Dear Saints in Santa Fe and other far-off places,
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ, who wept over the death of a friend, and who I imagine is weeping still over how we continue to treat one another.
June is Pride Month, and it couldn’t come fast enough.
On Wednesday the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination with around 50,000 churches and 16 million members, voted overwhelmingly to oust two churches because they had women pastors. One is Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, the denomination’s largest congregation whose pastor, Rick Warren, a national figure and author of The Purpose Driven Church, responded with “Saddleback disagrees with one word. That’s 99.99999999 percent in agreement! Isn’t that close enough?” Ninety percent of the 10,000 delegates shouted back at him, “No!”
Women pastors? Is that even an issue anymore? Apparently, it is, but what is left unsaid is the 99.99999999 percent that Saddleback agrees with, which includes not allowing LGBTQ people into Southern Baptist congregations unless they “repent” of the sin of homosexuality.
What might seem startling to us concerning women, should be just as startling, and more so, when we consider how we continually and shamefully malign the LGBTQ community, often without headlines. It’s taken for granted, and accepted, all too silently.
Pride Month can’t come fast enough, but even the Presbyterian Church (USA) didn’t allow its pastors to officiate at same-sex marriages until June 19, 2014. I was at the General Assembly in Detroit that day and remember well when the vote came down. There was no shouting in celebration, just silence, a hush, an exhale. Why did it take so long? was the question I felt all around me. And what about all the people who suffered in the name of Christianity until that moment?
The following Sunday I stood before all of you and proclaimed with relief that the doors of the Presbyterian Church are finally officially open to all people, but then wondered if anyone would bother coming in after being shut out for so long. Why would they?
Pride Month can’t come fast enough with Target bending to pressure from anti-LGBTQ forces, the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida, bathroom laws, hateful rhetoric, violence, and the deep and profound harm such discrimination has caused, including suicide.
So let us remember Pride Month, especially now in these fractured times. Display rainbow colors. Stand up. March. Speak out. Don’t let discrimination go unanswered. Keep doing so beyond this month, year by year, until that grand day comes when these bad times are long gone and we can shout, not with a chorus of 10,000 no’s, but with 8 billion yes’s for our love and acceptance of all people, no matter who we are, who we love, and who God made us to be.
Grace and peace,
Harry