Reconciling Ministries Network

Christian, Gay, and Feminist

by Leland Spencer

Recently, The Institute for Women's Studies at the University of Georgia hosted a research symposium with the theme, "Feminist Research Across the Disciplines." I had the opportunity to present a narrative account of my own intersection of identities. Because the essay addresses a number of questions and topics relevant to this blog, I wanted to share an excerpt from it for interested readers. Click here to read the complete essay.

I gave a similarly-themed paper at another conference a few months ago, and in each case, I was thrilled with the great and thoughtful comments and questions from audience members. I am convinced that people are eager to hear affirming words about how it's possible to co-exist at these ostensibly paradoxical levels of identity, and that is part of what makes me so excited to be a part of this movement.

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Christian, Gay, and Feminist: A Feminist Research Axiology Across Identities

Welcome to my story. My hope is that by the end of this essay, you will have an understanding for who I am and what I value as a scholar. My inspiration for this essay is three-pronged. The first two prongs are panels from the thirty-first meeting of the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender in Nashville, Tennessee. One panel focused on narratives; the panelists functioned as small group conveners and shared their own narratives and then invited everyone else to begin crafting a narrative (Defenbaugh, Tigerlily, O’Neill, & MacDonald, 2008). The themes and dynamics of my own narrative resonated within me throughout the conference, and then I found myself at another panel, the Vice President’s panel on feminist paradoxes (Kirby, 2008). Again arranged in small groups, we talked about how we navigate those moments in our lives when our feminist consciousnesses clash with other important values. In my small group, most of the participants identified religion or spirituality as their paradox. The question was asked by different voices using different words, but at its base, the issue was this: are faith and feminism compatible?

As I traveled home from the conference, these two influential panels merged in my mind, and the thought of their combined influence would not let me go. Somewhere at the overlap of knowing that narratives are powerful and thinking about the feminist paradoxes in my life, I knew I had a story to offer, a story that explains who I am, what I value, and why I do the work I do as a communication scholar. The two panels are the main reasons why I write this narrative; the third reason I want to tell my story is the very existence of the paradox. I am a Christian. I am a gay man. I am a feminist. So often in my life, I find that people are surprised by that combination. It seems unlikely—even impossible—that someone could identify with all three of those statements, and yet my life and my research is (I hope) a living embodiment of all three. I do not see my sexuality, spirituality, and feminism as contradictions of each other. Alternatively, I see them as mutual fulfillments of one another.

My thesis is that I can simultaneously affirm my identities as a Christian, a gay man, and a feminist because each of those parts of my identity is fundamentally emancipatory. My axiology is one that affirms human dignity as a central value. In my personal life and my professional work as a communication scholar, I believe in advancing human dignity and disrupting oppression. Those values are central to my life, and they are located at the nexus of my ostensibly paradoxical Christian, gay, and feminist identities. In the paragraphs that follow, I share my narrative and thus explain my axiology, dismantling each apparent paradox along the way.

Christianity and feminism

I begin with Christianity and feminism because the perceived incompatibility of these two central parts of my identity haunted several people in the small group of which I was a part at the conference. One scholar talked about the conservative church where she grew up; she remembered hearing feminism condemned. Another scholar said she often felt a contradiction between her faith as a Roman Catholic and her views as a feminist. She was unsure how to reconcile those parts of her being.

I appreciated the openness and honesty of my feminist colleagues around that circle, and I was grateful to be a part of a faith tradition that affirms both the primacy of scripture and the equality of women and men as an intention of creation. I first figured out I was a feminist because of my faith. I was at a church retreat, and I met a wonderfully gifted pastor. I was amazed by this pastor’s knowledge and ability to relate scripture to people’s lives in such personal and relevant ways. This pastor was unlike any I had met before. I was profoundly hurt when I learned that she had faced discrimination; that some congregations were unreceptive of her simply because of her gender. I felt the unfairness of it in the depths of my soul. It hurt me that this profoundly gifted pastor faced challenges that her colleagues who were men would never have to face. Though I may not have known the word feminism, I became a feminist that day because I acknowledged male privilege, identified a source and consequence of sexism, and began looking for ways to disrupt patriarchal oppression. Read more..

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Leland G. Spencer IV, a lifelong United Methodist, is a PhD student in the department of speech communication at the University of Georgia, where he researches religious rhetoric as it intersects with gender and sexuality. Leland holds an M.A. in Communication from the University of Cincinnati (2009). While in Cincinnati, Leland served as the worship intern at the Wesley Foundation. Leland served as a part-time local pastor at Mapleton United Methodist Church in the East Ohio Conference from 2005 until 2007 when Leland withdrew from the candidacy process because of the United Methodist Church's exclusive position about the ordination of LGBT persons.

