Book: Gifted by Otherness
Gifted by Otherness: Gay and Lesbian Christians in the Church, by William Countryman and M.R. Ritley. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2001.
This is the best book I've ever encountered about being LGBTQ and Christian. Anyone who identifies with both communities, as I do, knows it can be an awkward, uncomfortable, sometimes painful place to be.
I've read quite a bit of the last 30 years' output on this topic. A lot of it is on Biblical interpretation and explaining the original context of the seven "purple passages" used to condemn same-sex intimacy (Leviticus 18:22 - "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination") and why they don't mean the same thing in the 20th / 21st century. This genre is mostly by authors who aren't gay themselves, because of course gay people's interpretations don't count. *grrr* Some of it is confessional memoirs by straight Christians explaining how they realized they shouldn't condemn gay people, usually because their son or daughter came out. One or two, I regret to say, were by gay people who offered little beyond expressing the unfairness of the situation. Nearly all of this left me unsatisfied and impatient.
By contrast, the authors of Gifted by Otherness start out with a blunt declaration:
We make several assumptions in writing this book:
1. We will waste no time justifying our presence in the church. As baptized Christians, we ourselves *are* the church, and we are obviously here, as we always have been; end of statement.
Yes, THANK YOU. That exactly.
The rest of the book explores how LGBTQ identity and spiritual life are intertwined for people who embrace both and for me it really resonated. Being lesbian has shaped my spiritual experience very strongly and in entirely positive ways. I can't say the same for being part of the church: there are some positive things, certainly more as time goes on, but I found my place in the world as an unpartnered woman and a lesbian without being acknowledged or supported by the church. Unfortunate, but... the church isn't God.
I guess it should go without saying that both of the co-authors are gay. M.R. Ritley is a (female) Episcopal priest in California, and William Countryman is a professor of New Testament, retired now I think, at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, an Episcopal seminary. Their respective vocations really shape their writing. They alternate chapters so you know who wrote each section. Ritley speaks as a parish priest, very accessible and many anecdotes, while Countryman has a more scholarly approach.
Here's a bit more from the introduction.
Lesbian and gay Christians often find that we are trying to explain ourselves to two different and mutually hostile audiences. On one side, the gay-lesbian community is often deeply suspicious of anybody connected with Christianity. Many of us, individually and as a group, have excellent reason for such feelings, having been treated very harshly and dismissively by churches. Some people who claim to speak for Christianity really do have an anti-gay agenda, and they sometimes take an active political role in trying to keep gay and lesbian people from sharing the rights that other citizens of modern democracies take for granted -- the right to freedom of speech, for example, the right to basic security in habitation and employment, and the right to form legally recognized families. Given all this, many gay men and lesbians have a hard time understanding why we would still be engaged with the Christian faith.
The churches, on the other hand, even when they are not actively hostile to us, often seem to wish that we would go away or at least disappear quietly into the woodwork. They wonder why we cannot leave well enough alone and just be grateful that we're no longer being denounced, expelled, or even executed. A good many of our heterosexual co-religionists think of us as creating a problem by our presence. We belong to the ranks of the "tolerated," and the classic fantasy of toleration is that the tolerated ought to be so grateful for that status that they meekly submit to whatever lingering indignities may go with it. Churches, then -- with some happy exceptions -- wonder why we have to be gay at all; or, if it's really unavoidable, why we have to *talk* about it.
This is the best book I've ever encountered about being LGBTQ and Christian. Anyone who identifies with both communities, as I do, knows it can be an awkward, uncomfortable, sometimes painful place to be.
I've read quite a bit of the last 30 years' output on this topic. A lot of it is on Biblical interpretation and explaining the original context of the seven "purple passages" used to condemn same-sex intimacy (Leviticus 18:22 - "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination") and why they don't mean the same thing in the 20th / 21st century. This genre is mostly by authors who aren't gay themselves, because of course gay people's interpretations don't count. *grrr* Some of it is confessional memoirs by straight Christians explaining how they realized they shouldn't condemn gay people, usually because their son or daughter came out. One or two, I regret to say, were by gay people who offered little beyond expressing the unfairness of the situation. Nearly all of this left me unsatisfied and impatient.
By contrast, the authors of Gifted by Otherness start out with a blunt declaration:
We make several assumptions in writing this book:
1. We will waste no time justifying our presence in the church. As baptized Christians, we ourselves *are* the church, and we are obviously here, as we always have been; end of statement.
Yes, THANK YOU. That exactly.
The rest of the book explores how LGBTQ identity and spiritual life are intertwined for people who embrace both and for me it really resonated. Being lesbian has shaped my spiritual experience very strongly and in entirely positive ways. I can't say the same for being part of the church: there are some positive things, certainly more as time goes on, but I found my place in the world as an unpartnered woman and a lesbian without being acknowledged or supported by the church. Unfortunate, but... the church isn't God.
I guess it should go without saying that both of the co-authors are gay. M.R. Ritley is a (female) Episcopal priest in California, and William Countryman is a professor of New Testament, retired now I think, at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, an Episcopal seminary. Their respective vocations really shape their writing. They alternate chapters so you know who wrote each section. Ritley speaks as a parish priest, very accessible and many anecdotes, while Countryman has a more scholarly approach.
Here's a bit more from the introduction.
Lesbian and gay Christians often find that we are trying to explain ourselves to two different and mutually hostile audiences. On one side, the gay-lesbian community is often deeply suspicious of anybody connected with Christianity. Many of us, individually and as a group, have excellent reason for such feelings, having been treated very harshly and dismissively by churches. Some people who claim to speak for Christianity really do have an anti-gay agenda, and they sometimes take an active political role in trying to keep gay and lesbian people from sharing the rights that other citizens of modern democracies take for granted -- the right to freedom of speech, for example, the right to basic security in habitation and employment, and the right to form legally recognized families. Given all this, many gay men and lesbians have a hard time understanding why we would still be engaged with the Christian faith.
The churches, on the other hand, even when they are not actively hostile to us, often seem to wish that we would go away or at least disappear quietly into the woodwork. They wonder why we cannot leave well enough alone and just be grateful that we're no longer being denounced, expelled, or even executed. A good many of our heterosexual co-religionists think of us as creating a problem by our presence. We belong to the ranks of the "tolerated," and the classic fantasy of toleration is that the tolerated ought to be so grateful for that status that they meekly submit to whatever lingering indignities may go with it. Churches, then -- with some happy exceptions -- wonder why we have to be gay at all; or, if it's really unavoidable, why we have to *talk* about it.