The "Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic" Argument for Queer Acceptance

Image text: "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. - MLK" Image source.

In my post about the book "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals," I said that while reading the beginning part of the book, I felt surprised at the way it introduced its "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" and then claimed that this line of interpretation does NOT lead to acceptance of same-sex relationships- I was surprised because I've heard queer Christians and allies make an argument along those exact lines. How could the book say such an argument wouldn't work? (Turns out the answer is, the sections in the book on homosexuality are extremely shallow. There's a lot to be said, and the book just doesn't say it.)

In this post, I want to point you to where you can read about the "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" in support of queer acceptance. (Not just related to same-sex relationships, but acceptance of all queer identities.) For the most part, I've learned about this from the Slacktivist (Fred Clark), so I want to post a whole bunch of links from his blog here:

Overview of what it means to read the bible from this perspective:

Don't Look At The Finger 

‘Are We Capable Of Welcoming These People?’ 

Come hear the music. Come join the dance. "He heard the music and he wanted to join the party, but those 'scriptural prohibitions' wouldn’t let him. I’ve heard that same frustrated, constrained longing to dance in many other voices over the years."

Maybe God Is A Better Person Than You Think

"You can't pick and choose people":

‘You Don’t Get To Pick And Choose’ "I simply do not agree with those who say that love is not the fulfillment of the law. They’re simply wrong. Paul said they were wrong. Jesus said they were wrong. The entire church in the book of Acts said they were wrong."

Jesus Is Not At All Like That (My Video For The NALT Christians Project) 

J.R. Daniel Kirk On The Heart Of The Gospel (This Is Not An Official Statement Of A Stance On An Issue) "The gospel means that no one is excluded. The gospel means that everyone can be a part of the people of God."

Peter's vision of the sheet full of animals:

‘God Has Shown Me That I Should Not Call Anyone Profane Or Unclean’ "'Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?' Peter asks. LGBT Christians have received the Holy Spirit just as we have. To withhold the water for baptizing them, to call them profane or unclean, is wrong — it is disobedient, unloving, hurtful, harmful, unbiblical. It’s a sin."

‘God Has Shown Me That I Should Not Call Anyone Profane Or Unclean’ (No. 2) "'It is unlawful,' Peter said, 'but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.'"

Selfish Gentiles And ‘Shellfish Objections’: Timothy Dalrymple Vs. The Apostle Peter "Peter says that God sent him a vision telling him to welcome the outsiders that his Bible told him should be shunned as 'unclean.' Dalrymple says, No, God was merely telling him that a narrow portion of dietary Mosaic law was henceforth nonbinding for Christians."

Erick Erickson Says That The Apostle Peter Is An Idiot Who Doesn’t Understand The Vision God Gave To The Apostle Peter

Al Mohler Says The Apostle Peter Was Wrong And That’s Why Evangelicals Should ‘Focus On Homosexuality’ 

Evangelical Alliance Responds To Simon Peter’s Dangerous Sermon In Acts 11 

Slavery, Seafood, Sexuality And The Southern Bible "But Peter unsettles things by changing those words, saying instead that, 'God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.'"

The Ethiopian eunuch:

I’m Guessing It’s Named After The Other Philip "'So, OK then,' the man says to Philip. 'I’m a queer black foreigner who works for the government of a Gentile queen. Is there any reason I can’t be baptized?' And Philip baptizes him."

Religious Gatekeepers Would Not Like Philip The Evangelist "Philip knew his Bible. He knew that there were dozens of clobber texts that would have authoritatively answered the eunuch’s question. 'What is to prevent me from being baptized?' But Philip did not recite those clobber texts. He hopped down and got in the water with his new friend."

Circumcision/ it's really rich when gentile Christians try to exclude people:

The Ugly Ingratitude Of The ‘Nashville Statement’ "Here’s the thing though: Paul’s opponents here were not wrong about what the Bible says. They insisted that 'the Bible is clear' in its teaching about circumcision, and it is. (Just ask Zipporah.) This was something that was never, ever optional. Everybody knew this. Everybody had always known this."

Titus Was Not Compelled To Reparative Therapy "The texts on circumcision are not ambiguous and they are too numerous to count. The Bible is eminently clear. It says that people like Titus cannot convert unless they are circumcised and pledge to follow the rules. Paul says no to that. He says people like Titus are his brothers and sisters, his full equals. Paul isn’t just contradicting a handful of obscure clobber-texts, he’s swimming against a powerful main current of scripture."

When Gatekeepers Attack (First-Century Edition) "If the gatekeepers of the circumcision faction and 'the biblical view of everything' had managed to bully Peter and Paul into submission, then Gentiles like myself would be in precisely the same predicament that LGBT Christians are today within evangelicalism."

‘I Would They Were Even Cut Off Which Trouble You’

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Those are the links I have where the Slacktivist goes into detail about this argument. But I've also seen plenty of queer Christians and allies say things along similar lines, though not in as much detail. Basically, the idea that Jesus' message was about inclusion, especially among groups which were marginalized and rejected by society, and therefore in our culture that means acceptance of queer people.

