[Dialogue] Monroe/SpongFinding Home for the Holidays; Vosper; Spong revisited

Thu Dec 14 08:00:45 PST 2017

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Finding Home for the Holidays
Rev. Irene Monroe

The holiday season is a difficult time of year for many.
Too often we see the glitz and glamour that this holiday brings, and we miss its spiritual message. The underlying message in celebrating the season-Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, and the winter solstice- is the full embrace of human difference and diversity.
I believe if Americans stayed more focused on the message and teachings of this holiday season, many LGBTQ youth and young adults would not have the annual angst of searching for a home for the holidays.
However, LGBTQ people like the Early Christians struggle for full acceptance in society.
For example, until the 4th century C.E., when Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, Christians were despised as much in those days as LGBTQ are today. As a matter-of-fact, to be called a Christian was considered a religious epithet, and it subjected Christians to ridicule, hate crimes and Christian-bashing in much of the same way as us queers are today. Just as Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old first year student at the University of Wyoming in October 1998 was bludgeoned and then nailed to a wooden fence, like a hunting trophy, because he was gay, Stephen, a follower of Jesus was stoned to death in 35 A.D. because he was a Christian, becoming the first Christian martyr. And, Apostle Paul, before he saw the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and stopped his Christian-bashing, was one of the many approving bystanders at Stephen’s stoning.
Also, just as LGBTQ people transformed the pejorative term “queer” into a positive word of self-reference,Christians transformed the word “Christian” into one of self-reverence. Having known this history, I found calling myself a queer Christian neither blasphemous nor an oxymoron, because both are tied to the unending struggle for acceptance, just at different times along our human timeline.
For example, I come out of a black religious tradition born of struggle for acceptance. When slave masters gave my ancestors the Bible, their intent was not to make us better Christians, but instead better slaves. The Bible, at least according to slave owners, was one of the legitimate sanctions for American slavery. However, my ancestors took this authoritative text that was meant to aid them in acclimating to their life of servitude and turned it into an incendiary text to foment slave revolts, abolitionists movements, and also this nation’s civil rights movement. The Bible told African Americans how to do what must be done. And, in so doing, Nat Turner revolted against slavery, and Harriet Tubman conducted a railroad out of it. My ancestors expanded not only the understanding of what it meant to be human but also the parameters of what it meant to be a Christian. Having known this history, I found calling myself a queer African-American Christian to my community neither less black nor less Christian.
Jesus’ birth comes at a difficult time along our human timeline. Viewed as a religious threat to conservative Jews because of his iconoclastic views and practice of Jewish Law, and viewed as a political threat to the Roman government because he was a Jew, Jesus was nailed to a cross at Calvary because of the struggle for acceptance.
When I think of the birth of Jesus, one of the themes that loom large for me is LGBTQ homelessness.
Why homelessness?
Because many of us do not have a home to go to where we can sit at the family table and be entirely out — or if out, fully accepted. As with Mary and Joseph during the time of Jesus’ birth, we travel from inn-to-inn to only find there is no room.
“I’m Queer. I’m Homeless. I’m Hungry. I’m Scared. I’m Tired,” was the ad one year by New Alternatives for LGBT Homeless Youth asking the American public to give the gift of $10 during the holiday season to help their homeless.
While homelessness of teen and youth populations are often attributed to family neglect, family tragedy, poverty, AIDS, drug abuse, eviction, or being aged out of foster care, our LGBTQ teen and youth populations that are homeless are, first and foremost, if not solely, because of their sexual orientation. And sadly, it sends a message that these homes rather have no child than a queer child.
According to a 2011 study from Boston’s Children’s Hospital, published online on the “American Journal of Public Health” website it stated that when it comes to the private institution of the home, our LGBTQ youth are disproportionately thrown out of theirs, more often than their heterosexual peers, especially in communities of color like the African Americans one.
Some years ago when I wrote about homelessness of African American LGBTQ youth, this was a typical type of response I received from an irate blogger who read my piece on “Black Commentator’s” website.
“Given that our resources are tight & these youth are not at all psychologically prepared for our liberation struggle, they are expendable. Such are the realities of war. It’s going to take all of our resources to salvage the heterosexual youth, who will hopefully form strong, loving, heterosexual relationships & produce healthy children. This is how we will produce a strong black nation/community. The dysfunctional youth you are asking us to rescue cannot/will not be able to make the contribution we need, so they are expendable.”
The perception that African American families and communities do not throw away their children because of the much-touted old African adage that espouses black unity – “It takes a village to raise a child” – rings false, it seems when it comes to our LGBTQ youth.
In Luke 2:6-7 it states “While they were there the time came for [Mary] to have her baby, and she gave birth to a son — her firstborn. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.”
Our birth, as individuals and as a movement, mirrors that of Jesus. It comes at a time where there is still neither room nor tolerance for us – even with U.S. Supreme ruling in favor of marriage equality in 2015- in some homes and families – especially churches that have both unapologetically and unabashedly closed its doors to its LGBTQ population. And, despite the fact, these kids looked to the church for help these youth have neither a chance nor a prayer for assistance.
“I believe that one day, the Lord will come back to get me. Halleluiah all my trials and tribulations, they will all be over,”Ali Forney, a black gender-nonconforming teen stated at Safe Space, a program homeless youth in NYC, before being murdered in December 1997. In 2002 the Ali Forney Center in NYC, the nation’s largest LGBTQ youth homeless services center, was founded in Ali’s honor.
“Religious Freedom Restoration Acts” bills that codify LGBTQ discrimination are springing up around the country in many states. They justify denying services to same-sex couples.
For example, a Christian conservative family-owned bakery in Gresham, Oregon called “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” wanted to “practice their Constitutional right to religious freedom to not serve LGBTQ patrons. When fined $135,000, Sweet Cakes closed the family shop and moved the business to their home making it clear LGBTQ dollars are not wanted.
And, just this week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a baker’s refusal to make a cake for a same-sex wedding on religious grounds ― claiming a violation of First Amendment rights. Shockingly, however, the Trump Administration doesn’t see a problem with businesses hanging up a “No Gays Allowed” sign, which is reminiscent of America’s Jim Crow era. The intolerance from shopkeepers like Sweet Cakes and Masterpiece Cakeshop heightens LGBTQ youth and young adults sense of homelessness.
Many of our homeless LGBTQ youth and young adult across this country this holiday season will not have a queer-friendly shelter to go to. And too many will spend the time alone even where homeless LGBTQ shelters across the country will be open because they gravely miss their families and communities.
As we gear up for this holiday season, let us enjoy the time. Let us make home -if not with biological family -then with beloved friends. However, let us also not forget the continued struggle of LGBTQ homeless youth and young adults searching for a home for the holidays.
~ Rev. Irene Monroe

