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LGBT: In The Name of God: The Church’s Response to The LGBT Community
Cover by Bruce Rolff
Who would Jesus Condemn?
The Church, as we practice it, is not modeled after Christ but after Paul's pastoral teachings about Christ, or Christ-once-removed. Jesus lived a simple life of nomadic austerity that bears no resemblance to American mainstream Christianity as we practice it. He routinely hung out with "sinners" and condemned no one (John 3:17) but religious phonies. To believe that Christ never blessed an LGBT person, that He somehow pre-screened the multitudes, is to be a complete theological nitwit.
If homosexuality is genetic, if people are born gay, from that perspective we might conclude that homosexuality is not materially different than nearsightedness or tone-deafness. Freckles are a birth defect, caused by low melanin. Only 10% of the world’s population is left-handed, which may be caused by a kind of brain defect in which the brain’s two hemispheres are either switched or less lateralized. The main difference between being born with freckles and being born gay is freckles carry no moral component, while homosexuals are condemned for simply breathing. I am nearsighted. I was born that way. I am not a mistake. I am not defective. I am exactly who God intended me to be. And I believe these things about LGBT persons: they are not defective. They are not a mistake. We all are inherently sinful.
If we're going to burn gays at the stake for living lives of sin, we’d better be prepared to string up the remarrieds—and the autistic and the cerebral palsy and Spina bifida victims and the deaf and the nearsighted and the blind and the left-handed and those who wear garments made of two different threads and those who can’t whistle and, yes, the freckled and the bunny rabbits—right next to them.
I am for God and I am against hate. Hate, for us, is simply wrong. No matter how you cloak your hatred in religious conviction or scriptural purpose, hate is still hate. Bigotry is still bigotry. As Christians, especially as black Christians, we of all people certainly understand bigotry and hatred. We, of all people, should be the last to practice it.
LGBT: In The Name of God presents a collection of essays by Christopher James Priest, a critically-acclaimed novelist and comics writer for major publishers Marvel and DC Comics. An ordained Baptist pastor, this collection of pointed, irreverent, contextually critical no-holds-barred observations represents Priest’s personal views based upon more than fifty years of service to the African American church. Rather than LGBT Christian apologetics, the Black Church’s response, or lack thereof, to the LGBT community is the focus of this collection. Topics include an examination of traditional church doctrine and the roots of homophobia, a questioning of progressive doctrine with respect to eisegetical parsing of scripture, the Black Church’s unwritten “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, political exploitation of LGBT issues, same-sex marriage, and building a process through which open and honest dialogue among the household of faith may take place with respect to achieving a more biblically sound response to a challenge the American church has traditionally ignored. Foreword by The Reverend Benjamin L. Reynolds, MDIV, former Director of the LGBTQ Religious Studies Center at Chicago Theological Seminary. 12 Chapters, 49,000 words.
Who would Jesus Condemn?
The Church, as we practice it, is not modeled after Christ but after Paul's pastoral teachings about Christ, or Christ-once-removed. Jesus lived a simple life of nomadic austerity that bears no resemblance to American mainstream Christianity as we practice it. He routinely hung out with "sinners" and condemned no one (John 3:17) but religious phonies. To believe that Christ never blessed an LGBT person, that He somehow pre-screened the multitudes, is to be a complete theological nitwit.
If homosexuality is genetic, if people are born gay, from that perspective we might conclude that homosexuality is not materially different than nearsightedness or tone-deafness. Freckles are a birth defect, caused by low melanin. Only 10% of the world’s population is left-handed, which may be caused by a kind of brain defect in which the brain’s two hemispheres are either switched or less lateralized. The main difference between being born with freckles and being born gay is freckles carry no moral component, while homosexuals are condemned for simply breathing. I am nearsighted. I was born that way. I am not a mistake. I am not defective. I am exactly who God intended me to be. And I believe these things about LGBT persons: they are not defective. They are not a mistake. We all are inherently sinful.
If we're going to burn gays at the stake for living lives of sin, we’d better be prepared to string up the remarrieds—and the autistic and the cerebral palsy and Spina bifida victims and the deaf and the nearsighted and the blind and the left-handed and those who wear garments made of two different threads and those who can’t whistle and, yes, the freckled and the bunny rabbits—right next to them.
I am for God and I am against hate. Hate, for us, is simply wrong. No matter how you cloak your hatred in religious conviction or scriptural purpose, hate is still hate. Bigotry is still bigotry. As Christians, especially as black Christians, we of all people certainly understand bigotry and hatred. We, of all people, should be the last to practice it.
LGBT: In The Name of God presents a collection of essays by Christopher James Priest, a critically-acclaimed novelist and comics writer for major publishers Marvel and DC Comics. An ordained Baptist pastor, this collection of pointed, irreverent, contextually critical no-holds-barred observations represents Priest’s personal views based upon more than fifty years of service to the African American church. Rather than LGBT Christian apologetics, the Black Church’s response, or lack thereof, to the LGBT community is the focus of this collection. Topics include an examination of traditional church doctrine and the roots of homophobia, a questioning of progressive doctrine with respect to eisegetical parsing of scripture, the Black Church’s unwritten “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, political exploitation of LGBT issues, same-sex marriage, and building a process through which open and honest dialogue among the household of faith may take place with respect to achieving a more biblically sound response to a challenge the American church has traditionally ignored. Foreword by The Reverend Benjamin L. Reynolds, MDIV, former Director of the LGBTQ Religious Studies Center at Chicago Theological Seminary. 12 Chapters, 49,000 words.
118 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 13, 2015
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