YeKengalé

I had two significant conversations this week that clarified certain matters for me. Firstly, my brother was home from Atlanta and we had an intimate conversation about The Church and Sexuality. I shared with him my encounters with the late Ambassador Peter King, perhaps Jamaica’s most notorious homosexual. I rarely share those stories to avoid being misunderstood. Jamaica’s extreme homophobia (and yes I use that word quite aware of the push back from some quarters, but I believe I am able to defend my usage of it) and irrational stigmatization can make targets of the innocent in like manner as did the Salem witch hunts or McCarthyism. In his turn, Garth shared with me two stories representative of how his views on homosexuality were also shaped by significant encounters he had in the US. Our congruence of perspective, upon reflection, confirmed my conviction that the conversation on the Church and Sexuality does need to expand its ears and eyes to consider more effective ways of being relevant in an evolving society.

His first story was about a co-worker he met when he first migrated to the United States. A passionate Christian, constantly passing out tracts at work and engaging almost every one he met in whatever forum about faith in Christ. Garth was naturally attracted and they began to regularly hang out together, till one day, Garth was shocked to be informed by him that they could no longer have lunch together. He explained that Garth, a newcomer to the bank would not have known, but almost everyone else was aware of his past as a flamboyant homosexual. He was serving Christ now as passionately as he had flaunted his previous lifestyle. People were beginning to talk and he was protecting my brother’s reputation. He confessed to being treated abominably both by family and church. His passion for Christ was an expression of gratitude for the single solace he found in life.

The second story was about a family we had grown up with, the parents were close friends of my parents from the early days of Keswick, which had sparked their lifetime commitments to Christ and to church; their children were the same age of my brother and I and we had spent many a summer at their overseas home, the 2nd generation bonding as the first had. I had completely lost touch with them and my brother was updating me of their story. The eldest boy had become a homosexual and the parents had completely dissociated themselves so as not to condone his choice. After years of rebellion against his church upbringing however, the prodigal son renounced his lifestyle and recommitted his life to Christ, returning both to church and loving embrace of parents. After this however, he became aware that he had contracted AIDS and his parents once again turned their back on him, abandoning him to die alone on another continent, lost to the embrace of parents, far from family and the familiar. The daughter, who was my age, was so utterly abominated by what she saw as her parent’s highpocrisy, that she committed the ‘act’ of what my brother called ‘revenge lesbianism’, (as he assured me she was as straight as a pole before that).

In both cases, what fascinated my brother was the role of Christian religion in shaping these stories by certain particular values and attitudes learned in church. Had they not been socialized by the church, neither of those stories would have necessarily been tragic. We both have similar stories in galore to tell, of broken people, broken relationships, broken families, dysfunctional churches, all which fuel the conviction that the church could only benefit from self examination and re-evaluation.

It was stories such as these fuelling my passion in my conversational ‘dust up’ with Brother Wayne West on Face book this week. I’m known for rather pugilistic exchanges when seeking to ferret out matters of controversy, and I often deliberately argue opposite perspectives to test theses and warrant reactions which I generally find more telling than people’s persuasions. (If actions speak louder than words, I generally find attitudes speak louder than actions.)

Many find the condemnatory tone of church people either deeply offensive or extremely unhelpful – like the burden cast by the Pharisees which none helps them bear. Both in terms of the pastoral care of persons who struggle with their sexuality as well as the evangelism of persons who wholeheartedly embrace modern non-traditional lifestyles, this approach has been more a stone of stumbling than an invitation to Christ or signpost to salvation.

But then Wayne said something extremely clarifying for me. He was neither pretending to be pastor nor evangelist. He was a public advocate in defense of the Judeo-Christian Worldview. As lobbyist, his work was political not pastoral. Let the local churches do their work and leave him to do his. (My framing not his.)

Lobbyists often can be unscrupulous in M.O. because the ends justify the means. The NRA for example works for the commercial interests of the military industrial complex and whatever social collateral damage might be created by their activities (such as mass shootings) are absolutely none of their concern. Wayne’s group has decided that the embrace of the Judeo-Christian worldview by a society is essential to family and social health and the enemies of that position must be defeated by any necessary means, no matter the human fall-out. His single-mindedly round biblical condemnations are strategic. The invocation of shame and guilt, the strengthening of taboo, is not intended to necessarily have any salvific value, it is intended to sway public opinion and affect public policy.