I went to the GCN conference in 2017. (GCN is the Gay Christian Network- it later changed its name to Q Christian Fellowship.) And one of the songs we sang there was "Draw the Circle Wide," and, wow, that was really powerful, that was amazing. It was astounding to me to have a song about inclusion and acceptance of people be sung in a Christian setting like it was a worship song. That's... it's hard to even explain how different that is from my experience with worship songs, growing up evangelical. All the worship songs we sing in evangelical land are about how amazing God is and how we love God so much and we will do anything for God. Not really anything about, uh, the importance of treating people right, or anything along those lines at all. In evangelical land, they always say worship is "just about you and God."

Anyway, here's a youtube video of the song "Draw the Circle Wide":

My point is, queer Christians tend to believe that one of the most important foundational teachings of Christianity is love and acceptance, especially toward marginalized groups. This is the gospel, this is good news, this is the message Jesus preached, this is what Christians should proclaim to the world. This is, ahem, very DIFFERENT from how I understood the main message of Christianity when I was evangelical. And specifically, this is connected to the idea of a "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" because it's about continuing to expand the circle, continuing to accept more and more groups within society and welcome them into the church as full people.

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One more note about "inclusion"

I always hear queer people talk about "we should accept everyone"- but actually, we shouldn't accept "everyone." We should not accept abusers, Nazis, etc... If some leader from the NRA shows up at your church, okay you should welcome them but they will need to repent or else they can't fully participate. You gotta "hate the sin, love the sinner" them.

When people talk about "accepting everyone" what they mean is, being accepting of people's differences *when those differences are personal identities/decisions that don't harm other people* (and/or when those differences are related to health/disability issues that require us to give some extra support so that people are able to fully participate). I guess this is assumed to be obvious, and that's why I don't hear people explicitly spelling it out. Personally, though, I feel that this is a step that is frequently missing in people's logical arguments about acceptance of queer identities, so I'm mentioning it here. 

And anti-queer Christians often make comparisons that are along these lines- like "well if we accept homosexuality then we have to accept bestiality too" really missing the point that acceptance of queerness is about changing from a "we follow these rules because the bible says" paradigm to a "we should act in ways that support other people so they can live good lives, and not harm anyone" paradigm. As if it's about changing from a "here are the bible's rules" paradigm to a "whateverrrrr, there are no rules" paradigm. But, fair enough, because queer people and allies really do go around saying "we accept everyone" when they don't actually mean that- they mean "we accept that everyone can make their own decisions in their own personal lives about things that do not harm others." 

And when I was evangelical and I first heard queer Christians presenting the idea that "sin" should be defined as *things that hurt people* (as Romans 13:9-10 says) rather than just *things the bible says not to do* that was MIND-BLOWING to me. The idea that "sin" could and should be defined that way was not on my radar AT ALL as an evangelical. (I believed that an important component of "faith" was following rules that somehow make sense to God even though they make no sense from a human perspective. Blah. No. Jesus said "by their fruit you will know them." MIND-BLOWING.) So I'm sorta inclined to cut them a little slack if they missed that implicit logical step when they heard people arguing for queer acceptance.

For Christians who accept queer people, a big component is DEFINITELY being able to see with your own eyes/ being able to read scientific research which says that accepting queer people's right to define our own identities and make our own decisions is so GOOD and LIFE-GIVING, while requiring us to repress ourselves is really terrible. I think this plays a huge role, but oddly it's not often mentioned in these arguments about why Christians should accept queer people.

The Slacktivist has some posts which address an aspect of this- specifically, the "why won't you tolerate my intolerance" nonsense. Here's a link: Shaving The Intolerant Barber (A Continuing Series).

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Related:

"Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?) 

Why would it be bad news if ancient Romans had loving gay relationships?

The Christianity of GCN Conference 

We Need Queer Theology

How to Pretend to Welcome Trans People 

Blogaround

1. Police detain 50 after Pride march in Istanbul (June 26)

2. Zhongkao, Not Gaokao, Now the Make-or-Break Exam, Parents Say (June 26) "Part of the reason for parents’ anxiety is the zhongkao’s 50% pass rate as dictated by the Ministry of Education. Roughly half of middle school students go on to regular high schools, with the chance to take the gaokao three years later and be admitted to regular undergraduate universities, while the lower-scoring half either study in a vocational secondary school or drop out completely"

3. Will evangelicals be fooled by the ‘He Gets Us’ campaign? (June 27) Captain Cassidy found a "Christianity Today" article which turned out to be just an ad for the "He Gets Us" campaign.

4. Teach your kids about propaganda, or someone else will (June 26) "Teaching them critical thinking early on is essential. It’s like an intellectual vaccination, giving them a defense against all the toxic memes in the wilderness of the world."

5. When Did Jesus Mention Transgender, Intersex, and Asexual Folks? (June 19) and The Ethiopian Eunuch and Transgender, Intersex, & Asexual Folks (June 22) Very cool to see these posts about the biblical passages talking about God's acceptance of "eunuchs", and how there are similarities between "eunuchs" and modern-day transgender/intersex/asexual people. Obviously there are important differences too- but the point is, in the bible, there was more than just the gender binary and compulsory heterosexual marriage.

