jimrigby.org

Tonight sometime after six we will have a wedding at the church for two of our neighbors who live on the street. Jim and Laura have been together a long time, but Jim was recently was diagnosed with a very serious illness and they want to give witness to their love. Their friends from the street will be invited, but they also want everyone from St. Andrew’s and from the community to know they are also invited. Tom Mitchell will provide music. Hopefully we will have a bit of a crowd to celebrate the event. Afterward, our typical thursday meal will be offered to those who need food, and to those who come to the wedding.

My teachers, mentors, and friends,

I have known since I first read the letter you released that I wanted to respond to you. I have known that you would receive many other letters and I have wondered whether it was worth anything to add my voice, but you all have taught me that my voice matters, and so I will speak. Others have written from the perspective of the broader issues at stake, and I believe that is an essential part of the conversation. But I want to speak personally, because I believe this is all so deeply personal. In fact, I think somewhere underneath the problematic language of this letter, I imagine you were making the same argument: this is all so deeply personal and we would do well to remember it.

My response to the letter you unanimously stood behind was—like many others’—one of deep hurt and betrayal. In your call to “mutual forbearance” and refrain from “premature resolution”—I heard a scolding and a warning not to push too hard for justice or equality at the risk of others’ comfort or sense of belonging. In response I wondered what value there is in a sense of belonging that founds itself in the exclusion (fully or partially) of others. In the past year, I have just begun to understand the weight of history I will carry by being an out ordained queer pastor in the PCUSA. In your pleas for slow, careful movement and your warnings against “haste”—I saw the decades of struggle and pain and hard-won progress of those who have come before me collapsed into the phrase “too soon.” I heard a call to prioritize kindness over integrity and unity over justice—as if these things did not share one beating heart. As if there could ever be true kindness and unity without justice and equality.

I knew, of course, that this letter was not meant to address only me and others like me. But in as much as it seemed to respond to an assumed possibility of imminent departure, I wondered why it was addressed to us at all. What better example of “forbearance” can you imagine than those who have stayed within this church year after year and decade after decade despite abuse, dismissal, injustice, and inequality? What better example can be identified as commitment to the church than those who have invested their lives and livelihoods to ministry even when their ordination has been denied to them on the basis of their God-given identity? What better show of faith is there than those who have remain true to their calling and committed to the Church, even when it has cost them their families, their communities, their safety? What better picture of kindness is there than those who have stood before couples and joined them together in marriage even while their own marriages go unrecognized?

Might I suggest that such as these have something to teach the whole church about what loving kindness is? That is, we will fight for the Church that God calls us to be. We will speak truth. We will name injustice. And then, when others refuse to listen, when others refuse to respect and include us, when others abuse us in the name of the God who has called us, we will stay. But we will never stay quiet when there are still things in need of saying. We have too much love for the Church to settle for less.

I want to say that what was so deeply hurtful to me about this letter, was that what it seemed to be saying was so contrary to the radical inclusion, love, and embrace that so many of you have offered me in my time here and taught me to embody in my own ministry. You have been parents to me when my own could not be, you have affirmed my call and championed me when my community of origin would not, you have taught me a theology of radical love and grace when the theology I had been raised in made me feel only shame and fear. Over the past week, I have at some point thought of each of you individually—seen images of times spent in your offices and classrooms, moments that have challenged me and shaped me and taught me to believe in and fight for a better church—and I have wept. I have cried so much at the thought that these same professors and mentors who have sat with me in those dark places and taught me to hope in the face of seeming hopelessness, would now sign their names to a document asking me to hope less. To temper my faith in the Church that could be and my call to work for it without compromise.

I have had many conversations about your words over the past several days. On several occasions, I’ve had the opportunity to hear some of you clarify your intent and apologize for the other interpretations the letter has allowed. I have heard you say that your intent with this letter was precisely the opposite of how many of us have read it. That, in fact, you meant for your support of queer persons like myself to be assumed, and that you were urging others to be respectful of us and our need for justice. Some of you have admitted naivete and regret at the pain your words have caused. And hearing these things, I have wept again. I have taken great, gulping breaths of relief at the reassurance that you are not something other than I trusted you to be.

