How Inclusive Are WE?

January 1, 2006

I wrote this article for LOGOS, the student publication for Pacific School of Religion (PSR) in the Spring of 2003 during my graduate studies. I’ve posted it here with the hope it would lead to personal reflection for all of us located within a more progressive or liberal Christian context.

I was a fundamentalist Christian for more years than I’ve identified as a liberal Christian. I grew up in Sunday School, spent the summers of my youth weeping before the altar at church camp, and graduated from a Bible College where all the courses were actually about the Bible. I was a licensed minister for seventeen years within a conservative, evangelical Christian denomination. I led workshops around the country on Christian Education and traveled from the refugee camps of El Salvador to the Arab Christian neighborhoods of Jerusalem motivated by the Great Commission and my evangelical leanings. I believed the Bible to be the literal Word of God. I believed in supernatural miracles, the virgin birth and the born-again experience as the only means of salvation. I believed in the sacrificial atonement of Jesus through his bodily death and resurrection. I sang the hymn “Faith of Our Fathers” with fervor and I unreservedly called God “He.”

It was within fundamentalist Christianity I fell in love with God, encountered Christ and received my call to ministry and for all that and more I’m profoundly grateful and yet I’m not mounting a defense for Christian fundamentalism. Having lived in the heart of it for years I have experiential knowledge of its most grievous shortcomings. I observed injustice directed toward others and times when compassion was no where to be found. On more than one occasion I ran headlong into unshakable doctrines and dogmas that made no sense in light of a loving God and a Christ of mercy and grace. When I voiced my concerns about areas of the faith that troubled me I was looked at as a renegade and a threat. I was encouraged to question less and trust more. There were inconsistencies and teachings I could no longer hold true in my own life and so I left. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to leave had it not been for the late-blooming discovery of my sexual orientation. I only know that I’m glad I left because in leaving I found a faith and a life that speaks more authentically to who I am and who I long to be in this world than anything I encountered in my former years.

My coming out as a lesbian was, needless to say, radically transformative to my theological and political perspectives and my life and heart expanded far beyond the limitations my prior convictions had allowed. I came to Pacific School of Religion knowing I was entering into a liberal community. That’s what I wanted and that’s why I came despite apprehension about being in the midst of “those liberals” at one of their “faith cemeteries,” affectionate terms ascribed by evangelical friends. At the same time the opportunity to encounter and embrace the mystery of the Christian faith in a new and meaningful way excited me. I longed for a diverse community. I hungered to learn of other people’s lives and faith perspectives and to be challenged by them. I yearned to struggle with questions in a place that didn’t demand answers. I’ve experienced all that in my four years at PSR but there has also been another aspect of life in this community that has been troubling to me and that’s the apparent intolerance I see expressed on a regular basis toward anything that smacks of conservative theology or politics.

Never was this more apparent to me than when I read an article in the February issue of LOGOS entitled “Apocalypse Nine One One.” For eight pages I read line after line of angry rhetoric and judgmental accusations aimed at fundamentalist Christians. Fundamentalist Christians who found support in the Bible for their stringent sexual mores were labeled “fools or hypocrites.” Fundamentalist Christians who didn’t grasp the call of social justice as paramount to the Gospel read the Bible through “blinders of self-righteous preconceptions.” Fundamentalist Christians were encouraged to “lower their eyes considerably and look in the slums they maintain, in the prisons they build, and in the graveyards they stuff” if they really wanted to find Jesus. Not only was full responsibility for poverty and war placed upon them, conveniently removing our culpability in such matters, but their most sincere beliefs were dismissed with a check list of pejorative one-liners, leaving no room for the possibility that what informs their belief is just as thoughtfully reflected upon, genuinely motivated, and well-intended as those held by the most liberal among us.

On this campus we’re encouraged to honor all people and yet in classroom discussions, over lunches at D’Autremont (campus dining hall), and in chapel services I’ve listened to a steady stream of ridicule directed toward conservative Christians and their religious perspective. Sarcasm is routinely leveled at their political and theological viewpoints. No serious consideration is ever given to the views they hold and how we might respond thoughtfully and respectfully to them. Instead, fundamentalist and conservative Christians are generalized with terms such as self-righteous, naïve, arrogant and ignorant. Is there any other religious, ethnic or racial group that could be characterized in the same manner on this campus and have it be tolerable? I wonder.

On two separate occasions I’ve sat in a PSR classroom where the charismatic prayer practice of ’speaking in tongues’ was thought appropriate material for humor, being discounted as nothing more than frenzied emotionalism. As a charismatic Christian my spiritual language is an integral part of my daily prayer life. When I ’speak in tongues,’ I don’t roll on the floor or swing from the nearest ceiling lamp. Not once do I remember a time I foamed at the mouth with my eyes rolled back in my head. When a burden is so heavy words fail me ’speaking in tongues’ gives me a voice to take my cares to God. When I pray in my spiritual language I experience the living and active presence of the Divine in my life. Must everything have a rational, scholarly explanation in this academic community or can we as a people of faith stretch ourselves to imagine that sometimes what’s felt with the heart is as valid as what’s reasoned with the mind? Would humor be allowed in class discussions concerning Buddhist meditation or the Muslim practice of daily prayers offered toward Mecca? I wonder.