6. God Made them Male and Female…and Eunuch: Why the Biblical Case for Binary Gender Isn’t So…Biblical (2020) "Matthew’s Jesus does, however, recognize nonbinary gender in the grand finale of his teaching on divorce in a verse that conservatives routinely omit."

7. Woman Sues Anti-Abortion 'Pregnancy Center' After Her Ectopic Pregnancy Ruptured (June 26) "'Our client was forced to undergo a traumatic, dangerous, and completely avoidable emergency surgery to save her life because she was deceived into going to an anti-abortion clinic instead of an appropriate healthcare provider,' Liss-Riordan said. 'At every step of the way, she was led to believe she was receiving appropriate medical care when in fact she was subject to a campaign of misinformation and unfair and deceptive practices.'"

8. Fall Out Boy - Ghostbusters (I'm Not Afraid) (Audio) ft. Missy Elliott. Okay I'm sure I've shared this before, but here it is again. I love this cover of the Ghostbusters song SO MUCH.

Blogaround

1. My 2023 Reader Survey is still open- go take it if you haven't done it yet. (Survey will be open until June 19.)

2. Only ONE Person Has Solved This Puzzle... (May 12) 2-hours-13-minutes sudoku solve video. My favorite part was, at 1 hour and 30 minutes in, with only 2 digits placed in the puzzle, Simon says, "Maybe this is why people have found this difficult, because they get to this point and then get stuck."

3. Optimum tic-tac-toe (May 26) "[Chat GPT] very strongly prefers to place its marks in the corners, longwindedly explaining how its corner move is a superior strategy, all while I win game after game by placing my marks in the center rows and columns."

4. Journal Club: Why is absent/low sexual desire a mental disorder? (May 24) "The author criticizes the classification of absent/low desire as a mental disorder from three primary angles: first that it doesn’t make sense to have a different diagnostic setup depending on whether someone identifies as asexual; second, that this diagnosis is disproportionately assigned to women, reflecting sexist values; finally, the distress criterion is insufficient."

5. Rare all-white panda spotted in SW China's Sichuan Province (May 27)

6. China's first homegrown large passenger jet took its maiden flight after 16 years in the making — check it out (May 29) Great!

7. Shanghai Metro on the right track after 30 years (May 28) "Meanwhile, the overall length of the city's Metro network, has increased to 831 kilometers, becoming the largest metro system among all the cities in the world, according to Shanghai's Metro operator, Shanghai Shentong Metro Group." The Shanghai metro system has been operating for 30 years. I can confirm, yes, subways in China are very nice. (My photos here and here.)

Sixth Tone also has a series of articles on the 30th anniversary of the construction of the Shanghai subway system:
Shanghai, in Motion (May 28) "'Compared with walking on the street, we feel safer and more relieved after entering the metro station. There, everything is standardized and traceable,' he said, adding that the better tactile paving in stations and along the platform edges is a crucial accessibility feature, particularly for the visually impaired."
Beyond the Midnight Hour (May 29) "Maintenance crews take over to keep the Shanghai Metro running like clockwork for the 10 million passengers who ride it every day."
Building Shanghai’s Deepest Station (May 30) "With the deepest foundation piles reaching as far as 48 meters underground, Chen and his team had no choice but to build the new station at a record depth of 36 meters so that incoming trains could make it to the station after diving under the piles. For safety and energy consumption reasons, official regulations limit subway inclination to a maximum gradient of 3%."

8. Pentecost, Resurrection, and the Chasm of History (May 25) "In terms of early sources, the only vague candidate for such a mass appearance is the Pentecost scene in Acts 2, which as we know it today is not explicitly cited as a Resurrection appearance. But as I will suggest, that is what it was originally."

9. Return of the Jedi (1983) - Ace Mini-Review (May 25) "This leads to an ending that, in its own understated way, is remarkably ace-friendly.  Cinematic and storytelling conventions tell us that the hero’s happy ending should include heterosexual marriage.  And yet Luke, the quintessential hero, ends his story single and without a romantic prospect in sight."

10. China sends first civilian astronaut to space as Shenzhou-16 blasts off (May 29) "It is China’s fifth manned mission to the space station since 2021." Cool!

Blogaround

1. The TRUTH About Polyjuice Potion | Harry Potter Theory (posted April 14) "Let's say you're an adult, and you have the hair of another adult from when they were a child. In that case, would you transform into the adult version of them, or the child version of them?"

2. Birth Control vs J&J Vaccine (posted April 15) A video from an actual gynecologist, here to tell us that all the people on twitter going on about "they stopped the J&J vaccine because of a 1 in a million chance of blood clots, but birth control has a higher risk and nobody cares about that" don't know what they're talking about.

It is so important to do the actual work of checking sources and understanding what specific things are being measured in each statistic. But usually people just retweet things that line up with stuff they already agree with, without doing any of that work, and it spreads misinformation. And I have definitely done this too, retweeting things without actually thinking "is that true?" :/

3. Sapphira is a model of "complementarian biblical womanhood" (posted April 15) "Peter gives her a chance to come clean - to do the right thing by not going along with her husband's plan, by refusing to uncritically obey his spiritual guidance - but instead she opts to be a good 'complementarian,' demonstrating her unwavering commitment to submissive 'biblical womanhood,' and the same young men who buried her husband carry her to her grave as well."

