If you know me, or if you’ve been a regular reader of my blog, you know that I’ve been a long-time member of a church. You also know that I’ve considered myself a Christian, despite what others thought about my thinking that.

Neither of those two things is true any more, although getting to this point has taken a while.

About a year ago I started a test. I hadn’t really intended it to be a test, but it became one. I stopped going to worship every week and instead ended up going about once a month.

And what was the test? It was whether anyone would notice.

For me the important thing about belonging to a church is community.

It’s not the singing. Praise music isn’t important to me—I don’t believe in a God that demands praise. I’m not opposed to thinking of praise as a metaphor for being grateful for things, however. I do have some favorite hymns (and Christmas carols), but with a lot of hymns I don’t pay attention especially to the words (the metaphor of God as king doesn’t work for me, for example). I do like singing, especially in groups, but then that gets back to being in community, so it’s not the singing that’s important but what singing together gets you. (One study found that singing in a choir is good for you, but I think it’s the being part of a group, not the singing itself. And you don’t have to go to church to sing in groups.)

It’s not the sermons. Over 30-odd years of attending church (from age 5 to 18 and then again from about age 30), I figure I’ve heard about 1300 sermons. A few have inspired me, but most I can’t even remember. Something ironic is that my (former) denomination believes that “God is still speaking” and yet every sermon every week is based on the Bible. Yes, you can get an infinite number of sermons based on passages from the Bible (even if you restrict yourself to passages in the Revised Common Lectionary), but at some point it gets old, or at least it has for me. (And yes, progressive Christians such as those in the UCC respect that God speaks through other religions and in other ways, but the UCC’s Christian, not universalist, when it comes to worship and sermons.)

It’s not the Bible. Not that I think there’s nothing good in the Bible—that “Love one another” and caring for the least among us stuff is good—but frankly the world would be a better place if there had never been a Bible. Even ignoring how hatefully the Bible can be used against people, it’s absolutely amazing how much time is spent analyzing Biblical passages. Countless authors have spent countless hours writing books about the Bible, and even more countless people (including me) have read those books. We worship the Bible. Figuring out what it really means is paramount; it’s what church seems to be about. But it shouldn’t be, and understanding the Bible is not the main reason church used to be important for me.

And it’s not the praying. I wrote earlier this year about some of my thoughts on prayer. I know that many people are comforted when others pray for them. To me, however, prayer’s been seeming like the least you can do.
snippet from our church newsletter the week they prayed for me (click to embiggen) For a couple years, my church has been “car[ing] for each other through prayer, […] praying for several households each week.” The beginning of July was my turn this year. There my name was in the church newsletter, amongst five other households. Even if not everyone who got the newsletter bothered to pray, I knew at least some folks were praying for me.

You know what? Knowing that people at my church were praying for me made me feel worse, not better.

Great, you prayed for me. Did you call me to see how I’ve been doing? Mail me a card to say you’ve missed me? Send me an email to see where I’ve been? Nope, you didn’t, but I’m supposed to feel good because you prayed for me?

Actually I do know that people have wondered where I’ve been. The way I know is rather round about, though. A couple weeks ago I had lunch with our church’s senior pastor and my friend. (He was my friend before he was my pastor and he’ll remain my friend after having been my pastor.) He told me that people had asked him about me. I told him that made me crazy. They wonder where I’ve been but can’t contact me directly to ask?!

Over a decade ago this happened to a friend of mine, someone whom I met at church. A fun church story about her is that we were in a small group together, shortly after our church started, and she looked around at everyone, and it dawned on her that everyone else was gay! Although the church had a reputation as the “gay church,” in fact not all the members were gay. The point of mentioning my friend, however, is that a few years later she stopped coming to church for several reasons, and no one noticed. In fact a few people did notice and they asked me where she was, but did anyone call her to see how she was? Nope. I stayed in contact with her and knew why she’d left. She didn’t have to come to my church to remain my friend.

What’s more painful than people wondering where you are but not bothering to ask is people who don’t even notice whether you’re there or not. Last night I went to a fun event downtown and ran into some friends (Bekannte?) from church, a couple who’ve been a part of our church since it met in a storefront. I like them well enough, as, I think, they do me. They came up to me to say hi, and in the course of our conversation I asked if they were still going to our church. Yes, they were, they answered. Wasn’t I?

Not so much any more, is what I told them, and we moved onto other topics. It wasn’t really the right place for a serious answer, and they weren’t the right people to give a serious answer to. If they care, they can find the serious answer here.

So yeah, I was a part of a church not because of the singing or the sermons or the Bible (or God) or the praying. I was a part of a church because of the community I found there.

Being in community requires effort on the part of all who want to be in community, although each person’s ability to work on being in community varies. And I’m not perfect, so as a Christian, or someone who’s not a Christian but still finds value in some Christian precepts, I shouldn’t judge others for being imperfect. There are plenty of people who’ve left our church for reasons I don’t know because I was one of those who remained but who never called or emailed to find out how those who’d left were doing or why they’d left. And I’ve also not made as much effort as I could have to check on people who have not left the church but who I have good reason to suspect might be lonely or struggling.

I haven’t done nothing, however. I keep a stash of blank cards in my desk at work to make it easier to dash off a note to someone. For a while I was pretty good about it, trying to send at least one card a week to someone. I’ve slacked off, but I still send cards if I find out someone’s suffered a death in their family. Although I shouldn’t judge, I admit I’m rather scornful of those who think adding a comment to a thread on Facebook is a decent way to offer condolences. Still, a handwritten card, taking only a little more effort, really isn’t much more than the least one can do.

