A Prayer Quartet for Pride

In celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising

Mary,

you conceived more than a child.

You conceived a vision of God’s intentions:

scattering the proud,

putting down the mighty,

exalting those of low degree,

feeding the hungry.

Your vision led you through

the pain of giving it birth,

the anguish and joy of assisting its growth.

It led you to the cross,

and, finally, to an empty tomb.

Your vision has conceived more births,

more anguish and joy in growth,

more crosses,

and yet more empty tombs.

Your vision has

scattered the self-righteous,

brought down those who would judge,

exalted the marginalized,

and nourished us with hope.

As we conceive your vision in our own communities,

may we remember those who have gone before us in the dream,

and may we also be blessed with kin who greet us with joy,

and prophetic voices who offer thanks to God.

Our soul magnifies our God,

our spirit rejoices in God our deliverer,

for God has regarded our oppression.

Generations to come will call us blessed,

for God has done great things for us,

and holy is God’s name.

Holy Trinity,

divine and blessed relationship,

bless the ecstasy of these lovers

as their faces kiss,

as their bodies touch,

as in their lovemaking

they overcome the fear and the hatred

and the garbage heaped upon them

by the church and the culture.

Bless their adoration of each other

as they worship the holy imprint

of your divine beauty

and enjoy the communion

of a loving covenant.

May such sacrament

bring them ever closer to you,

Lover of us all.

 As you called the paralytic to walk,

lift us from the paralysis of low self-esteem

so we may walk into your commonwealth

with the power you have given us:

a power we do not need to prove

by lording it over others,

a power we do not have to sacrifice

to love you or others.

Resurrect us, God; call us to rise and carry our pallets,

and let religious and political leaders and friends alike

stand amazed at our healing,

and with those of long ago who witnessed the paralytic walk,

may they witness in us your power and glory:

a power which seeks not to dominate but to serve,

a glory which seeks not itself but others.

Then may they also glorify you, saying,

“We never saw anything like this.”

 From lack of trust and faith

in ourselves as individuals

and ourselves as community,

O God, deliver us.

From lack of commitment

to lover, to friends,

to our faith, to our community,

deliver us.

From denial of our integrity

as spiritual-sexual creations,

deliver us.

From rejection of others

because of their body-state,

whether gender, race, age,

sexual orientation,

appearance, or disability,

O God, deliver us.

Free us to live your commonwealth, O God.

Clarify our vision,

purify our motives,

renew our hope.

In the name of you who create us,

of the Christ who calls us,

of the Spirit who empowers us,

we pray, O God. Amen.

The foregoing prayers are excerpted from prayers for days 17, 24, 47, and 59 in my 1991 book, Coming Out to God: Prayers for Lesbians and Gay Men, Their Families and Friends. The graphic combining the Celtic cross with the rainbow flag was devised at my suggestion by cover designer Kathy York for my 2001 book, Reformation of the Heart: Seasonal Meditations by a Gay Christian.

See also: Three Meditations for Pride

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: https://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

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Copyright © 1991 and 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Pride and Shame

I was one of two original grand marshals of the 

2009 Atlanta Pride parade. That's Wade in the front seat.

Along with others, Dean Lewis has been the longtime conscience and “better angel” of the Presbyterian Church on multiple social justice issues. He was on the staff of the Advisory Council on Church and Society of the former United Presbyterian Church under whose auspices the Task Force to Study Homosexuality (1976-1978) was formed and did our work. Knowing of my intern work for the Christian Association at the University of Pennsylvania with LGBT people on campus (1975-1976), I believe Dean was the one or among those who recommended me for the task force.

I served as its only openly gay member, appointed by the first African American woman to serve as General Assembly Moderator, the Rev. Dr. Thelma Adair, and Elder Jeanne Marshall, chair of the advisory council, who became a good friend and later advisor and board member of the Lazarus Project, a Los Angeles based ministry of reconciliation between the church and the LGBT community that I served as founding director.

In his birthday greeting to me last week, Dean reminded me that this year was the 40^th anniversary of the delivery of our task force report to the 1978 General Assembly meeting in San Diego, a report whose majority of 14 recommended that homosexuality not be considered a bar to ordination.

The minority report recommended the opposite, and the view of that minority of five held sway at the assembly, putting in place a ban on the ordination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and, by inference, transgender candidates for professional ministry and lay leadership within the denomination that lasted nearly forty years, and lingers in the less inclusive presbyteries and congregations of the church to this day.

Tomorrow, October 11, is Coming Out Day, a day inviting LGBTQ people and our families, friends and allies to come out about our “faith in the idea that God had when God made” us, in the words of Isak Dinesen (nee Karen Blixen) in Out of Africa and her Immigrant’s Notebook.