A Response to Comments

by Rev. Gilbert Caldwell

It is is in writing/speaking and reading/listening, that I have found God is able to take us to places we seldom visit. A recent commentary on one of my blogs prompts the following. I will print an excerpt of the commentary and offer my response. (In Response to Comments From -Lessons for United Methodists from Mayor-elect Annise Parker and Strom Thurmond)

"Are you sure that Strom Thurmond did not take what he wanted from Carrie Butler and then..."

My point was that too often we in the Church and beyond "use" the gifts of LGBT persons and same gender loving couples and yet condemn them for being who they are; human beings who have the same gifts and graces, perfections and imperfections and if they are people of faith; love God as deeply as any of us do. Thurmond "used" Carrie Butler, and then had the audacity, to block legislation that would benefit Carrie Butler and all of us who are African Americans. I have LGBT friends whose gifts are "used" by preachers and churches, even as those preachers and churches, condemn them because of their "incompatibility". I sought to suggest in my blog that there are similarities in the way Thurmond related to Carrie Butler, the servant who was the mother of his child, while he demeaned black people as a group. I have seen this same kind of relationship with individual LGBT persons in the church,accepted and affirmed, while from pulpit and pew they and those like them are demeaned.

"But the nerve of you to use God to further your agenda and line your pockets"

I respond in reverse order to this critique. The writer must be aware of income that I have that has not yet reached my pockets. If he could identify the source and amount of that income,I would appreciate it. It has not yet reached my pockets, my wallet nor my bank account.

It is strange that my being an ally/advocate of gay rights in church and society, becomes "your agenda". Does this suggest that my critic believes that the justice agenda, whether for blacks or for LGBT persons or for women, or poor people, etc. is not an important aspect of God's agenda? The Broadway play titled; "Your Arms Too Short to Box with God", is descriptive of my relationship to/with God. "Using" God is to box with God, and history has shown us that those who "used" God to support slavery, segregation and the subjugation of women, boxed with God and lost!

"How dare you trivialize the fight of minorities and compare it to the fight of the LGBT group."

The writer has trivialized the long struggles of minorities when he suggests that comparisons with other struggles is an act of trivialization. My history of black advocacy and my writings have indicated that there is no equivalency between slavery, racial segregation and the discrimination faced by LGBT persons. But the fight/quest for justice is not an exercise in comparisons, it is an effort to affirm the dignity, rights and humanity of all of God's people.

"Please don't say racism is dead."

It is difficult for me to understand why the writer suggests that the death of racism is something I believe, or have written. Martin Luther King, Jr. said of segregation; "It is dead, it is just a question of how long some folk want to make its funeral." I believe that the existence of legally sponsored racism or heterosexism is so at variance with God's intent or the intent of our Constitution, that neither of them has legitimate life. But, sadly in the church and in the nation, there are people who seek to prevent their burial by prolonging their respective funerals. Thus, LGBT persons and black persons are harmed and hurt by these two "isms". They are perpetrated by persons who have some peculiar need to hold on to their racism and/or heterosexism, not realizing that they are living with the awful odor of an attitude/assumption/action that is dead but not yet buried.

"Media disrespect of our President"

There are those in the media who disrespect our President and that disrespect is so obvious that most Americans can see it. Media "talking heads" who have labeled President Obama, "a racist" or who claim "he hates white people" say much about  themselves and nothing about President Obama. My critic in his writing states, what I too believe; the election of President Obama may have made racial history, but it did not erase our racial history, much of which is negative. There are issues with which I have disagreement with our President. But when any of his critics resorts to racial bias or prejudice to under gird their differences with him, they weaken the legitimacy of their disagreement.

I am writing this after a speaking/preaching engagement in Brooklyn in observance of the Martin Luther King holiday. My critic's response reminds me of those 8 clergyman in Birmingham who took out an ad criticizing Dr. King, expressing the wish that he and the Movement would leave town. I have remembered the richness of the words and thoughts that Dr. King included in his Letter from Birmingham Jail addressed to those clergymen. I obviously do not have the gifts we saw in the life of Martin Luther King. But, my hope is that my responses may serve to soften the anger that was revealed in the comments of my critic. I, possibly unlike my critic, have sought to allow the wounds that I have experienced for 76 years because of my blackness, to help me become a "wounded healer", sensitive not only to my wounds, but to the wounds of others. I have felt that if I cannot be sensitive to the harm and hurt that others who are not black, experience, I cannot expect others to be sensitive to the harm and hurt, I have experienced.