(The follow-up post, 'Biblical families,' an index, is very good too.)

4. The Universal Never-Nude Art Museum Tour Map. (posted 2016) Lololol!

5. The coronavirus is ravaging India. Here's how you can help (posted April 29)

The Bible Stories As I Read Them Were Never Actually In The Bible

Clipart image of Sherlock Holmes looking for clues. Image source.

[content note: discussion of a suicide in the bible]

Here's an interesting article from Libby Anne: How Did Judas Die? Why Evangelicals Seek to Explain Away Contradictions. She talks about a post on Answers in Genesis which "resolves" the supposed "contradiction" between Matthew's and Luke's (in the book of Acts) accounts of how Judas died.

I remember reading the "answer" to this contradiction a long time ago, in an apologetics book. Basically the issue is that Matthew 27:5 says:

So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

And Acts 1:18 says:

With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out.

So like... uh what exactly happened to Judas?

The "answer" from Christian apologetics is that Judas hanged himself, and then his dead body hung there for a while and eventually fell down and burst open.

I've known this answer for a long time. And so, every time I read Acts 1:18, I read it as "Judas bought a field, there he hanged himself, and then after a while his dead body fell headlong and burst open and all his intestines spilled out." As it happens, I had this verse memorized back when I did bible quizzing- so I knew that the literal words written in Acts did not say "hanged himself", but that was still the meaning I got when I read it.

It's only right now, in 2019, reading Libby Anne's blog post, that I am realizing that's not what the Acts passage says.

It's only RIGHT NOW, that I'm realizing, if we just read Acts and not Luke, we would get the impression that Judas took the money he got from betraying Jesus, and happily went off and bought a field, feeling like he'd gotten away with it. But then he ended up accidentally falling off some tall thing that was in the field, and died from the fall. Perhaps this is God's justice- he didn't "get away with it" after all.

Or, well, I'm embellishing- we can't say for sure if he "happily" bought the field, we can't say for sure if this is a little morality story to show you can't actually "get away with it" ... I kind of added those. But reading it as "Judas was remorseful so he went and hanged himself" is also embellishing. The remorse is in Matthew's telling of the story; that's not the way it's told in the book of Acts.

Luke (the writer of Acts) is telling a different story.

And of course, the idea that Acts tells a different story than Matthew is completely unintelligible for Christians who believe the bible is inerrant. Everything in the bible happened in the same universe, which is also the universe we live in. Therefore if one passage says Judas did this and another passage says Judas did that, the correct account of Judas's life would include both. Indeed, if you read the bible this way, you would see it as quite helpful that Matthew tells us Judas was remorseful even though Luke doesn't- if we only had Luke's account, we might misunderstand and get the impression that Judas's death wasn't a suicide. Isn't it nice that Matthew gives us more information, to help us understand what Luke wrote?

Or rather, isn't it nice how we're not actually reading the story that Luke wrote, we're changing it by bringing in details from a different story...

Yes, if you believe in inerrancy, then this is definitely how you have to read the bible. But I don't believe in inerrancy any more. I won't get into all the reasons why; it's kind of too much to put into this blog post (but if you're interested, maybe read my review of Peter Enns's book "The Bible Tells Me So"). The bible has errors, it has stuff that wasn't true at all but was added for political reasons, it has embellishments that the authors made up to help communicate whatever point they were trying to make- and that's not necessarily a bad thing, because ancient readers wouldn't have expected they were reading a 100% true factual historical account. 

And all this stuff about "resolving contradictions" completely misses the point. It makes us unable to actually read the words that are right in front of us and understand the story that each individual author is telling.

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Note: In this post I said Luke was the writer of Acts, but hey maybe that's not true either.

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Related:
The Bible Lied About Lot's Daughters
This Star Wars Fan Theory Is EXACTLY How Apologetics Works
"The Author of Leviticus Would Have Been Cool With It"

For the Sunday School Kids Who Never Heard About "the Curse of Ham" Or "Black Simon"

Simon of Cyrene (a black man) helps Jesus carry the cross. Image source.

[content note: lynching, crucifixion]

So here we are in chapter 2 of James Cone's book The Cross and the Lynching Tree, which EVERY AMERICAN (especially white people) should read. This chapter is mainly about the white American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It's about how, even though Niebuhr's ideas about justice and Christian ethics were very good and powerful (and even served as an inspiration for Cone's own writing), Niebuhr never really *got* it when it came to the issue of racism.

Anyway in this post I'm writing my thoughts inspired by this chapter, but I can't really do it justice, you should all go buy this book.

