Reprinted from "O/AM News" Oct. 01/Jan. 02 issue
-- by Dick Allen, Senior Pastor at The Congregational Church in South Glastonbury, to the congregation on the tenth anniversary (May 2001) of its Open and Affirming vote.
I wanted to write a pastoral letter in celebration of our ten years as an Open and Affirming Church. This stance for justice is one of many identifiers of our congregation. I am fond of telling people we are a church in mission, a church committed to children and youth, a church of spirited worship, and a church not afraid of talking about any subject from a faith perspective.
The process that led to our Open and Affirming vote and the years thereafter have given us opportunities to reflect deeply on matters of theology and biblical interpretation and the authority of our own life experience. Nothing thrills a pastor more than a congregation willing to reopen these subjects in a prayerful, intentional way.
For example, many of us found ourselves having to revisit our understanding of the nature of sin. We realized that sin has to do with moral choices. God sets before us the ways of life and death and encourages us to choose life! A person's sexual orientation is a gift from God, not a matter of choice. The only choice is in accepting or rejecting the orientation God has given. So, choosing life means accepting and celebrating the sexual orientation God gave each of us as we were being knit together in our mother's womb.
In revisiting the biblical texts, we found lots of helpful material. We found that Jesus preached a Gospel of radical inclusiveness, making room for everyone at the table, especially those traditionally excluded: the Samaritan, women, lepers, children. Though gays and lesbians are not mentioned by Jesus specifically, his strong language of inclusion informs our thinking.
Mention of homosexuality in the Bible tends to refer to occasions of violence of one person against another such as rape, degradation, and sexual exploitation. The Bible is silent on the subject of same-gender couples in committed, loving relationships. What the Bible condemns is the violation of what is sacred. What we regard as sacred is the vow of fidelity in a committed relationship.
Other biblical material has been informative and inspirational. The story in Acts of Peter's vision of unclean animals leads to the profound truth that God shows no partiality. The Creation stories in Genesis affirm the infinite variety of God's diversity. What some would label as unnatural, we have come to understand as a healthy manifestation of God‚s creative genius. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah reveals God's impatience with inhospitality.
Many of us have relatives and friends who have come out to us or who are known to us as gay or lesbian. These people are dear to us. We know them. We trust them. We have walked with them through life's dilemmas.
Our life experience tells us our gay and lesbian friends are created in the image of God just as our heterosexual friends are created in the divine image. What we are learning is to trust the authority of our own experience. And when the authority of our life experience appears to be in conflict with the authority of the Bible or any other authority, it's time to look again more critically at our own reality, at our biblical interpretation, at whatever it is that remains conflicted; and to do this in the context of a faith community.
This is what I have found incredibly stimulating and where the truth breaks in; namely, where various authorities rub up against each other. This is what causes us to grow, to deepen our faith, and to see more clearly the Realm of God. For God is revealed to us in the pages of Scripture as well as in all the relationships of our lives.
When I have conversations with young people, the word that surfaces over and over again is the word hypocrisy. They seem to have x-ray vision. They can detect in a moment what is genuine and what is hypocritical. They know who accepts them as they are and who rejects them. They know who has time for them and who has no time. They know who cares and who does not care. They know who is open and affirming and who is closed and judgmental. I believe this explains why so many youth come to Junior High Fellowship, to Wednesday School, and to the Habitat for Humanity Mission trip. Their experience of the adult advisors is that they are open and affirming.
When Jesus challenged his disciples to be a light in the world, he couldn‚t have known what form that light would take hundreds and thousands of years later. For these past ten years, being the light of Christ has meant being an Open and Affirming Church, a place where all God's children find a spiritual home.
Blessing and honor, glory and power be unto God! In the greatest of hope, Dick Allen.
