By Bob Allen
Simply denouncing acts of overt violence against gays without addressing the underlying message that people with same-sex attractions are abnormal and inferior to heterosexuals is not enough, a gay Baptist minister argues in a recent Religion Dispatches article.
Cody Sanders, a graduate of McAfee School of Theology now pursuing a doctorate at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas, lamented the recent suicide of a Michigan teenager who had just told his mother he was gay as evidence of “ministerial malpractice” going on in American pulpits.
Sanders, a featured speaker at last April’s [Baptist] Conference on Sexuality and Covenant co-sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Mercer University’s Center for Theology and Public Life, said people discuss malpractice by clergy less than other professions. When they do it usually refers to cases of criminal child sexual abuse that have come to light in various denominations in recent years.
He applied the term to the well-meaning but misguided belief that violence both committed against LGBT persons and the self-loathing that causes gay teenagers to take their own life will go away if churches just learn to “love” people who are gay.
“Love” covers a multitude of meanings in various religious traditions, Sanders said. Churches that practice “reparative” or “conversion” therapy aimed at “normalizing” gays by changing their sexual orientation say they are motivated by love and compassion.
Other congregations are more “accommodating” to people attracted to members of the same sex. Some are the “silent type” that loves and welcomes everybody without getting into specifics. Others are the “vocal type,” which intentionally include gay people in structures like leadership, ordination and marriage already enjoyed by straight folks.
Sanders said “accommodation” is helpful, but he called for a broader vision of love “supported by a robust understanding of justice, concerned not only with the wider distribution of privileges but also with the more fundamental inequality of some having to grow up with the marks of insult and hatred being written onto their bodies.”
Sanders cited several examples of what he means by “ministerial malpractice.”
–“Negligent attitudes of clergy and congregations concerning the violence being enacted upon queer lives, not just the violence of bullying, but the persistent injury to the bodies, psyches and souls of queer people.”
–“The youth minister who invites representatives of ‘ex-gay’ ministries to speak to teenagers because these ‘practices of love’ are theologically responsible, despite evidence of their destructive power.”
–“The pastor who knows the realities of violence enacted upon queer lives and is deeply concerned, but who, nevertheless, avoids any mention of sexuality in the pulpit so as not to upset parishioners.”
–“The theological scholar who prevaricates in public when asked about concerns of justice for queer lives — not even out of a sense of personal conviction on the matter, but in order to protect a public career: speaking invitations, book deals.”
–“The congregation that skirts around open discussions of queer affirmation, inclusion and justice, because they don’t want to become a ‘gay church’ or (more liberally) they don’t want to be ‘defined by that one issue.’”
Sanders discussed the article Dec. 15 in an interview on the State of Belief radio program with Welton Gaddy, head of the Interfaith Alliance and an ordained Baptist minister who serves as pastor for preaching and worship at Northminster (Baptist) Church in Monroe, La.
Sanders told Gaddy he has long been concerned about gay teen suicides, and began writing and speaking publicly on the topic after a string of highly publicized such deaths in 2010. He has also made it an item of research in his pursuit of a Ph.D. in pastoral theology and pastoral care.
Sanders described the problem as “fists with footnotes.”
“We are aware of fist bullies that attack queer lives on a daily basis in schools, in society, but we often aren’t aware of the footnotes that those fists come with,” Sanders said. “The physical bullying and the violence is a citation of the larger social and religious discourse that mentions the queer self as sick or sinful or an object of disgust or derision.”
“The words don’t even have to be said,” he continued. “We all already know the reason that queer people become subjected to violence and bullying.”
What is less obvious, he said, is how the “fists with footnotes mentality” affects the psyche of adolescents trying to square same-sex attraction with a healthy image of “self.”
“What I’m suggesting in the article is that we need to sort of revisit these practices of love,” Sanders said, “to re-imagine these practices of love so that they are supported by a more robust notion of justice that takes into account the effects of multiple levels of violence experienced by queer people in our society.”
In addition to his studies, Sanders is editor of the forthcoming revised edition of Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Resource for Congregations in Dialogue on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, published by the Alliance of Baptists, the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, and the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.
Previous related story:
Speaker says churches can learn from same-sex couples
Other commentary by Cody Sanders:
On gay rights, is there common ground?