Read essay online here
About the Author
The Reverend Monroe is an ordained minister. She does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), a Boston member station of National Public Radio (NPR), that is now a podcast, and a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS (NECN). Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists (Boston) – Detour
Monroe’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, Ireland, Canada. Monroe writes a column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and Opinion pieces for the Boston Globe.
Monroe stated that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As an religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Because homophobia is both a hatred of the “other ” and it’s usually acted upon ‘in the name of religion,” by reporting religion in the news I aim to highlight how religious intolerance and fundamentalism not only shatters the goal of American democracy, but also aids in perpetuating other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism and anti-Semitism.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website.

Question & Answer

Stephen from Westmere, Australia writes:

Question:
If, as you say, the stories of Jesus' miraculous birth are pious legends, what are the implications for staging a children's Christmas pageant in a small suburban church?

Answer: Rev. Gretta Vosper

Dear Stephen,
Ah, the Christmas pageant! A delightful opportunity for intergenerational engagement that shares a story of magic and wonder. Its appeal is rooted in our own wistful memories and we love to see children caught up in the same exuberance as we once felt, lo, those many years ago.
Often, the story brought to life includes the three wise men (sic) and shepherds, crowded together in the small stable. Angels hover on the sidelines and baby lambs and donkeys provide opportunity for costume variety. The congregation’s youngest child or a substitute doll (we once used my daughter’s black Cabbage Patch doll), lies in a manger. We can see it all. But perhaps the most dramatic part of the story displayed when all are in their places – a challenge for stage managers dealing with excited, and often unruly children – is how wrong it all is.
Not only is the central story of the virgin birth a myth, there was no inn (and no surly innkeeper), no stable, no animals. The shepherds and the magi were nowhere near each other in the gospel accounts, the latter showing up at a house, not a stable, at a considerably later date. Even the shining star which rises in Matthew’s story, is not associated at all with Jesus’ birth, but only with the (likely Zoroastrian) magi who noticed its rise, and, so the story goes, followed it to find him and offer their gifts.
While there may have been animals in close proximity to a manger (there is no mention of them in the gospels), if your pageant has them talking at the stroke of midnight, the virgin nodding to the little drummer boy so he can play a solo for the smiling baby Jesus, or three majestic Kings with gifts, you are tragically deep in the magical thinking that has fed the Christmas story for two thousand years.
What to do? The story of Jesus’ birth seems so central to the Christian narrative that we feel compelled to tell it even when we know it isn’t true. But this can be deeply problematic, particularly when we are entertaining members of the public who are very likely not in attendance when the story is deconstructed with contemporary (and not so contemporary), critical scholarship in bible studies or sermon series. We live in a time when the once crucial distinctions that religions provided us are no longer helpful. Our recognizable differences – the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the symbols we drape and tattoo on our bodies – once sheltered us safely amongst those who were like us. But now, armed as we are with twenty-first century weaponry, religious intolerances can quickly turn deadly. Even when religion is not the reason for war and violence, it is often the fuel used to stoke political, economic, and civil tensions. We can no longer afford to fire the imagination with beliefs that privilege one group of humans over another.
The Christmas story, then, must be told as myth so that all who witness it in pageant form, go away with smiles on their faces knowing that it is not a story of privilege or power, but a story that invites us to explore our own lives in the light of the possibilities into which each human being is born. Well, maybe that’s a bit deep for audiences laughing until they cry when the angel trying to see his wings twirls so fast in pursuit of them that he collapses in the hay from dizziness. Perhaps the best we can do is be clear that the story is a myth and let the questions percolate.
Living the Questions created a pageant called “Matt and Lucy’s Version Births” in which two children were given directorial responsibilities, each provided a different gospel narrative from which to work. That is sure to raise questions for both participants and audiences. But it is important to acknowledge that there are answers to many of the questions raised and they need to be shared. Be prepared to provide some of them, perhaps even in a question and answer form in a handout you can distribute as the audience disperses. “Was Jesus really born in a stable? Not likely. ...”
Or, if you don’t want to tamper with the cultural accretions that make up some of the cuter pageant possibilities, at least be honest about the story itself. In addition to a simple handout, you can begin the wonder in the opening moments of the pageant, situating this story amongst the fabled tales we’ve shared throughout our history. Begin it with the simple but telling words, “Once upon a time ....”
~ Rev. Gretta Vosper
Read and share online here
About the Author
The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Gospels and Punctuation

Elizabeth Robinson, a friend of mine who teaches English as a second language to the children of immigrants in New Zealand, recently sent me an exercise on the importance of punctuation that she has used in her class. Please note that the words in these two examples are identical, only the punctuation has been changed.

1. Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we are apart. I can be forever happy - will you let me be yours? Gloria
2. Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we are apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Gloria 

