I look forward to many things in the church week, but perhaps few as much as the weekly Tuesday Bible study at noon. I have led this group ever since I first came to SSPC eight years ago, and while the participants have rolled over a lot over the years, it’s surprising the overall consistency. A core group has been with me almost since the beginning.Read More »The Priesthood of All SSPC-ers: The Blessing of Tuesday Bible Study
On a recent Tuesday, a group of 15 students, ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s, were gathered around a table in St. Stephen’s Eastminster Room. They were comparing the Book of Job in the Bible to Archibald Macleish’s brilliant poem/play JB. How did Macleish’s post World War II rewrite of the biblical book that asks why God allows suffering give us insight into Job? How did they differ? The discussion was lively and insightful. At the table were a varied group–a faithful older lady who is a dedicated volunteer, a PCUSA missionary, a young man who teaches English at a high school, a middle-aged administrator on his lunch break, an older couple, one of whom is in a wheelchair, and a formerly homeless woman originally from the Bahamas. The energy is palpable.Read More »Tuesday Bible Study
A Canterbury Tale
By the end of my sophomore year at Hampden-Sydney College, Inter-Varsity, our official campus fellowship group, was becoming more exclusionary and judgmental. There were standards that brooked no room for questions or disagreement. I was increasingly frustrated for my friends in IV who had questions, or were troubled in their souls, or who didn’t toe the fundamentalist line, or who weren’t quite pretty enough, cool enough, or secure enough in their faith to fit the IV model. Don’t get me wrong, there were many good, faithful people in IV–but the tenor of the group had become increasingly “Us against Them”–us against the “liberal religion professors,” us against the fratty boys, us against the Creeping Religion of Secular Humanism. Us against the world.Read More »A Personal Journey, 8: God’s Kingdom of Forgiveness
Real Evangelism
A couple of years ago, I was invited to serve on a clergy panel of Equality Texas, a group that advocates for LGBTQI2-S rights, at a Texas Freedom Network conference. I was honored to be asked. Despite the fact that there were several break-out groups and panels, I was astonished at the heavy attendance to our clergy panel.
It was a room full of hurt and pain. There were men and women who’d been raised either Roman Catholic or in a fundamentalist faith, and thought of themselves as Christian, but were ostracized because of their sexual orientation.Read More »A Personal Journey, 7: Paul, the LGBT-Rights Convert??!!
What’s A Christian, Anyway?
My sophomore year in college, I was having issues with the leadership of Inter-Varsity, the fellowship group, of which I was an officer, and which I would soon leave. I started to feel the leaders were too wedded to rules and regulations at the cost of the Gospel. I’d been challenged by a fraternity president when I’d accidentally said, in line with our IVCF philosophy, that “Christians and fraternity guys share some common goals.” He’d been incensed. “I’m a Christian,” he said, “and a fraternity guy. Who are you to make that distinction?” The criticism had stung.
Rules are Cruel
The most pernicious and un-Christian way that Christians use Scripture is as a rulebook. This is legalism, and it goes against the very spirit of the teachings of Jesus and of Paul, both of whom were intense critics of any use of Scripture or religious observance as a way of putting barriers between God and human beings.Read More »A Personal Journey, 4: The Blasphemy of Legalism
Some time after seminary, when I was serving my second parish, in rural Virginia, I was in a regular case study group of pastors and counselors led by a Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor. One participant was a very sharp Christian counselor. He presented the case of a young man who came in and confessed that he was gay and wanted to leave his marriage. I can’t remember what the counselor told him, but he explained to us that his philosophy of counseling was that the Bible was like a mathematical formula, into which you plug the variable of a human life, and then you get the answers you need.
We immediately challenged him on this. The Bible is not in fact a formula, or a manual like a car’s manual, or any sort of mechanistic analogy. And people are not variables in God’s formula for life.Read More »A Personal Journey, 3: Theology “In The Flesh”–The AIDS Crisis
In 2011, the PCUSA officially ended its policy of excluding gays and lesbians from ordination. This was a long, hard-fought battle for many of us, but there was no time for celebration, because there were casualties. Our evangelical brethren and sistren have started leaving the church, claiming that the PCUSA had transgressed the bounds of Biblical morality. One of those leaving was a dear friend from seminary, a man I love as a brother, but who believes, as does his church, that the PCUSA had strayed from Scripture and traditional Christianity in a profound way.Read More »A Personal Journey, 2: The Bible and LGBT Issues
Former PC(USA) moderator and prolific blogger Bruce Reyes-Chow has started a petition drive called “There is more than one version of Christianity!” His point is that there is a great deal of diversity the Christian family. Christians need to be more tolerant of one another and the media and culture need to recognize Christian diversity, too.Read More »Big Tent?
