I tend to be of two minds about demographically targeted worship: On one hand, I appreciate a faith community, and regular worship, that is inclusive of all kinds of people -- a mirror of the larger Communion of Saints. On the other hand -- sometimes you just want to, just need to be with your people, however you define that.
Anyhow, check it out. I especially like the photos of gay people "being the Church." I think we can all use more images of that. Sort of makes up for referring to God as the "Big Dude" (you've got to be kidding, people) in the teenagers' petition.
Stained glass cross, Chi Rho Press
19 comments:
Well, I tend to be of only one mind about demographically targeted worship - and that is that worship was never meant to be demographically targeted.
Worship is what it is. It is for all without specific attention to the individual - it's corporate.
When we change worship so that it will make ME comfortable - especially when this happens to the exclusion of others who are not ME - then I must ask exactly what it is we are worshipping.
I do understand the need to be with "my" people - those people are Christians, regardless of whether they are gay or straight, white or black or orange or green.
I don't think that the church should be an ala carte institution where we come and pick and choose what parts we want and what people we want. It's a package deal.
-C
OK, it seems that in my previous post I may have come off a bit harshly - I apologize. I read your blog at least daily and I think you are an insightful and inspired witness to the Christian faith. You write better than some preachers I know can preach.
However, what triggered my knee-jerk reaction is the relationship of this post to the one which comes immediately after. You speak there of Christians whose lives reflect the love of God by pointing to God, and not to self. These posts together present an oxymoron of sorts.
To custom-tailor worship or the church so that it is palatable to a specific group of individuals is wrong,I think. Imagine the outcry (and rightfully so) if I wrote a post which states that I need to "be" with white, straight, almost middle-aged people with elementary school-aged children - because that kind of people is MY people.
Fact is, we are all God's people and we need to be with each other, regardless of who we are as individuals and how we define ourselves. God has defined us all as God's children.
-C
C: I agree with you as far as regular weekly worship. The more diverse the congregation, IMHO, the better -- the more vital and healthy, the more it resembles the Church Universal.
But I also think there are times when people feel safer and more taken care of spiritually if they can worship, even occasionally, in the context of other people who share their life experience. Just as a personal example -- a few months ago I encountered some people online, in a forum I used to frequent with some regularity, who quite cheerfully informed me that, according to their view of things, I should be dead; that if they were running the country, they'd execute gay people, including me. Now, granted that the Internet attracts crackpots the way meat attracts flies -- it still took the breath of out me to talk to Kristians who hate us so intensely -- and, again, so cheerfully -- that they felt quite comfortable publicly rubbing their hands in glee anticipating the day they could string me up in the public square. Fortunately my online friends and I help each other out when things like this happen to us...but I'll tell you, had I known about this website at that particular time, I might indeed have used it in conjunction with the regular Daily Office prayers. I know women sticking with very female-disempowering churches, trying to change them from within, who feel the same way about worship geared to women -- it gives them an extra spiritual charge every once in awhile to be able to worship in a context where women are leading the worship and where the language used in worship is speaking to their immediate experience.
"God has defined us all as God's children"
Unfortunately - and it's amazing to me that this needs to be said - the vast, vast majority of Christians doesn't see it this way even now.
Metropolitan Community Church was started so that gay people would have a place to worship God unmolested by "Christians." That was in the 1970s, I believe, and that Church is still the only place gay people can feel completely safe even now, in some places.
I don't know why people have such a hard time understanding what religion has done to gay folks. Most gay people still won't set foot in a Church, any Church, you know.
"I don't know why people have such a hard time understanding what religion has done to gay folks. Most gay people still won't set foot in a Church, any Church, you know."
Gay Christians have no corner on the market of those who have been hurt by the church. Lots and lots of straight people to are hurt by those in the church, too. And lots of people of color, and lots of fine church leaders, etc. Does this mean that it would be better for them to go off and find a community of wounded Christians in which to belong? Of course not. It is the presence of those wounded persons which helps those who are not wounded to understand and to accept those who are in any way different from them.
The church needs to be the church, and not some custom made organization intended to make us all feel comfy and alike. Because the church is made up of human beings, it is not a perfect institution, and so it is comprised of imperfect persons - sinners - like the rest of us. The church is not an escape from the real world. People will be hurt, and with God's help, they will heal.
It's not that I don't understand that gay people have been treated poorly by the church in the past - I certainly do understand it. But more, it's that I understand that MANY people, gay and straight, have been hurt by the church.
No one person or group of persons has been hurt any more than any other.
But when you have been hurt by the church, you have 2 options: you can either run away and hide and throw stones at the church because you are angry, or you can stay in the church and pray to God for healing and strength and remain faithful.
Not all Christians are intolerant.
-C
Um, excuse me, C, whoever you are: No one here is running away, hiding or throwing stones at the church. We are, against all odds, right smack dab in the church, even though on some days it feels like walking back into an alley to have the goons kick you in the ribs one more time.
I'd also take exception to your statement that no person or group has been hurt by the Church more than another. This is a just breathtakingly ridiculous statement.
Are you gay? Are you in some other group that is regularly vilified, marginalized or otherwise treated as "other" by Kristians? If you're not, you have absolutely NO business telling us how we should feel or what we should do. If your wagging-fingered scolding is the "healing" that you claim that the Church is providing gay people, then you can keep it. It's patronizing and insulting. Evidently defending the institutional Church is more important to you than actually listening to and honoring our experience as persons wounded by the Church.
