Lillian Daniel Talks Torn
I’m a woman senior minister of a large liberal Protestant church in the middle of the conservative Western suburbs of Chicago, where dreams of evangelical mega churches dominate the ecclesiastical imagination. So I didn’t need Justin Lee to tell me that the ex-gay movement doesn’t work.
My congregation welcomes everyone on the cover of each Sunday worship bulletin, with a specific reference to sexual orientation. We do that because we are surrounded by churches that claim to welcome everyone, but then pull them into the ex-gay movement, for bad therapy at best and soul-scathing injury at worst. Sometimes, those refugees limp into our church. But more often, they end up nowhere.
So in the liberal Protestant waters in which I swim, it is not uncommon to hear this plaintive question asked with a sigh, and perhaps also with a touch of condescension, “But why don’t they just come to our churches instead?”
Why don’t they come to my church? We’ll perform your gay marriage. In Illinois, we can’t make it legal, but not for lack of trying. Our children take it for granted that every church welcomes gays, until they hit prejudice in the schools and playgrounds, and realize we are the minority opinion within Christianity. But the teenagers are proud of our counter-cultural stance in conservative Du Page County. As one snarky senior high fellowship member put it, “Our church put the “bi” in Bible.”
Having never been a member of a conservative church, I scratch my head at the gullibility of Christians who line up to hear the next ex-gay phenom doing victory laps around the Christian speaking circuit. I marvel at these guys’ ability to reproduce themselves each time another speaker gets caught with his pants down. But my world is not Justin Lee’s world.
And Justin Lee loves his church. And when I say he loves his church, I mean he loves it so much so that he wants to change it.
His memoir makes it clear that he delights in praise songs and evangelical worship. And as for coming to my church, he is no fan of the ultra open churches, which he characterizes as too quick to depart from doctrine and too quick sacrifice a relationship with Jesus on the altar of inoffensiveness. That’s not how I would describe my church, but I do understand the ways in which people love the worship practices that have shaped them, even when they have been hurt.
Having experienced prejudice in the evangelical world, Lee is still passionate about its many strengths. And it’s that evangelical church he seems to be talking to the most in Torn. At first, this book seems to be aimed at LGBTQ evangelical Christians. But by the end, it feels like it was written more for their parents, their grandparents and, most of all, for their pastors.
Because of that, the book has a sweet tone that bends over backwards not to be strident or to shock. Lee’s prose on the subject of sexual attraction is so wholesome it could read with a glass of milk and cookies while listening to Karen Carpenter sing “Close to You.” He lays out his dream of life long companionship so tenderly; you’d think he was a middle-aged marriage enrichment leader instead of a college boy. I have to admit, I kept wondering if the kid was ever going to get to have sex.
But Lee came early to the mature understanding that eludes your average college student: our sexuality is so much more than the sexual act. His exploration of celibacy (his own in college and that of other adults he knows now) is respectful and serious, and comes out of his evangelical tradition.
Today, years later, Lee is a spiritual leader who makes a compelling case for setting aside the language of the culture wars. He is determined to keep two key groups of Christians within the Gay Christian Network – one he calls, “side A,” who are open to being in gay sexual relationships, and “side B,” who are gay but choose to remain celibate. Surely, I am not the first to note that in trying to avoid polarizing terms, “side A” gets a way better grade than “side B.” But Lee’s genuine desire to keep both these groups in conversation sets his project apart from others, as does his consistently gentlemanly tone.
And here, his gentle analysis convicted me, as a reader from outside his tradition, yet another sinner prone to smugness. I recall with some chagrin a conversation I once had with a Catholic feminist nun I worked with on social justice issues. As we grew closer, she told me she was gay, which I immediately interpreted to mean she had a partner. After all, why else would she tell me? When I said something that revealed my assumption, she was clearly offended. She took her celibacy seriously, even if I had not. I now see that she was a “side B” Christian. And I was a liberal Protestant who didn’t get it.
The beauty of this book is that Lee wants to challenge all kinds of Christians on the ways we don’t get it. It’s not enough for liberals to sit comfortably in their own little swimming pools and say, “Come on over, jump in! The water’s fine.”
And it’s not enough for the evangelicals to throw up their hands and say to their gay members, “Love the sinner, hate the sin. And if you don’t like it, go somewhere else.”
It’s not enough for openly gay Christians to rejoice in their relationships and see everyone else as repressed. And it’s not enough for celibate gay Christians to see themselves as more pure.
These self-righteous polarities are not working for us, in the church or outside it. Hence, Lee’s conciliatory and generous tone.
But if it were not for the battles waged thus far, would there even be room in our culture for a gracious book like this? This past election, four more states passed gay marriage. Public opinion is turning, and it’s turning in the evangelical church of Lee’s upbringing as well. None of that happened by accident.
