Month: December 2022

Posted on

Friction over LGBTQ issues worsens in global Anglican church

FILE – Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, front row, centre right poses for a photo with bishops from around the world at the University of Kent, during the 15th Lambeth Conference, in Canterbury, England, Friday, July 29, 2022. Friction has been simmering within the global Anglican Communion for many years over its 42 provinces’ sharp differences on whether to recognize same-sex marriage and ordain LGBTQ clergy. In 2022, the divisions have widened, as conservative bishops – notably from Africa and Asia – affirmed their opposition to LGBTQ inclusion and demanded “repentance” by the more liberal provinces with inclusive policies.

By Associated Press

Friction has been simmering within the global Anglican Communion for many years over its 42 provinces’ sharp differences on whether to recognize same-sex marriage and ordain LGBTQ clergy. This year, the divisions have widened, as conservative bishops – notably from Africa and Asia – affirmed their opposition to LGBTQ inclusion and demanded “repentance” by the more liberal provinces with inclusive policies.

Caught in the middle of the fray is the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who is the top bishop of the Church of England and ceremonial leader of the Anglican Communion, which is one of the world’s largest Christian communities. Welby has acknowledged “deep disagreement” among the provinces, while urging them to “walk together” to the extent possible.

The divide came into the spotlight four months ago at the communion’s Lambeth Conference, typically held once every decade to bring together bishops from the more than 165 countries with Anglican-affiliated churches. It was the first Lambeth Conference since 2008, and the first to which married gay and lesbian bishops were invited.

The conservative primates of Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda refused to attend, while other bishops who share their opposition to LGBTQ inclusion pushed unsuccessfully for the Lambeth gathering to reconfirm a 1998 resolution rejecting same-sex marriage.

Now those primates, and their allies worldwide, are looking ahead to a conference in Kigali, Rwanda, in April. They’re expected to discuss their dismay at support for same-sex marriage in some Anglican churches and what they see as Welby not taking a tough stand against such marriages.

Welby, in turn, says neither the Lambeth Conference nor he individually has the authority to discipline a member province or impose demands on it.

In Nigeria, Anglican leaders say a formal separation from the global church over LGBTQ inclusion is more likely than ever. They cite Welby’s comments at Lambeth and the subsequent appointment of the Very Rev. David Monteith – who has been part of a same-sex civil partnership since 2008 – as the new dean of the Canterbury cathedral.

Bishop Williams Aladekugbe of Nigeria’s Ibadan North Anglican Diocese said same-sex unions are “ungodly and devilish” and their recognition by some provinces is a major reason “we cannot continue to fellowship with them.”

“If it is going to cause further division, let it be,” Aladekugbe told The Associated Press. “If they don’t worship God the way we worship him, if they don’t believe in what we believe in… let us divide (and) we go our own way.”

Henry Ndukuba, primate of the Anglican church in Nigeria, cited such divisions during an interview with a church-run television network.

The archbishop of Canterbury “is a symbol of unity” in the Anglican Communion, Ndukuba said, but “because of the way things are going, we are not tied to the apron of Canterbury.”

The umbrella group for the conservative bishops is the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GFSA). Its steering committee is headed by South Sudan Archbishop Justin Badi, and includes archbishops from Bangladesh, Chile, Congo, Egypt, the Indian Ocean region and Myanmar.

At the Lambeth Conference, the committee issued a stern communique – in effect demanding their views on LGBTQ issues hold sway throughout the Anglican Communion and that the “revisionist” provinces be disciplined or marginalized.

That threat was aimed at the provinces which have embraced LGBTQ-inclusive politics – including the Episcopal Church in the United States, and the Anglican churches of Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales. For now, the Church of England refuses to conduct same-sex marriages, but some of its bishops want that policy to change.

The GFSA leaders contend that conservative-led jurisdictions are home to 75% of the global Anglican Communion population, which is estimated at 80 to 85 million.