And just as a postscript: Like clockwork, I opened my daily paper this morning to find a letter to the editor directed at me and people like me, just oozing with Kristian Luv, pleading with me to change my shameful, perverse, iniquitous self to conform to biblical mandate. I can count on these missives a couple of times a week around here. And it's just the pious, eyes-to-the-sky variant of the homophobia that I have to live with every day -- having to be circumspect about everything I say and do; having to listen to redneck queer jokes and stupid, bigoted comments; in one instance, being physically intimidated by some tattooed Nazi goon, ironically while stopping in to buy groceries on the way home from church. And let's not even talk about that, about the minefield I tread every day as a member of a denomination that "welcomes" me, but only to a point, only as much as it has to to keep thinking of itself as progressive and relevant.
If you have never had to experience these things on an ongoing basis, C, or if you haven't had a loved one who has, then you have no right to lecture me or anyone else about our supposed bad attitudes.
I am not trying to lecture anyone, only say that those who feel marginalized by the church because they are gay join a whole history of others who have been marginalized by the church. It's not a pissing contest to see who is the most persecuted Christian.
I am not gay, but I love many people who are. I have many friends and a sister with whom I am very close who are gay. I do have many loved ones who have experienced this same prejudice, many of them have been able to move beyond their anger, secure in the knowledge of God's love through Christ.
I worship in an RIC congregation, and work in a different RIC congregation. I know many who have left the ministry because they are gay - but most of them have not left the church.
I also happen to love others who have been abused by clergy in the church. So I know some of what I am talking about. Those in the church hurt more people than just gay people.
God does provide healing for those who seek it. I am not talking "healing" from homosexuality - I am talking about healing of wounded souls and spirits. I'm sorry that you seem to think that this cannot happen.
The church is full of homophobes (mostly people who are afraid of gay people because they don't know any gay people). The church is also full of people who sexually and mentally and physically abuse others who are not gay - because the church is an institution of a sinful world. Abuse is abuse and nothing makes it right. It's wrong.
I'm sorry that I have offended you - it was not my intent. My intent was only to mention that countless Christians have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of other Christians. It's not just a gay thing. (take a quick look at the lives of some of the Christian martyrs). But because I am straight, these words will fall on deaf ears - even though the redneck queer jokes offend me as much as they do you.
I am weary of the classification of Christians: I am a gay Christian, I am a straight Christian, I am an emergent Christian, I am a purpose driven Christian. It's time for us Christians to focus on Christ, and not on ourselves. (And frankly, I don't see why the regular Daily Texts don't work for gay people, too. The Word is the Word and it's for everyone).
-C
C: No one is saying that the regular Daily Texts "don't work for gay people." No one is saying that gay people's wounding at the hands of the Church can't be healed. Once again you're telling us what we think and feel, even though it isn't remotely what I've said.
[pounding head on desk]
I'm not telling anyone what to think and feel - just telling you what I think and feel.
-C
By the way, exactly where did I tell you what you think and feel?
-C
I fear you're seriously overestimating my desire to continue this conversation.
Oh, thanks goodness you said it and I didn't have to....
;-)
As you wish. I fear I've overestimated other things about you, too.
-C
Oh, C. THat is not worthy.
You go, LC.
All blessings, RP
Since you asked, -C (and having come to this particular party later, I have a little more patience than LC, rightfully, does at this point), lemme help you out:
You ask
By the way, exactly where did I tell you what you think and feel?
but just two of your posts up, you say
But because I am straight, these words will fall on deaf ears
. . . all but stating that we queers somehow are deaf to straight people.
Good God man, how the heck could we EVEN SURVIVE, if we were? :-0
As you love your gay friends/family, -C, so do we w/ our straight ones (almost invariably, we have far more of the latter than you do of the former!). We aren't "deaf" to them . . .
. . . but we are FED UP w/ blowhards/know-it-alls---*especially* when they claim to be our friends. >:-(
Tell me,-C, do you walk into an AME Church (that's "African Methodist Episcopal" FYI) and tell the assembled congregation "To custom-tailor worship or the church so that it is palatable to a specific group of individuals is wrong" or "I am weary of the classification of Christians"?
Lemme know how that turns out...
". . . but we are FED UP w/ blowhards/know-it-alls---*especially* when they claim to be our friends. >:-("
>>> OK, so you're gay. Great!- God created you differently than God created me - I'm so over it now and ready to move on.
*I* am fed-up with attempts by the church to welcome so specifically some that they invariably exclude others. The church is not about us and who we are as individuals. It is about God's people - all of them - coming together regularly around Word and Sacrament not to focus on ourselves and our needs and our wants and our problems and our identities, but instead to focus on God. To this, ALL are welcome.
"Tell me,-C, do you walk into an AME Church (that's "African Methodist Episcopal" FYI)..."
>>> ummm - I knew that ....
"and tell the assembled congregation "To custom-tailor worship or the church so that it is palatable to a specific group of individuals is wrong" or "I am weary of the classification of Christians"?"
>>> I am not an AME Christian. I am an ELCA Christian. So it would not be right for me to walk in to an AME church and tell them anything - it's not my church.
But do you propose, then, that we make up lots of little custom-tailored churches (like the AME) for those who are gay, those who are straight, for old people, for young people, one for each color of person, one for each ethnic heritage, one for depressed people, one kind for de-churched, another for dischurched, one for unchurched (would you like me to continue?) Or do we put our individual selves away for a few hours each week and focus on God?
Lemme know how THAT works out.
-C
As long as there are straight, white, middle-class, but mainly overbearingly OBNOXIOUS boys like you, -C, the former.
Adios!
J.C. fisher -
I'm a woman, not a man - or a boy. (can it be that YOU don't know everything?)
Well, enjoy your ghetto - just know that it's not the church. But I'm sure you will be very comfy there. And that's what most important, right?
Adios to you, too.
-C
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