Praxis Habitus - On Race Religion & Culture: sexuality

Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts

Friday, February 20, 2009

ELCA Ordains Gay Pastors - But Only Churches Hire Them

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) will allow the ordination of gay pastors, but leaves individual congregations and synods discretion on ordaining or, more importantly, hiring them.

Image via Wikipedia

The issue of homosexuality (and the host of LGBTQQi issues swirling around American Christianity) continues to strain the decision-making processes of denominational bodies across the United States. Some are solving it in some fashion or other, but others are waiting and waiting, hoping that some bold solution to the issue will present itself.

Yet no easy solution is being found for positions that simply fail to recognize any form of homosexuality as legitimate. The ELCA now offers a type of compromise solution. The denomination ordains gays, but ultimately it is up to churches to hire them.

As an outsider to the ELCA, this strikes me as an interesting position. This is a move that may protect the reputation of the denomination ("Hey, we ordain gays!") and stave off controversy from the standpoint of denominational headquarters (who can publish official positions on the matter), but it certainly leaves the issue unresolved.

The burden of actually figuring out an approach to gay pastors will be done on a church by church (or synod by synod) basis. This not only heightens the salience of local churches but also has vast implications for the issue -- and the decision will be watched closely by other "conservative" denominations.

Overall, this position is essentially a conservative solution. The denomination is throwing up its hands in the face of what are undoubtedly several progressive leaders in the body and their many compelling arguements for gay ordination.

But it is a conservative position in that most congregations will likely continue the path of barring both the ordination and employment of gay pastors.

Image via Wikipedia

On the other hand, the "open" denominational position does leave the possibility of new ELCA congregations being formed by gay pastors. I would guess that as ELCA seminaries graduate more openly gay ministers -- and perhaps some seminaries will become havens for such ministers -- they will seek to establish new ministries where the issue is solved at the outset by their very presence.

The history of homosexuality in the modern church is still being written. How important are ELCA's actions? Or will they only be seen as a side-step to another, larger development? Finally, as church-planting efforts continue, are there new, gay-affirming, "strip mall" ELCA churches coming to a neighborhood near you?

Monday, February 16, 2009

The Strip Church, Las Vegas NV

The XXX Church guys have just started a church in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Craig Ross, the long-haired and still-young founder of xxxchurch.com (never heard of it? It's a ministry to the porn industry and to those struggling with porn addiction. Please visit here, here, and here), and his team have taken the next step in the development of their ministry. The same team that sells t-shirts saying "Jesus Loves Porn Stars" has now moved their offices and their families to Las Vegas to start a church in the heart of Sin City.

The Strip Church is now open.

Image via Wikipedia

They began their unique ministry on January 8th, 2002, when they arrived at their first adult entertainment industry convention dressed in a bunny suit. "Understated, outsmarted, and underfinanced, we knew we could never compete with the 70 billion dollar a year sex industry. But then we realized, we didn't have to compete, we just needed to show up."

In 7 years of continual evangelistic ministry to adult industry trade shows and industry workers, they've continued to move ever closer to the core of the industry. They've even had a documentary made titled Missionary Positions, by filmmaker and non-Christian Bill Day.

Pastor Craig Ross writes on the new church's website, "Every year we head back to Vegas for the porn show in January. This year we plan on staying." His thought is, "Heck, if we can share Jesus when there are naked people distracting from the conversation, how can we not be able share Jesus during a concrete convention or an automotive trade show?"

A nice video and continual updates on The Strip Church are also available.

As a bonus, their vision and plan for the church is nicely described in a "graphic novel" format.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Ted Haggard HBO Documentary Will Discomfort Evangelicals

On Jan. 29th, HBO will air a documentary, "The Trials of Ted Haggard." Haggard, who fell in 2006 amid a gay sex scandal, was exiled from the New Life mega-church he founded and told by church leaders to leave Colorado after admitting "sexual immorality" and buying methamphetamines from a male prostitute.

A new HBO documentary covers Ted Haggard's year in exile, his struggle with his sexuality in the face of his past condemnation of gays, and his attempts to make a living outside the church. During his exile, he told documentary maker Alexandra Pelosi (the daughter of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi), that he continued to "struggle from time to time with same-sex attraction."

"Even though I'm a sinner, even though I'm weak," he told Pelosi, "God's best plan for human beings is for men and women to unite together." He also said this difficult year "strengthened my faith. I do wish others had been more forgiving toward me. But I think those who hate me and judge me had a reason. I deserved it."