“For too long the Anglican Communion has been driven by the views of the West,” Badi told news media during the conference. “We often feel that our voice is not listened to, or respected.”

In their communique, Badi and his allies stressed they are not defecting. Yet they questioned whether the global Anglican community, under current circumstances, could consider itself a truly unified body.

“If there is no authentic repentance by the revisionist Provinces, then we will sadly accept a state of ‘impaired communion’ with them,” the communique said.

Welby, instead of reprimanding the LGBTQ-inclusive provinces, commended the sincerity of their approach to human sexuality.

“They are not careless about scripture. They do not reject Christ,” Welby said at Lambeth. “But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study and reflection on understandings of human nature.”

The Most Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, saw this as a breakthrough.

“What shifted in the rhetoric,” he said, “was a genuine acknowledgement that both sides had arrived at their views through serious study of scripture, theology, and modern understanding of human nature.“

The Rev. Chuck Robertson, a top aide to Curry whose dossier includes relations with the Anglican Communion, described Welby’s comments as “a game-changer.”

“It reflects that those who’ve been going beyond traditional teaching have done so with deep care,” Robertson said. “This is something new — a corner had been turned.”

The conservative bishops’ frustrations with Welby intensified in October when Monteith was appointed the new dean of the Canterbury cathedral.< While Welby did not personally make the appointment, he issued a statement expressing delight at the choice made by a selection panel. Within days, the GSFA steering committee conveyed its dismay. The announcement “puts in question the seriousness with which (Welby) wants to pursue the unity of the Communion,” the committee said. “We take exception to the Church of England’s accommodation of a person in a same-sex union being appointed to an office of spiritual authority over the flock of God’s people.” A Rwandan bishop, Alexis Bilindabagabo of the diocese of Gahini, said he condemns the ordination of gay priests because “weak” people shouldn’t stand at the pulpit. “A gay man must be led, but he should not lead others,” said Bilindabagabo. LGBTQ activists say most Anglican churches in Africa are led by conservative priests, including many averse to even discussing homosexuality. “For Uganda, the Anglican church has almost played a leadership role in being intolerant,” said Frank Mugisha, a prominent LGBT leader in the East African country where a lawmaker once introduced legislation seeking to punish some homosexual acts with execution.

In some cases, Mugisha said, Anglican priests take a hard-line stance because they fear losing their flock to more conservative evangelical groups.

In contrast to other Anglican provinces in Africa, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa has considered letting dioceses conduct same-sex marriages, though it has yet to take that step.

The church is based in South Africa – the only African country to legalize such unions – and also represents dioceses in several neighboring countries. It was led for many years by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was a staunch advocate of LGBTQ rights well as leading foe of apartheid.

The Southern Africa church has been critical of Anglican leaders elsewhere on the continent who support harsh laws against LGBTQ people.

“It is evident that some of the draconian laws in some African countries are in fact violations of human rights and some bishops of the Anglican Church in these countries have openly supported these laws,” said Bishop Allan Kannemeyer, who heads the Diocese of Pretoria.

It’s unclear what lies ahead for the Anglican Communion. The GSFA leaders, in their October statement, say that if Welby does not take the lead in “safeguarding the Church’s teaching,” there may be an opening for conservative bishops to increase their influence.

That topic will likely be paramount at the April meeting in Rwanda, to which GSFA bishops have been invited. It will be hosted by the Global Anglican Future Conference – known as Gafcon – which includes the archbishops of Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda, as well as leaders of conservative Anglican entities that already have split from the Anglican Communion, such as the Anglican Church in North America.

No one from the Anglican Communion’s head office in London is expected to attend.

“Some in Gafcon see it as a movement for biblical renewal, which is fine, but others as a rival to the Anglican Communion,” said Gavin Drake, the communion’s communications director. ‘There is a growing frustration within the Communion at this ‘political wing’ of Gafcon.”

