church ethics

It's all over the news and United Methodist circles: the reversal of the removal of a Virginia Pastor who denied membership to a homosexual man in his congregation.

To me, the pastor's exclusion of the gay man was a direction violation of the Christian tenet of hospitality. Hospitality, as defined by Christine Pohl in her book Making Room, involves:

Hospitality provides a context for recognizing the worth of persons who seem to have little when assessed by worldly standards. (page 62)

Hospitality thus has a counter-cultural edge to it as it embodies values and models that are not shared by the greater society. Additionally, Pohl relates the following quote about the relationship between the civil and religious spheres:

Expulsion from the civic sphere, in which the basic rights of citizens are protected, is the most dangerous form of expulsion, but the danger is intensified when particular religious, ethnic, and cultural identities are singled out for exclusion. (page 81)  read more »

I just attended the Human Rights Campaign's annual event on LGBT and society issues. This years' was "Young and Gay in America" talking about the promise and the pain of being young and gay in America.

The four participants could not have been more appropriate. Judy Shepard (Mother of Matthew Shepard), Maya Keyes (Daughter of wacko Alan Keyes[dKos]), Mike Glatze (Editor, Young Gay America), and Chris Medeiros (Episcopal Divinity School professor). All four have extensive personal and professional experience with youth violence, oppression, and shared family pain of LGBT youth.

I was struck by how much religious language was used by the participants in the forum, and how pervasive the religious influence is in both perpetuating and preventing youth hate crimes in today's society.

The discussion began with a question of How to make Progressive churches respond more prominently and aggresively to LGBT issues. Medeiros said that American Christianity (which is his background) has been whitewashed as all anti-gay, as prominence and visibility are hard to attract from this current media that is focused on the Pope and Falwell. In reality, it has three tiers:

• The Religious Right wing (falwell, RCC, SBC)
• The Christian Left liberal churches (UUA, UCC, MCC])
• The huge middle gap of mainline protestant churches (PCUSA, UMC, Episcopal, etc...)

Thus, the primary force of progressive churches should be to expand the infrastructure, and to live into what it really means to be "welcoming." Take loud and proud stances and dont back down. Do more than wave a rainbow flag, and create institutions and infrastructure to deal with all the realities of what it means to be gay, from homelessness to poor to substance abuse and on up. It has to start with the people crying out "I am LGBT and I refuse to choose!!" Maya Keyes agreed, and stated that people aren't gonna know about openness until they target lgbt youth and let them know you are there. Thus, take the challenge of redefining the common concept of Christianity and flip that image, and Christianity can become a force for fighting oppression, not causing it.

The primary points I got from this conversation was that LGBT youth need the following things to truly find safe space, and all of these can be provided or influenced by the Church.

• Build an allies network. Reach out in little or big ways to find your friends in the community, and when the time comes, out yourself and your allies. The more people that can stand together, the more wind it takes to blow them down. Move forward from isolated individualism to community unity.
• Become Role Models. If LGBT culture is just the village people, or the white rich males, then it will lose. Be a role model or find a role model in your community to raise up.
• Break the Isolation. This is not 1993, you have the internet to find out information, and you have much more contacts than any other generation. Use it to break out of your shell.
• Help each other on the ground level. Focus on beds and help for homeless LGBT youth. Share information with other groups. We are all in this together, so coalesce and fight for humanity, not just gay culture.
• Small is Ideal: Small towns are great grassroots places for you to be heard. If you are safe enough and have enough support, out yourself and force a small community to deal with you. Exposure forces confrontation.

All in all, progressive churches need to step up the aggresiveness and the prominence of their witness, which will empower gay youth to break their culture-forced isolation and connect with others. Be loud and proud for homosexuality BECAUSE of your faith, not in spite of it!

What has worked in your community to reach out to gay youth? Discuss.

Catch-phrases, slogans, and "10 Essentials" dominate not only the airwaves of advertising, but the godwaves of church marketing as they seek to meet the people in the marketplace and beckon them to their spiritual shop. By breaking down the Gospel to manageable chunks that catch people's attention, they rob the Gospel of its compelling pieces of social change, and focus on the satisfaction of selfish desires crafted by Capitalism.

At its core, Capitalism does one thing extremely well: it disciplines our wants. It gives us impetus and at least the perception of opportunity to earn what we want, and to give up on what we want until the proper opportunity is achieved. Capitalism achieves this by dipping deeply into the cultural channels of desire, and by programming people to believe in their selfish wants.

How does the Church combat this monster of a machine? One of two extreme ways: sacrificing the Gospel by marketing it, or by combatting Capitalism itself at its own game.

For some churches, the church should meet the people where they are: in the marketplace, and provide the alternative voice to combat the noice directly. To sell ads on train walls, to give catch-phrases to radio stations, to sell books of "7 Steps of Highly-Successful Churches" and "10 Basics of Christianity", the "Purpose-Driven Church" and other minimalist approaches to the Gospel. Think these are only advertising and not really capitalism? The concept of delayed gratification is one aspect of the disciplining process of capitalism that finds rich fruition in marketed Christianity. The necessary component of the Christian story of delayed salvation, the social impetus to help others, is absent from the capitalistic marketplace.