A couple years ago a church friend went through an extreme crisis and did something that let a lot of people know about this person’s situation. I hadn’t been a very good friend before this person’s crisis, but I tried to step up when the crisis hit—making an effort to visit, driving this person home, buying this person gas, taking this person to dinner. This person survived the crisis and is in a better situation now, an active member of our church’s community, and I’ve gone back to being the bad friend I was before, not having made any effort to check with this person to see how things are now.

What this person did was a cry for help, and it was an effective one. Something perhaps to be learned from that is that if you need help, you should ask for it. I’m not good at asking for help.

Over the last year one way I tried to help myself, and in a way, to ask for help, was to hold a few “Facebook dinner sweepstakes.” I would do a post saying that the Nth person to comment would win dinner with me at a particular restaurant. It wasn’t a bad idea. Each time I had a nice dinner (my treat) and conversation with a friend who, as it happened, I had never spent time one-on-one with before.

As it happened, two of the winners of my dinner sweepstakes were also members of my church. One was someone I’ve known since the beginning days of our church. Another was someone who volunteered with me at the church food pantry. As you might expect, they both asked me why I was doing these dinner sweepstakes. I took a risk and I told them: I’m lonely and I’ve been struggling with depression. Perhaps a bit much to dump on someone expecting a casual dinner but then again not done in a dramatic way, no tears or desperate crying and not the only topic of conversation. And my friends were sympathetic.

But I also did not hear from these friends after our dinners. I don’t mean they didn’t thank me for dinner—both sent nice handwritten notes of thanks. After that, however, they went on with their lives. I can understand that. They’re busy with jobs and taking care of families. But in a way, as with not going to church as often, I’d set up a test, and they failed it.

It’s not fair, though, to say that no one from church has asked me directly how I am. A few have, although only after having been prompted by circumstances.

Last fall, after I sent an email to another of our church’s pastors to let her know about a food pantry volunteer who’d decided to stop attending our church, that pastor in her reply asked if I was okay, mentioning that someone had been asking about me (but not asking me about me!). I gave her an honest answer—that I was feeling disconnected from folks at church and sometimes felt lonely in a crowd there, and she responded sympathetically, offering to meet for coffee or lunch some time. I never took her up on that, although last week she emailed again saying we were long overdue for coffee. We’re meeting this week, which has prompted me finally to write this post, although I’ve been thinking of writing this for a while now.

Earlier this year another church friend asked me why I wasn’t at church much any more. Ironically she posed her question at card ministry, a church activity I still participate in and enjoy. We meet in a member’s stamping studio and make cards to be sent to church members having birthdays or who’ve helped with various church activities or who are ill or have suffered a loss. Stamping isn’t about prayer or the Bible but rather about community, both amongst those making the cards and with those who will receive them. But I didn’t give this friend an honest answer, instead saying something about being busy traveling. It wasn’t a good place for her question or for the answer I could have given.

And then a couple weeks ago, two days after my lunch with my pastor, I got a call and then an email from a friend from church, the food pantry and PFLAG. We missed each other’s calls, so she sent a nice email saying that she missed seeing me around church, that she missed my leadership at the food pantry, and that she hoped I’d be back. I was honest with her, probably more honest than she wanted, saying basically what I’ve written here. One thing I wrote, though, is worth sharing here:

I like the folks at church and I don’t doubt that there are many who would be absolutely willing if I were to call with a specific request for help (e.g., my car’s broken down — can you come now to give me a ride), but I have shared a more general issue with a few people (I’m depressed and I’m lonely) and really gotten nothing from that, which just makes me more depressed, more lonely and more disconnected.

I got absolutely no reply to that, and that amazes me. Yes, she might not have known exactly what to say, but surely she could have come up with something. How about “I’m sorry to hear that. Are you talking to someone about this?” Ugh.

5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say to you, they have their reward.

6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

— Matthew 6:5–6

Did you go to church this morning? If you did, I bet you saw someone standing at the front of the sanctuary, praying in front of the congregation.

Which is strange, given that Jesus, according to the Bible, gave us very explicit instructions about how to pray. Praying in front of others is exactly what Jesus told us not to do.

Most Christians have probably heard of the Sermon on the Mount, but if you ask most Christians what Jesus said then about prayer, they’d probably say he taught us the Lord’s Prayer, not that he told us to pray alone in secret.

Perhaps that’s because most Christians haven’t been paying attention on Ash Wednesday (do most Christians even go to an Ash Wednesday service?), when Matthew 6:5–6 is included in the Revised Common Lectionary (all three years—A, B, and C).

More likely it’s because Matthew 6:5–6 is read in church once a year, while every Sunday pastors and liturgists climb up to pulpits and lecterns to pray in public. All churches, conservative or progressive, do this. And it’s not just in church that we pray; in America we pray everywhere, at inaugurations, before city commission meetings, at prayer breakfasts, at football games, on reality TV shows.

And do those of us who pray get our reward?

For an answer to that question, you could ask John Helmberger, head of Minnesotans for Marriage, who this past Monday told the folks he brought to St. Paul to “pray for God to intervene” to stop queer Minnesotans from gaining marriage equality. Helmberger prayed standing in the streets (see Matthew 6:5 above) and got his reward accordingly—gay marriage in Minnesota.