By the time they meet in April, Gafcon and GFSA members might be further angered by events within the Church of England, whose General Synod will gather in February to consider proposals on same-sex marriage developed during a lengthy discussion process. There’s a possibility of an unprecedented vote allowing Church of England priests to conduct same-sex weddings for the first time.

A significant development came in early November, when Steven Croft, the bishop of Oxford, became the church’s first diocesan bishop to speak in favor of same-sex marriage. He published a 50-page essay urging a lifting of the ban and sent it to all members of the College of Bishops.

At stake, he said, was the Church of England’s claim to serve the whole of society. Its anti-LGBTQ stance “is leading to a radical dislocation between the Church of England and the culture and society we are attempting to serve,” he said.

Five other Anglican bishops have publicly backed Croft’s call for change.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

LGBTQ people of faith

— From LDS to Catholics to Jews to Muslims — find ways to belong where doctrine rejects them

“I embrace my faith,” says former leader of Affirmation, a support group for queer Latter-day Saints, “but I don’t fully embrace the institution.”

By Kathryn Post

When queer students at Yeshiva University sued the school for discrimination in spring 2021, critics were quick to question why LGBTQ students would opt for an Orthodox Jewish university in the first place.

But for many LGBTQ Orthodox Jews, as with believers of other faiths, their religious identities are as nonnegotiable as their queer identities.

“A lot of people ask, why would somebody who is queer stay Orthodox? It’s like saying, there’s conflict in your family — why don’t you just leave?” Rachael Fried, a Yeshiva alum and executive director of JQY (Jewish Queer Youth), a nonprofit that supports Orthodox Jewish queer youths, told Religion News Service.

In churches, synagogues and mosques, as in families, religious teaching and texts are often cited in rejecting LGBTQ members, and many queer believers feel they have no choice but to leave. Many end up rejecting religion as a whole; others find meaning in accepting faith communities. But some LGBTQ religious people are reconciling parts of themselves that their faith’s doctrines frame as incompatible, continuing to serve and worship even where they are officially considered in violation of divine law or are barred from leadership.

A Catholic

For Madeline Marlett, it was the Jesuits who first showed her that being a Catholic, queer transgender woman was possible.

Growing up in Texas, in a devoutly Catholic household of 10, Marlett told RNS, she would pray every night that she would wake up the next morning in a different body. Years later, as a student at the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit school in Worcester, Mass., the body dysphoria hadn’t subsided.

“I was hoping that this trans thing would disappear, but through Holy Cross, the Jesuits showed me a different flavor of Catholicism. It was more about ‘God is love,’ less about ‘these are the rules,’” said Marlett, now 25 and living in Boston.

In a class called “Understanding Jesus,” Marlett said she first encountered the idea of a radical Christ who ministered to outcasts. “That became my barometer as I was unpacking what I believed. Is this rule loving? That’s what helped me rebuild my sense of religion to include myself and the people next to me.”

After graduating, she joined Dignity USA, a Catholic LGBTQ advocacy organization, changed her legal name and began presenting as Madeline.

Jodi O’Brien, a sociology professor at Seattle University, said many LGBTQ Christians have had the ‘aha’ moment Marlett did when she encountered stories of Jesus ministering to those on the margins.

“They rewrote themselves in the script of Christianity,” said O’Brien. “Instead of being the sinners, or the cast off, they were the ones who most embodied the love of Christ.”

A Latter-day Saint

For some, pursuing an accepting version of their faith means leaving institutional religion behind. For Randall Thacker, a Latter-day Saint and former president of Affirmation, a global organization that supports LGBTQ members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, separating God from the church was key.

“I would say I embrace my faith, but I don’t fully embrace the institution,” he told RNS. “That’s pretty hard in this kind of faith, where everything revolves around (the church).” Over the years, Thacker has learned to treasure doctrines he loves while ditching harmful teachings, a move that allows him to claim a faith that “feels like it’s in my DNA.”

A Muslim

Jordan Jamil Ahmed, 31, takes a similar approach. “Organized religion, not just in Islam, is often a way to express political power over people. Whereas, for me, the idea of faith is more innate or intuitive.”

