From: Rev Harry Scott Coverston
Subject: Re: Greeting received at breakfast (asbestos alert)
Some comments on Abestoswear from Margaret's of Sydney:
I think it is ridiculous that homosexual people expect to receive a special exemption certificate with their Bibles which means that they alone can keep this one preferred sin.I was unaware we got a choice on which sins we preferred. When did that happen ? And what were the other choices ?
If people don't want to be part of the church of all true believers no one is forcing them; but why should homosexual people be trying to force true believers to give up their faith and accept immoral acts.Interesting conflation here of conventional morality and the faith of the "true believer." Notice how the the richness and depth of the faith is reduced here to a position on homosexuality. Notice also how brittle this faith construct is - accepting homosexuality on any other terms than the current moralistic understanding is tantamount to forcing people to give up the whole of their faith entirely. There is a sense of the faith as a house of cards here. One piece tumbles and the entire construct comes crashing down.
Actually, "true believers" is a good self-description. Back in the early 1950s Eric Hofer wrote a small work on fanaticism, the roles of conservative v. liberal ideologies in shaping worldviews and what factors prompt certain people to become what he called "true believers" and willing to sacrifice everything to the true cause. Here's a couple of thoughts from Hofer's book:
Those who are awed by their surroundings do not think of change, no matter how miserable their condition. When our mode of life is so precarious (NOTE: or perceived as such - the literal existence of the conditions people respond to is not necessary to produce their response, only the sincere belief they exist) as to make it patent that we cannot control our circumstances of our existence, we tend to stick to the proven and the familiar. We counteract a deep feeling of insecurity by making of our existence a fixed routine. We hereby acquire the dillusion that we have tamed the unpredictable. ( 17)
Hofer's point is that fear of the present and the future (one of the conditions Milton Rokeach suggests is inevitably present in those with closed minds) often dictates a sanctification of the familiar. The tendency of many in the west, including this woman, is to confuse middle class morality with natural law and divine sanction.
It misidentifies what is with what ought to be.
Of course there is a very practical reason for doing so. It allows those who are willing and able to obey the dictates of that which is within one's grasp, conventional morality, to see themselves as being in obedience to natural law and God. Thus, despite the fact one experiences themselves in a precarious world, they also experience themselves in control of their own lives and ratified by God Godself.
And, thus, all whose behaviors or thoughts suggest otherwise must be condemned as blasphemers and threats to society (read: they threaten one's perception of being in control by presenting alternative realities).
Of course, the opposite situation can also be true. Conservatives are often those who have something to conserve. Thus, those who benefit from current social arrangements in terms of wealth, position, status, power and self-affirmation are going to be loathe to see such arrangements change.
As Hofer says:
When the present seems so perfect that the most we can expect is its even continuation in the future, change can only mean deterioration. Hence men of outstanding achievement and those who live full, happy lives usually set their faces against drastic innovation.
This is clearly what underlies the struggle at Lambeth over the World Bank and debt forgiveness. A lot of people of privilege have a lot to lose if that should occur. But a lot more folks in the 2/3 world have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
But in this particular context, the notion of heterosexism is very helpful (as opposed to the irrational operation of homophobia) in understanding where this woman is coming from. Her comments suggest she is heterosexual. She rails that attitudes about homosexuals are in process of change. Of course, one would oppose the current social arrangement if one is somehow deprived under it and support change (assuming they believe that it's possible for change to make things better). But those who would fight tooth and nail to preserve it do so because they have something to lose. What this woman has to lose is the unlevel playing field that a heterosexist church and society provides its heterosexual players. It is not surprising she would be so energized in her comments given that potential loss of power, status and privilege.
The obsession that gay people have with making everyone else take notice of them is incredibly childish -
This is a good example of projection, I think. On a given night's watching of commercial television, a space alien encountering western culture for the first time would probably come to the conclusion that westerners would find it impossible to sell any product from cars to shampoo without the use of heterosexual imagery. Indeed, sometimes it's hard to even tell what exactly is being sold. The movie and music industries pound out a tidal wave of heterosexual imagery that insists that the public take notice. Heterosexuality seems to be intent upon being noticed, whether one wants to or not.
The gay community is just beginning to be noticed and to make itself noticeable. The level of visibility our community has in the 1990s is a very shortlived phenomena that goes back only four decades at best. Compare this with centuries of heterosexual notice making and taking and this statement begins to be seen as the absurd comment rising out projection that it is.
I do not want my church or my country being run by people who can't work out that gay sex is wrong.
