You see this is the time when no one knew how or why little black boys and black teenagers were disappearing and turning up dead in Atlanta, GA. Those five white men in that car have no idea how much they scarred me that day. And even if they were to ever apologize, I’m sure they would say, “It was just a joke.”  You see they had the privilege to joke about things like that. That was their reality.

One person’s idea of reality can be so hurtful and damaging to another. And I must say, Mr. Beck, listening to your take on Liberation/Black/Theology (I lump them together because you did) I felt sucker punched. You have single handedly given millions of people permission to hate and distrust Black me simply because you seem to enjoy wanting the world to live in your reality.

I feel very much like that scared fifteen year old again. I can’t get the image out of my head of vitriolic hate speeches coming my way again. I can’t get the image out of my head of people in the name of democracy stepping on others dreams just to get ahead. And yes, Mr. Beck, it is this serious to me, I can’t get the image of dead black bodies turning up in swamps and city alleys out of my head. You give permission for hate, Mr. Beck. And whether or not you know it, I am the one who suffers for it. Me, this Black man, this African American, this Same Gender Loving human being who, as tired as I am, must keep fighting for survival because with each word you speak you unleash the hounds of hatred–against me.

I applaud my fellow seminarians and seminary President, Serene Jones for responding to your diatribe of intentional misinformation regarding Liberation/Black/Theology. I couldn’t watch more than ten minutes before my eyes streamed with tears for what you are doing to this country.

Please do come to Union, Mr. Beck. At least then you will have at least three years to try to digest the information we study, the Bible we try to live, the love we try to spew. If your staff can digest Black Theology in one day with the help of one person then you all deserve a theological scholarship to Union.

By the way, let’s clear up a couple of things. Mr. Beck, the Good Samaritan is a parable…Jesus’ teaching tool. Stick to Jesus’ script if you are going to use it and don’t add your take. It’s stood this long without your take on highway maintenance in the Roman world. The other thing, while we’re on the Romans. Be careful the way you spit out how the Jews killed Jesus and he would have come back to get ‘em. That’s the way you think, don’t put that on Jesus. And the last time I looked, it was the Romans that stripped Jesus, beat him, nailed him to the cross and pierced him in the side! No Jewish person had that much power under Caesar.

And one last thing, while my stomach is still in knots, while I still fear for the safety of those I call my own, and while I know that your work hurts me more than you will ever know…this one thing I can say:
I have nothing but the love of Jesus Christ for you and hope the Holy Spirit will crack your heart wide open so that you see the simplest words of social justice that Jesus ever spoke, ‘Love God, Love your neighbor as yourself’. If you can do this one thing for Christ, Mr. Beck, then you will see that everyone deserves to live in the bounty of God’s creation.

As parents, we are so in need of our own worship time that we put our trust and faith in the – God bless them – volunteer Sunday School teachers who are typically (but not always) kind-hearted souls who do their best.  When my partner and I sat in on a Sunday School session the first time we visited a church, one of the parents approached us at coffee hour and asked us how it was because while she’d been sending her kids there for several years, she’d never actually gone and observed. She thought it such a novel idea. I don’t think she cared less than we did what her kids were learning, but I’m not sure it occurred to her that she could and should be involved.

Well intentioned or not, our amazingly committed teachers are not frequently trained and, in my experience, often operate autonomously. Sometimes this means that what is being preached up in the sanctuary is undermined or inconsistent with what’s happening in the church basement. Disturbingly, many (most?) churches don’t have well developed policies for dealing with children and creating “safe spaces” for them. There may be a newly derived interest in sexual abuse policies because of the slow unveiling of the horrific misconduct in the Catholic Church, but these policies are often simply on-the-books for show.

How many mainline congregations in fact take the time to establish an entire system of safety – both theological and practical — for the practices of their churches and for the care of their youth?  When my two kids (who have lesbian moms) and the son of a gay couple received their first Bibles from their church school leader on one special Sunday, they were told by a Sunday School leader that they should go home and read it with “your mother and father.” Understand this: the only kids getting Bibles that Sunday were children of the only out queer families in the church. A theologically cogent system designed for the safety and inclusion of its children would have never led to three kids hearing the dismissal of their families realities in front of the entire congregation.

I didn’t expect this post to get so long, but I’m not done yet. (And I’ve got a feeling I’m gonna need many more posts on this topic.)

Here’s another big problem: I’ve been at seminary for 4 years now and up until the January SU190 1&2 courses, Children in the Church  (non-required 1 point supplemental courses offered during intersession) with Laurel Koepf (who is amazing and I highly recommend any course she offers) , I have had yet to hear about or deal with anything related to children. In other words, it is quite possible to graduate from this prestigious (and mostly wonderful) seminary without ever having a course related to children. That is absolutely shocking. It means we are untrained to minister to what is it, roughly half of our congregation?  That’s unconscionable.

It goes beyond just asking people to lie. It’s what that lie actually says about the power structure of institutional authority, as well as the person who must submit to that institution. I’m feeling that way about these arguments about gays in the church. The parameters for the discussion of the issue has been set in such a passive aggressive tone. Of course, the primary foundation reduces people who are LGBTQ to nothing more than what they do in their practice of sex. And that is the fight: to be able to claim who is moral and who is immoral.

Much of the church’s argument seems to hinge on this idea of moral superiority. My personal belief is that the LGBTQ person is not immoral. Lying is immoral. Living a lie is immoral.  (Upon further thought, what I meant to say is that living as though it seems one must live a lie is immoral.  For the choice to be out or not is personal and should be respected as such.) Don’t get me wrong, I am a human being and know that I have human failings. But it seems that I am being asked to acquiesce to the idea that loving someone of the same gender is immoral before I can gain acceptance into the institution that is church.

I guess I’m just saying that I will not acquiesce to being immoral. When I am asked by the church to lie and agree that LGBTQ falls outside of the realm of who God wants to serve God’s church, then I am being immoral. Immoral acquiescence…can’t do that for any human. I have to answer to an even higher authority.

**use of the term “church” is specifically monolithic to express the ideas here and is based on experience in many denominations