Atlanta’s Pride festival and parade/march come this weekend, moved some years ago from the traditional observance on the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion the final weekend of June because of the Georgia drought that prompted concern about the lawns and grounds of its venue, Piedmont Park. Unique to Atlanta Pride, I believe, is that it has always been an invitation for all to express pride in our diversity, regardless of sexual orientation.

Sunday I was invited to encourage the community of Ormewood Church to attend both festival and parade/march in support as part of a year-long series on “Loving Our Neighbors.” The Sunday before, Ormewood Church had celebrated our first anniversary meeting together thanks to the leadership of many fine people, including organizing pastor, the Rev. Jenelle Holmes.

When the Task Force to Study Homosexuality announced its majority/minority divide on the ordination of LGBT people in the winter of 1978, many opposed to that ordination said that, if the task force had included more lay people, the vote would have been more clearly opposed.

But the minority of five who opposed ordination of LGBT people were all straight, white, older male clergy. The majority of fourteen who saw no reason to exclude LGBT people from ordination were lay and clergy, male and female, black and white, old and young, straight and gay. Diversity welcomed inclusion.

This is especially relevant as we face this week a U.S. Supreme Court which will be dominated by five straight white men.

During the hearings on the nominee for Supreme Court justice, my spouse Wade expressed his continuing dismay that the Senate is mostly old white men. “We need a Congress that is as diverse as the American people,” he said. Amen to that!

I recently lost as a Facebook friend one of my best friends from high school when he questioned “identity politics” and I responded politely that “identity politics” has always been with us: as long as you were a straight, white male, you were welcomed into the power structures of government, business, military, and church.

I wrote in my first book, Uncommon Calling, that it was the Rev. Dr. Thelma Adair who gave me a helpful perspective on the LGBT movement as we waited in line for “The Women’s Breakfast” at the San Diego General Assembly. She said simply, “When I first started coming to General Assemblies, we [African Americans] were not allowed to stay in the same hotels with white delegates. We had to stay in private homes far from the venue.”

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

An Extraordinary Friendship

Selfie taken by Erin Swenson with me when we took 

a walk along the Atlanta Beltline a few weeks ago.

I conclude a series of personal reflections on the LGBT Christian movement that posted each Wednesday of June, Pride Month, and now extended to this first week of July, given the “interruption” of my post on Orlando. For those unfamiliar with this blog, be assured that I will return to other topics next week! And for the dozens of activists I’ve encountered and have yet to write about, maybe I’ll tell more stories next June.

There are momentous occasions in our lives that cause us to remember details surrounding them vividly. It was inside the El Capitan Theater in downtown North Hollywood when I was 19 years old that I saw The Christine Jorgensen Story, a 1970 film about a transgender person, long before that term was familiar.

As a young gay man, I identified with her, though I did not think of myself as other than what we now call cisgendered. But that she crossed gender expectations was one more encouragement for me as a same-gender loving young man, and one more reason why I never resisted including “T” in “LGBT.” For me, it’s always been a “no-brainer” to do so, and I speculate my attitude originated from seeing that film.

It seemed fitting, then, when I learned that New York City’s Stonewall Rebellion that is heralded as the beginning of the U.S. queer rights movement was largely initiated by drag queens and transgender folk discontent with the abusive enforcement of gender expectations of our American society.

My first Presbytery of Greater Atlanta meeting after moving to this city was one that considered the continued ministry of the Rev. Dr. Erin Swenson after transitioning from Eric to Erin. Having been ensconced as a volunteer in presbytery and synod ecclesiastical committees and conclaves in Southern California—to my dismay having little effect on changing Presbyterian views on lesbian and gay Christians—I had delayed involvement in similar commitments in my new home of Georgia.

But I wanted to be supportive of Erin, whom I had never met, and see how this presbytery behaved in considering her ongoing calling. I was impressed with her pastoral approach, showing great patience in answering even the most insulting of questions. I was also impressed that, as a therapist who had “been there” for many of the presbyters as Eric, many of them were more receptive and respectful of her own choices.

When her calling was affirmed by a healthy majority, the heavens opened up for me, and the Spirit descended in a rare appearance at a presbytery meeting.

That began what I consider a beautiful friendship. I’ve spent time with her former and loving wife and her faithful daughters, with her father and her sister and brother-in-law, and a friend—whose Pakistani birth certificate read “female” when he knew he was male—and his wife, both faithful Muslims, whose wedding, celebrated by Erin, I attended in their Sufi circle. I also was invited to attend their festivities on Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan.

I think the most memorable holiday dinner I’ve hosted included LGBT Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and atheist/pagan guests and there were only seven people around my dining room table!

Erin was there for me the night when my mom died, the first to come to my house with Sharon Taylor, my pastor whom Erin had notified. Erin was there for me when Mark and I separated, helping me with my double grief, recommending a couples’ counselor and serving as our divorce negotiator as well. She retained me as her writing coach when she was writing her as yet unpublished but powerful memoir.