(...because if I did, my own sense of myself and my being in control of my world and my ultimate destiny secured by virtue of adhering to middle class moral values might be in jeopardy. I like things as they are. I feel safe and in control and self-justified. You gays are so mean and ugly to cause this state of affairs to change or people like me to have to rethink our worldviews. Why don't you just go away and leave decent, law-abiding folks like me alone ?...)
I know that you don't care what I think, but I do wonder at the obsession that gay people have with the church. Are they jealous??
She does raise a good question here, I think. Why *would* gay people want to be part of a church which is based in homophobia and heterosexist privilege ? (Note how her last comment about jealousy speaks to the element of privilege)
This is the question I raised earlier and so many of you so kindly responded to both privately and online. I think the essence of the question is whether the church can change. I have come to frame this question in terms of misfeasance and malfeasance.
When the church engages in misfeasance, it knows what it is called to be but loses sight of that calling and goes off the path. Misfeasance always leaves the possibility open that the church will realize it has made a mistake and seek to rectify it. In our own language, we call that repentance and reconciliation.
Malfeasance, on the other hand, is the active and self-assured doing of evil. It is what I hear in the self-righteous and voluntary self-blindedness of the African and Asian bishops who perpetuate ungrounded connections of homosexuality and child abuse or bestiality. It is what I hear in the self-righteous purity-driven moral crusades of the American presenters. Malfeasance is the more dangerous of the two because it does not leave any room to be wrong and thus does not see any reason for introspection and self-examination of conscience or comparison of one's acts to one's stated ideals. While I can readily deal with misfeasance because every one of us makes mistakes, a malfeasance in which self-righteous, self-blinding and thus unreflective people become crusaders to actively perpetrate evil in the world is unacceptable. If the church is relegated to that mode of being, not only gays and lesbians but all "true believers" ought to have second thoughts about remaining a part of such a destructive entity.
So her question is well taken. If the church is in the latter state, as her comments would suggest, why *would* gays and lesbians who have any modicum of self-respect or love want to be associated with such a destructive entity ? Of course, her comment is based upon the mistaken assumption that this is the only form the church of the "true believers" could possibly take. On the other hand, what gay people want, demand and are helping to create is a church in which there is no privilege, either among members or between members and non-members outside the church.
I believe the faith of the true believer is not about power, not about a sense of control of one's world, not about privilege which legitimates and sets the faithful above the heathen of the world. That is the description of a country club or a national security organization, both of which operate in us v. them terms which create self-legitimation through the denigration of others. The church which incarnates the Way of Jesus will by definition tear down the walls of social privilege and power to let in "the little ones" that Jesus spent his life ministering among. And as for the need for self-justification, Jesus has a lot of choice comments about such self-centered needs in the Gospels, none of them particularly flattering.
I offer these comments on this woman's post this morning for a very specific reason. I do not seek to dismiss her words or the feelings which obviously and powerfully inform them. I offer my analysis because I think that it is important that we have some level of understanding what prompts comments like these. It would be easy to see a woman like this as vicious mean-spirited and evil. It would be easy to play her game and see her as outside the pale of "true believers." But then we are no better than she.
What I hope will come across in these words is an understanding of and sense of compassion for the level of fear, of the sense of potential loss, of the unconscious vested interests in jeopardy which this woman and millions others like her are feeling as the Christian faith begins to come to grips with its destructive homophobic past. In many ways, reconsidering social ideas about sexuality threatens to shake down the very understanding of reality many people cling to, some desparately. It is not surprising when one's grip on reality is threatened that people would react so vehemently. The threat of chaos is a pretty frightening thing for most human beings.
Those of us who have lived in closets of fear and self-loathing, of clinging to hope in constructed realities we thought that if we could just maintain them maybe we'd be safe, ought to understand that fear experientially. Some of us also know what it means to have vested interests that mean more to us than we might readily be able to say and the anger and fear the threat of their being challenged causes in us. I write this morning not to condemn this woman but to try to understand where she is coming from. But I hope that understanding will not be a merely mental connection but rather one which connects with your solar plexus.
We all know what fear, anger and loss feel like. We all know what cognitive dissonance does to our psychic systems, regardless of how beneficial it might ultimately prove to be. While I do not suggest for one second that we back down from calling the church to live into its own ideals - an inclusive, life-giving, world-transforming way of being the people of God - I do think that empathetic relating to the folks who cause us to don our asbestos suits is important. Like the kids say today, "Been there, done that," to which I'd add, "Learned to be a little more compassionate as a result."
Harry+ (who's certainly been guilty of misfeasance in his time !)
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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston
Episcopal Priest, Diocese of El Camino Real (CA)
Member, Florida Bar (inactive)
Ph.D. Candidate: Religion, Law and Society
Florida State University
What does God require of you but to do justice, love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God ? (Micah 6:8)
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