Or you could ask me. I spent many a night as a closeted teenager praying to God to fix me. I prayed in secret (see Matthew 6:6 above) because I had a horrible secret, but God declined to answer my prayers—yep, I’m still gay.

Some might argue now that God did answer my prayers, just not exactly as I asked, instead helping me to see that it’s okay to be gay. Salon.com has a fun excerpt from Kevin Roose’s book, a chapter about how Roose and some other Liberty University students went to Daytona to witness to spring breakers. Favorite prayer: “Lord, let them be nicer to us tonight.” God works in mysterious ways and all that.

And I would answer, no, that’s bullshit. I do not believe that an omnipotent omniscient God hears all prayers and makes decisions about how to answer each one, sometimes in ways we don’t understand.

Lots of people do believe in the power of prayer, though.

For example, my church has a Facebook group, and while it’s also used for things such as announcing events or seeking volunteers, it seems lately that its
Click to embiggen to see
some Facebook prayers primary purpose is for public prayer in the form of Facebook comments.

If you see a Facebook prayer request, how should you respond? You could simply comment “PRAYERS” (ALL CAPS makes it work better). You could opt for the standard “My prayers are with you,” or you could go with the more secular “Thinking of you.” Do make some comment, however, because it’s the least you can do.

The least we can do does seem to matter. In the example to the right, the prayer requester comments at the bottom that she wants to thank everyone for their concern. I don’t know if she believes that everyone’s prayers would sway God to intervene in her situation (some people do believe that), but she did appreciate knowing that people care about her.

Although if typing a one-line comment on Facebook is the least we can do, then there’s certainly more we could do, isn’t there? Sending a card or flowers would have more impact, as would calling not to say “If there’s anything I can do, let me know,” but instead to say “Can I walk your dog or bring you a meal,” concrete actions that would be more powerful than verbal prayers.

And so, despite what Jesus taught about prayer, perhaps the point of prayer is not asking God to do something but spurring one another to do something. If that’s true, then praying in a closet where only God can hear would be rather pointless. The point of prayer might be to let others know what we need so they can help us and to hear what others need so we can help them.

And yet something I read a few years ago suggests there may also be a purpose for prayer done alone. Brown University student Kevin Roose took a semester off from Brown to attend Liberty University so he could write a book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University. Roose returned to his “ultimate, secular, liberal” environment but “still tries to pray every day.” Why? To answer that, Roose quotes Oswald Chambers, who said that prayer doesn’t change things but instead “prayer changes me and then I change things.”

I don’t see myself getting into the habit of praying daily, even though this idea of being mindful of what I could do to improve things (either in my own or others’ lives) doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Perhaps, instead of tossing off one-line Facebook comment prayers (“my thoughts are with you”), a first step would be to really try to have my thoughts be with those who seek prayers and to think about what small step (bigger than a FB comment) I could take to make a difference for them.

Prayer might have a point, but only if we do prayer right.

On the one hand, Amy Grant sings:
My life was just a fairytale.
I was letting an illusion
Come into this heart of mine.

While on the other hand, in the same song, she sings:
There’s a world out there that human eyes can never see,
But it’s just within the reach of the heart.
Two princes wage the battle for eternity.
But the victor has been known from the start.

Amy Grant (1977)
My Father’s Eyes (1979)
Never Alone (1980)
Age to Age (1982)
Straight Ahead (1984)
The Collection (1986)
Lead Me On (1988)
Heart in Motion (1991)
Home for Christmas (1992)
A Christmas to Remember (1999) I bought each of her albums as they came out, and I listened to them over and over. It was a rough time in my life, I was lonely, and Amy Grant’s music brought me some comfort as I struggled with something that at times seemed life threatening — yep, figuring how to deal with the fact that I was a big ole queer was a big deal to me then.

I don’t remember for sure where I first heard Amy Grant’s music, but it must have been at my church, Good Shepherd United Methodist^* in Mad River Township here in Dayton.

To the left you can see copies of Amy Grant’s various albums that I bought when I was a fan. I was pretty religious about getting every new Amy Grant CD, continuing even after I stopped going to church but eventually tapering off. I skipped 1994’s House of Love and 1997’s Behind the Eyes but I did buy A Christmas to Remember in 1999.

If you were ever an avid Amy Grant fan, you might notice that 1999 was when Amy Grant got divorced, a shocking event that caused many of her devout Christian fans to drop her. However, my no longer buying Amy Grant albums wasn’t because of her divorce—I wasn’t shocked by that and thought it made her more human—it was just that Amy Grant’s music didn’t speak to me as much as it once did.

I’ve still played the two Amy Grant Christmas CDs I own each December, but other than that, I haven’t really thought about her much.

Until yesterday, when I saw a clergy friend (interestingly now that I’m out I have quite a few friends who are clergy) post a link on Facebook to Amy Grant’s first ever interview with the gay press. Of course I and a bunch of other gay Amy Grant fans flocked to read the article—we were all dying to know “how she reconciles Christianity and homosexuality.”

Amy Grant’s friend Michael W. Smith was another Christian singer whose music I liked, in part because he was cute.

That he’s now a close friend of Santorum makes me think he won’t be talking to the gay press any time soon.

You see, how Amy Grant reconciles Christianity and homosexuality is something I’ve wanted to know for a long time.

