Old Wineskins

I am keenly aware that my minister links to my blog from his, The Farthest Shore. As such, I feel kind of hesitant at times to express some of my thoughts about faith. But, sometimes I feel that being an agitator, and making folks uneasy, comes so easily to me that it must have something to do with my mission in life. So, here goes.

When I came upon a clarity of faith earlier this year, my main obstacle was skepticism about the resurrection. I transcended that one through a lot of prayer, reading, discussion and more prayer. It felt and feels right, and I haven’t looked back and doubted.

How that faith has played out in my choice of church membership, however, is something I now grapple with. I became a member of a moderate Baptist congregation whose members, while belonging to another church in town, rejected membership in the Southern Baptist Convention due to its requirement for Baptist churches to promise adherence to a specific creed which was fundamentalist and socially conservative in its nature. The Baptist history is one that eschews one-size-fits-all creeds, and there were enough progressive folks in the church at the time that they broke off to form the church I have joined.

Now that the pink cloud of being baptized has kind of dissipated, I am thinking less of my own journey than about that of others, particularly those folks who feel unwelcomed in a Christian church of any stripe due to the perceived, and actual, intolerance for homosexuals. “The Great Commission” is what the older church folks call it — this is Christ’s call to bring others into faith, and it’s what gives more annoying Christians to the tendency to place silly tracts in your hands, and ask you if you are saved. A neighbor of mine in Fredericksburg was particularly anxious to convert me because I was a Unitarian Universalist, and she thought that I was a member of the Unification Church (aka, a “Moonie”). Maybe it’s because I was from NYC and hung out a lot at airports…just kidding. I didn’t try to divest her of this belief because I thought it was really funny.

I was brought to this church by a progressive couple who lives here in Charlottesville. I felt more comfortable with the folks here who seemed to be receptive to my talking in my usual in-your-face way about things. Or else it’s the Virginia “smile in your face and hate you in private” approach — another thing I don’t mess anymore with because, like my misguided neighbor, I think it’s really funny.

At the same time, what’s not funny is what’s not being said. If they left the other church to avoid adherence to a creed, and if the Baptist way is to come to your own faith, why are homosexuals not visible in the congregation? They could be there, but there’s a “don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of feeling about it. I got some feedback, privately, from a couple of folks about the likelihood we could join AWAB (The Association of Welcoming & Affirming Baptists) as a congregation. The response from both, in short, was, to paraphrase, “not bloody likely.”

I’m troubled that I didn’t do my homework before joining this church, and wonder why I’d want to bring anyone into a congregation that does not openly support homosexuals. My two gay sisters would have to be closeted to avoid being shunned by some members. How can I stay, and how stupid have I been not to have really understood.

I’m left with the age-old conundrum: Do I leave to find a more welcoming corner of the world, or agitate from within what I find to be a broken interpretation of Christ’s love? In all honesty, I don’t know the answer to that question. Despite this bit of marketing fluff, I know from experience that in the Unitarian Universalist faith, Christian faith is openly mocked (so much for the “first principle”), so there’s no going back there for me. In the Christian tradition, homosexual “practice” (how the CBF refers to homosexual orientation) is shunned. Where do I belong afterall, and how “great” is the commission that would deny Christ the opportunity to have dinner at the house of an openly “practicing” (ugh!) homosexual.

I always THOUGHT Zaccheus was gay