Let's start with this description of lynching, from page 31:

As Jesus was an innocent victim of mob hysteria and Roman imperial violence, many African Americans were innocent victims of white mobs, thirsting for blood in the name of God and in defense of segregation, white supremacy, and the purity of the Anglo-Saxon race. Both the cross and the lynching tree were symbols of terror, instruments of torture and execution, reserved primarily for slaves, criminals, and insurrectionists-- the lowest of the low in society. Both Jesus and blacks were publicly humiliated, subjected to the utmost indignity and cruelty. They were stripped, in order to be deprived of dignity, then paraded, mocked and whipped, pierced, derided and spat upon, tortured for hours in the presence of jeering crowds for popular entertainment. In both cases, the purpose was to strike terror in the subject community. It was to let people know that the same thing would happen to them if they did not stay in their place.

Yeah. Lynching and crucifixion were more or less the same, but somehow nobody in the white church ever mentioned that to me. Sure, we heard about Peter getting crucified upside-down; we heard stories about various martyrs being killed in various ways- but those were all stories where they were killed because they were very very good Christians, killed for reasons that had nothing to do with race. Killed for their choice to not disown Jesus. Never any stories about someone being killed because the killer hated them for something the victim never had a choice about. No, in the stories they told in church, the victim always got to be a hero- they were offered a way out, if they disowned Jesus, but they chose not to take it.

The white church doesn't talk about the similarities between lynching and crucifixion, and that's a sin.

And another thing: I've heard Christians go on and on about how crucifixion was, supposedly, the worst execution method ever invented. And that's why Jesus lived during the time of the Roman empire- because he needed to suffer the worst possible death anyone ever suffered. I seriously used to believe that. Even though the biblical account of Jesus' death calls this "Jesus suffered worse than anyone else" claim into question- the soldiers broke the legs of the other two crucifixion victims, but not Jesus, because he was already dead. Hmm kind of seems like maybe Jesus suffered less than those other two guys, huh? (Or rather, it's difficult to compare, because we don't know if the other two were flogged and beaten like Jesus was. Either way, nobody should be claiming that Jesus suffered The Worst Death Ever. There's just not evidence to support that. ... Ugh, but I'm cringing remembering me as an apologetics nerd back then, literally trying to defend the claim that Jesus suffered the worst possible death- why? Why did I think that was such an important doctrine? It's not in the bible; somebody just MADE IT UP.)

My point is, I'm angry about white Christians claiming that "crucifixion was the worst method of execution ever invented" while not saying a word about lynching.

All right back to Cone and Niebuhr. Cone highlights how Niebuhr's writing on race was "at once honest and ambivalent, radical and moderate." Niebuhr said racism was "the gravest social evil in our nation," but also said black people should be "patient" while justice came "gradually." Cone says, "Niebuhr's call for gradualism, patience, and prudence during the decade when Willie McGee (1951), Emmett Till (1955), M. C. "Mack" Parker (1959), and other blacks were lynched sounds like that of a southern moderate more concerned about not challenging the cultural traditions of the white South than achieving justice for black people." (page 39)

Cone mentions a situation where, while Niebuhr was teaching at Union Seminary, there was drama at the church he used to pastor because two African Americans tried to join the congregation. Members of the church- both those who supported integration and those who opposed it- wrote to Niebuhr asking for support. He said he was opposed to racism, but didn't feel that his church was "ready" to actually have black members, so he didn't push for them to integrate. He also said he regretted not engaging the issue of race while he was a pastor.

Yeah, so, did you know that all that stuff we learned in school about segregation happened in churches too? I remember learning about white people throwing things at black students when the schools were integrated, but I never realized, hey a lot of those white people also were good churchgoers and would have reacted in the same violent way if black people came to their church.

This discussion about "patience" and integrating churches reminds me of the current controversy over churches being "affirming" toward same-sex couples. I remember reading a blog post (which I can't find now, unfortunately) by a gay blogger about how a church shouldn't just suddenly decide to be affirming without considering how to actually protect queer people- because when members are angry about it, they may react violently toward actual queer people who attend the church. You really need to consider the safety aspect when you integrate- and perhaps that is one of the reasons that some Christians argue for "patience" and for it to happen gradually. But. It is very much NOT OKAY for a church to decide, "we made the decision for you, we decided that our congregation is not ready and it wouldn't be safe for you if we decided to integrate/ be affirming, and that's that." No, you should actually listen to those who are marginalized and find out what they need in order to be safe at your church, and then do it.

And I suspect the primary reason churches want to change "slowly" is that they believe their members aren't bad people, even though they hold biases against a particular group. A lot of them are faithful churchgoers who have tithed and volunteered at the church for years, who do genuinely care about others. But they just believe black people (then) or queer people (now) shouldn't come to their church. But not because they hate them, you see- it's because this is what God said. How are you going to change that without upsetting a lot of those good, nice church people? They're such nice people, they don't deserve to be put through the emotional pain of being told their beliefs about what "God said" are wrong and are not welcome in your church.

Yeah, I can see why a pastor would think that way, but that doesn't make it okay. The actual people who are hurt by segregation should matter more than the feelings of those who hold biases against them. I wonder, though, in a practical sense, how can you deal with that, if you're the pastor? Probably by asking for advice from black people (then) or queer people (now).