Why would I use this column for a lesson on punctuation? Because it illustrates a primary problem we have with biblical fundamentalists who make excessive claims for the accuracy of the Bible. Stick with me to the end of this column and the connection will be clear.
Recently, I had a television debate with Dr. Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky. In that debate, he proclaimed, "I believe that every word of the Bible is the inerrant word of God." It was such a astonishing statement that I responded by asking him if he had ever read the Bible! Yet his words are not dissimilar from those voiced by such fundamentalist media evangelists as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson. They are also regularly recited in the belief system of that part of the country called the 'Bible Belt,' in which I was reared as a child. This claim is not, therefore, unfamiliar to me.
Yet when I hear this evangelical rhetoric today, I am still stunned. It is so uninformed that I cannot believe that people who make this claim actually read the same Bible I read. Is it the word of God when Paul writes to the Galatians, "I wish those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves (Gal. 5:12);" when women are ordered "to keep quiet in church (II Cor. 14:24);" or when the Bible calls for the execution of all homosexuals as it does in Leviticus (20:13)? Do fundamentalists not know that the Bible has been quoted to justify slavery, to encourage war, to diminish women and to vilify Jews, among many other evils?
The claim is even stranger when one inquires about which version of the Bible is the inerrant one? Is it the New International Version, clearly the favorite among the fundamentalists? Or is it the Jerusalem Bible that Roman Catholics prefer because it does not challenge the dogma of that Church in regard to the Virgin Mary? Is it the King James' Version, that the traditionalists so love or the Revised Standard Version, that scholars seem to prefer? Is it the New Revised Standard version that attempts to remove sexist language from the various texts? How can there be an inerrant Bible if there is such variety in the available translations?
When pressed, the fundamentalists will generally say that inerrancy is in the original text not in the translations. Fair enough, I respond, so now allow me to examine that claim. Does anyone have a copy of the original manuscript of any book in the New Testament? Perhaps fundamentalists do not realize that though we have earlier fragments, the oldest full text we have of any book of the New Testament dates only from the seventh century C.E. In those days, without printing presses, the Bible had to be hand copied by a scribe. Is it possible that no scribe in seven hundred years of copying ever made a mistake or added a clarifying word? The fact is that in various ancient texts of the Bible, there are thousands of places where the oldest texts we possess disagree with one another. In the notes at the end of the chapters in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, time and again there is a statement informing readers that other ancient manuscripts differ on this particular word or passage. John 7:53 - 8:11, in most Bibles is, for example, the story of Jesus rescuing the woman taken in the act of adultery. Yet this story does not appear in manuscripts of John's Gospel until very late in medieval history. In other ancient documents it comes after Luke 21:28, but with a number of variations in the text itself. In Mark 14:24, where Jesus is described as instituting the Last Supper, he says, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many." Some ancient texts, however, add the word "new" before covenant. A minor change, one might say, but an example of how a word might have been added by a scribe, to address a later conflict between the followers of Jesus and the traditionalist Jews. Does the original text of Mark's Gospel open (Mk. 1:1) with the words, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ," as the majority of our available manuscripts suggest or does it say, as others argue, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?" I can think of far more reasons why that phrase would have been added than I can for a scribe leaving it out. Surely some scribes took liberties in their copying by inserting words to make the text conform to later teaching. No passage from any book in the Bible can be guaranteed to be the exact copy of the original author's work. How then, knowing this, can anyone claim inerrancy for a text, the accuracy of which could never be guaranteed?