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The Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell is a retired United Methodist Minister who lives in Asbury Park, N.J. He was active in the Massachusetts unit of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and participated in the civil-rights movement throughout the nation. In 2000, he, with others, organized the RMN Extension ministry United Methodists of Color for a Fully Inclusive Church (UMOC), an organization committed to the full inclusion of LGBT people in every aspect of church and society. His recent book, Something Within: Works by Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell is available from Church Within A Church.

Overcoming Serial Discrimination

By Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell

This post references Decision No. 1111 by the Judicial Council of The United Methodist Church.

"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been known. And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."  First Corinthians 13: 12 and 13

Many of us had hopes for the recent meeting of the Judicial Council that were not fulfilled. Rather than allowing our disappointment that a newly elected Judicial Council seemed to make decisions much like its predecessors, I suggest something else.

I write as always, much like the musician in improvisational Jazz. She/he pays their solo with the hope and expectation that their solo will inspire more creatively profound solos from the musicians who play next. This is my "solo", hopefully to be followed by far more creative and profound solos from those who read this.

One of the reasons I have attempted to be a consistent and persistent ally/advocate of equal rights and opportunities for LGBT persons and same gender couples in The United Methodist Church is that our present negative legislation is almost a mirror image of previous legislation that once enforced racial segregation and the denial of  ordination to women. The United Methodist Church is a living example of the words; "The more things change, the more they remain the same." I contend that because we have not really acknowledged and admitted the limited and exclusive Biblical interpretation that was ours that justified racial segregation and the denial of ordination to women,  we have been reluctant to change our present language; "incompatible with Christian teaching", vis-a-vis Gay persons.

The May 11, 2000 issue of the General Conference Daily Christian Advocate carries an interview with Bishop Kenneth Carder. The article states (not as an exact quote) "Bishop Carder also said of our differences over gay rights in United Methodism may be the place where the Church can understand God in a different way." Then this direct quotation from Bishop Carder; "On the issue of homosexuality, we are raising other issues such as the authority of Scripture, the nature of God and the meaning of baptism."

I believe that neither on racial segregation, our unwillingness to ordain women and now our refusal to ordain same sex loving persons who are open about their sexual orientation, did we then, nor do we now, do what Bishop Carder suggests. Neither then nor now, have we sought to "understand God in a different way", or honestly review our understandings of "the authority of Scripture, the nature of God and the meaning of baptism".

Our denomination has engaged in serial (one after another) discrimination, because we have not engaged in, in-depth re-appropriations of what we believe. Therefore there are United Methodists who do not believe they are not out-of-step with Scripture and therefore the Book of Discipline, when some of them still say no to the appointment of an African American Pastor,  and/or a woman, even though the Book of Discipline forbids this. Thus when it comes to same gender loving clergy, they repeat the flawed legislation of the past and re-mix it to exclude "Homosexuals".

The USA has nine Supreme Court Justices who interpret the Constitution; deciding when past or current actions are out of step with their understandings of the Constitution. (On  May 17, 2009 we remember their 1954 decision ruling making invalid "separate but equal" public schools). They in doing this,"corrected" an earlier mis-interpretation. In The United Methodist Church every 4 years 1000 delegates make decisions on the meaning of Scripture and insert their interpretation in the Book of Discipline. We have seen over and over again how in the Church and in society, majority decisions often do not protect the rights of minorities. And, all we allow our Judicial Council to do is to play a "Traffic Cop" role, deciding when one decision or action collides with General Conference action, but not when it collides with Scripture or the mission and ministry of The United Methodist Church. What might we be as a denomination if our Judicial Council could rule "invalid", legislation that is counter to a wholistic understanding of Scripture and the "inclusivity" claims of the denomination?    

When will we in The United Methodist Church begin to acknowledge that past legislation was faulty because "we (saw) in a mirror dimly", and that "we (knew) only in part".