The Christian Church in this context should do the opposite path of counter-capitalism. The offering up a competing set of principles and beliefs that also turn people's wants towards the Church and towards God. The want is not for yourself or your immediate surroundings, but the wanting, the yearning, is for God. To be saved (in God's economic sense) is to take the selfish wants and redirect them towards God who is our beginning and end.

Capitalism, then, is not an asset of the church, but is its necessary enemy. There is a clash of technologies of desire, one that wants in one's self-interest, the other that channels that want into God's interest. Capitalism's mechanisms focus the already-present channels of culture's wants on the individual; Churches should reconfigure the entire infrastructure to be focused on God for one another. When you reduce the Gospel to catch-phrases, all of which are focused on the individual (see next week's diary), then you lose the social message of Christ and betray the Gospel.

How to combat this this? How to keep evangelizing with integrity, but one that actually works? In an abstract sense, by subversion: by not playing Capitalism's game. By not buying ad space or airtime, but by offering up the counter-set of principles by doing what capitalism cannot: embody them. No person embodies capitalism, they just drink from its breast. A person of Christ can embody the work of Christ in social outreach and justice initiatives that live out the Great Commission in far better ways than . By being human billboards of integrity in your community, and by inviting others to do the same when they wonder where you get your power. Building a church of lightposts is better than powering a flourescent cross, as the power comes from within, not dependant on an external source.

While I leave it to you to figure out the practical ways, the simple point is this: By submitting to Capitalism's principles, the Church is getting short-term gain for long-term alienation and irrelevance of the Church. Even as we see the rise of Church exposure on the airwaves and in politics, we see the donut effect of the loss of the church's grounding in Christ replaced by the empty core of self-interest.

The church and capitalism are impossible bedfellows, as they don't dream of the same thing.

Go back to your church growth councils, and say to them: "Get out of bed with capitalism, you whore of a church, and go back to your Creator who beckons you to come home again."

At their essence, Christianity and Capitalism are incompatible, and thus I am leery of the question of corporate sponsorship in church settings.

A church I volunteer at holds musical events and programs in the evenings on occasion. When I go, I open the bulletin, and I notice about 2-3 pages of ads from local businesses. They are just well-wishes from the business, their address, and their tagline or whatever. Simple advertising and sponsorship of neighborhood projects. This is good sponsorship...or is it?

It's not just a local church. Luis Palau's huuuge DC festival has a full page of corporate sponsors to pay for all the flash, celebs, and communication efforts to get his festival off the ground. Admittingly, the event would never be as effective or flashy without those sponsors, who allow Palau to reach bigger audiences (though also drive away those of us who abhor those types of events).

Instances like these cause me to ask the fundamental question: What is the relationship between capitalistic agendas and church structures?

My church will solicit these corporate sponsors for their programs to pay for their printing and operating costs, and thus donations are purely for the church's ministries. In that way, corporations and local businesses sponsor the program, while allowing for donations to go to the church. Is this a good line to walk? Does this involve businesses pouring money into the community that they have as customers?

Palau's DC event is possibly a different animal (as it is not officially a denomination, but rather a Christian service). There is a ton of attention-getting items in there, most of which are only attention-getters, not actual operating necessities. Regardless of whether that is money well-spent, since money talks, does the religious event hear and obey? Are there provisions that only Chik-fil-a will be served as snacks? Should a church promote Amtrak's services(page 6) since they are sponsors? At what point is the Church endorsing a corporation in deed if not in word?

As one of my forum members pointed out, Christianity and Capitalism have two divergently different goals. Corporations exist to make money at all costs, Christianity exists for Christ who calls all persons to himself. Christ and money are not synonymous goals (though for some proponents of the Prosperity Gospel, they are linked), and anytime the Church is even considering choosing between Christian outreach and Corporate dollars, there is something wrong.

One counter-argument is not that Christianity should resist capitalism, but that it should subvert capitalism by using its greed for Christ's gain. An understanding of evangelism as meeting the public where they are and subverting those systems to point to Christ...what better place than the marketplace where advertising research can catch the person's eyes? Like God hardening Pharoah's already hardened heart, Churches can "with proper respect" use capitalism's greed to its own uses and subvert capitalism's system of advertising and sponsorship to draw people away from worshipping moneys or themselves and point them towards Christ who unites us all.

So, what do you think? Should churches have local businesses contribute by name to sponsor events? To advertise in bulletins? Should a church get into a contract with Coke to have a machine in their foyer in exchange for donations? Can there be a Pepsi Baptist Church? Should an evangelical event have sponsors that can sell their wares in the hallways outside or on the roads there?

At what point does Christianity submit to capitalism or subvert capitalism for the sake of the Gospel? And the flip side is also true: at what point does capitalism subvert Christianity to better find a target audience (We know Patriotism has subverted Christianity in parish's captive audiences)? How can we keep the church free from mitigating influences to be able to freely critique society and offer its own voice?