Haggard's documentary (about which he had no control of editing) will likely complicate rather than comfort evangelicals. It seems his sexuality is more complicated than he thought. According to the Reuters article:

Three weeks after church elders told Haggard to leave and ordered him to undergo "spiritual restoration," they announced that after counseling he was "completely heterosexual."

Haggard smiled wryly at the statement, saying he fits into neither the gay nor the evangelical community.

"My therapist says I am a heterosexual with complications. I don't say that because it is more complex. I love my relationship with my wife."

To the extent Haggard's sexual "complications" are played up in the film, conservatives will continue to dissassociate from him, even if Haggard still supports traditional marriage.

Look for further backstage revelations on the process of his dismissal and restoration (like "he smiled wryly at the statement" following his elders' assurance that their former leader is "completely homosexual"). As the public absorbs the complex process of navigating between fallen pastors and shocked congregations, such revelations will complicate other high-profile scandals that will inevitably occur in the future.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Why Young Adults Lose Their Religion

I found a great article available online describing how and why teens seem to "lose their religion" as they grow into young adults. One of the co-authors is sociologist Mark Regnerus. I mentioned his excellent book on sex and religion among teens Forbidden Fruit a few days ago in a post on teen virginity pledges.

Does College Secularize Younger Adults?

Yesterday, I wrote about a Muslim Televangelist who had lost his religion in college before re-discovering his faith. I am reminded that most people believe that going to college leads young adults to move away from religion.

But here's published research that shows those who avoid college are actually more likely to lose their religion.

Image by murplej@ne - under deconstruction via Flickr

From the introduction:

Contrary to expectations, emerging adults that avoid college exhibit the most extensive patterns of religious decline, undermining conventional wisdom about the secularizing effect of higher education. Marriage curbs religious decline, while cohabitation, nonmarital sex, drugs and alcohol use each accelerate diminished religiosity – especially religious participation – during early adulthood.

This article is easy to read and challenges our common sense assumptions.

How to Get the Essential Points from the Article

If you don't have time to read the whole article, focus on pages 1-6, and 17-20.

What do you think?

Monday, December 29, 2008

The Value of Teen Virginity Pledges Continues to be Questioned

It's no surprise that conservative Christians promote sexual abstinence among teenagers, but many have found interesting they have been fairly effective at drawing their teens into various rallies to make "purity pledges." The program "True Love Waits," for example, gets enthusiastic support from parents and church leaders who hope to keep their kids out of trouble. And there has been government support.

But the effectiveness of such programs has always been questioned.

Today, I found a study published in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. Using sophisticated data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Janet E. Rosenbaum (post doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) matched students who had taken a virginity pledge with those who hadn't.

Basically, the study indicates that teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have all forms of premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence. Also, because of what the study reports as "negative views on sex," these teens are less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do.

The study also finds that 5 years after taking "virginity pledges" teens say they never made such pledges. This "disavowal" and "disaffinity" seems to indicate that parents and churches have been more effective at getting kids into programs, not in making lifelong commitments.

So, rigorous research does not seem to support that abstinence programs slow the rate of sexual activity. This will again call into question the federal funding of these programs because the stated goals are not being met. But the research I read fails to look at other choices these kids are making as a result of these programs.

My guess is that while critics of these programs may be right in the devastating finding that on average what these programs were supposed to do actually doesn't happen. On the other hand, I would be very interested to know more about the "unintended consequences" of participating in these programs (more so than lack of condom use). How do these programs affect friendship networks? Later church attendance? Identity as "Christian"? And later, what will their attitude be towards parenting? How about suicide rates or grade point average?

Finally, we might be spending more time looking at middle averages and not enough on the outliers. What happens to the "super-pledgers", young people who take up the cause of sexual purity? And what about the "anti-pledgers," those who end up fighting against a program they initially supported?

Findings like this will ultimately be a struggle over values. Perhaps the power of these programs lies in unexpected places. If we can get to understanding what these programs actually do in the lives of teens--and the variety of responses by young adults to these programs over time--then church ministries will change again, maybe focusing less on sexual abstinence and more on sexual identity, personal relationships, and reflections on self-worth.

More on the study can be found reported at the Washington Post, and The New York Times.

Also, for an excellent and up-to-date study on the sexual lives of American teenagers, please see my friend Mark Regnerus' new book:

Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers

Interesting and easy to read, this book goes well beyond looking at just abstinence to give a full picture of the relationship between sex and religion among teens.