LGBT Prejudice Mirrors Racism and Sexism

by

A United Methodist Insight Exclusive

Two recent United Methodist Church-related events have prompted me as never before to reach deeply into my racial journey as an African American, encompassing my journey within the Methodist/United Methodist Church and beyond. The events: a meeting of United Methodist executives from the General Commission on Finance and Administration and other denominational agencies, reported by United Methodist News Service, and second, an article in the Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun, "LGBTQ allies gather at Duke Divinity Convocation".

Two items in particular trouble me about these events. In response to our disagreements in the UMC about "the practice of homosexuality," Bishop Scott Jones at the meeting of agency executives is quoted: "The question is, is there a middle ground that will allow most of the traditionalists to stay and yet satisfy most of the progressives?" The first paragraph in the article about Duke Divinity School says: "Dozens of Duke Divinity School students and faculty gathered at the school's convocation Tuesday morning to show support for the LGBTQ community after an alleged conflict at the school's orientation."

Sadly, I am familiar with the kind of discrimination against LGBTQ people shown at these events. I was born into legal and church-sanctioned Southern racial discrimination in North Carolina, and grew up with the same atmosphere in Texas. The name that I was given in the racially segregated hospital where I was born in Greensboro, NC, was Gilbert Haven Caldwell, Jr. My preacher-father and I were named for Bishop Gilbert Haven (1821-1880), a white Methodist preacher who was described by his biographer as being " a white Martin Luther King." Haven's vocal and written support for racial integration, including interracial marriage, caused him to be admired by some and hated by many because of his views on race. I believe that my grandparents who named my father, and my parents who named me, were making a statement of resistance to slavery and the racial segregation that followed by naming their sons Gilbert Haven.

My call to the ordained ministry began when I was a freshman at Methodist Church-related, all-black Samuel Huston College, (now Huston-Tillotson University) in Austin, Texas. My call was nurtured as I became one of the few African American college students active in the North Carolina Methodist Student Movement, (MSM) from 1953-1955. I have shared in other writings how my black student colleagues and I in MSM knew that there were some Methodist churches in North Carolina that would not allow a racially integrated group of students like us to meet in their churches. I have shared in earlier writings how we endured the racial segregation of recreational facilities at the historic Methodist site at Lake Junaluska, NC. We discovered that one year after the MSM Officers had voted to refrain from using the segregated facilities during our meeting, they quietly planned to meet at Junaluska a day early in order to use those facilities.

Because of the relationships I had with some of my white colleagues, I chose to apply to Duke Divinity School rather than applying for admission to Gammon Seminary in Atlanta, the black Methodist Seminary. I applied to Duke Divinity School. My father had been a brilliant student at Gammon, and I knew that I would be expected to walk in his academic shoes, and I knew I could not  I discovered just last year that my father's master's thesis written at Syracuse University in 1918, was about the beginnings of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, because of its pro-slavery views. But, Duke Divinity School in 1954 when I applied, was racially segregated and my admission was refused. The letter I received from the school expressed the "hope that I would find a Seminary to meet my needs." That seminary became Boston University School of Theology. Since my rejection, I have been elated as I watched Duke Divinity School integrate its student body, invite African American faculty and administrators to work at the school, and develop programs on the Black Church.

The above is relevant for this article, because the church-based discrimination that we black people have known is a thing of the past. I often wonder, did Duke refuse my application because of a biblical interpretation that is no longer accepted? Or did Duke reject me because of then-legal racial segregation? I believe that there are parallels between Methodist Church-sponsored racial segregation that is now a thing of the past, and United Methodist Church discrimination against LGBTQ persons that exists today.

I ask these questions amid today's debates among so-called "traditionalists" and "progressives" about "the practice of homosexuality." Because of my own experience with past racial discrimination, I wonder whether the language about same-gender loving persons is truly Bible-based or more bound to cultural attitudes and practices? I confess the theme that shaped the meeting of GCFA executives and others – "Beware the Cost of Sexuality Debate" – while being focused on finances and structure, really is about costs far greater than finances and structure.

I contend that the decline in The United Methodist Church since the original passage of the anti-LGBT legislation in 1972 results from not affirming the depth of what God has done in Jesus Christ's Incarnation and in all of us as we have spoken but not lived the truth that "God is love." Ours is a denominational decline of not remembering our historic prejudice regarding women and blacks in regard to "the practice of homosexuality" or marriage equality for same-gender loving couples. While we engage in conversation and debate about whether or not we will, or how we will re-structure because of our differences about the legitimacy of same-gender couples, the nation and the world crumble around us.

