Is Christianity Worth Saving?

Crucial question. Crucial answer.


It's the day after Easter. The chocolate Easter bunnies have given up their retail space to Mother's Day cards and purple vestments are tucked away in church closets. Easter lilies and cymbidium corsages* may see another week of life but most of the trappings of Easter must wait resurrection in the coming year. Easter, the very soul of Christianity, its raison d'etre, will be stored away like Christmas ornaments.


Today's Christianity, the one we see on television, the one posted relentlessly on YouTube, the one touted endlessly in GOP campaign speeches, however, will not be tucked away for future use. Its vehement chest-pounding was seen in Pastor Dennis Terry's introduction of the "Jesus Candidate" Rick Santorum.** It's hypocrisy was seen in Pastor Terry's back-peddling response to criticism in the ubiquitous "...but we LOVE everyone!"


Andrew Sullivan's recent views on today's Christianity certainly brought home the fact that Christianity has been ruined by the last 50years' worth of televangelists, moralizers, priests, politicians... and people like Terry. 

"There's so much bad religion right now in this country that I felt it was important as a Christian to say, 'This is not what I believe. This is not what many of my fellow Catholics believe. We want to return to the message of Jesus and the gospels, not these obsessive battles over contraception or gay marriage or these other, I think, political issues, where Jesus really, really avoided politics at all costs," Sullivan said.


And the "Bad Religion" Sullivan speaks of is reeking havoc on everyone: last Friday, Lou Engle rewrote Scripture in calling upon women to emulate Queen Esther in fasting and prayer, demanding that they humiliate themselves for all the abortions they had. And Pastor DL ("Down Low") Foster insinuated that gays are worthy of death while advertising his "retreat" for men fighting same-sex attractions.

POLICING THEIR OWN


It's all well and good for some conservative and progressive Christians to say "They're not one of us! They don't speak for us!" but such response is ...lame. And while we realize that freedom of religion restrains the "other" Christians from pummeling their righteously arrogant brothers, stronger means of chastisement  are called for. But what? Excommunication?  Hardly. Take, for example, the situation with today's Southern Baptist Convention and its steadfast 14th century views about women, gays and sex. Then look at its stranglehold on Tennessee. In order to bring Tennessee back into the 21st century, we would have to virtually eradicate the Southern Baptist denomination in that state altogether. True, Southern Baptist churches claim autonomy, but autonomy is a mythical beast trotted out once in a while to cover up the fact that churches who stray from the SBC agenda are severely chastised - financially as well as socially. 


So if they can't chastise the Christian Right, can't curtail the charlatans, the Fundamentalists, the Religio-political Establishment, what is the rest of Christianity to do? Can Christianity be saved? 


More to the point, is Christianity worth saving? This is where qualifiers come in: Christianity may be worth saving, but today's Christianity may not be worth the effort. 


Maybe it's time to scrap everything and start all over again.




* My mother loved cymbidium orchid corsages because she could put them in the refrigerator and they'd last until the next Sunday. I loved them too because they were easier on my allowance.
**Terry's now infamous speech framed the Christian Right's hatred of dissenters with two words heard over the internet: "Get Out!!"

Writing About the Twisted World of DL Foster

When passion is involved, it can take a long time to write about something, especially something newsworthy. That's the frustration a journalist/reporter/blogger can face: immediacy can fall to the wayside. The Christian Right's obsessions with sex and homosexuality seemed to peak last week, with the National Organization for Marriage leading the way for bigotry with its "wedge memo." 

It didn't.


I will be busy this weekend writing about the twisted world of "ex-gay", rabidly anti-gay Pastor DL Foster. 
Wish me luck.

When Giving Hope Is Considered Evil: Dan Savage Gets Savaged By "Ex Gay" Minister And Associate Of "Bishop" Eddie Long

The gay teen anti-suicide/bullying movement, It Gets Better, finally got the unkindest cut of all, courtesy of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality Radio Hour with Peter LaBarbera:  Pastor DL (short for "Down Low") Forster called for the arrest of Dan Savage, the creative mind behind the phenomenally successful attempt to quell the country's spate of teen suicides.