Until we do this, women and African Americans who are ordained clergy will encounter some United Methodists who are still living by the restrictive legislation of the past, and same gender loving candidates for ministry and those who are ordained clergy, will be rejected by our  current legislation. We are "open" about the exclusion of self-proclaimed Gay clergy and subtle about those times when women and African American clergy are denied access to some Churches because of gender and race. I believe that African Americans and women who support the restrictive legislation regarding Gay persons, are through their silence or their actions, retroactively, condoning the Book of Discipline that once separated and/or excluded them because of race and/or gender. There is a peculiar irony when those who were once excluded because of race or gender, see no contradiction in their support of persons being excluded because of their sexual orientation. Faith, hope and love do abide, but despite the greatness of love, The United Methodist Church, despite its language about the "sacredness of all persons", in the past and today, compromises the meaning of love. It did so in the past when love did not become justice for women and Black persons. And today, when love does not become justice for same gender loving persons.

Gilbert H. Caldwell

Motive Comes Out!

By Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell

Grace and I after 51 years of marriage, continue the emotionally draining process of re-discovering and then discarding, articles, magazines and books that we have saved over the years. A recent re-discovery; Volume 32, Number 1 of the 1972 MOTIVE, Lesbian/Feminist Issue. It is my hope that it is not inappropriate for me as a male to share this. The editors include these words; "Ending gay oppression will not automatically end woman oppression. Only a complete destruction of the whole male supremacist system can free women." I have sought to acknowledge my male privilege and hope that my sharing these words from that issue of MOTIVE will represent another small step on my part, to "own up to" the imbalances that still exist between women and men.

"MOTIVE, a monthly magazine published by the United Methodist Church for over twenty years, is no more. This is its final issue. Throughout MOTIVE's history, radical dissension within limits was tolerated with a few slaps on the wrist, but the church fathers really squirmed when the special issue on women appeared in March-April, 1969. In the aftermath of the controversy over the women's issue, the church began to reduce its support of Motive and Motive decided it could no longer function under the church...the staff and editorial board decided to close up shop-using the remaining resources of the magazine to put out one final gay issue. The Furies, a collective of twelve lesbians in Washington, DC. which included a member of the old Motive editorial board, assumed responsibility for the lesbian issue. Within the collective, four of us took major responsibility for this project but everyone has contributed to it....We hope you will read the magazine, pass it on, talk about it with women you know and women you are getting to know, keep in touch with us and join the struggle."

Joan E. Biren, Rita Mae Brown, Charlotte Bunch, Coletta Reid

(The issue was published by Sojourner Truth Publishing Collective, Atlanta, Georgia)

It may be that the greatest gift we who are old men and women who "Dream Dreams" (Joel),can offer this moment in history is to share history that many of us have forgotten and many, many others, have never known.

Grandpa Gil

Mother/Wife as the height of life?

By Darrius Hills

A few weekends ago, I went to Michigan Ave. to walk around as I normally do. While I was at Water Tower Place, I saw a mother with 4 young daughters. They were walking in front of me headed to the main area of the mall. The picture of this mother and her daughters was interesting, and I couldn't help but note a few things. ALL the young girls had toy carriages full of small babies. This was odd coupled with the fact that just earlier, I saw another set of young girls with their mother with the same toy carriage full of babies (I don't know if this is/was a new toy to emerge this year). I was particularly attuned to the comments of one of the mothers: "take care of your babies; this will be good practice for later!"

In one of my classes, Wesley and the 19th Century, we continued discussion on the struggles faced by women seeking ordination in the early Methodist movement(s). The professor raised the observation that many women in this time period sought male clergy for a husband--that it was indeed an "honor" to be considered the wife of a minister--to support his ministry--even though for a long time women would be denied the public leadership afforded to male clergy. Yet, the consensus at the turn of the 19th century was that the role of wife was the best suited identity a woman could possess.

A few things---

The issue that I've always raised is one of self-agency and self-naming. The beautiful Audre Lorde said it best: "If I didn't define myself for myself, I'd be crushed into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." As I consider what I observed in the mall that day and as I consider the information from the lecture, I find myself wondering how women are learning to and/or choosing to define themselves and their identities: is it via their own consciousness--their own sense of agency or is it rather from heternormative perspectives on motherhood/marriage?

What I saw with the young girls seems to be an indicator of female socialization into heternormative notions of motherhood. Consider the mother's comments linking the play of the young girls to preparation for their future (i.e. "it'll be practice for later"). This has several implications. First, it makes the girls' childhood recreation a type of training ground for motherhood; in this sense, the girls were being "bred" into mothers. Secondly, and perhaps what I'm most afraid of, comments such as these ingrained into young girls minds over time, imply that motherhood (and being a wife) is the height of what it means to be woman. In a word, breeding children within the confines of a marriage is the essence--the zenith of womanhood.