When we speak of fundamentalist Christians as we do here, when we believe so absolutely that we on the left are right then we, as much as them, are closing the door to any open conversation that might bring understanding. We treasure words like “inclusion,” “diversity,” and “tolerance” and pepper our speech with phrases like “making a place at the table for all” and “letting every voice be heard.” Those words are the language of justice and in using them we’ve set the bar high for ourselves. We should aim for nothing short of that but I wonder sometimes how we can claim diversity and tolerance when it appears that some voices continue to remain stifled among us. How many eyes roll and snickers suppressed when a student from a less liberal seminary says something in a PSR classroom that resounds with theological orthodoxy? How welcome would it be for a student to express a pro-Israeli position or to suggest prayerful support for a Republican President? How long would a poster remain on the campus bulletin board announcing a “pro-life” rally and how many angry letters to the LOGOS editor would follow an article berating fundamentalist Muslims? I wonder.

In the midst of all these questions the one lurking in the shadows is why we at PSR seem to lack all tolerance for fundamentalist Christians when we’re continually and passionately striving to embrace tolerance and diversity with everyone else. Is our intolerance a defense meant to safeguard the distinctions between liberal and conservative Christian in response to the recurring tendency of fundamentalist spokespersons to misrepresent Christianity in the media? Or is it that we fear in extending tolerance toward them we might in some way be diminishing the injustices many of us previously encountered from conservative Christian communities? In the end there are probably as many reasons as there are seminarians on campus but until we thoughtfully consider the “why” we’ll never be able to move into the “how” that expanding our tolerance will demand.

Whatever the reasons, I don’t anticipate that talking nice about fundamentalist Christians will bridge the gap between us but at least it seems to me it might build one less wall that separates us. Galatians 3:28 seeks to break down divisions among people with the words, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Could we ever imagine extending it to include “neither fundamentalist Christian nor liberal Christian?” Why should we long for unity within diverse Christian communities any less than we long for it among nations and why should we work any less passionately to attain it? Is it ever going to be possible for those of us committed to diversity to listen to the opposing side and share our truth without tearing down theirs? Can we let go of our own set of absolutes, however creatively they might be masked as such, so that we might listen to those who hold a different perspective than our own? Will we ever be able to speak words of compassion to those who don’t speak compassionately of us just because it’s the right and just thing to do? I wonder.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not standing outside these questions nor am I asking them from a place of cynical arrogance but from a genuine desire to know if what seems inconceivable could be attainable one day. I struggle with this stuff in my own life and am often mired in a self-righteousness and judgmental attitude about those on both ends of the spectrum. I go crazy when I listen to some of the rhetoric coming from conservative talk radio, muttering snide remarks in response under my breath as I drive down the highway. I get e-mails from fundamentalist Christians telling me that God abhors me as a lesbian and I go livid that they would dare to claim the same Christ I do. And in this liberal PSR community my moderate sensitivities hear plenty that makes me cringe internally. There are days I’m flooded with anxiety as I arrive on campus, feeling I don’t belong here even though I know it’s just where I belong, and wondering what conservative view I might express or moderate position I make take that day that will be considered objectionable by others who will waste no time in pointing out my ignorance.

All I can tell you is that I’m trying. I’m trying to focus on the log in my eye before whacking out the speck in everyone else’s. I’m struggling to live diversity and tolerance for all people including those whose viewpoints I so animatedly oppose. I pray to be willing to rub shoulders with everyone at the table; even those who I prefer were relegated to the folding card table in the kitchen. Sometimes I succeed. More often I fail. So trust me when I say there’s no finger pointing here and if I’m pointing at all, it’s only toward what I believe is a growing edge for this community. The liberal church saved my life and my spirit. It opened its doors and welcomed me in while my heart was still stinging from the rejection of my former fundamentalist
community. It assured me that not only was the person of Anita desired in community but so were my call and my ministry. This is where I was healed and where I found my voice. That’s why I want more for us. I don’t want us to shut out or shut up anyone even if it means including those who have excluded us. Radical inclusivity as I understand it means opening the door to those who shut the door on us, speaking with respect and tolerance of those who speak poorly of us, and earnestly seeking understanding of those who have no interest in understanding us. Are we so committed to diversity that we’re willing to risk going that far and take that chance? I wonder. I wonder and I hope.

“May God bless us with love that overwhelms all hurt and anger, and grace which established all our good work. Amen.” - Marchiene Vroon Rienstra

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Posted in Christian Living, Public Homilies