And the supposed pastor has long billed himself as "ex-homosexual," and has had a close association with "Bishop" Eddie Long and his New Birth Missionary congregation. Go figure.


Dan Savage responded in his inimitable Dan Savage way:

Gay Kids Are Still Killing Themselves

posted by DAN SAVAGE on MON, FEB 13, 2012 at 10:34 AM

And it's not because gay kids are still being told that they're sick and sinful by their preachers. And it's not because gay kids are still being failed by cowardly school administrators and callous school boards and cowed teachers. And it's not because gay kids are still being bullied by straight kids who have been told that gay people are sick and sinful and that gay people, by simply existing, represent an existential threat to their families. And it's not because the religious right opposes all efforts to prevent anti-gay bullying in our schools and is pushing for new laws that create a special right for little religious bigots tobrutalize gay children. And it's not because some gay kids have parents who subjected to years of psychological and spiritual violence before throwing them out and cutting them off.

No. It's my fault. And I should be arrested.

The Low Down On Down Low

DL Foster (Christian name Darryl, but attributes the DL to "Down Low") does not have a page on wikipedia.org. He is, however, mentioned in passing as one of the leaders of the ex-gay movement, which is surprising, considering that Exodus International (the leading "ex-gay" group) distanced itself from Rev. Foster back in 2006. Foster's own ministries are a dizzying mixture of self-inflicted racism, self-loathing, come-back-to-God because you are "sexually broken" polemics centering on the African American Community, in particular Atlanta, the hub of "Bishop" Eddie Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church (at which Foster was invited to speak about the evils of homosexuality ... and to hawk his book


Foster's autobiography,  Touching A Dead Man: One man's Explosive Story of Deliverance from Homosexuality,  has long been out-of-print and is available only by downloading it through Foster's website.* It is, of course, a "book that launched a thousand deliverances." [sic]. Needless to say, however, unless you read the book, you will not know just how much Foster was in "the homosexual lifestyle" or if, in fact, he was ever gay at all. 

Bigot-enablers


The 27 videos of "ex-gays" and their proclamations are problematic: the self-loathing cannot be hidden. Their self-acceptance comes across as a merely a polemic (as Low Down would have it, but a poor one) based upon deep-rooted self-loathing: "falling" back into a destructive lifestyle of sex and drugs is predominant. Even those who admit to being born gay, never look upon themselves as have ever having any self-worth. Some actually state that they were "enticed" back into a "homosexual lifestyle," as if their own lives were worthless to begin with.


These "testimonies" seldom address one problem: that they may do more harm than good; for the purely prejudiced, "change" is the name of the game. And they care not if it is true or false, because they need something to hang their prejudices on. Harking back to the thoroughly researched topic of the relationship between I.Q. and prejudice, sociologists and psychologists can tell you that such testimonies can cause serious physical and emotional harm to gays, lesbians and transgendered people. And while the "ex-gays" are told how many souls they are helping to save, the reality is this: people will be hurt. 


The Target Is The Message

Foster's latest raison d'etre is not African American men and women who identify as gay, but gay men and women who identify as Christian. Yes, you read that right. Gay Christian Movement Watch - one of Foster's online "ministries" - is perhaps more like Gay Christian Movement Witch Hunt, alerting people to more progressive ministries and organizations and demonizing them ad infinitum:

GCM Watch seeks to facilitate balanced discussion regarding the “gay christian movement” and enlighten the broader Christian constituency through research, documentation and examination of movement’s various adherents and their beliefs in contrast to traditional Christian doctrine.

A close look at his polemics (his own word, since he considers gay Christians and affirming churches heretical) reveal nothing that could be considered a "discussion" and certainly nothing approaching balance.
To sum up: after the American Family Association warned us that Ellen Degeneres was dangerously "nice" and should be fired from being a spokesperson for JC Penney, a suppoosedly "ex-gay" minister has called for the arrest of Dan Savage because he founded the movement It Gets Better. 


Being nice to people and giving them hope sure ain't what they used to be.




*One reviewer of Touching A Dead Man: "I feel sorry for this man's wife. He'll be skulking around the men's room sooner or later, if he isn't already."
4 copies of the paperback book are available for an astounding $64 ea. Perhaps someone thinks of it as a curious collector's item.