Indeed I wanted to know so much that back in the 80s, after I stopped going to church but while I was still an Amy Grant fan, I wrote her a letter. This was back in pre-WWW days, before many people had email, when you actually had to put your message on paper, stick it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and put it in a mailbox. A disadvantage of those days before email and scanners is that I don’t have a copy of what I wrote, although I remember the gist of it. I know I didn’t use the phrase “How do you reconcile Christianity and homosexuality,” but I did tell Amy Grant that I was gay and I did ask her what she thought of people being gay and Christian.

I did get a response to my letter but not from Amy Grant and also not from someone on Amy Grant’s staff. No, the response came from a very compassionate woman, a stranger who found my letter in a seatback pocket on an airplane, where Amy Grant or one of her assistants had left my letter, probably by accident. This woman didn’t know me or Amy Grant, but after reading my letter, she felt compelled to write to me because she said she could feel my pain. She wanted me to know what had happened to my letter and, more importantly, to know that she would pray for me in the hopes that God would heal me and help me to leave the homosexual lifestyle.

God must not have heard that stranger’s prayers for me because God never healed me of my homosexuality, and instead of leaving the homosexual lifestyle, I embraced it, coming out and realizing that if there is a God, God loves me for who I am, including being gay. I was cured of something though, cured for the most part of internalized homophobia, cured of caring whether others, including Amy Grant, approved of me despite my being gay.

I don’t know what I expected when I read Amy Grant’s interview with PrideSource. I guess I was hoping, knowing that Amy Grant had no ground on which to stand about the sanctity of marriage, that the reason she finally wanted to talk about teh gayz was because she wanted to come out, as so many others have recently, in favor of marriage equality.

Amy Grant declined to take a position on marriage equality, either pro or con, instead saying “I never talk about anything like that.” She didn’t say anything overtly offensive in her first gay interview, sticking mainly to “a message of honesty and welcoming,” saying that “you can either default to judgment or you can default to compassion” and acknowledging that she knows “that the religious community has not been very welcoming.”

Nevertheless something in Amy Grant’s careful interview—in which she tried not to offend anyone and stressed that “everybody is welcome” on “the journey of faith” towards having “a relationship with God”—did strike me as language I’d heard before.

I had friends in high school who eventually said, “I’m living a gay lifestyle.”
— Amy Grant, PrideSource, issue 2116, 4/23/2013 And what was it that I’d heard before? A conservative Christian’s favorite term when it comes to teh gayz: lifestyle.

Amy Grant tells us that she “had friends in high school who eventually said, ‘I’m living a gay lifestyle,’” to which I say, no, you didn’t.

I wouldn’t say that Amy Grant was intentionally lying, and I do believe that she had gay high school friends come out to her, but I don’t believe they said, “Amy, I need to tell you something. I’m living a gay lifestyle.”

Unless we’re still desperately trying to leave it, “lifestyle” is not a word we queers use. No, we just think we have lives just like everyone else does.

But conservative Christians sure do love the word “lifestyle.” Are you struggling with same sex attractions? Google “leaving the gay lifestyle” and you’ll find tons of compassionate people willing to help you.

Amy Grant was probably just paraphrasing when she talked of friends telling her they were living a gay lifestyle. Despite her use of the term again at another point in the interview, talking about the ACLU’s first openly gay executive director, Anthony Romero, whom Amy Grant “felt so changed by” but who has a “very different lifestyle” from hers, given the lengths to which she went to stress being compassionate and loving and welcoming and to avoid being judgmental, I shouldn’t read too much into Amy Grant’s choice of words.

Why shouldn’t I? Because what Amy Grant thinks doesn’t really matter. I didn’t care two days ago, before I knew she was talking to the gayz. So why should it matter two days later? Maybe Amy Grant, living in what some would call an adulterous relationship, has no problem with gay people also finding love but is afraid to say so in so many words. Or perhaps instead “lifestyle” really is hidden code for what Amy Grant thinks of me.

Either way I’m living a gay lifestyle and I’m happy with it.

A few days ago a gay friend of mine complained on Facebook about my “Christ-centric” point of view, saying that he couldn’t understand my “still want[ing] to find hope within the religious mainstream.” On the very same day, a heterosexual stranger with whom I had a little debate on Twitter about marriage equality in New York said that his opposition to same sex marriage was “the Christian point of view,” having expressed astonishment at my 140-character explanation of my religious beliefs. An irony made more evident by the close timing of the reactions from these two very different people is how they, coming from such antithetical places, share something in common with each other—neither approves of my religious beliefs or the spiritual choices I’ve made.

For the former person, someone I’ve known for many years and whose friendship I still value, I’m too Christian. My openness about my faith, my participation in a church, my knowledge of scripture, all of this is apparently too much for him, this despite the fact that I’ve never pushed my religion on him, never told him he should be Christian or join a church, never engaged him in debate about religion, never emailed him or posted on his Facebook wall about religion. Indeed my comment on one of his posts that triggered his harangue made no mention either of Christ or of religion.

For the latter person, the stranger whom I’ve never met and never will, I’m not Christian enough. My being a member of a United Church of Christ congregation, part of a denomination that not only endorses marriage equality but also espouses views such as the key UCC one that “God is Still Speaking,” means that I am “not Biblical” in my approach to life. [Another irony is that this stranger’s father is a UCC pastor, although I do not know whether this stranger and his father share similar views about the path the denomination has taken.]