I do not believe we have appreciated sufficiently the value of reason, the fourth leg of our Wesleyan Quadrilateral, as we United Methodists have rejected slavery, racial segregation and second-class status for women. The Bible that was once used to validate and sustain verbal and physical mistreatment of women and blacks was interpreted anew to put into practice fair and equal treatment for those who had not received it. I believe that reason was one of the elements that have brought us to the affirming of women and blacks as a counter to the illogical and irrational Biblical interpretation that once promoted less than fair and unequal treatment of blacks and women.

Reason would be helpful to The United Methodist Church if we allowed it to help us acknowledge that lesbians and gay men have made invaluable contributions to our denomination for generations. There have been closeted laypeople and clergy at every level of the Church. Our tragedy is that four years after the UMC was birthed, some United Methodists believed that to thwart the possibilities of the "new" denomination being harmed by homosexuals (who had been with us from the very beginning), they introduced language and legislation that has not only hurt and harmed the LGBTQ persons among us, it has also hurt and harmed the denomination's worldwide mission.

In my parents' day, there were white Methodists who openly disagreed with the racial segregation in the denomination and its institutions. My mother was one of the first black women to represent the racially segregated Central Jurisdiction on the Women's Division of the Methodist Board of Missions. She would return home from national meetings to tell us of experiencing racial segregation in restaurants and hotels. Mother's eyes would glisten as she spoke also of the white women from the South such as Thelma Stevens, and from other places around the United States, who would walk out with her when she was refused service, and stand up with her to challenge racial bigotry whenever she and the other black women experienced it.

How can United Methodist leaders "stand up and speak out" for LGTBQ persons when our Book of Discipline contains language and legislation that does not affirm same-gender loving persons? I do not know Dean Richard Hays of Duke Divinity School, but I am sure that he believes "commitment to inclusion is a value and mission of the school," as its administrator has said. But how confusing it must have been to students and others when he read from the Discipline that, while "all persons are individuals of sacred worth," United Methodists still officially state that "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching."

I remember when I was a teenager and would attend with my preacher-father a rare meeting of black and white Methodists in some place in Texas, I still remember someone saying something like this; "We shouldn't worry too much about racial separation on earth, when we get to heaven, we will all be together." Yet after the meeting my father and I would go back to our congregation in the nationwide racially segregated Central Jurisdiction, where pastors could moved across the country from year to year. And the speaker would go back to his more convenient, geographically based white congregation in the South Central Jurisdiction. Are we saying to our United Methodist LGBTQ persons, that they too are "individuals of sacred worth," but they must stay in the place conferred upon them by the UMC while Heaven awaits us and them?

James H. Cone, long-time professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York has raised these questions about theology and women, blacks and gays. "... Is patriarchy so deeply rooted in biblical faith that one could not do Christian theology without justifying the oppression of women? ... Is racism so deeply embedded in Euro-American history and culture that it is impossible to do theology with being anti-black? ... Gay and lesbian theologians are following the feminist lead and asking whether homophobia is an inherent part of biblical faith? *

Although the task is not complete, The United Methodist Church no longer teaches and preaches a theology that justifies the oppression of women nor a theology that is anti-black. Could we begin to discuss, teach and preach a theology that doesn't declare that "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching"? Would not this be more Christ-centered and God-led than are the discussions about separation, segregation and schism because of "traditionalists" and "progressives"? If we are United Methodists, then by our spiritual DNA inherited from John Wesley most of us are progressive traditionalists or traditional progressives anyway. Could we begin we begin to dare to dare and admit that publicly?

I close with a quote from an essay by Bishop Woodie W. White, "The church versus itself", found in his book "Conversations of the Heart" (Abingdon Press, 1991):

"Wouldn't it be a pity if the world God so loves so much were ignored because the Church was too busy doing battle with itself?" 

The Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell of Asbury Park, NJ, is a retired elder of the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference and a co-founder/partner of the Truth in Progress Project.

* "Looking Back, and Going Forward in Black Faith and Public Talk," Dwight N. Hopkins, editor, Orbis Books, 1999.