She gave the charge at my MCC ordination in 2005, and she served as celebrant of Wade’s and my wedding in 2015. And she was beloved by my dogs, Calvin and Hobbes, with whom she would stay when I was out of town, and last July, joined me and Wade and a few friends celebrating Hobbes’ life at a recently opened Mexican restaurant.

And she was among the “trinity” to whom I dedicated my book, Henri’s Mantle, for getting me through “the recent unpleasantness.”

I entitled this “an extraordinary friendship” not only because of Erin’s great friendship, but because I believe transgender folk have been great friends to lesbians, gay men, bisexual and straight people, enlarging our view of gender and gender possibilities.  To me, that is a spiritual value, and applies to our understanding of God as well.

The Religion and Faith Program of HRC, the Human Rights Campaign, contracted me to pull together their curriculum, Gender Identity and Our Faith Communities: A Congregational Guide for Transgender Advocacy.

Earlier posts in this series:

Out of the Closets and into the Kingdom

Don’t You Want Me?

Guess Who Came to Dinner?

Love between Women

Nobody Doesn’t Like Janie Spahr

Stranger in My Office

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Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author, photographer, and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Pride Is Faith

Today this post is appearing on my blog and that of Believe Out Loud, which will be running selected posts beginning today. Thanks be to God and to all those who made possible the U.S. Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage announced after this posted!

“Pride is faith in the idea that God had when God made us.”

–Isak Dinesen, nee Karen Blixen

I often quote this insight from Blixen’s memoir, Out of Africa, during LGBT Pride Month.

This morning on Atlanta’s public radio station, an interview reminded me of the religious objections to Atlanta’s Pride Parade, formerly in June, the month that marks the anniversary of New York City’s famed 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, considered the birth of the modern LGBT movement in the United States. (I personally prefer to think that our contemporary movement began nine months earlier—a good gestation period!—with the founding of the Metropolitan Community Church on October 6, 1968.)

Charles Stanley, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s First Baptist Church, was unhappy with the Pride parade’s route down Peachtree past his church. He once declared AIDS was “God’s curse” on gay people, the interviewee reminded listeners. Confrontations between church members shouting Bible verses and holding anti-gay signs on its steps and the offended marchers prompted the church to hire security guards to stand between the marchers and the church edifice, one subsequently torn down when the congregation retreated from urban life to the suburbs.

Across the street, St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, though to this day hampered by a denominational ban on any support for LGBT Christian causes, decided to pass out cups of water to the marchers.  Their senior pastor, Mike Cordle (misnamed in the interview as “Mark” Cordle), had decided to resurrect a dying city church by reaching out to the LGBT community.

Writing of this in my 1994 daily meditation book, The Word Is Out (Oct 25), I quoted Mark 9:41, “For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose their reward.” As one of those marchers, I wrote, “We may not have known we bore any resemblance to Christ, but these Christians saw Christ in us. Their reward was that we saw Christ in them.”

My late mother in California resisted the increasing volume of her Baptist worship, sometimes choosing instead to watch Charles Stanley on television. On one of her visits to Atlanta, she asked if I would take her to worship at First Baptist Church to hear Dr. Stanley.  I didn’t want to spoil her image of him, but I gently said that I thought he was anti-gay. She said, “Oh, he never says anything negative about homosexuality on television.” Being my chief supporter, that would have soured her view, having stopped watching Florida preacher James Kennedy because of his anti-gay rhetoric.

A gay African American neighbor, who once sheepishly admitted attending First Baptist Church, told me at the time, “They never broadcast his anti-gay sermons.” But I did not tell Mom, and dutifully took her to worship at their new location, a Big Box building with a church-like interior that was a cross between the perfection of Disneyland and the artificiality of a Hollywood set, which of course, it was. His sermon, itself a mix of pop psychology, self-help, and the gospel, was interesting and not objectionable. I encouraged Mom to wait in line afterward to have the book she had just bought in the church gift shop signed by Dr. Stanley. He was gracious as I fumbled with Mom’s camera to take a picture of them together. For her, he was a rock star.

The fall before she died Mom confessed to me that she had always known God loved everyone, but she had never understood that God loved her specifically and individually until then. I said in mock dismay, “Mom, haven’t you been reading my books?!” Yet Dr. Charles Stanley was partly the reason for her spiritual insight.

Both Rev. Stanley and Rev. Cordle would go on to have public marital problems.  I already knew the latter’s compassion toward gay people, but I hoped the former’s trouble might sensitize him to those who are judged for their sexuality.

I hoped Dr. Stanley might have learned Karen Blixen’s corollary to her insight about pride:

“Love the pride of God beyond all things, and the pride of your neighbor as your own.”

Related Posts:

The Boy with Green Hair

A New Underground Railroad

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  DONATIONS NEEDED AND WELCOMED! THANK YOU!