In Which My Hair Is On Fire

OK, I have fifty thoughts about this excellent essay by Rachel Held Evans. They are best expressed by yelling and throwing heavy things through windows, but we don't have the technology yet to do that over the Internet. So, here we go:


1)  Evans's experience backs up the idea, already fairly wide-spread thanks to Dan Savage, that support for LGBT rights is strongly correlated with knowing out LGBT people. "It is known", as the Dothraki might say. I wish people didn't have to personally know someone to treat them like a human being, but whatever, progress is progress, get out the closet, etc.

2) Young people as a whole mostly support LGBT rights. I don't think this and #1 constitute a coincidence. This also means that in 30 years, when today's 20-somethings are 50-somethings, and today's 50-somethings are dead, this will be a non-issue. I think that to some extent the haters know this, and that's one reason they want constitutional amendments, which are harder to repeal. Harder, but not impossible.

3) The thrust of the article is: "Hey, look, we're Not All Like That." (The NALT acronym is once again thanks to Dan Savage.) And, indeed, many young Christians are NALT. And that's great. But why is it that they need to define themselves by opposition to a position? It is because the loudest voices in Christianity in the last 30-100 years have defined themselves by their anti-LGBT position, and set themselves up as the mainstream of Christian opinion. Whether they are or not, they have been able to define the narrative. The author spends some time talking about her and other Christians' dismay at the positions their churches have taken on LGBT rights, but she doesn't hit very hard on the solution: SPEAK THE FUCK UP AND WALK THE FUCK OUT. If it's really that important, vote with your feet and your money and LEAVE. Find a church that you agree with, start your own, or shut the hell up. Just being sad doesn't accomplish anything.

Some time after I left my hometown and my faith, such as it was, my home church found itself in dire straits, and was negotiating with the other Lutheran church in town for a merger. My church had a plaque in the back declaring that it was "Reconciled in Christ", which meant "We don't hate any gays at all", and the other church did not. It seems that during the negotiations over the merger, the topic of whether the new combined church would be similarly Reconciled came up, and there was some pushback from the other church. I am proud to say that my church's council agreed to torpedo the negotiations if they didn't get their way on this, and guess what the fuck happened? IT WORKED. They spoke the fuck up, threatened to walk the fuck out, and it worked. They made Reconciliation a priority, and it happened.

So, how did I get on that?  Evans speaks of Christianity losing a generation of believers over LGBT rights. Frankly, I can think of worse things, but let's leave that aside.  (This isn't an atheist rant, and I won't let it turn into one.)  She seems to assume that it's an either/or situation: either young people can stay in their wrong-headed congregations and stay silent, or they can leave. I would suggest a third alternative: SPEAK THE FUCK UP AND WALK THE FUCK OUT. (I think I mentioned that before?) Start your own church, find a new one, do whatever, and then become the voice of accepting, welcoming Christianity. Stop letting Billy Goddamn Graham and Pat For-Fuck's-Sake Gays-Caused-9/11 Robertson define your faith for you. Make your own mainstream, or shut up and stop whining about it.

Or, you know. Just keep your head down and don't make any waves. Like that Jesus guy might have done.