbigayt “pioneering [of] a wide range of untried intimate relationships.” He claims there is a “communal catharsis” when hundreds of men are dancing together.”
“Most homosexuals have abandoned the religions they grew up with.” This is how a gay interviewer prefaces a question to Arthur Dong, director of the film, “Family Fundamentals,” a documentary on religiously conservative families and their gay or lesbian relatives. While making the film, Dong consulted a retired official with the National Association of Evangelicals and Philip Yancey of Christianity Today. Dong says: “In removing God from their life, many gay people have forgotten about the people who do believe in God. Those [believers] are the ones who impact us. It’s easier to just say, `They’re the bad guys’ and ignore them, but we eventually have to deal with them. We can pass laws in some states – domestic partnership, hate crime laws, etc. – but what about these people with their interpretations of the Bible? They are out there and they vote.”
AND FINALLY:
“Goodness! Who knew there was so much to learn: plucking eyebrows, hair bleaches, hair waxings, facial mud masks, eye lash curlers, manicures, pedicures, push-up bras, tummy tuckers, rear-end boosters, last year’s colors, and next year’s fashions?” These are “the seeds that grew” into her “ex-lesbian” identity when she stopped believing the “dozens and dozens of lies … that contributed to my same-gender attractions.” A regional rep for Exodus makes these remarks in her cover testimony in the organization’s newsletter, Update.