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Please view both cartoon panels above.
Welcome back to Part 12 of A History of Incompatibility. In this series, we explore the development of Christian beliefs around human sexuality, particularly as it relates to present church schisms over LGBTQ inclusion. If you are just now joining the story, I recommend going back and starting at Part 1.
This story is being told in three movements. The first movement set the stage with the 1972 General Conference of The United Methodist Church, a moment in time that set the stage for 50 years on conflict in one denomination, but reflects the common struggles in most denominations between those who affirm LGBTQ people and those who do not. Today’s comics wrap up the end of the second movement, where we explored broad strokes across Christian history that have led up to modern religious beliefs on sexuality. If you’ve been following along, you’ve seen how Augustine in the 4th century and then Aquinas in the 12th century established a millennia of anti-sex religion, where sex is inherently bad, and therefore only procreative sex was morally acceptable. Literally EVERY sex act that could not result in pregnancy was considered sodomy, and one of the worst of all sins. The 20th century saw first liberals and then conservative Christians changing their minds, and teaching that sex between a husband and wife is a good gift of God. Former beliefs around what was included as “sodomy” fell squarely on the gay community, and the Christian imagination transferred Aquinas’ teachings from heterosexual sex for pleasure to just mean gay sex. As the LGBTQ community began emerging from the shadows in the 1970’s, the Religious Right became politically aligned, targeting abortion and homosexuality as the biggest threat to the American family.
50 years later, with the Supreme Court recently overturning Roe v. Wade, (and Clarence Thomas indicating that contraceptives and marriage equality are next), it seems like the agenda of the Religious Right is capable of major disruption in American politics. It’s also interesting that in his 2007 book, unChristian, David Kinnaman’s research found that of those Americans who do not claim to be Christian, 87% called Christians judgmental, 91% described Christians as anti-homosexual, and 75% said Christians are too involved in politics.
Growing up a United Methodist, we regularly sang a hymn based on John 13:34-35, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
But research seems to say they’ll know we are Christians by our hate.
More specifically, Christians are known first for what we stand against, not for our love of God or even our love of neighbor.
Now, the argument has been made, Christians shouldn’t care what outsiders think about us. After all, their minds are darkened by the devil’s schemes! They are not enlightened by the real love of God! Marriage equality is the gay agenda of the unChristian mind! Pro-choicers have the feminist agenda of the unChristian mind! We alone know exactly what God wants for everyone, and so we’re going to work within the political system to enforce God’s values on all society!
Don’t worry, not all evangelicals think this way. Apparently just 56% of us, and perhaps the loudest of us, enough to get the rest of us to apologetically tell our friends, “Yes, I’m a Christian, but I’m not one of those Christians.”
But this is not an us or them conversation. Humanity, and especially religious humans, universally failed the LGBTQ community during the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s. Christians were either openly judgmental, or largely ignored the plight of anyone and everyone suffering from HIV/AIDS. The Religious Right literally lobbied against government funding to find a cure because they professed it was God’s judgment against homosexuals. The Christian-elected Reagan administration refused to say the word AIDS or deal with the crisis in any way. Christian mothers and fathers refused to even speak to their adult gay sons dying in the hospitals.
“This is how the world will know you are my disciples, when you love each other.”
I wanted to end this middle movement of the story with the AIDS crisis of the ’80’s, though obviously much history has happened in the last 30 years since, leading to our present day schisms. When you come back next week, the story will pivot into its final movement, in which my protagonist (a modern day re-imagining of Methodist founder, John Wesley), will use direct Wesleyan theology to challenge non-affirming readings of scripture. This will NOT be a point-for-point debunking of the clobber passages, because that was never John Wesley’s style. If all you were looking for was the history portion, then I thank you for reading this far! But I would encourage you to stick around through the final movement as we explore how history informs theology, and that affirming Christians just may be taking scripture seriously, too!