Perhaps it is because of so many fights hard won that Lee is now able to move into more nuanced territory with this grace-filled memoir. It’s a Biblical model, after all: first, the tearing apart, then, the repairing.
And of course, we do not do this work alone. Torn is not the last word, but another beautiful beginning in God’s ongoing story of rift and repair.
See this on The Huffington Post.
Im no longer a believer in Christianity and theism in general; nor I hold any longer any sentimentalism about my lost of faith in that. But I want to make an observation.
It seems to me that the analogy of the victim of domestic violence applies to many Christian gays.
Many victims of domestic violence claim to “love” their abusers. Many stick to it while telling themselves that in the future it will be different… other just fear change… fear having nowhere else to go. Many blame themselves for the abuse they receive (it’s my fault ‘cuz I didnt do this the way he wanted me to do it).
It’s an abusive relationship.
Yet, I see the same in Christianity’s in general. Your god tells us that we are “nothing” without him (her?), he (she?) threatens us if we intend to leave him (her?), he (she?) tells us that we dont deserve his (her?) love, he (she?) tells us “you are never going to find someone as good as me”, “You are a terrible person and you can only be better if you are with me”…
I see that you’ve realized that you are a minority in Christianity… that you dont have 2,000 years of Christian history on your side… Why you guys still want to cling to that religion? Why you want to pay lip-service to that religion?
Elisaul,
Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your observations. I fully appreciate your decision to walk away and your observation of many Christians and the church in general. Our opinions might be different, but I respect yours and actually agree with some of them. We have indeed made the faith irrelevant in part.
But I don’t want to paint everyone with the same brush. There are different reasons for staying and everyone’s situation is different.
I do want to point out the faith I hold on to is not a result of disfunction. I, like you, walked away. I was angry and hurt and fed-up. I am not making those assuming these were your reasons as well – those were my experiences alone. When I came back, over a decade later, it was with a different understanding and a faith in Jesus, not the religion that bears his name, that drew me back in.
If you would be interested in talking further, I would love to hear your experience and actually talk about the possibility of you writing a blog post about your thoughts for us. Interested? wendy.grisham@hbgusa.com
Elisaul Rodriguez commented: “It seems to me that the analogy of the victim of domestic violence applies to many Christian gays. Many victims of domestic violence claim to “love” their abusers.”
I don’t think the analogy works.
First, no one should stay in an abusive relationship, with a person or with a church.
But churches are not individuals. And churches are not monoliths.
They are complex diverse communities filled with people of different points of view. We are always shaping and changing each other in community, for better or worse.
Many people have reformed churches by staying in them. Others have changed them by breaking away and forming or joining new ones.
But when Elisaul Rodriguez writes to me about “your God,” what follows is not anything that I recognize from my own church experience, or from anything I wrote, but rather a caricature.
I can’t speak for every church member, but speaking for myself, if there’s anything I cling to in church, it’s the people, not the religion.
Community matters. And sometimes, it’s worth fighting for.
Reformers are not victims.
This is your statement
“I can’t speak for every church member, but speaking for myself, if there’s anything I cling to in church, it’s the people, not the religion.
Community matters. And sometimes, it’s worth fighting for.”
I believe that God brings a community of christians together to worship God, and to help one another in their christian walk. Although you were half correct, about not clinging religion, because religious people put Jesus on the Cross. What we should always cling to is Christ Jesus, He dead to reestablish a relationship with God the Father, so we may come to learn about our heavenly Fathers unconditional Love for us. People we fail us, but our Heavenly Father does not know the meaning of failure. God wishes for everyone to have a intimate relationship with Him, through prayer and the Bible. In may prayers, I ask God to teach me to have a better relationship with Him, my Heavenly Father Who Loves me with an Unconditional Love. edwinpurchase@gmail.com
What do you call a person who is having sex out of his marriage. Adultery right. Thousands of years, it is still adultery, the adulterer would like to change the name to make it sound more fun but we still call it adultery. Homosexuals are homosexuals, gay refers to a happy person, you may try to cover up the perversion by calling it gay, but before God it is sin. When you call yourself a Christian, you are saying you are a Christ Follower, & if you are a Christ follower, you no longer living for the perversions of the flesh, but your are being transform by the Spirit of God. Read Roman chapter 6, 7 & 8. As a christian, I am not here to help you feel good about your sin, what ever it may be, but to make you aware how it displeases God and to come alongside you in prayer and to demonstrate Gods Love. Gay sounds better then Homosexual and in your video you used homosexual most of the time, why?