And another thing: I've read blog posts (from anti-queer Christians) about how it's so wrong that people compare queer rights to the Civil Rights Movement, because, you see, opposing queer rights is what the bible says, but back then during the Civil Rights Movement, like, people were just racist and that's just wrong and not biblical at all, so ya see, completely different situation.

I'm sure I made arguments like that too, back then, back when I was a good anti-LGBT Christian. I had no idea that Christians- good Christians- used to make biblical arguments in support of segregation and slavery. Seriously. They did. Like, some of that stuff still exists now- I accidentally happened upon it when I was looking for articles about interracial marriage and the biblical concept of "one flesh" (because, uh, I married a Chinese man and I have SOME OPINIONS ABOUT IT) but did you all know that THERE ARE LITERALLY STILL PEOPLE who think interracial marriage is bad and wrong? And they point to Acts 17:26, which says "From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands." White Christians have, historically, taken that to mean that God intended for the different races to live separately. Yes. Seriously. I had no idea, not til I started reading blogs about Christianity and white supremacy, and how the way they talk about "the biblical definition of marriage" is scarily similar to the way they used the bible to defend slavery hundreds of years ago.

And here's another anecdote I have: about "the curse of Ham." Did you all know that, historically, white Christians have taken the biblical account of Noah cursing his son Ham and grandson Canaan to mean that Ham was the ancestor of black people, and that black people are just lower than white people, they're cursed and that's what the bible says so that's that. I remember in college, I attended a church which was really racially diverse, and there was a sermon about how that story about Noah totally does NOT mean that black people are cursed or any crap like that- and that was the first time I had heard about that "curse of Ham" nonsense. (Yes, of course I was familiar with Genesis 9, but I never knew that anyone thought it had anything to do with race.) Like, we were halfway through the sermon before I could even figure out what on earth the pastor was talking about. But apparently there were people in our congregation who had been taught that in the past- "you're inferior because the bible says Ham was cursed" and for them it was really good to hear a sermon about how no, that's not what that passage was about.

So here's a question: One might say that it's good that, as a child, I never learned about how the bible was used historically to justify slavery, segregation, and racism. Like obviously those teachings were horrible, so let's not teach them to kids, right? But that meant I didn't know about the history of white American Christianity. I didn't know how my own religion and culture had been shaped by white supremacy. So what should we teach kids in Sunday school about history? Should we do lessons about "white Christians used to believe blah blah blah but that was wrong"? Like how would that fit into Sunday school curriculum?

We can't just say "they learn history in school, we don't need to talk about it in church" because yes, in history class at public school I learned that people did this or that and used Christianity to justify it, but it was SO EASY for me to dismiss that as "well those people obviously weren't real Christians." The history teachers and textbooks didn't speak evangelical, so I didn't take anything they said about Christianity seriously- in church they warned us that there are a lot of fake Christians, and that "the world" is going to persecute us and try to make Christianity look bad. It would have been a completely different thing if a Sunday school teacher had said "these people were like us, they read their bibles, they had a personal relationship with God... and they were SO WRONG about slavery- how can we learn from this and make sure we're not like that?"

Wowwwww we've gotten way off-topic somehow, I was trying to write about James Cone and now here we are. Basically you should all buy his books, is what I'm trying to say.

Later in the chapter, Cone talks about "Black Simon": "Black ministers, searching for ways to identify racially with the story of salvation in the scriptures, have since slavery times liked to preach about 'Black Simon' (as they called him) who carried Jesus' cross." Yes, so, you know how the bible says Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus' cross? Well a lot of people think he was black. I don't know if it's true or not, but I definitely support this way of reading the bible.

Cone references black reverends and artists who depicted Black Simon. For example, Countee Cullen wrote,

Yea, he who helped Christ up Golgotha's track,
That Simon who did not deny, was black.

Cone writes,

I remember ministers preaching about Black Simon when I was a teenager in Arkansas. Although blacks like to think that Simon volunteered to carry Jesus' cross, he did not; it was, as Niebuhr said, an involuntary cross. The Gospel of Mark says that "they compelled" Simon "to carry his cross" (15:21), just as some African Americans were compelled to suffer lynching when another could not be found.

WHAT???!!!

Wait wait wait wait, sometimes the lynching victim was not actually the one who had done whatever "crime" the white people were all upset about- sometimes they just lynched a different black person if they couldn't find that specific accused person? Seriously?

I mean, like, I knew that the justifications given for lynching were extremely flimsy and often totally false accusations, but wowowowowow.

How could this happen?

All right, one last thing. This whole chapter is about how Niebuhr should have *got it* but really didn't. How it's hard for white people, even when we mean well and aren't trying to be racist, to actually do the right thing and advocate for racial justice. In the words of Jesus, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

And so, my first reaction is, I don't want to be like that. I don't want anyone to write a chapter about how, like, I'm really not helping at all on the issue of racism. But I know that's the wrong reaction to have. It means I'm mainly concerned with making sure I don't get blamed for perpetuating white supremacy- rather than caring about the actual people who actually suffer from white supremacy. More concerned with being called a racist than about the existence of racism itself. Like, what's the bare minimum I can do in order to count as "not racist"?

