I’m also a United Methodist.  My grandfather & great-uncle were Methodist.  My parents chose United Methodist churches when I was growing up.  I attended the same United Methodist Church for more than 20 years before heading off to seminary at Claremont School of Theology.

I resonated early on with the idea that God is one who expresses love rather than anger or hatred or contempt, and God calls all of humanity to do the same.  I was most moved by Jesus’ final teaching in the Gospel of John when he gave that new commandment:  love each other, and that’s how people will know who you are.

Like a good Methodist, I think that the ancient and sacred Christian texts have everything I need to figure out God’s message for the world.  As a pastor and a preacher, I am a student of the Bible and continue to read and study.

And it’s hard.  It’s really hard to figure out what’s written there because it challenges me and it makes me think and it forces me out of my comfort zone and it transforms me.  God transforms me.  And I can’t help but keep working at it, because the more I do the more I become a better person.  That’s the way I think about it.  That’s the way I experience it.

I recently read a blog that made me see that I’ve been somewhat of a hypocrite, though.  I haven’t been doing all I can – as informed by sacred Christian texts – to show the love that Jesus teaches and that God calls me to give.  I haven’t been open to God’s transforming work as completely as I could be.  I haven’t been showing the world who I am because of the way I show love for all of humanity.

I have been silent in the face of exclusion and condemnation.  I’ve been afraid of offending people.  I’ve been afraid of pissing people off.  And this stops now.

The blog was from Dan Pearce’s Single Dad Laughing site titled I’m Christian Unless You’re Gay.  It’s an excellent read.  Please check it out.

He writes of judgement, hatred, and bullying for any reason and how it’s completely against the tenet found in a number of religious traditions to express love to one another.  He specifically discusses the Christian (and I see it from other religious and non-religious traditions) abuse of gays and lesbians.  And he’s right.  I see it.  All the time.

And I’ve been silent.  I’ve been afraid to say something.  And this stops now.

I’m a Christian pastor who loves the LGBT community.  I’m a Christian pastor who doesn’t believe that homosexuality is a sin.  I’m a Christian pastor who thinks that gays and lesbians and bisexuals and queers and transgendered persons are not only invited by God into faith communities, but who are essential to the meaning of true community.

And I would be remiss not to note that the United Methodist Church disagrees with me, and instead notes that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Even so, I refuse to be silent.  I refuse to give in to my fear of the response.  I refuse to give in to the fear of consequences.  I refuse to exclude these persons from the Christian community.  Because that’s not love.  That’s not life-giving.  That doesn’t show who I am by the way that I love the world.

Many of my friends will disagree with me.  Many will cite scripture to me.

They’ll reference the creation story in Genesis and tell me that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.  Even though that story is about creation and procreation, about addressing human origin.  It’s not about faithful same-gender relationships.

They’ll reference the Levitical laws, forgetting that we already ignore most of those laws based on Paul’s writing in Galatians that the law has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ or his writing in Romans that we are no longer under the law.  And even so, careful reading of the specific Levitical text seems to show that it upholds patriarchy instead of condemning faithful same-gender relationships.

They’ll reference the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is about gang-rape and fear.  It’s not about faithful same-gender relationships.

They’ll reference 1 Corinthians and Romans, two letters from Paul – who by the way was a very gifted writer and whose Greek is well known for its form and poetry.  But they won’t mention that there’s debate on the meaning of the Greek words used (and that weren’t even translated to “homosexual” until the 1940s).  Careful analysis reflects a likelihood that these texts are likely to reference pederasty (the ancient practice of enslaving young boys who would be sexually exploited).  It’s not about faithful same-gender relationships.

And yet I would still be a hypocrite if I were to say that I have the exclusive (capital-T) Truth of God’s will for the world.  If I exclude persons who disagree with me, I’m doing the same thing as those who exclude persons based on their sexual identity.

My particular passion is about exclusion of the LGBT community, and I won’t be silent.  And I don’t intend to silence anyone else.

Instead, let’s talk.  Let’s have a conversation.  Let’s be respectful.  Let’s show love to one another, because that’s how the world will know who we are.

I’m a Christian pastor who doesn’t think homosexuality is a sin.  Let’s talk.

A friend, classmate, and author named Steven Luff gave me a T-shirt just the other day with that saying on it, and it made me think.  Just how far does Jesus’ love go?  Is it possible that Jesus could really love a gay porn star?  A sex addict?  This last one Steven addresses in the book Pure Eyes: A Man’s Guide to Sexual Integrity, available at Amazon here (full disclosure: if you buy through that link, I’ll get a small kickback… thought you should know).

Does Jesus love gay people like Ellen Degeneres?  Some would say not, and continue that natural disasters like hurricane Katrina are actually God’s wrath because of American society’s acceptance of gays and lesbians (read here).  NOTE:  This example and the next both suggest that homosexuality is a sin, something that I whole-heartedly argue against, though I will not do so in this post.

Fred Phelps (whose website I refuse to link from here) would say that U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan are a direct result of the same.  Still others argue that the earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan were God’s wrath, perhaps a result of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 (read here).

Is any of this consistent with the Gospel message?  No.  Not to me it’s not.  And frankly, I think it gives Christians and Christianity a bad name…

And that’s the thing.  Sure, we can find all sorts of things that point to God’s wrath in the face of humanity’s stupidity.  First-century Jews (and I think some today) might have argued that violating the sacred covenant with God would surely result in divine punishment.  And there is more than a little support for that train of thought in the Hebrew Bible (or the Old Testament as most Christians know it).  And if that were our only source of sacred text, could we argue the point?

