Earlier this week, I posted an article on Facebook about a Stella Harville and Ticha Chikuni, a couple who was denied membership at Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in eastern Kentucky because they are an interracial couple.
You can read the article by clicking here.
In the comments, my new friend Jaime asked, “What can I do, how can I have a positive impact as a Christian against this type of hate and bigotry?” I started sketching my thoughts and decided to post them in my blog, rather than on Facebook.
What can we do? That’s the big question. What gets to me at this time each year is the constant, self-righteous whining about “keeping ‘Christ’ in ‘Christmas'”. If there’s anything that’s going to make Christ mad enough to flip over some tables, I’m guessing it’s probably going to be the above article, rather than ‘Happy Holidays’. I also seem to remember that the most famous example of Jesus getting THAT angry took place in a house of worship.
I don’t have the answer to that question. Whoever does will be the next Martin Luther. All I’ve got right now are a few ideas that I’ve been trying to work out in my life. I’ll share them here. If anyone finds them helpful, please feel free to steal them. Again: no answers, just ideas.
1. Honesty. I want to own the truth about how racist/sexist/homophobic I really am. It seems like everybody likes to start these discussions with the phrase: “I’m not racist/sexist/homophobic but…”. But the cold, hard fact is that, half a century after Martin Luther King, I still live in a country where 85% of the people on death row are African American, women make 75 cents for every dollar a man makes, and the suicide rate among LGBT youth is twice that of their peers. It’s like we’ve settled into this pattern where it’s okay to BE racist/sexist/homophobic as long as I don’t SAY I am. As a privileged white, male, heterosexual Christian, I’m thinking it’s time for me to sit with the prophet Isaiah and confess, “Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet I am encountering the face of reality!”
2. Proximity. Our culture has sped up the amount and rate of information exchange to the point where it’s all becoming a big blur that goes by while we stay isolated behind ‘screens’ (kind of like I’m doing right now). We don’t actually have to face each other or get close to one another anymore. We can just blast them in anonymous comments on YouTube. We end up saying things we would never say in the real world. I wonder if it’s really a coincidence that political dialogue became so extremely polarized in the same decade that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter emerged? How many members of Westboro Baptist Church have openly gay friends/family? How many members of the church in the above article have close friends of another race? Speaking for myself, the point when I started questioning my homophobia came when I realized that some people I love are gay. I care a whole lot more about sexism now that I have a daughter. And so on…
It’s hard to hate (or ignore) a group when people you love are part of it.
3. Education. I am woefully ignorant about issues of inequality and established injustice. I find that most folks are. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve become aware of the difference between personal prejudice and systemic oppression. Most folks seem to think that racism/sexism/homophobia has to do with their personal feelings. Cornel West and bell hooks have been most enlightening in helping me recognize that one can have friends of another race and still be racist. I have a lot more to learn if dismantling injustice really matters to me.
4. Simplicity. The flip-side of the need for education is our need to keep the message clear to those who are not educated. The Right seems to claim a monopoly on ‘common sense’, folksy wisdom, and ‘family values’. We tend to show up with charts and figures of trends and projections. All of that is super-important because we need the facts to support what we’re saying, but I’ve noticed that a lot of people eventually get lost and check out of the conversation before we’ve even made our point. We’ve got to find some way to keep it clear, simple, and short.
5. Volume. I was recently listening to Dan Savage talk about how frustrated he gets when liberal Christians come up to him and whisper, “Psst! We’re not all homophobic.” Dan said how he wants to tell them to stop whispering that to him and start shouting it to Pat Robertson. Progressive types (especially progressive Christians) are so eager to appear different from the screaming Bible-thumpers, we hardly raise our voices at all. We sit quietly in our churches and don’t bother anyone else… ever. Well, what if people need to be bothered? To paraphrase Gustavo Gutierrez: Silence is a vote in favor of oppression. Being “liberal” or progressive does not equal “politically correct”. I need to get up off my fat butt, get over my fear of offending someone, get out there where people are suffering, and GET LOUD.
Those are my ideas. Who is with me?
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 
Thank you Barrett. I’m with you.
Wow! Thanks for your response, Barrett! I, too, am with you. Although I try to maintain hope, commitment and perseverence, I, honestly, sometimes let my frustration and, maybe, fear of what I see and hear overwhelm me. You make many wonderful points here and offer a lot of great suggestions. Lately, I have especially been thinking about your point number #2- proximity- and how important it is. I am striving to make the committment to my son to keep him in proximity and personal face-to-face contact with other people. It is important that he connect with, witness, understand, appreciate and celebrate difference. It is important to me that he learn to physically reach out to others who may be in need or, for that matter, just reach out! And not merely by sitting behind a computer screen or some other medium. This is not to say that I do not appreciate what technology has been able to offer in terms of social networking. As a stay-at-home parent who lives out in the country, it would be hypocritical of me to say I haven’t enjoyed the communication I have gotten off facebook and the like. But it HAS to be tempered. Hmmm…maybe that is not the right word. Suffice it to say, it does not/ can not/ must not replace proximity to others. I do have some fear that it is. It is changing our discourse.
Good artical! The people of God have to stop ‘playing church’ and start ‘being Jesus’ to a world that is lost and dying! Having said that, it doesn’t mean that anything goes…it does mean that Jesus loved and died for all people and all are welcome to come to Him in repentance for forgiveness and relationship It also means that we are to stand up for what Jesus says is righteousness and stand against what Jesus says is sin not what the world says is politically correct. Isn’t it interesting that the only people who Jesus turned away and rebuked were the self righteous..perhaps this Bapist church should look inside themselves to find the real sin
Wow, this could do me good.
Honesty. I have hardly ever confessed that I have a liberal brand of modified racism – but I know it’s secretly driving my disdain for professional basketball!
And your points about Proximity and Education contributed to my finally overcoming my liberal brand of modified homophobia. I was drawn into intimate discussions with a gay man over a mutual love we had for religion and philosophy. I won his confidence I guess and he told me a story about his first love – at the age of 13 he fell head-over-heels for a fuller brush man! In his obvious emotion I saw very clearly the difference between ‘choice’ and ‘orientation’ and abandoned my silly notions that gays choose to be gay.
Let me add my theory that a huge amount of gay-bashing from clergy and elders comes from guys who think there is such a thing as an ‘ex-gay’ because they themselves made the ‘choice’ to abandon their natural sexual orientations. Their animosity is often complicated by the fact that their most powerful ‘conversion’ experience came through a wrenching surrender of a natural homosexual orientation which they had interpreted as sin.
Like me when I quit smoking – at first I was hugely self-righteous and critical of those who could not quit or didn’t try. I don’t think I stopped ‘bashing’ smokers until after my nicotene craving was really history – maybe three years or so. But sexual cravings don’t die so easily and are easily sublimated, and so …
There’s your Tim Haggard I think, and thousands like him.
Correction: I meant to name Ted Haggard. I do not mean to imply that everyone who believes that God is displeased with homosexuality is ex-gay, but I would argue that Haggard is in fact a classic case of a rogue ex-gay.
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Dear Madam or Sir,
I take it as a great honor to be numbered among the “promoters of race-mixing” on your blog. Thank you ever so kindly for the free advertising. Should I ever find myself in the bowels of hell, I shall be only too happy to save you a seat.
Sincerely,
The Reverend J. Barrett Lee
With you all the way. I agree; we need to get loud and be heard.
Yes I agree…For the goodness of all humanity, we need to be heard. Be it loud or subtle the message needs to be communicated.
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