Yeah, that's the wrong motivation entirely. Instead, I believe that being an ally means supporting marginalized people in the way that they say they need support, and not being concerned with being recognized as a "good ally." Yes, it's certainly okay to have feelings about being told that you messed up or you said something racist, but your feelings are less important than the actual injustice that's happening, and it's not marginalized people's responsibility to make you feel better about those feelings.

-------------

Posts about The Cross and the Lynching Tree (by James H. Cone):

Reading US History Inerrantly
Ending Slavery Didn't Address the Real Problem
For the Sunday School Kids Who Never Heard About "the Curse of Ham" Or "Black Simon"
Dr. King and What Taking Up the Cross Actually Looks Like
"The South is Crucifying Christ Again"
"Strange Fruit"
"The Cross and the Lynching Tree": Conclusion

Blogaround

A fat orange cat proudly stands in front of a painting of 2 fat orange cats hanging out at a picturesque stream. Image source.

1. On the Plausibility and Purpose of Paul’s Sea Voyage in Acts 27 (posted December 11) "If we consider it theologically, however, there are intriguing connections between shipwrecks and criminal guilt in Greek legal and religious thought — connections lost on a modern audience."

2. Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Madame Blueberry" (posted January 27) "This VeggieTales story claimed that it's teaching 'being thankful is good' but instead it seems to be teaching 'wanting things is bad.'"

3. We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated. This is how well your district does. (posted January 8) "But they also found causal evidence that this integration causes "white flight" out of public schools." I remember learning the term "white flight" from high school history class. Like it was this big bad thing that unbelievably racist people did a very long time ago. Well, turns out it's still a thing NOW, and it's something that "nice" white people are doing, while they claim they're just trying to put their kids in better schools.

4. The Elephants in the Room: Rapid Migration and Recolonization of the Earth Following a Global Flood (posted January 16) "Why should the remains of giant sloths—and all other sloths for that matter—be found only in the New World if they migrated from Noah’s Ark in the Middle East? How did they manage to leave no fossils in the Old World while leaving thousands of fossils in the New World? What was their migratory path to the New World and how could these slow-moving, large animals have made their way into the Colorado Mountains in such a short period of time? Why, if they were so widely distributed and abundant just 4000 years ago or less in the YEC chronology, did they then all disappear?"

5. The Two Stories of Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem (posted December 24) and Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem Again: Possible Harmonizing Interpretations versus Probable Contextual Interpretations (posted December 27)

These 2 posts are a MUST-READ for anybody who is or used to be an apologetics nerd. The first is about how the geography of the Christmas story in Matthew is totally different from the one in Luke. The second is about how playing the game of coming up with not-quite-impossible explanations to "harmonize" the 2 passages totally misses the point.

6. The Fall of the Veils (posted 2014) A Harry Potter fanfic featuring a relationship between Harry and Draco. And Draco is asexual.

7. Kesha - "Praying"

8. World Magazine on Andy Savage: “Each Christian must acknowledge, ‘I am the abused and the abuser.'” (posted January 29) [content note: minimizing sexual assault with "we are all sinners" ideology] "But evangelicals do not typically define sin as harm-based. They define sin as going against the commands of God—whether or not harm is caused to another person is irrelevant—and talk of sin as being against God." Yes, what Libby Anne's describing here is EXACTLY what I was taught about sin.

9. Concordance-ism is not your friend (posted January 24) "But it didn’t challenge the overall construct of concordance-ism itself — the idea that we choose what terms to “look up” and thereby exclude every other passage and every other perspective and every other thought, reassuring ourselves that we already knew everything there was to know about something before we even got started manipulating the index to “prove” our prior assumptions."

Blogaround

Cow sitting like a dog. Image source.

1. When the evangelical establishment comes after you (posted July 17) "You have to realize that whatever abuse you are taking from evangelical authorities is nothing compared to the abuse that LGBTQ people have taken from pastors, teachers, parents, and “Christian friends” every day of their lives."

2. When gatekeepers attack (first-century edition) (posted July 17) "It helps, of course, that Peter seems to have corrected himself. There are different ways to place this story into the timeline of the book of Acts, but however that all fits together the end of the story is that Peter got his act together, finding the courage to embrace the Gentile believers in public the same way he had been doing in private."

3. Harry Potter Theory: Why Harry Had To Compete In The Tri-Wizard Tournament (posted August 3) "'Maybe death' is better than 'definite death', is a fact. Seriously why does everyone think this school is so safe?"

4. Theology, history, and context (posted July 23) "One reason has to do with fear. Many Christians have gotten the idea into their heads that their eternal salvation — whether they are destined for Heaven or Hell — is dependent on their having the proper ideas about theology. If one believes the wrong doctrine, one may be damned forever. And thus it is unthinkable and terrifying that one’s understanding of theology might be, in any way, contingent on context, or culture, or any other such accident of personal or national history."

