Interfaith
Prop 8 service celebrates equality
Spiritual communities who support marriage equality joined to reflect
and pray together for marriage equality Aug. 10 in the synagogue of San
Francisco's Congregation Sha'ar Zahav. More than 100 people gathered to
pray, sing and hear a series of speakers. Episcopal clergy participating
in this service included the Rev. Jay Johnson, Rev. Tommy Dillon and
Rev. Thomas C. Jackson.
The early evening service drew clergy from Christian, Jewish and
Muslim faith traditions. It was convened by the
Coalition of Welcoming
Congregations, a program of the Center
for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the
Pacific School of Religion.
During the service Rev. Johnson, who serves as the Center's
senior director of academic research and resources, addressed the
question: How can we facilitate healing between the LGBTQ community and
faith communities? His answer is below.
Well…thank God! What a relief to be
gathering here this evening to celebrate a moment in our
struggle for full marriage equality. And what a honor and privilege it
is for me to offer these brief observations tonight as a person of
faith, a priest in the Episcopal Church and an openly gay man who has,
over the years, become a bit queer around the edges.
If you haven’t already, I urge you to read
Judge Walker’s stunning opinion in the case that brings us here tonight.
While I appreciate very much Judge Walker’s clear and articulate
reasoning that civil marriage has nothing to do with religion, I would
argue that his decision has everything to do with religion
because it has everything to do with justice and human dignity.
Making absolutely clear that faith
communities of all kinds have a profound stake in securing justice for
all and celebrating the dignity of every human being would go a long way
toward addressing the question that I’ve been asked to talk about this
evening: “How do we facilitate healing between the LGBTQ community and
faith communities?”
Like the other questions posed this evening,
that’s a big one and I certainly can’t address it adequately here. So
very briefly let me suggest just three steps toward that goal from my
perspective as a priest in the Episcopal Church and from within
Christian traditions.
First, we need always to pay attention to
language. “Religion, faith, and spirituality” will mean different things
to different people. What doesn’t count as “religion” for some certainly
will count for others. We should also pay attention to that word
“healing,” which will not look or feel exactly the same way for
everyone. Let’s not assume, for example, that it’s LGBTQ people who need
healing while our religious institutions are just fine the way they are.
Faith communities need as much healing around these questions as anyone
else.
And I do think that the question itself is a
bit problematic. To wonder how we might facilitate healing between the
LGBTQ community and faith communities at least implies that there aren’t
any LGBTQ people of faith. And of course that’s ridiculous. So how we
frame these questions is important; we certainly do not want to
perpetuate or exacerbate the perceived gap between LGBTQ people and
religion, which has been so hurtful to so many. LGBTQ people are already
well ensconced in our religious institutions, in our churches, and in
faith communities of every kind and always have been.
That said, and second, visibility does
matter. This is something that the so-called “religious right” learned
decades ago and the so-called “religious left” has yet fully to grasp.
As Woody Allen once remarked, 80% of life is just about showing up. We
need even more religious leaders and identifiably religious, faithful,
and spiritual lay people at our press conferences and rallies and
congressional hearings and town hall meetings. And I mean concerning
every issue that impinges on human rights and dignity.
We need visibly white clergy at those
occasions where the lives of our African-American brothers and sisters
are at stake; we need visibly Anglo-religious leaders at our immigration
reform rallies; we need economically secure people of faith showing up
at labor meetings and picket lines; and of course we need more openly,
identifiable religious people of faith showing up to support full civil
marriage equality.
For every straight-identified married cleric
who shows up to support us – like Bishop Marc Andrus, whom I single out
because he just so happens to be my bishop – I know there are hundreds
of others like him. So where are they? Hey, y’all! Come on in! The
water’s fine! And we need you!
Visibility is, of course, rather difficult to
manage. We cannot, for example, control the media; but we can
overwhelm the media. Let’s commit ourselves to making it impossible for
any news outlet to take photos of any pro-LGBT gathering without
including an obviously religious person in the photos. I believe this
matters a great deal. Just having collared and robed clergy in our midst
– even if they don’t say anything – can be enormously healing and
transforming.
And third, healing of any kind will always
rely on education and of multiple types and for different kinds of
audiences. Many organizations have been doing this educational work for
a long time, including the one where I work – the Center for Lesbian and
Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at Pacific School of Religion. Yet
there is still so much more to do, especially in a country where our
collective memory is so terribly short.
How quickly so many people, both religious and non-religious alike, have
forgotten the vital role religious leaders and faith communities have
played in nearly every movement for progressive social change in this
country’s history – from women’s rights, to the abolition of slavery,
and labor reform, to name just a few. Faith-based activism is not new;
it’s actually quite traditional.
How shocking that so many seem to forget that it was the Reverend
Martin Luther King Jr. who called this nation back to the ideals of its
founding, not in spite of but because of his religious
faith. Or that he galvanized this country not just by quoting from the
Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution but also from the
vision of ancient Hebrew prophets, the ones who dreamed of that day when
“justice would roll down like waters and righteousness like an
ever-flowing stream.”
We must not let our own religious
institutions forget that the texts held sacred by Jews, Muslims,
and Christians issue a clarion call to the practice of justice as the
heart of our religious traditions.
And we must not allow the misguided pronouncements of just a few
prominent religious leaders to perpetuate the spiritual amnesia that has
infected our political discourse and social policy-making in this
country. I can think of no better remedy for that amnesia than
education.
Language, visibility, and education – these will take us a long way
toward healing. But let me conclude by being clear about this: religious
leaders themselves bear the responsibility for sustaining that healing
work and they bear that responsibility for the sake of their own
religious and spiritual integrity. Religious leaders must understand the
social consequences of their religious speech; by the same token, they
must understand that silence is not support.
Let me take this a step further and, in the “tradition of boldness” we
always talk about at Pacific School of Religion, suggest that religious
leaders need to understand that “tolerance” is not good enough and
acceptance is only marginally better. Healing the deep wounds inflicted
by religious institutions will happen only when our faith communities
recognize LGBTQ people as a divine gift in their midst – a heavenly,
fabulous gift that, rather ironically, our religious communities now
need for their own revitalization.
When that happens – and thankfully it has already begun – we will be
well on our way not only toward healing but beyond that and more
importantly toward transformation and new life, toward a fresh and vital
vision of what religion, faith, and spirituality are really all about.
May it be so.
|