Beyond these truths, fundamentalists must contend with the fact that Jesus' earthly life seems to have ended around the year 30 C.E. Mark, however, wrote no earlier than 70 C.E. and John the final Gospel is dated at the turn of the century, so every word attributed to Jesus in the gospels, and every gospel story about Jesus, floated in oral transmission during that 40 to 70 year period. Were the words or stories always repeated identically? Hardly! The gospels themselves are not even in agreement with one another. Both Matthew and Luke had Mark in front of them when they wrote their later narratives. Yet they omit some things that Mark had included, change others with which they do not appear to agree and add new things to Mark that perhaps he had not known. Where there is a clear textual disagreement in the gospels themselves, can the claim be made with any credibility that any particular version is the inerrant word of God?
The difficulty does not stop there. Jesus spoke Aramaic, yet all the gospels were originally composed in Greek. So every word of Jesus that we have has undergone a translation. Is there such a thing as a perfect translation? Of course not! Every language is deeply acculturated so that few words in any language can be translated exactly into another language. Anyone ascribing inerrancy to the Bible apparently has no knowledge of these elementary facts.
Now let me come back to the punctuation exercise with which I opened this column. The final thing that fundamentalists do not seem to understand is that in the earliest manuscripts of the gospels, there is no punctuation! They have no chapters, no verses, no paragraphs, no capital letters, no commas and no periods. There is not even a space between the words. These manuscripts are simply row after row of Greek letters. If a word could not be completed on a line, it is simply broken wherever the space ran out, without a hyphen, and the remaining letters of that word continued on the next line. There is nothing to indicate to the reader that a word has been broken. So when we read the gospels today, we need to be aware that every paragraph, every comma, every period and every word division that we find in the New Testament today has been imposed on the text hundreds of years later by interpreters. Did those interpreters always get it right? The suggestion that they always did defies rationality. Punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence dramatically as we saw earlier.
This brief analysis of textual problems we have with the Bible is not designed to be an attack on the Bible that I treasure. It is rather an attack upon an idolatrous, irrational attitude by which fundamentalists seek to transform the words of the Bible into some magical, inerrant authority for their religious claims and thus to be able to use that authority as a weapon with which to attack their religious enemies.
One can only hold to a fundamentalist view of the Bible if every rational faculty is suspended. This mentality also requires a refusal to acknowledge any idea that destabilizes one's prejudices. That is why fundamentalism is always marked by hysteria, defensiveness and hostile attacks on those who do not share that point of view. Fundamentalist religion is ultimately a search for security, not a search for truth. This is what makes real dialogue with fundamentalists, whether it is over evolution or homosexuality, so unbearably difficult. No rational basis exists upon which to explore an issue, if one believes that quoting the Bible is the way one arrives at conclusions. Those who are convinced that they possess the whole truth of God will always be imperialistic. For those who disagree with fundamentalists are, in the minds of the fundamentalists, disagreeing with God. That is also why fundamentalists will ultimately employ violence - whether that violence is expressed in 'Holy' Wars, by burning heretics at the stake or by using suicide pilots to destroy the World Trade Center. I wish our world could understand this very simple truth, since it is that mentality that operates today in the flames of Iraq, on the West Bank of the Jordan River, in Ireland, in Bangladesh and in the murders that take place at family planning centers or in other hate crimes in the United States.
~ John Shelby Spong
Originally published November 3, 2004

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