We deserve better than 'together'
It's not about the dragons out there. It's about the real people around here.
“Liever Turks dan Paaps,” our forefathers said.
Better Turkish than Papist. Better to be dominated by the Muslim Ottomans than the Catholic Spaniards. Better to be left alone by our theological opponents than to be oppressed by those whose beliefs are broadly similar to ours, but dissimilar enough to incite raw intolerance.
These words came to mind as I read Nate DeJong-McCarron’s recent Third Way blog: Here be Dragons vs. Better Together Thinking.
In his blog, DeJong-McCarron rightly points out that the church has endured conflict before, that we’ve redefined salvation-jeopardizing sin before, and that the church has survived contentious issues without resorting to binary fission at every impasse. He’s right to remind us that there was a time when dancing and card-playing and movie-going were as verboten by us as we believed they were by God. He is right to remind us that things changed, and we survived—together. I’d go a step further, even, and remind us that human-authored hymns were once seen as a dire enough violation of sola scriptura as to fuel schism and afscheiding, contributing in turn to much of the emigration that led to our present existence as Americans and Canadians, rather than Netherlanders, like our ancestors were. Indeed, we Protestants have a sad history of insisting that shades of gray be rendered as either fully black or purely white.
The value of DeJong-McCarron’s comparisons are limited, however, by his reduction of the matter of queer inclusion in the Church to a mere theological concern. Queer Christians (and queers who used to be Christian) know that the issue is not just a theological dilemma, like whether we should baptize infants instead of adolescents, or whether we should prohibit hymns and sing only Psalms. For us, this queer ‘issue’ is one that concerns our identity, our inclusion, and our full acceptance into a loving community of fellow seekers and believers. Queer Christians, like all Christians, require a community in which all people are regarded by everyone as both equally fraught by human imperfection and equally endowed with the beauty of the Divine. Each of us bears the Image of God. Each of us is unable to throw the first stone. Each of us is wonderfully made, with the kingdom of God dwelling inside.
Unlike card-playing and movie-going and disco-dancing, queerness is not a chosen pastime. Being LGBTQ is not a hobby that we carelessly engage in on a Saturday evening instead of getting to bed on time so we’ll be ready for church in the morning. Our queerness is a twenty-four/seven condition, a constant orientation, a full-time state that affects our humanness at all levels: physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and yes: sexual. Queer Christians deserve more than just a seat at the proverbial table: we need to be accepted and included and valued and loved. What DeJong-McCarron’s blog never considers is the experience of queer Christians who would, in the proposed Third Way, be asked to harmoniously co-exist in denominational life with those who believe and proclaim that we’re immoral sinners. Will we really be Better Together if our fellow Christians are allowed tell us that our sexual identities and spiritual inclinations must not—for the sake of our souls1—be allowed to coexist?
DeJong-McCarron lists a number of divisive issues the church has overcome and then says that he “…and maybe you, would argue that the church is healthier for them.” Perhaps the church has been hardened by these fires. Her members, on the other hand, have been burned. Real evidence validates the controversial claim made on the floor at Synod last year that the church has blood on her hands with regard to her historical treatment of queer Christians. For LGBTQ people, increased religiosity is correlated with an increase in suicidal behavior. We queers might not be better off Turkish than Roman Catholic, but we’re probably better off excommunicated once-and-for-all from an Abiding denomination than seated precariously on the edge of a tokenist pew in a Third Way CRC.
Before arguing that we’ll be Better Together, one might clarify: Better for whom? And by which standard of Goodness will we be Better? For if we’re not unified by mutual love and respect and affirmation, then I see neither Goodness nor real Togetherness. Or by Together do we simply mean sharing one roof, lovelessly married but not quite divorced?
I admire DeJong-McCarron’s request for reasonableness and caution against needless division. But togetherness and unity are two different things. DeJong-McCarron’s one-sided exploration of the issue—his evaluation of the theological issue concurrent with a blind eye turned to the practical, social, and psychological concerns—is incomplete. In the case of LGBTQ affirmation, agreeing-to-disagree is more problematic than a simple allowance for varied theological interpretations. This allowance, in the view of queer Christians anyway, is an acceptance of unacceptance, a toleration of intolerance. Together or not, we do deserve better.
https://www.crcna.org/sites/default/files/summary_human_sexuality_report_2020.pdf
Absolutely!