It took just a few minutes to read the article about the decision of the Baptist General Association of Virginia to ask a Richmond church to end affiliation after ordination of a gay man for a service mission, and I was transported back to the painful emotional experience of my childhood.
Marinetta Cannito Hjort
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No, I am not homosexual. I am an Italian woman born in a Baptist family who lived in a Catholic country. Being Baptists in Italy, up to some years ago, was to live on the margin of society, subject to religious, cultural and social discrimination. It was painful to be ostracized, to have to “defend” ourselves all the time, worrying about the next insult or subtle denigration somebody would use to degrade us, our faith, our group, our identity. We were aware that our rights were violated, that anyone of us could lose their job in the blink of an eye, but there were only a handful of allies within the population.
The consciousness of my diversity shaped my identity and gave me the lenses through which I see and interpret life, and it is through those lenses that I read the experience of the gay man, Brandon Scott McGuire, Ginter Park Baptist Church and the decision of the BGAV in this regard. Because of my experience of marginalization, I cannot remain silent and look away with the excuse that I am OK and the case does not affect me, my family, my church. From the margins I also learned solidarity and compassion, respect of those different from us, and those we don’t fully understand and somewhat fear.
“The law of the Lord … restores my soul, "says the psalmist (Psalm 19:7), and God’s justice in Christ is presented as a process of healing and redemption, not retribution and revenge. It is a justice that meets the fundamental human need to be heard, accepted and cared for. I wonder if the members of the executive committee of the Mission Board of the BGAV ever had a personal conversation with Brandon. Have they asked him how he feels, how their decision has affected him and the people around him, his family, his friends, the other members of the church, besides the consulted leaders? Have they sat with him and listened to his life story and his spiritual journey?
I also wonder if the BGAV’s criteria to decide who is “in” and who is “out” include the respect of social and economic justice, keeping out of the association those churches supporting policies that discriminate against immigrants and women, policies that reduce funds from education and health care in order to increase military spending that facilitate arms trade and violence.
The purpose of my writing, though, is not to further divide. Instead, I wish to invite the BGAV to create a space where people can safely and respectfully dialogue, where every voice is listened to, despite the different and conflicting views, a space where listening means entering into the sacred ground of the others, recognizing in them the “image of God” — a physical space transformed into a spiritual sanctuary where everybody is welcome, where we can journey together without judgment, in love and compassion, and together pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, open to be transformed by the encounter with God, ourselves and the others.
To “be transformed” means to take a new form, and I believe that this event, though started as a divisive moment, can become an opportunity for a vision of hope and reconciliation announced with a new language. Not a language of condemnation and opposition between “us” and “them,” those who are “in” and those who are “out,” reflecting the image of a distant and absolute God, but a new language reflecting the image of a God of relations, a new language able to narrate the paradox of faith itself: the belief in the possibility that we can affirm reconciliation and healing where there seems to be only separation and pain.
Marinetta Cannito Hjort is president of Transforming Conflicts, Restoring Justice and a member of McLean (Va.) Baptist Church.