Perhaps one reason my friend disapproves of my religious perspective is that, although he does not realize this, he agrees with the stranger about Christianity. The stranger, explaining his beliefs on marriage, on the UCC and on Biblical inerrancy, presented his views as “the Christian point of view,” not a Christian’s point of view [emphasis mine], and I think that somehow my friend agrees with this stranger, Somehow my friend agrees with this stranger, that there can be only one Christian point of view. that there can be only one Christian point of view, and thus if I say I’m Christian, my point of view must be invalid.

A third irony is that the stranger showed me a little more respect than did my friend because he actually asked about my beliefs, while my friend I don’t think understands them, but both the stranger and my friend think I’m wrong when it comes to religion. While I respect the right of both my friend and this stranger to have religious beliefs different from mine, I refuse to allow either of them to tell me that there is a single Christian perspective.

So what do I believe? Well, what I told the stranger about my beliefs, in a Twitter-sized chunk, is “that the bible isn’t inerrant, that, as the UCC says, God is still speaking, and that Christianity isn’t the only way.”

For many Christians, including the stranger, my beliefs are enough to disqualify me from claiming that I’m a Christian, and given our culture’s understanding of what it means to be Christian (an understanding of Christianity that, ironically, my non-Christian friend shares), I guess I’m not a Christian. I do not believe the Bible to be inerrant. I do not believe an omnipotent God had no choice but to sacrifice his only son to atone for my sins to save me from eternal damnation. Further, I do not believe in an omnipotent God at all, I do not believe Jesus was the son of God or the sole manifestation of God, I do not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus, and I’m not entirely sure there even was a historical Jesus. The stranger’s right—
I’m not Biblical.

My friend’s right—
I am Christ-centric. The stranger’s right—I’m not Biblical.

For many non-Christians, including my friend, my beliefs are enough to dismiss me as yet another Christian, and given my choices in life, especially those about many of the people with whom I associate, I guess I am a Christian. My background is Christian and I’m a part of a Christian church. You may not know many people who’ve helped to start a church, but I’m one such person, having been a part of Cross Creek Community Church since before it was even called that (I drove my little gay Miata through a blizzard in 1996 to be part of a small group of people who met to come up with our as yet unborn church’s name). Many of my friends are clergy. Despite not being entirely sure there ever was a historical Jesus, I believe much of what Jesus reputedly says, including the bits about loving one’s neighbors and caring for the least among us. It’d be much easier if I didn’t believe this stuff—I wouldn’t ever have to take a vacation day to unload a Foodbank truck or to get up very early on a Saturday to volunteer at a church food pantry. My friend’s right—I am Christ-centric.

Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter whether either the stranger or my friend is right. I can’t live my life to please strangers who understand my beliefs and thus think I’m going to hell, and I can’t live my life to please friends who misunderstand my beliefs and thus think I’m making choices to avoid going to hell. All I can do is make choices that, as much as possible, make my life better for me.

And whether the stranger is right that I’m not a Christian but should be or my friend is right that I am a Christian but shouldn’t be, I’m happy being the kind of Christian I am. A statement that is true for me, though it will be too Christ-centric for my friend, is that I’ve found God at Cross Creek. The God I’ve found there is neither the one in whom the stranger believes nor the one whom my friend rejects. No, the God I’ve found is one whose voice is heard through relationships and dialogue, one who is made powerful from people working together but one who is limited by people’s imperfections. My describing God in this way should make it obvious that I believe God can be encountered in many circumstances, not just through Christianity and indeed not just through religion, but my encountering God through this Christian community works for me. I’m not ashamed of it, nor will I apologize for it.

A final irony before I close is that in another context this same statement—I’m not ashamed of it, nor will I apologize for it—would be something my friend would wholeheartedly endorse. It’s rather queer that in a Christian context he would find it so offensive.

Rabbi Irwin Kula If you’re a regular reader of my blog or if you’re familiar with the church I attend, Cross Creek Community Church, you know that over the years we’ve had quite a few rabbis come to talk to us. It’s become a tradition of sorts for us to invite a rabbi to talk to us during Advent (read about rabbis who spoke to us during Advent in 2009 and 2006), but this weekend we invited a rabbi, Irwin Kula, to come to speak to us for Lent.

Rabbi Kula lives in New York City but has developed some Dayton connections through teaching a class at United Theological Seminary where he influenced Ruth Hopkins, one of many Cross Creekers who have gone to seminary there. Ruth brought Rabbi Kula’s book Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life to the attention of Cross Creek’s pastor, Mike Castle, who ended up incorporating teachings from the book in the sermons and liturgy for Lent in 2009, and many Cross Creekers read Yearnings that Lenten season. Because of those connections, Rabbi Kula is back in Dayton this weekend for Cross Creek’s latest weekend intensive; he gave a talk this evening after a chili supper and will be back to preach at both services tomorrow morning.

I have to confess that I was not one of the Cross Creekers who read Rabbi Kula’s book in 2009, and despite the many references to Rabbi Kula’s writings in Cross Creek materials from 2009, he didn’t make a big impression on me then. It’s not that I disagree with what he said; I guess I just wasn’t paying attention.

This evening, however, I appreciated what Rabbi Kula had to say, and I think I can pass the test Rabbi Kula’s son might put to me—Rabbi Kula shared several anecdotes about his family, one of which is that his son often travels with him as he lectures around the country, but people don’t realize who his son is, and if his son hears someone saying to Rabbi Kula, “I enjoyed your talk,” his son will ask that person, somewhat mischievously, “Oh, really? What did Rabbi Kula say?”