5. Alliance Defending Freedom Through The Years (posted July 24) "The designation [as an anti-LGBT hate group] is a result of ADF’s propagation of known falsehoods about LGBT people over the years (including the conspiracy theory that there is a “homosexual agenda” or “homosexual legal agenda” to undermine “the family” and Christianity), its demonization of LGBT people, its support of criminalization of gay sex in the U.S. and abroad and its continued attempts to create state and local policies and legislation (so-called “religious liberty” laws) that allow Christians to deny goods and services to LGBT people in the public sphere and marginalize LGBT students in schools." Yes, ADF is an anti-queer hate group, 100%. I read their book, "The Homosexual Agenda," back then. I learned all the arguments about how legalizing same-sex marriage will destroy marriage and families. ADF is a propaganda machine which spreads dehumanizing lies about queer people (who, by the way, bear the image of God). ADF is a hate group. Back then, I believed all their bullshit, and I prayed to ask God to stop same-sex marriage from being legal. That memory is one of the main reasons I don't pray now. And I'm angry.

6. Crisis Pregnancy Centers: ‘You May Not Need An Abortion’ Because Maybe God Will Murder Your Baby! (posted July 27) Holy crap this is awful.

7. Bisexual, Not Broken (posted July) "If you try to tell others they are broken and in need of redemption because they experience sexuality outside of your carefully constructed binary box, I will fight you."

8. Medicine's Women Problem (posted July 28) "It takes an average of five years and five doctors for autoimmune patients (75% of whom are women) to get a proper diagnosis. And more than half of those report being labeled as 'chronic complainers.'"

9. The Wicked Problems of Jails and Prisons (posted July 26) "But the trouble in my experience, as Coakley notes in the last sentence of the quote above, is that if a chaplain attempts more than palliative care, and begins to offer theological reflections on the justice of the system, they risk being labeled as politically subversive and kicked out of the jail/prison."

God of Language

If you were the Holy Spirit, how would you make an entrance?

Back in the days of the early church, right after Jesus had left, and the Holy Spirit was coming to live among people for the first time- whatever he chooses for his first appearance is going to say a lot about him, and about the nature of how God interacts with humans and what the church should be like.

What did he do? He showed up speaking every language.

Here it is, in Acts 2:1-4. "When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them."

And this gets people's attention. Turns out there were Jews there from a ton of different countries, and they were all surprised to hear someone speaking their native languages.

And I love this. What does it say about our God, when the first thing the Holy Spirit does to kick off the early church is reach out to every culture represented there by speaking their native languages?

Do you think those people who heard, who were in Jerusalem at the time, couldn't speak Aramaic (or whatever the common language was- correct me if I'm wrong) and that's why the Holy Spirit spoke in their first languages instead? No, I don't think so.

This means that my God is the God of the whole world. This means that Christianity was, before it was about anything else, all about reaching the nations. All about entering someone else's culture.

In this Christianity, there's no room for complaining "why don't they just speak English?" There's no room for mocking other languages. There's no room for my belief in a god who mostly speaks English and lives in the northern US, who knows that the CORRECT climate is one where it's below freezing for about 3 months out of the year.

Christianity's not an American thing.

Okay, wait. Back up. Perfectnumber, what are you even talking about? Why would anyone think that Christianity's an American thing?

Image source.

Okay, point on the map to where Christianity was started. Now point to the US. On the one hand, I feel like I'm making a profound statement, to say "Christianity's not an American thing," because I really did subconsciously believe it was. On the other hand... seriously, look at the map. Why are we even talking about this.

But I did. Because I went only heard about God through a church full of white Americans. (Maybe I'll do another post sometime about how lack of diversity hurts us like this.)

But my God's not an American.

And I thought I was weird, when I discovered China is FREAKING AWESOME and I want to go there and speak Chinese. I imagined God was completely caught off-guard.

"You want to go WHERE?" Image source.

No. The Holy Spirit's presence on earth began in the form of sending people off speaking foreign languages. Not only does God "understand", this is so much deeper into the heart of God, the heart of Christianity, than I ever realized.

I thought I was asking God, "This is crazy, but can we edit the plan for my life? I know you wanted me to live in the US... I know you don't get it, and maybe it won't turn out as good as your original plan, but I would really like permission to move to China."

And I never realized it before, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Because my God is the God of the whole world. My God has no limits, no ignorance, no racism. And the first thing the Holy Spirit did was send people out speaking foreign languages. Unlike everyone else I meet, God does NOT think it's weird that I speak Chinese.

It's more than saying "God understands. God knows every language." It would be much more accurate to say, "God speaks every language all day long." This is such an essential part of who God is, and what Christianity is. He made the disciples speak other people's languages. He didn't say "well they came to this country, why don't they learn our language?"

And this fact just continues to blow my mind. I could write and write forever. I'm really writing to myself- because I'm still not convinced God's response is any different from the responses I get in church, when I tell people I'm moving to China. I'm still not convinced that God's first language isn't English. I'm still not convinced that God isn't sheltered and naive like me.

So I'll just end this post with my favorite bible verse:

使徒行传17：26-27
“他从一本造出万族的人，住在全地上，并且预先定准他们的年限和所住的疆界，要叫他们寻求神，或者可以揣摩而得，其实他离我们各人不远。”
Acts 17:26-27
"From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us."