But for Christians, that’s not the only source of sacred text.  So given the Gospel text, what’s the significance of Jesus’ teachings or of his sacrifice on the cross?  Don’t most Christians affirm that Jesus taught a message of profound love and even gave his life on the cross as an ultimate act of love for all of humanity for all time?  I – as one Christian – am unwilling to say that Christ’s death wasn’t enough and that God’s wrath has to fill in the gaps.  I’m just not willing to say it.  Because I believe that Jesus loves us where we are and as we are, without qualification and without prejudice.

I am willing to say that Jesus loves gay porn stars.  And yes, I believe it.

And yet it seems to be all we can talk about.  Or more accurately, it’s all we can think about as long as we don’t talk about it except that we can accuse other people of thinking about it or doing it wrong.  Just don’t broadcast it.  During the Super Bowl.  Ever.  Unless it’s a commercial and they paid for it.

Why don’t we talk about sex?  Because we’re very busy hiding it between the thin pages of our bibles.  That way it’s safely hidden from view.  It’s safely hidden in the most scandalous, raucous, kinky, sex-laden book I’ve ever read.

But don’t read those parts.  Those parts make us uncomfortable.

And it’s getting into the uncomfortable parts of faith that Brian McLaren does in his new book, A New Kind of Christianity.  McLaren dives directly and fearlessly into the sex question, spending a great deal of time discussing what is clearly a public hatred of non-heterosexual attraction and behavior.  And he cleverly steers us away from closed-minded rhetoric into thoughtful, scripturally-supported territory.

The reality is, homosexuality has become more of a buzz-word these days, used most often to generate fear and hate.  Residents of California have heard all too often that gay marriage will ruin marriage for everyone, although I’ve yet to hear how exactly that would work.  Conservative Christians will quote from any of 6 passages to condemn homosexuality – although Justin Cannon has written a compelling argument to all of these.  Go Justin.

McLaren correctly recognizes that non-heterosexuality is not the only part of the sex question in relation to faith.  Sadly, we don’t seem to be doing any better even when we avoid that sticky homosexuality thing.  McLaren reminds us of these chilling realities:

• Social anonymity makes secret-sex easy.
• Easy drive-by birth control (as long as you can afford it, and many can) makes us forget that sex can lead to pregnancy.
• The technology of the condom and of medicine make us forget that sex can lead to STIs.
• The average marriage age is going up while the average age to hit puberty is going down.  That’s a growing gap of time for extra-marrital sex.
• Porn is easy to find online.
• Commercial media is all about sex and sex appeal.  Yes, even during the Super Bowl.
• Poverty and unemployment leave people with very little to do.  And if you don’t have much to do, doesn’t sex sound good?  Even though you can’t afford birth control.  Nor do you have the $$ to support children who will then grow up in poverty & repeat the cycle.

But don’t talk about sex.  That’s for private conversations.  That should be talked about at home.  That way it’s safe.  And in the words of Dr. Phil, how’s that going for ya?

I don’t think it’s the gay Christian who’s damned (or the gay pagan, for that matter).

If there’s any place at all to talk about sex, shouldn’t it be in our churches? Doesn’t it sound better to talk about sex in the context of God and spirituality?  Doesn’t it sound better to teach appropriate love and compassion rather than hatred and divisiveness?

Because when I read my Bible, that’s what I find.  Yes, there’s scandal.  But that’s not all.

This file is in an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.  If you need the free reader, click here.  To download the paper, click here.

But to be honest, I don’t want to talk about that right now.  I want to talk about the backlash.

I’m beginning to hear more and more about the anger at the faith-based organizations that actively and even financially supported Prop 8.  The cry I’m hearing more and more is to “take away their tax-exempt status!”  Or, “what happened to the separation between church and state?”

I’ve only done a little research on the separation clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”  How I read that is that there won’t be a nationally established or declared or financially supported religion.  I don’t read it as a law that faith-organizations don’t get to have a voice.  I don’t read it as saying that persons of faith can not or should not be guided by that faith even if they’re in elected or appointed positions in government.

So what might the founders have thought?  Keep in mind that all the founders were Christian and even Protestant, and – although they were rebelling against a nation that had proclaimed a national religion – I’m not sure they ever envisioned divisions beyond the various denominations within Christianity.  And even in that context, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their “legislature” should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

If we look even deeper into history, I argue that even Jesus himself spoke out politically.  I think that in speaking out against the scribes and pharisees he was making political statements.  I think that in setting aside the purity laws when he ate with prostitutes and tax collectors, he was making political statements.  I think that in preventing the murder of a woman for committing adultery – completely appropriate according to Jewish law of the day – he was making a political statement.

Now, some would argue that this had nothing to do with government but with religion.  But remember, at this point in Jewish history, the secular and political structure were combined!  Yes, the Romans occupied the area, but much of the social and political decision-making was left to the Jews themselves (which was common throughout the Roman empire; it’s how they maintained control).

So with this in mind, do we argue that faith-organizations should not have voice in politics simply because we disagree with their theology, because we disagree with their conclusions, because they’re flat-out wrong?  Keep in mind that shutting down all political voice shuts down both sides of the conversation.  I myself attend a church that organized phone banks and had a sign out front all that spoke against Prop 8.  Should this church lose tax-exempt status too?

I don’t have an easy answer to this.  I invite dialogue.  Please share your thoughts…