The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Top ten reasons we'd Work For Diddy. Plus: Spaced and Olbermann invade The Soup and Mr. Spock gets all wicky-wack.
At the beginning of my career as a priest, if I told someone what I did, I was likely to be lumped together with the likes of people who call gays "sodomites" and flash gruesome pictures of scrambled fetuses at frightened girls entering abortion clinics. That was just five years ago, when "fetal" pretty much described the stature and power of the Christian Left compared to the hulking, crushing Christian Right.
But thanks to Christians like Jim Wallis and a slew of other people, there's a growing, more formidable Christian left. Fed by books like Wallis' God's Politics, The Left Hand of God, Why the Christian Right is Wrong and Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America — as well as an increasing number of movements like Sojourners, CrossLeft and the Center for Progressive Christianity — the Christian Left just might be strong enough to make a difference at this year's polls. They've definitely spared me from having to clarify that I'm not a rigid, right-winged fanatic whose only moral concerns are with abortion and gay marriage.
This is a huge relief to many Christians who, like myself, have wondered how the teachings of Jesus became so distorted by those laying claim to the Bible. One of the newer, liberally-inclined Christian groups, the Red Letter Christians, recently took on the Christian Right's baffling and duplicitous obsession with Biblical authority and homosexuality by pointing out just how many times in the Bible Jesus talked about gays: zero. Their conclusions echoed what the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches,
promotion
Bob Edgar, said at a conference back in April: "Jesus never said one word about homosexuality, never said one word about civil marriage or abortion." By contrast, he was far more concerned about poverty and protection of the weak and vulnerable, meaning that, if Christians claim to take Jesus' teachings seriously, then they should expand "moral issues" to include poverty, torture, capital punishment, the war in Iraq and the environment.
As a Christian whose faith informs her political and social views, and who is not opposed to hearing politicians talk about faith (as long as it's not of the George Bush variety), I'm relieved by this much-needed expansion of what count as "moral issues" in our country. Moreover, I agree entirely that Christians don't need to be occupied solely by reproductive and sexual issues. But I'm also concerned that Christians may be dangerously sidelining them — and just at a time when we're beginning to make real progress.
For instance, on several recent occasions when I openly raised concerns with my clergy colleagues about sex — concerns like whether we should question our blanket condemnation of premarital sex, or attempt to understand and then talk more openly about the actual sexual mores of our parishioners — I was accused of being frivolous. Millions of people are dying in the Third World, and I'm worried about why I don't see a single openly gay couple worshipping in my congregation right here in downtown Manhattan? Thousands are dying in Iraq, and I'm concerned that the couple I'm counseling feel they have to lie to me about living together before marriage? What kind of Christian am I?
Along those lines, I was appalled when an ecclesiastical higher-up recently told me that openly questioning the Church's stance toward premarital sex would "most
This subtle pitting of serious issues like poverty or the war in Iraq against issues concerning sex and sexuality is happening more and more.
certainly" jeopardize my job prospects; if I needed to be provocative, he said, then I should write about something like capital punishment or Third-World debt. Comments like this make me wonder whether these people are genuinely concerned about those other issues, or whether they're just using them as an excuse to finally stop talking about sex.
This caustic statement from an open letter to the United Methodist Church by a prominent Methodist minister sure heightens that suspicion: "In the United Methodist Church, we say nothing about the horrifying violence in Iraq, while at the same time we exhaust ourselves going around in circles debating the issue of sexuality."
It's true that we haven't been talking enough about the war, but this subtle pitting of "serious issues" like poverty or the war in Iraq against issues concerning sex and sexuality is happening more and more, and it's just wrong — there is a strong connection between the issues. Failure to talk about sex can lead to unsafe sex, which leads to the disastrous health crises that create and perpetuate poverty in many communities. Related to that, and partly thanks to some churches' ignorant insistence on abstinence-only birth control, many churches in developing countries still refuse to hand out condoms or other forms of birth control, thereby harming vulnerable women, children and entire communities.
But pitting these issues against each other is wrong also because sex, being an important part of who we are and how we relate to the world, needs to be discussed. A lot. Consider how many people in their day-to-day lives deal with feelings of confusion and guilt stemming from unhealthy — and ungodly — attitudes toward sex, or how many people have been hurt by the Church's neglect of what really constitutes unhealthy sexual impulses. If the number of people I've watched struggle over these issues in the past five years says anything about how many people in my pews are dealing with shame and guilt over sexual relationships, then I can tell you, it's on people's minds. Many Christians don't stumble out their front stoop and over a homeless guy or starving child, but probably do stumble each day upon people who have been wounded by the Church's failure to talk about sex in a nuanced, sustained way.
In fact, now is a terrible time to abandon our efforts, since they've just started to make a big difference. A recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that more Christians than ever are open to gay marriage, and even more are open to civil unions for gay people. Along those lines, when Christian conservatives rallied behind the Federal Marriage Amendment last summer, a group of liberal, anti-amendment clergy united
Last I checked, there were plenty of pulpits to be heard from.
under the banner "Clergy for Fairness" beat them to it — and won.
What's more, many churches now impose strict screening processes on anyone working with children because they took the time to talk about the sexual misconduct that was going on. Thanks to those conversations, more people also see through the Vatican's initial and absurd link between homosexuality and pedophilia. And many Christians, who only recently opposed condoms or any form of birth control, are now recognizing the importance of sex education that goes beyond abstinence, especially in developing countries.
But there's a lot of work yet to be done — especially on women's reproductive rights, as well as on the utterly neglected subject of healthy sexual relationships outside the context of marriage. Last I checked, there were plenty of people in the Church who were all too eager to be heard, and plenty of pulpits to be heard from. Unless we in the Church keep talking about these issues, though, there may not be anyone still interested in what we have to say. n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
The Reverend Astrid Joy Storm is the Curate at Grace Church in New York City.