This is partly why I was also troubled by the comments from the lecture in class; there was (is) an ingrained social trend that suggested that women are best suited for motherhood and thus, being confined to the role of "wife"--a formless entity only rationally conceived when united with another greater entity--the male. This is troublesome because there are still traces of this ideology that permeate social and relational structures in most contemporary societies. I do not want to diminish those who seek to be or who are wives or mothers. My problem is the limiting of female possibilities and capacities to domesticated roles (which more often than not are confined to the private sphere).

Is being a wife or a mother REALLY the best that women can hope for? No. Is being a wife or a mother a bad thing? No; but it certainly isn't the only life option. It isn't the only way women can assert or develop self-agency or identity. There seem to be some parallels here with Victor Anderson's critique of "ontological blackness." He suggests that there are many dimensions and possibilities of Black life--of Black capacity. Therefore, to have an understanding (self-identity) of Blackness, viewed solely in terms of oppression and discrimination, is too limiting and alienating.

Using a similar thought process here, I'd say that limited understandings of the capacities and possibilities of female personhood would be alienating as well as do NOT give full justice to wonderful gifts and creative powers that women possess beyond those associated with males. (motherhood/marriage).

Is motherhood/marriage the height of life for women? No. It is but one among so many others. What these other options are and how they are to be determined is solely up to women.

Raise your Voice

By Darrius Hills

Food for thought...

Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. (1 Timothy 2:11-12, NRSV)

A continual dripping on a rainy day and a contentious wife are alike; to restrain her is to restrain the wind or to grasp oil in the right hand. (Proverbs 27:15-16, NRSV)

It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a contentious wife. (Proverbs 20:9, NRSV)

Well…from the ancient Biblical writings to the present, at least one thing is certain: we men have a hard time accepting women with minds of their own, or with LOUD, booming voices! The voluminous voices of autonomous women—proves threatening to a society of men so used to being entitled to a ‘global speakerphone’—how dare women encroach upon our space—how dare women take up our "airtime"! :)

A few weeks ago, I was listening to The Temptations Anthology while I was working out—one of my favorite songs--“Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” graced my headphones. The song resonated with my sentiments as of late—albeit with a slight twist: what would happen if men weren’t too proud to listen to the voices of women. What would the world look like if men decided to destroy the seats of authority we have unscrupulously created for ourselves? What if the mute button was pressed on the male voice, and the volume was increased for the female voice? I wonder…I wonder…

In any formal debate a facilitator gives each party a specific amount of time to state their piece—then it becomes the other party’s turn. Within the discourses between men and women, however, there simply has not been sufficient time given, or more to the point, ALLOWED for the female perspective(s)/voice(s). Here, I do not say “allow” in the sense that women need permission to raise their voices, but rather, to demonstrate that womens’ voices have been muted. Women’s vocal cords have been silenced due to patriarchal asphyxiation.

I am reminded of a statement I recall Dr. Bedford making in my Feminist Theology class my first year. Men pride themselves on being on the ‘center stage’ (public sphere)—because we deem it our space (I use “our” in an individualized sense; men often fight other men for that space lol). Because it is “our” space, we easily become threatened and our egos take a hit when the “other” enters the space demanding equal time! I’m not altogether sure that I should parallel public/private sphere discourses to a formal debate, but just for a moment, I’d like to use that example to further clarify my point. Earlier, I stated that a facilitator allowed each “party” to offer their perspectives. Historically, male voices and male presences have served as pseudo-facilitators—I say “pseudo” because it is a role that we have falsely and forcefully ascribed to ourselves. Who then, is the authentic facilitator?

The Holy Spirit is the facilitator.

It was the Spirit who ignited the voice of Susan B. Anthony to speak out on behalf of the suffragist movement. It was the Spirit who moved Sojourner Truth to ask boldly, “Ain’t I a woman?” at the 1851 Women’s Convention. It is within these examples (and so many more) that I find hope. It is my hope—my prayer—my belief that we have entered/are entering a time when the Spirit is raising and cultivating the voices of women who will commit themselves to a society—a world unbound by social conventions—unchained by gender roles—a truly egalitarian model of living.

It’s funny, over the summer I was watching home videos of myself as an infant/preschooler, etc. I was a timid, quiet toddler (this characteristic is still apt), and whenever we’d visit friends/relatives, Mom would always tell me to raise my voice—to speak up. Well, Mom—today, I say I can’t really speak up in the way you were hoping.

Tis’ time for me to shut up :)