But I want to speak boldly and say, “It is not enough.” Intention is important. But I have learned in my writing and preaching that when words are spoken aloud, intention quickly becomes the shadow of interpretation. There are many who will read and interpret this letter for whom your support of equality, inclusion, and justice is not a foregone conclusion. If this letter created doubt so quickly in hearts like mine who have directly encountered your support and love, imagine what it might stir up in less informed hearts. If it is true—as has been said—that there is no confusion among you about your support for queer people in the church—then I wonder if that too might be worthy of public declaration.

Perhaps no such thing has been done before. But you were some of the first people to tell me that I could be queer and called to ministry—and so let me now tell you that there can be immense power in being first. I know that there is great risk in speaking bold and potentially divisive truth, but I also know that the call to faith is also a call to risk. I have so much hope for what might be accomplished if the wider world—even those who disagree and especially those who could never imagine it—knew the best parts of this institution—the parts that I have seen and been lifted up by.

I’m not really asking for another letter—that is a bit more literal than I am intending to speak. I suppose what I’m asking for is that you be just as public, just as vocal, just as convicted, and just as faithful in naming your support for justice and equality as you have been in this public call to “mutual forbearance.” I do not want you to be who you are not, but rather to live into the truth that you each have so thoroughly taught me: that the best way to do justice AND love kindness is to be fully and unapologetically who you are—who God has called you to be. And who that is—from my experience—is an institution that lifts up its queer students, like myself, as valuable leaders for the future of the church. An institution that believes that we are all called into relationship, and that such relationship is founded, ultimately, not in empty kindness or tempered passions, but in vulnerable authenticity and deep belief in the value of every human being.

Thank you for cultivating in me a faith in the love of God that gives me courage to call out moments when I don’t see that love being embodied—even when those moments come from people I love and respect.

So very sincerely,

Layton Williams

When I first read the seminaries letter I found it rather benign but after sitting with and seeing a few reactions from my peers it strikes me as a bit of a cowardly stance. I’m all for peacemaking but peace at what cost? If our peace, our mutual pew sharing, comes at the lessoning of one Christian witness over another than I find this call for mutual forbearance similar to a call for those subjugated in other contexts to continue to remain, or rather actively work to keep their lights under a bushel ( starts humming this little light of mine…) If the issue were rather a theological one where we were simply pontificating on whether the host was actually flesh or not this would be an easier place for mutual forbearance as whether the host is flesh or not does not reflect my actual identity as a child of God. As this issue is one of identity, mutual forbearance calls for our brothers and sisters to hold pieces of their identity, their child of God-ness, in stasis so that more light can break in seems to lack a realistic understanding of the queer identity and witness. ( or possibly the just plain old Christian witness) Rev. Remington Johnson M,Div 2012

Dear colleagues,

The letter that was recently crafted by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary faculty requesting “mutual forbearance” was quite surprising. I’ve taken a few days to consider it, and have been in conversation with area clergy, alumni, and students about its contents.

First, let me say, I do not believe the faculty had malicious intent in publishing this letter. I believe they thought it was a nice, middle-of-the-road sentiment calling for churches, pastors, and lay people on each side of contentious issues to stick it out. I believe that many faculty may have been surprised at the push back. I believe straight privilege can make it difficult to see clearly the impact of our words on LGBTQ people.

People of privilege would do well to remember that we are invited into liberation movements; they do not belong to us. We do not determine their direction, but walk alongside our friends as allies. When there is a question of direction or action, we should consult the marginalized, not presume to know what is best.

To those of us who already have what we want, be that ordination, marriage, tenure, or a place of standing among our denomination, it is easy to ask others to wait. It is easy to insist on patience. It is easy to suggest forbearance. We lose nothing. We go on about our lives and nothing changes for us. But behind statements like the one released by this faculty are real people…waiting.

You know them. They are brilliant, gutsy, feminist, Methodist lesbian women turned away for ordination. They are young, fiery, outspoken Presbyterian gay men forced to temper their speech for the comfort of their oppressors. They are same gender couples, your own students, seeking to seal the covenant of marriage in the beautiful Shelton Chapel. You taught them. You worshipped with them. You encouraged them.