That much made clear, I confess I find more problematic with that construction than helpful, not just as a sentimentalist but as a thinker. To begin with, the invocation of Bible into public policy affairs only has effect because of social programming. That social programming in the Caribbean context was historically introduced as a tool of imperialism as I make the case for in The Dark Side of Christianity. A christianity that intends to be a source of enlightenment and freedom in our context has to be deliberately reengineered and dissociated from its dark past and recast manifestly as a tool of liberation rather than control of the people. However Wayne’s methodology and rhetoric seem to align him most closely with the disposition (and dispossession) of conqueror than liberator as I somewhat expand upon in previously referenced article.

Secondly, what is the Judeo-Christian Worldview? By whose hermenuetic is ‘sexual sin’ /abortion more socially dangerous than economic oppression, or racial discrimination, or social injustice? In the context of our Facebook tussle, Wayne was prepared to soundly condemn and invoke divine retribution against any American who would not vote for Trump, even for given scriptural reasons, because a Democratic vote empowers the LGBTQI and Pro Choice agenda, which apparently is the unpardonable sin, regardless what other judged greater evils might be avoided in so doing. This is great strategic lobbying but poor theology. Whatever arguments there may be about homosexual abomination, does not the same god abominate lying and injustice? If God can use a morally reprobate liar and swindler like Donald Trump as a standard bearer of righteousness for His Name sake, could He not also use a Lesbian like Rachell Maddow for instance as a witness for truth and social justice and political fair play? Does He not delight in using a people who are ‘not a people’ (Lo Ami) as witnesses against his unfaithful people (Ami)? What might stop Him besides a certain kind of moral prejudice? Wayne is no theologian of course nor making any claim of such, but is this not a theological strategy and as such bound to implicate the church and that for which or Whom for which it stands, or should represent?

On the issue of the theo-political, Israel as a nation has pro-LGBTQI policies. Shouldn’t they also as a nation be equally as enthusiastically condemned? But are they theologically exempt? Of course one’s theology doesn’t have to make sense if one is merely employing it as a lobbying tool, but then if theology is invoked and the name of the Church thus implicated, ought it not be somewhat consistent?

Some would find Wayne’s concoction of belief not only inconsistent, or laughable even, but neither representatively Christian nor Jewish (not Just Israel the nation but the 2.3 billion Christians on the planet. And if it is the view of a representatively minor fundamentalist sect within Christendom, then how can it be invoked with the authority of the entire Judeo-Christian mythoplex?

I am aware of entire people groups for whom marital infidelity, or divorce (some argue the original ‘sex sin’, the only one Jesus treats with and arguably the parent sin of all other forms of promiscuity, which till recently, with the introduction of gay marriage, homosexuality was just another version of) has been unthinkable throughout their generations and they would never have even seen a Bible till very recent times. And ironically, along with its introduction by the church would be attended these very evils totally foreign to it throughout history and which Wayne falsely believes that a ‘Judeo Christian world view’ necessarily corrects or ameliorates.

It would seem to me that a more sensible strategic defense of Judeo Christianity would more be targeting the education system than the legal system, which appears less a religious imposition and assault upon those inclined to reject, or those having abandoned or having never been acquainted with biblical teaching.

I could add many more layers of argument to embody the difficulties I have with this strategy, but my chief concern is the fall-out. The collateral damage. The stories of real people in the real world which is really changing and requires a sensible and sensitive response from a church that would claim relevance to the times and not be an albatross around the neck of sincere people seeking to offer hope in Christ’s name to a world in most challenging times.

Maybe some of these matters will be further clarified in today’s conversation. If so, I recommend every pastor, guidance counsellor, soul-seeker and truth seeker to come in person and participate. Only the live audience will have the opportunity to directly join the conversation. Those online will only be able to field questions to the discussants.

Let’s make some more sense of this.

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