Sometimes I think the Divine is a woman and She is the moon and her children are fairies. Sometimes I think the Divine is God, male, and that His son was Jesus Christ. These both are so real to me that neither can possibly be false. Here at Prescott College I feel so much safer telling people about my first belief. In the Christian community, I feel safer telling my second belief. Maybe you are thinking I must be full of contradictions, but to me, these things are not mutually exclusive, they are just reality.
I use this example because I am so often torn between identities I have. Today in class we were discussing gay marriage and religion. I am so sick and tired of being met with surprise or hostility when I say “I am gay and Christian”. I am no longer solely Christian, but that is a more complicated matter for another time. I have heard really weird stuff from people about being gay and Christian. Like, from certain anti-gay religious groups, if I was MORE Christian, if I loved God more, He would take away homosexual desires. And I’ve heard from anti-religious folks that I should just give up on being Christian, or remarks that I wasn’t “like other Christians” because I am a same-gendered-loving-woman.
I am in no way targeting anybody in our class as I write this: I believe that the discussion we had ultimately educated people. It is the broader community I am still having issues with. Our class is curious, respectful and open to hearing new information. That is not always the case.
I am many things. I’m a feminist, I’m Queer and I love fairies and mythical creatures (maybe a bit obsessively). I also smile when I think of my First Communion, I still say the Hail Mary in times of struggle and the spiritual experiences I have had in a church setting have been experiences of deep connection with Divinity. I do not want to limit myself, stick a label on and say “this is what I am!” because I am more than one thing and it is all real and beautiful and part of my humanity and I won’t choose because, why should I have to! It is time I stop having to defend my religious beliefs and my sexuality. LGBT Christians/persons-of faith-traditions-conceived-to-be-anti-homosexuality really get caught in the middle of “Us” and “Them”.
I would like to close by encouraging you all to go to a website that saved my faith: whosoever.org. This website is not flawless, and it highlights only the Christian faith (so it does not really speak to those of other faith traditions that are typically believed to be anti-LGBT). But it is a start. Go there, expand your mind.
Whosoever.org
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First of all, stop caring about whether or not you feel comfortable (unless you think you might be subject to violence) and just start owning it. Make other people uncomfortable if they can't accept homosexuality or your belief in faeries. Pave the way for others like you.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I'd like to explain why I don't really understand someone's desire to be an openly homosexual chrisitan. Monotheism is so passe. My (and I think a lot of people who find the whole homosexual christian thing weird as well) problems with christianity and the bible don't arise from me thinking that it condemns gay people and if I found out that the bible didn't condemn gay people I would embrace christianity. I view all of organized religion as like this whole wacked-out, crazy cult that you would have to be more than a little bit ignorant to totally believe in. I mean, don't get me wrong - I completely respect everyone's right to believe in whatever they want - but that doesn't necessarily mean that I respect your beliefs. In fact I think its pretty stupid/ignorant. Science has figured out the origins of life - thats pretty much been religion's last bastion for a while. That should have been religion's death blow. Its like when you're a kid and you think that Santa flies to your house on reindeer and delivers you presents - and then one year you stay up and realize its just your parents - that is a metaphor for christianity. Some people think that Santa still flies on reindeer, some people realize thats bull. Some people who think Santa still flies on reindeer don't have access to the wealth of scientific knowledge about it actually being their parents while chrisitans in the US have SEEN their parents put the presents under the tree and STILL believe Santa does it. And speaking of christmas, we KNOW that "Jesus's birthday" is just a co-opted pagan holiday, same with easter. and we know that even if the bible was divinely inspired it was passed down orally for over 200 years before being written down and even then most people use the KING JAMES edition anyway, which is an edited version of an edited version of an edited version...
sorry christians, but humans are just slightly more intelligent, hairless, upright chimps. I know we like to pretend that we're special, but we're not.
To me christianity represents everything conservative, regressive, archaic, backwards, and illogical. It represents war, death, torture, and corruption. Mostly though, it represents the blocking of progress. the church has a vested interest in the status quo and has been on the front lines of the war against science, knowledge, and reason since they put galileo under house arrest for saying the earth is not the center of the universe. Today, christians are trying (successfully) to stop stem cell research.
Worst of all - christians are a majority in this country and they know it. They have turned a relatively secular democracy into a theocratic dictatorship of the majority. "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine" - Thomas Jefferson.
I'm sorry if this offends you, but in my experience religion just tends to bring out the worst, most crazy, illogical, hateful side of people - not the best.
The way I see it is - if you want to join a cult where the majority of members don't accept you for who you are and under their beliefs think you are going to burn eternally in a lake of fire - go for it I guess. I just don't understand it thats all.
Devin -
ReplyDeleteI have to say that though I agree with you on some points you've made, I take issue with the way you've gotten them across.