A great deal of the first part of Rabbi Kula’s talk, which had been billed as being on “Tradition and Change: Reimagining Religion in the 21st Century,” was helping us to understand the state of religion in the United States in 2011, and much of what he told us wasn’t surprising. The fastest growing religious segment in America is “None,” and that’s not atheists but spiritual people who don’t identify with any religious group. People don’t feel obligated to follow the religious practices of their parents. Rabbi Kula used the metaphors of cathedrals and bazaars for how people used to get information on religion and how people get that information now—people used to have beliefs handed to them in cathedrals, buildings whose price of admission was buying the beliefs being sold in them, but now people search for wisdom from the many booths in a bazaar (one that, unlike markets on the streets of old European towns, doesn’t have an anchor store in the form of a church at its center), and if the wisdom being sold at your booth doesn’t make sense—real practical sense, the effects of which people can witness—people will move on to other booths.

Rabbi Kula then tried to explain why people search for wisdom, and, given his Jewish background, I didn’t find his mentioning the Jewish concept of tikkun olam unexpected, but instead of translating it in the way I’d heard before, repairing the world, Rabbi Kula described it differently, as “repairing the soul.” That’s not so altruistic. “Do[ing] less damage,” another reason Rabbi Kula gave towards the end of his talk for seeking wisdom, is important too, but we seek wisdom to make our own lives better.

What Rabbi Kula said next about this 21st century search for wisdom was something I really hadn’t expected and indeed heard very skeptically at first. Locate
the partial truths
our opponents have What he said was that an important way to find wisdom is to locate the partial truths that our opponents have.

Now Rabbi Kula made it very clear that he’s pretty progressive; beyond being willing to come talk at a Christian church pastored by an openly gay man, he was also explicit about advocating for the acceptance of LGBT people in his Jewish circles. So, although Rabbi Kula wasn’t just talking about the gay issue but any issue with multiple sides, my mind went immediately to how unlikely it would be that those who say I’m going to hell for being gay or that God hates me for being gay or that I can change my being gay could have any truth on their side. And I did something somewhat rude and blurted out a question about just how little these partial truths we were supposed to find could be. Rabbi Kula had confessed during one of his initial anecdotes that he himself finds it difficult to control his impulse to blurt out exactly what he’s thinking sometimes, so I hope he understood my lack of impulse control. At any rate, he took my question seriously and diverted temporarily from the planned path of his talk to give an answer I found very helpful.

The partial truths that conservatives or fundamentalists have in our society’s culture war turn out not be so small after all: the truths they have are related not to the remedies they prescribe for our society but have to do with the diagnoses they’re making about our society.

For example, sexuality is messed up in our society. The specific example of this, pointed out by Rabbi Kula and discussed some afterwards by the assembled group in the appointed question and answer time, is the hypersexualization in our society of young women from their teens to early twenties. Conservatives aren’t wrong when they say this is a problem. What they think should be done about it—oppressing women back into traditional roles, stopping acceptance of alternative sexualities, etc.—is wrong, but the problem is real, and liberals can find wisdom by acknowledging it and talking about it. Rabbi Kula modeled this talking about this particular problem by sharing an anecdote about a situation his daughter, working amongst liberal artsy folk in a NYC gallery, found herself in.

Other areas in which conservatives have some partial truths are in the ideas that sacrifice and discipline and aggression can be necessary, although, again, not necessarily in the ways conservatives might advocate.

This seeking wisdom by locating the partial truths our opponents have pertains not only to large groups of strangers but also to individuals whom we know and love, love being the operative word. Rabbi Kula, sharing some anecdotes about his relationship with his wife, said that we should not seek to understand our opponents so that we can then love them but rather that we should love our opponents in order to understand them.

That should ring a bell for Christians, shouldn’t it? Rabbi Kula’s not the first Jewish teacher to tell us the importance of loving our neighbors. He’s just the first one, at least that I’ve heard, who frames it not as a belief—“Thou shalt love thy neighbor”—but who offers it as a method for finding wisdom—by trying to love your opponents, by cooling down the rhetoric, by listening, you might understand them and gain something for yourself in the process.

The Greek Festival, which occurs each year the weekend after Labor Day, is something I’ve attended annually for over a decade, even before I gained such convenient parking for it, having fallen into the tradition of going with the same friends each year. There’s plenty to experience at the festival—cute Greek boys (especially the one there Friday lunchtime at the Never on Sundae booth), music, shopping (in particular for icons that a friend of mine collects), dancing, thick Greek coffee in small cups, crowds, noise—but it’s the food that’s the main draw.

It used to be that I’d go only once each year, but now that I live so close I eat Greek all weekend. Friday for lunch I had a gyro and cheese and spinach pies and a chocolate-coated baklava for dessert. For dinner I shared a bottle of retsina and had pastitsio and Greek salad, followed by Greek coffee and a couple baklavas. The festival doesn’t open each day until 11 a.m., but, knowing that, I’d planned ahead and had
A sweet, if not healthy, Greek Festival breakfast baklavas and chocolate pinwheels for breakfast both Saturday and Sunday. Today for lunch I had a chicken gyro (not as good as the lamb gyros—be sure to ask for extra sauce on the side—but tasty) and another spinach pie, followed by some honey puffs. I definitely got my Greek on, as one of the t-shirts available for purchase said.

