Paranoia Sweepstakes–the Winner

Posted by WiredSisters on November 4th, 2014 filed in Church History, Guest Blogger, Moral Philosophy, Sexuality

I apologize to any of you out there who have been waiting with bated breath to find out the winner of the current paranoia sweepstakes. To refresh your memories: Three paragraphs max, more or less. One end or the other needs to be grounded in reality (ie, either the means or the end must be an observed phenomenon–computer chips in pet animals is well-documented, using them for espionage isn’t. Or lots of homeless people on the street is an observable phenomenon, getting them out there by hiring out-of-work actors isn’t.) So you need to give examples of the observed phenomenon, then track it back to the means (how did we get here?) or forward to the end (What else could this be used for?) you are imagining. No UFO aliens, please. The prize is a gift card at our local spy store.

So here it is, from Linda Preston, of LaGrange Park, Illinois, and (full disclosure here) my godson’s mother, a longtime friend, and a member of my congregation:

This summer, a Baptist church in Florida refused to hold a funeral for a man because they discovered, after his death, that he had been gay. Their justification was
a) the Bible says we can’t, b) homosexuality is a sin. What an ugly action to be associated with God’s holy name! The Bible labels many things that people do as sins, people do these things anyway, and they continue to be church members and to have church funerals. Adultery, murder, child abuse, theft, whatever. Except in this case. What’s really going on here?

God, as it says in all holy books, is forgiving. (Two of many examples: “Judge not lest ye be judged; “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”) What makes God really angry, however, is the sin of Nineveh, the sin of Sodom, recorded in the story of Abraham and the story of Jonah – cruelty toward each other. This outrageous cruelty towards a grieving family, this sad refusal to offer a person who is part of the church the last rites, these are examples of what the Bible tells us God does not want. Actions like this, and the hatred that caused them, stray far from actual Biblical teachings. This happens because they were planted within the church by people who are not of the church. Think Trojan horse. The Greeks fought for 10 years to subdue Troy, without success. Finally, they packed up to leave, and left a huge wooden horse at the gate of Troy, supposedly as a gift. Trojans opened their gates and took the horse past their guards. During the night, the host of soldiers hidden inside came out and attacked Troy from inside. Troy was totally defeated, by the agency of what seemed like a gift.

Thinking of that, note that the increasing pitch of hatred directed towards gay people within the church has, within the last 30 years, moved from a background issue to a singling out of gay people as the group to hate. It has come to seem “obvious” to many Christians, but homosexuality was not always a headline issue, a litmus test of belief. Where did this change of perspective come from?

It is not a coincidence that, within the same 30 year period, many Americans have suffered under an array of hardships – millions of hard-working families losing their homes to foreclosures, tens of millions of jobs outsourced, millions of citizens who want to find work but are out of work for years, and finally find jobs for lower salaries and without benefits, cities without water and lights, the disappearance of pensions, the crippling of unions. At Nineveh, Jonah was there, in the name of God, to denounce such cruelty to ordinary citizens. Where are today’s churches?

I believe that the movement of the issue of gay sexuality, from background issue to litmus test, did not happen by accident. The headlines, the books, the articles, the media mentions, were paid for, crafted, and planted as carefully as a Trojan horse, seeming to shed light on the true nature of the church, while at the same time changing the course of some Christian discourse away from social and economic issues to a focus supposedly on sexuality, but actually on identifying a group of people within the church who are “different from you,” “inferior to you,” and ”the cause of all your troubles.” This has resulted in a strange thing, noted by many pundits and thinkers–a huge and growing group of people vote against their own economic interests. The new emphasis on sexuality came with the seductive and seemingly religious idea that sexual morality was more important than economics. If this were true, than it would not matter if you lost your job, if you would retire without a pension – if you were even able to retire, or even if you didn’t have enough money to pay for health care. The important thing, this supposedly Christian logic said, was that you stood against sexual immorality, that there was another “group” of people who were different from you and dangerous to you, and you opposed them.

Of course, this switch in theology would also benefit the very wealthy, since it would effectively remove the churches from the opposition to growing economic sabotage. It would be well worth it for wealthy corporate executives and folks from the new, suddenly-wealthy class to pay whatever it took to buy out media sources, to create saleable and inflammatory ideas, and to create and staff groups that would spread these ideas. The reward for their investment has been to neutralize one of the big players in the civil rights movement, by focusing its attention elsewhere, and by fomenting discord within its ranks. Perhaps it will work for them. Or perhaps the churches will wake up, read their Bibles, and go back to defending their flocks from economic suicide.

Linda Preston