Yes -- I absolutely agree that a lot of problems are caused when people latch on to a religion blindly -- just having faith without any skepticism or following their "inner light." Things can get really fucked up and distorted, yes, definitely, in ANY wisdom tradition this can happen.
The term "Christian" carries with it so much baggage that it is tempting to point the finger and demonize all of them together. It is unfair and inaccurate to accuse *all* Christians of fucking up various aspects of society. Yes, Christianity has a lot of ideas that simply don't make sense in our culture and times anymore. But it also has a lot of ideals that are still applicable -- and I think that many people who identify with this faith have been touched by them and therefore still call themselves the C word. Things like compassion, a sense of wonder, charity, humility, etc. are present in the Bible as well -- not all C's interpret it in the same way. And some absolutely give credence to evolution.
Also, I think it was a little disrespectful and dismissive when you drew the comparison between belief in Santa to Christianity. Oversimplifying an issue so deeply complex, individual, and personal as spirituality is limiting.
To automatically assume that someone else's spirituality is bullshit -- that their idea of "God" which may be entirely different than yours, or the traditional one we often hear, is not going to create any helpful or enlightening dialogue.
Anyway, I want to reiterate that I totally get the anger that is informing your commentary -- I feel it too. So many people have lost sight of the beautiful, life-affirming aspects of spirituality and become mobs of dogma disciples.
Sadie (I'm assuming you wrote the first entry) --
Thank you for sharing your unique vision.
I absolutely agree that we can get caught up in a very restricting 'us vs. them' mentality... I think it's high time we break down all these categories that deny our human intricacy... we're all snowflakes, goddamnit. Diverse, complicated, unique snowflakes.
-Kelsey
Wow, I'm sorry I didn't make this clearer, I bet I sounded like a jackass:
ReplyDeleteKelsey, everything you said about my post is 100% correct. By no stretch of the imagination do I consider what I wrote to be the unquestionable truth of the matter or anything like that. My post was not supposed to be an objective analysis of christianity. I was trying to illustrate how I personally view the matter - and nothing more. And, as someone who doesn't really understand a homosexual's desire to be christian I thought it might shed light on why other people like me also "don't get it".
Although really, its more of a "why would anyone at all want to be christian?" rather than a "why would gay people want to be christian?". My views on gay people wanting to be in the military are similar - why would anybody want to join the military?!
Oh, and the Santa analogy - that is honestly how I view it. Yes, it is that cut and dry for me; but allow me to expand (still in the analogy here): If you know that an actual physical Santa doesn't actually literally fly in on reindeer - you can still honor the spirit of giving, togetherness, and love that the holiday represents - without believing in a bunch of crazy impossible stuff.
Okay, folks, I need to intervene here. Keeping track of folks' postings on the blog and the different discussion threads has been very interesting to me, and though there have been a number of instances where I was on the verge of making commenatry (like, the "La Guera" thread), I've held back in the hopes that others' engagement will mitigate and open possibilities of interpretation. By and large, there's been terrific, hope-inspiring, as well as provocative, points raised.
ReplyDeleteThe level of vehemence articulated in the above response to the first post, however, has crossed the line. I tried to make it explicitly clear that the postings on this blog needed to be "productive, generative, and respectful" and, Devin, your response to the initial blog in this thread was anything but that. Kelsey, thank you for your mediating response to him.
I recognize that we all have trigger points to different issues and have diverse ways of initially responding, when those trigger points are activated. That said, this blog space is absolutely NOT the place for your initial rant. If folks are not able to step back, take a deep breath, acknowledge your own triggers/biases/worldviews, and then respectfully, compassionately, and productively come to the proverbial "table of dialogue" in your postings, then do not post here. There are plenty of blogs out there in the cyber-space universe on which you can vent. This is not one of them. For me, this is not a matter of censorship, it is a matter of creating educative and safe space. If that space is violated, I cannot, in good conscious as the educator responsible for this course, allow it to be maintained.
I know you each have it in you to examine your worldviews and recognize that the way you choose to present your arguments has the potential to either open up possibilities for your own and others' learning (and, ideally, shift some of your own dogmatism) or to contribute to perpetuating profound wounding, alienation, misunderstanding, and misinformation. (Devin, your second response - as well as your postings in some of the other threads - evidences your capacity to come into discussions with more tempered and appreciative modes of inquiry, though your assertion in the last line about "believing in a bunch of crazy impossible stuff" returns to the timbre of your first response.)
I will not allow this space to be violated, if folks are unable to follow the guidelines laid out.
Finally, as I am also currently co-teaching a "Globalization, Religion, & Social Change" class and, therefore, have the profound benefit of expanding my awareness on a daily basis of the extraordinary social and environmental justice movements that have been (and continue to be) enacted by peoples of faith, and in deep respect for leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero (both of whom were assasinated for their visionary and emancipatory leadership in the name of justice), I caution anyone who feels justified in making blanket statements about the idiocy of peoples of faith. It is offensive, unjust, and uncalled for. -Jordana