On Saturday, apart from breakfast, I took a break from Greek and ate Italian, not in the way you might have thought (no, not at the Italian festival) but at a spaghetti dinner held at my church as part of “An Evening with Philip Gulley.” Gulley was at Cross Creek as the guest speaker for the most recent of our weekend intensives, occasional times where we invite “professional thinkers” (as Gulley refers to himself and as my pastor introduced him but applicable also to other guests we’ve had previously) to give us amateur thinkers something more to think about.

You might be thinking I’d have done better to stick with the Greeks (and perhaps another bottle of retsina) than to go to a church dinner to hear a preacher talk, but Gulley, whom my pastor also introduced as an Indiana Quaker version of Garrison Keillor, was entertaining. Gulley has a dry self-deprecating sense of humor, a quiet, folksy manner that drew out quite a bit of laughter from those in attendance.

Like Keillor, Gulley draws upon his experiences growing up and living in small town America, but, unlike Keillor, Gulley’s purpose is not just to entertain but also to share his understanding of his faith, and, as Gulley shared on Saturday evening, although he is Christian he doesn’t believe that Jesus is the only way to experience the Divine. Gulley believes there have been and are multiple “God bearers,” and he spent his time Saturday explaining how we might recognize them. (Hint: the more loudly one proclaims that one is a God bearer, the less likely it is that one is.)

As part of his explanation of the concept of God bearers, Gulley, who says he likes to avoid theological language for the most part and to speak instead in language more people can understand, did bring up and explain a theological term, Theotokos, a Greek term for Mary, the mother of Jesus, a term that means (you guessed it) “God bearer.” I mention Gulley’s mentioning of Theotokos not so much because the term itself was central to his message but because I happened to hear that same specific Greek word again not more than 24 hours later.

Just as one helping of Greek food wasn’t enough for me this weekend, neither was one helping of Gulley sufficient, and I went back to Cross Creek again this morning to hear Gulley preach during our morning worship. Gulley was again entertaining, telling funny stories from his life experiences, not just to elicit laughter but to explain his faith. Gulley told a funny story from his Catholic childhood about being caught by his priest sledding down the hill of the Methodist church in his small town; rather than progressing in his faith by associating with non-Catholics, the priest thought Gulley should instead remain on the unchanging flat lawn of the Roman Catholic Church.

The problem is, as Gulley went on to explain, faith is not unchanging. Gulley illustrated this with another story, about a photo that his parents still display, a photo taken in 1958 of their family, before Gulley and his younger siblings were born. The photo which Gulley’s parents are still so fond of is valuable because it shows their family at a point in time, but it’s not an accurate depiction of their family over all time.

Alongside that story about a cherished family photo Gulley talked also about the Nicene Creed, again straying briefly away from folksy stories and into theological explanation, but again I mention his mentioning of a theological reference because this too I would hear mentioned again very shortly thereafter. Gulley talked about the 1685-year-old creed not because it is worthless and to be discarded but because, like the photo Gulley’s parents still like so much, the Nicene Creed is a snapshot of Christian faith at a particular point in time, not an unchanging depiction of Christian faith forever and ever.

So after my two helpings of Gulley, I went with another friend back to the Greek Festival for some more Greek food, and after eating, we went inside the Annunciation church to hear a brief explanation of the building and the Greek Orthodox faith, and here’s where the odd juxtaposition of Gulley and the Greek Festival took place. Sitting in the interior of the church with all its beautiful
The only Theotokos? icons, I heard mentioned two things I’d just heard Gulley mention—Theotokos and the Nicene Creed.

For the Greek Orthodox there is only one Theotokos, and they venerate her with a large icon at the back of their sanctuary, and the Nicene Creed, available on laminated cards stored in the backs of their pews, they brought up as an example of the unchanging and eternal nature of their faith. Quite a contrast to how Gulley made mention of these two theological things.

I point out this juxtaposition not as an attack on the Greek Orthodox faith (this statement echoes one I just saw made today on another blog by someone claiming, as it happens, not to be making “a personal attack on Pastor Philip Gulley”). It’s just that as enjoyable as I find the food at the annual Greek Festival, I’m afraid I don’t find what they serve inside their sanctuary to be as nourishing. Ironically, considering Gulley’s story of childhood sledding, it seems that those who go up the hill to the Annunciation Church value most the unchangingness of their faith while we who worship on the flat lawn in the church building that is Cross Creek cherish that God is Still Speaking.

I guess a lesson to be learnt from this odd juxtaposition is that just as there are multiple festivals with different kinds of food, there are also different Theotokoi bearing the Divine to us in different ways, even if some of us would prefer to go all our lives to the same festival.

This Sunday at my church, Cross Creek Community Church, United Church of Christ, we celebrated Pentecost Sunday.

Our worship space was festively decorated in Pentecost Red with balloons everywhere lifted by the Spirit!

Click any photo to embiggen it.

Of course, I brought one of the balloons home myself to enjoy on my balcony:

As I’ve done for a few years now (the first time was in 2006), I participated again today in the annual Good Friday Walk for Peace and Justice, combining the Stations of the Cross with social justice issues ranging from immigration to health care to homophobia to hunger, issues whose continued existence is why Jesus is still suffering metaphorically on the Cross.

Whatever you believe about why Jesus was crucified—whether you believe it was the only way Jesus could save us from the horrible eternal damnation an omnipotent God would otherwise have had to subject us to, or whether you believe Jesus was a radical communitiy organizer who ran afoul of the Romans—you can probably agree that Jesus (the historical one or the arisen one) would be aghast that the issues raised each year during this walk are still unresolved.