I find it interesting which sins people worry the most that other people are “feeling good about.” They often are the so-called sexual sins, and the “sinners” get portrayed as having more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
But if you read Justin Lee’s book, he makes the point over and over again that his sexuality was not a choice and nor was it much fun coming out.
And as for those who “came alongside him in prayer” while simultaneously telling him he was displeasing to God, they come off like the people Jesus argued the most with.
I wonder how many people who insist that everyone read the very few Bible passages on homosexuality, would also demand that we read the hundreds of passages on personal wealth.
Do they approach every first time property owner at a real estate closing with the demand that they read Jesus’ instruction that we give it all away?
While Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, he said a great deal about those who cast judgment in God’s name.
We all interpret scripture all the time. We make choices about how to apply those words to our lives, whether it’s about eating shellfish or homosexuality. The people Jesus and Paul spoke to had similar struggles, with circumcision and table fellowship. They were trying to be faithful as they worked with ancient texts in a changing world.
I appreciate the book review, Lillian – I shall read it!
I also appreciate your quandary.
I’m gay & married, and both my husband and I come from Evangelical (even Pentecostal!) backgrounds.
We’ve experienced everything you’ve heard from everyone else, tried the ex-gay thing, did our dead-level best to be straight, finally left the church and came out, and now continue to experience plenty of rejection and anger from the more conservative members of the church.
But, thankfully, like Lee, we understand where many of these fear-driven evangelicals are coming from. And so, most of the time we have grace for their hurtful and silly behaviour.
And we’ve been surprised by how many from the evangelical world have been celebrating our gay marriage (We’re in Canada, so it’s all nice and legal).
It’s an interesting time for the evangelicals right now. Many on the inside aren’t drinking the “gay is evil” kool aid anymore.
Anyway, finally to my point:
Perhaps you weren’t seriously asking, but I want to say this anyway – the reason we’ve hesitated becoming involved in a theologically progressive church is we find the worship services tend to lack passion, energy, quality & focus.
I don’t understand why liberal churches, with a wonderful embracing message of God’s love, goodness, kindness, acceptance, aren’t more enthusiastic about it. The music tends to be dull. Usually there’s a decent organist, but attempts at contemporary are typically not well done.
See, the Pentecostals have invested. They KNOW how to make church be a quality experience. (It helps to have the ever-present threat of hell as a motivator, I suppose… Adds to the drama and the budgets nicely.)
Now, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate elements of traditional form and liturgy, but I admit, I miss the well-done production of those theologically-stunted yet musically-forward days…
So my quandary is this: Why do liberal churches have nice-but-dull services that over-protect stuffy form; whereas the theologically conservative ones have much more freedom from form?
Maybe your church is different. Maybe the music is fantastic, the production values are high, the speaking is great and people love their worship experience there.
And if that’s the case, I’m coming to Chicago to see how you do it.
“Theologically progressive church …. worship services tend to lack passion, energy, quality & focus.”
Is that what people want? “Quality” doesn’t really fit in there, but anyway…
Some people might want worship services that invite calm, quiet reflection. Simple, nonenergetic forms, movements that don’t draw attention to the process itself but position the attendee to concentrate on the message.
“High production values”?? Should that be a metric for amateur church musicians…
I have called myself a recovering Catholic for over thirty years, before it became a catch phrase. I am many things,among them, a lesbian, happily celebrating 18 years with my beloved life partner. Raised in a strict Sicilian home, I was not allowed to date all through high school. When I started college, I started dating, but never clicked with any of the men. When it became clear to my mother that I was having a number of one-time only dates with guys, she pulled me aside and said, “Camille, he doesn’t have to be Sicilian – as long as he’s Italian.” A few years went by and she pulled me aside again, “…so he doesn’t have to be Italian, as long as he’s Catholic.” A few more years…through gritted teeth, an eye twitch and thinning hair from worry that I might never marry, my mother said, “…Jewish boys make good husbands.” Then it was “…as long as he’s white.” And finally…. “as long as it’s a man!” So just for fun, on my 35th birthday I brought home a black, Cuban, Jewish woman. My mother clutched her chest and said, “Oh, my God, she’s all of them!” I jest, but only a little.
Feeling a need for spiritual community, I have explored a number of different churches throughout my life. For a time I even considered becoming a minister with my own church because I am a speaker who is passionate about delivering a message that is both enlightening and entertaining. As a child, sitting in church, I would imagine myself giving the same sermon, but with a decidedly more dynamic spin. It seemed that a third of the congregation were bored, some were asleep, and the rest merely sheep.
I become aware of Lillian Daniel via a television program I saw yesterday – Spiritual but not Regigious. I just ordered her book and am eager to read it. Wish her/your church were here in South Florida!
Brava, Rev. Daniel, Brava!
Camille you should start your own blog; that first paragraph had me laughing out loud.