Robert E. Shore-Goss - Queering Christianity: Finding a Place at the Table for LGBTQI Christians

Queering Christianity

Finding a Place at the Table for LGBTQI Christians

Robert E. Shore-Goss, Thomas Bohache, Patrick S. Cheng, and Mona West, Editors

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Queering Christianity : finding a place at the table for LGBTQI Christians / Robert E. Shore-Goss, Thomas Bohache, Patrick S. Cheng, and Mona West, editors.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-4408-2965-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-4408-2966-6 (ebook)

1. Church and minorities. 2. HomosexualityReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Shore-Goss, Robert.

BV639.M56Q44 2013

261.8'35766dc23 2013006776

ISBN: 978-1-4408-2965-9
EISBN: 978-1-4408-2966-6

17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5

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Dedicated to the prophetic vision of radical inclusion and human rights for all of Rev. Troy Perry

Contents

Robert E. Shore-Goss

Douglas Smith

Patrick S. Cheng

Robin H. Gorsline

Patrick S. Cheng

Robert E. Shore-Goss

Megan More

Robert E. Shore-Goss

Thomas Bohache

Thomas Bohache

Bryce E. Rich

Axel Schwaigert

Rachelle Brown

Kerri Mesner

Nic Arnzen with the Cast and Friends of Corpus Christi

Robert E. Shore-Goss

Thomas Bohache

Mona West

Joseph Shore-Goss

Joan M. Saniuk

Neil Thomas

Lea Brown

Mona West

Joseph Shore-Goss

Jim Mitulski, Donna Hamilton, and Nancy Hall

Introduction: Queering the Table

Robert E. Shore-Goss

Tony growled, You know Troy, I learned one thing from this experience, nobody likes a queer. Were just a bunch of dirty queers and nobody cares about dirty queers.

Somebody cares. Troy responded.

Who?

God cares.

Tony laughed bitterly, and said, Oh, come on Troy, God doesnt care about me. With that, he turned and left. I knelt down and said, All right God, if its Your will; if You want me to see a church started as an outreach into our community, You just let me know when. And that still, small voice let me knownow!

Rev. Troy Perry

Before Stonewall, Troy Perry founded a movement that became a church, spreading throughout the United States and globally. On October 6, 1968, Troy followed the promptings of the Spirit and celebrated the first worship service of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in a rented house in Huntington Park, California. Twelve people responded to an ad run in The Advocate Magazine and attended that service. During the first Sunday service, Troy told the attendees that he intended to develop a church that would reach homosexuals everywhere. His message was three-pronged: salvation, community, and social action.

Toward the end of the service, Perry offered a prayer over the bread and grape juice and offered those who had been excluded to come and receive communion. He dramatically and spiritually ritualized the exclusion that the gays and lesbians in attendance had experienced through their churches politics of the table. They had been denied access to the sacrament because of their sexual orientation, for they had not been welcomed into communion with God and the church. This ritual is now repeated in many MCC churches during worship at the end of the communion table prayer with the invitation: You neither need to be a member of MCC, nor any church nor even be a Christian. All are welcome to Gods table. In that simple ritual proclamation is embodied a profound proclamation that the unconditional grace of God is available to all people. God surrounds all human beings from birth to death with inclusive, incarnational love and redemptive care. This gift of love is nothing other than Gods self-communication of divine love and forgiveness. There are three notions embodied in MCCs ritual. First, Gods grace is radically inclusive and without conditions. Second, no one is turned away, for the table is open. Hospitality supersedes all denominational politics of the table. Finally, the open invitation expresses a central practice of Jesus ministry that every person is loved equally by God. Combined, this ritual invitation would become the core mission of MCC: Gods radical inclusive love.

Many churches fail to recognize Gods indiscriminate or even promiscuous love for all people in Jesus table practice of meals and table companionship with sinners. The symbolic power to partake of communion by excluded queer Christians should not be underestimated. In her study of MCC, Melissa Wilcox observes how individuals, when they start attending, may take weeks or even months before they approach the communion table because of the exclusionary practices and messages within their former churches. Same-sex couples may come and receive communion as a couple, then receiving a prayer blessing from one of the celebrants. She concludes, The habitus that conveys second class status to the world and oneself is thus broken during the MCC ritual.table fellowship. At Queer Conference of queer theologians and religious leaders at Emory University, the late feminist, queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid shared with me how MCC Edinburgh brought her back to Christian communion. She found communion to be an alienating and exclusive experience in many churches but found the MCC open invitation at table and the blessing meaningful.

The editors and contributors understand that the core queer theologies are based on the open invitation to communion table and that we have been comprehended as sinners. We may be sinners, but we believe that we are also companions with the risen Christ in meals remembering the inclusive grace celebrated in his first meal, his Last Supper, and his meal at Emmaus on the beach of the Lake of Galilee. The dynamics of the open communion table incarnate a dynamic of inclusionary grace.

FINDING A PLACE AT THE TABLE

The sad divisions of Christs Church are exacerbated by rules and regulations that create barriers to the receiving of Gods free grace at the table. Issues of intercommunion, closed communion, and open communion divide Christians and their practices at table. Nowhere are the divisions more realized than in a closed Church who invites a guest to the Lords house and then dictates that the guest cannot sit and eat at the table with the family. Such behavior, at best, is rude etiquette and, at worst, a profound betrayal of the table practices of Jesus.

One of the scandals of contemporary Christianities is their politics and exclusion at the communion table. It neither expresses church unity, unless ecclesial definitions are narrowed down to a specific denomination, nor expresses inclusivity. Closed communion is the practice of restricting the serving of the elements of communion to a particular church, denomination, sect, or congregation. Although the meaning of the term varies slightly in different Christian theological traditions, it generally means a church or denomination limits participation either to members of their own church, members of their own denomination, or members of some specific class (e.g., baptized members of evangelical churches, children who have made their first communion, closeted or nonpracticing queer folks).