Tonight I saw the Dayton Playhouse’s production of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi, a play that reimagines the myth of Jesus. Corpus Christi first premiered eleven years ago, in 1998, and I first saw it six years ago in Cincinnati. That 2003 production was by Know Theatre Tribe (see archive.org’s copy of their Corpus Christi page) in an unconventional theatre space called Gabriel’s Corner housed in a church building. I enjoyed the play six years ago, but I enjoyed it even more tonight.

Corpus Christi has driven conservative Christians crazy since before its premiere, and tonight’s production in Dayton was no exception. The sidewalk into the Dayton Playhouse’s theatre was lined with protestors, quiet and polite but bearing signs complaining about the blasphemy of the play and promising to pray for all involved in it (I told the bearers of one prayer sign that I’d pray for them too).

I’m sure that these protestors, if at some point they google Corpus Christi and run across my little review here, will think my reference to Jesus’s story as “myth” just to be more blasphemy along the lines of McNally’s play. Yet I mean no disrespect to the historical Jesus (if there was one, and I’m inclined to think there probably was) nor to the idea of Jesus, nor do I think that Jesus, at least not the Jesus in whom I believe, would be offended by my talking about his story as myth. I don’t choose the word “myth” because I think the story of Jesus is made up or not real; instead “myth” comes to my mind in reference to Corpus Christi because of truth.

The truth I mean is not literal truth. Obviously Jesus was not born of a Brooklyn Jewish Mary in a sleazy pay-by-the-hour motel in Corpus Christi, Texas, to the sounds of johns fucking prostitutes. Bishop Forsyth of South Sydney needn’t point out that Corpus Christi is “unhistorical and untrue” — McNally isn’t asking anyone to believe that Texas was ever under Roman rule. McNally isn’t even asking people to believe that the historical Jesus was in fact gay (for someone who is asking people to believe that, read a post I wrote in 2004 about the book The Man Jesus Loved).

Bishop Forsyth and others outraged by Corpus Christi are quite right that the play is “unhistorical” but they’re quite wrong about its being untrue. The bishop and his fellow protestors need to read some Joseph Campbell and learn about the power of myths. For anyone who has ears to hear there is indeed truth to be found in Corpus Christi.

That truth is not primarily that Jesus was gay, although Sean Frost’s portrayal tonight of a 17-year-old Texan Joshua going to prom with a girl and then not wanting to do what was coming naturally to all his straight classmates that night certainly rang true to me — in high school I went through the motions of dating and even kissing girls and went to prom with a girl, but like Joshua, I never sealed the deal. I also spent too much time staring at boys on whom I had crushes, enough to attract the wrong kind of attention, just as Joshua does in Corpus Christi. And let me mention here that I found Mark Diffenderfer, who played the masculinely and aggressively gay Judas, to be quite hot.

No, the primary truth to be learnt from Corpus Christi is something one might expect even those protesting the play to agree with, for despite the liberties McNally takes, he remains faithful to the most important lessons taught by the Jesus of the Gospels. Love your neighbor, and realize that your neighbor isn’t just the person who shares your demographics and lives right next door to you but that the people who make you most uncomfortable, the lepers, the homeless, the faggots, the tall-haired Pentecostals, whoever, are also your neighbors.

People who focus on Corpus Christi’s literal untruths and protest the play miss this most important truth. What Jesus would want isn’t protection from blasphemy — as depicted both in Corpus Christi and in the Book of Matthew, if Jesus wanted protection from blasphemers, “Do you think [he] cannot call on [his] Father and … [have] at once … twelve legions of angels” to provide such protection? No, instead what Jesus wants is for us to recognize the divinity in each of us (shown beautifully in the introduction/baptism of each of the actors/disciples at the beginning of the play).

However, Corpus Christi focuses not only on Jesus’s message of love but also on the hatred his fellow men show to one another and to him, culminating in the play’s portrayal of the Passion and crucifixion of Jesus. Here I find Corpus Christi to be very true towards traditional Christian understanding — Jesus’s betrayal by Judas and his suffering and death were preordained by God — but I disagree (ironically, probably as opposed to the play’s protestors) with that traditional understanding and its depiction in this play. I do not believe that the only way an omnipotent God could forgive humanity was by sending a Son to Earth to be sacrificed to atone for our sins. Hello, omnipotent means all-powerful and an all-powerful God could damned well decide just to forgive us, couldn’t he? No, instead I think that the historical Jesus with his radical message of defying social conventions and loving everyone ran afoul of religious and secular authorities and got himself killed.

Yet despite my disagreement with the historical accuracy of the crucifixion in Corpus Christi, I think director Michael Boyd did manage to bring truth to its depiction nonetheless. The projection of photos of protestors from Westboro Baptist Church, of defaced pro-gay Christian billboards and of Matthew Shepard and the site of his death rammed home the point that just as the historical Jesus faced hatred from his fellow humans so too are we today endangered by such hatred, especially if we try to be true to Jesus’s message. Unconditional love of all God’s children is radical and dangerous and difficult and scary.

Corpus Christi at the Dayton Playhouse runs through November 22, so if you’re reading this post shortly after I’ve written it you still have time to see it. Unlike other productions Boyd’s includes no intermission but runs straight through, but I found it very powerful and thought the time passed quickly. You might not think you could find such good theatre in Dayton, but you can.