I’m deeply saddened that you weren’t more thoughtful of the way this letter might be heard. I’m grieved that the students and alumni of APTS cannot count on their faculty, a faculty who privately voices support, to make a public statement of support to their LGBTQ students. Instead, the faculty chose to make a statement requesting non-action. Status quo. Waiting.

You ask them to wait for what you already have. This is heartbreaking. It is unfair. It is unjust. I hope you all will reconsider, and instead encourage other seminaries to throw their support behind the radicals they produce. Let us be bold instead of tepid. Let us not ask one more day of waiting. Not one more day. The time is now.

Rev. Katrina Shawgo, M.Div. ‘08

I have great respect and affection for many of you at APTS (I received both my graduate degrees there), but I wish you had crafted your recent letter differently. Asking my sisters and brothers in Christ who are part of the LGBTQ community to linger with the issue of marriage equality until those in doubt are convinced is unjust. I do not know what others have done, but I have been informing and educating my congregation for ten years. I pastor in Oklahoma, and you do not get much “redder” than that. We have been studying scripture, meeting “out” gay people, encouraging them to be part of our church family, loving one another. There are still some doubts, but we are ready for this change.

After reading your letter one gay man who is part of our church family said to me, “I see APTS is not throwing me under the bus. Instead they are asking me in Christian kindness to throw MYSELF under the bus for the time being until the whole denomination is ready for whatever is left of me to come out??” I said to my brother in Christ, “Yes, and it appears they are asking me to smile and help you stay under there.”

I am a GA commissioner from Cimarron Presbytery, I will vote as the Spirit leads me, and I trust I will act in love and forbearance. I will also say gently, in love—I am very disappointed in your letter.

Rev. Dr. Judye Pistole, Pastor
First Presbyterian Church
628 Church Street
Alva, OK.

Many of you know that Christopher Lucas Liz Perlman and I have been following Mary Ann Barclay‘s journey towards ordination. A finer candidate for minister, I cannot imagine from her personal strength to her in depth understanding of Weslyan Theology. Plus, she’s just awesome. I don’t know how all of you feel about organized religion. I find much of it very problematic and painful to negotiate even as I recognize a deep spiritual resonance in many communities that I’ve met (secular and non). But I recognize what can only be called “spirit” in Mary Ann as well as her partner Annanda. Call it social justice. Call it Buddha. Call it love, service, leadership, but my lord, call it what it is, a gift.

So Chris, Liz and I have been filming and documenting the process she’s gone through, and today we were out in Kerrville waiting for the decision. We couldn’t be with her but we witnessed such powerful community and fellowship, love and compassion from morning until we left to drive home. Bearing witness and providing space for this story to be heard, seen, it’s important. She is a minister and nothing can actually stop that. She lives her faith in the world, and no title will change that. She has, as they say in the church, a prophetic voice and nothing will silence it.

She is a model for living authentically and frankly, in my opinion, embodying God in the world from her love to her partner, to the service she provides others, and the message she brings. The church is truly behind, but then looking back at history, institutions usually are. The NFL seems to get it, I’m not sure why the Methodist church can’t.

As she notes in this piece, it’s not the end. It’s most certainly not. And we hope to document what goes forward because her story, like so many before her, so many happening now right now, so many LGBT youth being cast out, not able to marry or be ordained or be in fully community, those stories are sacred texts.

Regardless of your belief system, I hope you’ll continue to#standwithmaryann

— 

The recent statement of belief posted by the faculty of Austin Presbyterian Seminary fills me with enormous sadness. The larger part of my sadness is entwined with that of certain current students and their families, with certain alums and their families, and with that of all us allies who stand with the GLBTQ family. How betrayed so many must feel by those who have been their teachers and mentors and role models preaching faith’s courageous love. I’m sad, too, though, that the statement purports to be the belief of “the faculty.” Was this statement truly unanimous, an expression of all minds and hearts? Was there no one willing to point to the naked emperor, no one willing to say that peace paid for by oppression is no peace?