Ahmed is a Shiite Muslim who grew up in a multiracial, multiethnic household in central Ohio. After years of wrestling with their queer and Muslim identities, Ahmed joined the Queer Muslims of Boston in 2020 and eventually connected with Union Square Halaqa, a group of marginalized Muslims who gather to study Islam.

“The halaqa is the first space where I’ve really come into my understanding of queerness and Muslimness together,” Ahmed said. The expansiveness of the divine, Ahmed believes, can’t be limited to the male-female binary. This widened view of spirituality has also allowed them to experience God, said Ahmed, who uses they/them pronouns, in everything from prayer to tarot cards to dancing at gay clubs.

But Ahmed’s spiritual fluidity, as much as their gender, has meant exile from some Muslim settings. “I’ve definitely built my community outside of traditional institutions. There aren’t really mosques where I feel comfortable.”

Tyler Lefevor, a counselor and psychologist, has found that queer believers can face exclusion in and outside of religious contexts. In a study published by the American Psychological Association this year, Lefevor and his co-author found that more than half the LGBTQ Latter-day Saints responding to a survey said they lacked belongingness in their faith community, the LGBTQ+ community or both.

The struggle to belong is what leads LGBTQ believers to create explicitly queer religious spaces like Affirmation, JQY or Dignity USA, Lefevor said. “A lot of these communities provide some of the theological tools queer religious folks need to stay within these conservative congregations. They are a group of people who get what it’s like to constantly explain yourself to people on both sides.”

The groups often go beyond theology. During the standoff at Yeshiva, JQY stepped in to fund the Pride Alliance, the student club at Yeshiva, after the university refused. It also hosts a weekly drop-in center in Times Square, where LGBTQ youth get free pizza, check in with social workers and have game nights.

Sergio Guzmán, who belongs to the San Fernando Valley chapter of Dignity USA, was emboldened by his participation to adopt what he calls a “Hell no, I’m not gonna go” stance toward the Catholic faith he loves.

After years of drifting in and out of church, Henry Abuto, a celibate gay Christian, found his way to the Side B community — a loose network of Christians who embrace queer identity but believe God designed sex for marriage between a man and a woman. Abuto, who attends a nondenominational church in Fort Worth, Texas, chose celibacy eight years ago as the best way for him to be true to himself and his faith. Like many on Side B, he’s since been called both a sinner for being gay and a self-hater for choosing celibacy.

In 2018, Abuto stumbled upon Revoice, an annual Side B conference. Suddenly, he was surrounded by people whose journeys mirrored his own. “Without that community, my walk would not be flourishing nearly as well as it is,” said Abuto, who is now a Revoice staffer.

Not all people reconcile their faith and queerness. A 2013 study from Pew Research Center found that nearly half (48%) of LGBTQ people are not religiously affiliated — more than double the share among the general public (20%). A third of religious LGBTQ people reported a conflict between their sexual orientation or gender identity and their beliefs.

Eric Rodriguez, an associate professor of psychology at City University of New York who has studied LGBTQ identity issues for decades, said faithful LGBTQ people can reject their religious identity, attempt to eradicate or suppress their queer identity, compartmentalize both identities or integrate them.

“The folks who did the best were either those who identified as being integrated, or those who identified as being secular,” he said. “That’s regardless of whether you are talking about somebody with a Christian background, Jewish background or Islamic background.”

The issue of belonging is complicated by the wide range of attitudes toward LGBTQ inclusion, even when a faith is non-affirming on paper. In the Catholic catechism, homosexual acts are called “intrinsically disordered,” but in 2019 the Pew Research Center found that 61% of Catholics said they support same-sex marriage. In 2017, Pew reported that 52% of U.S. Muslims said homosexuality should be accepted by society.

“It’s the guys in the gowns and funny hats that have the issue,” as Guzmán put it.

Jeff Chu, author of “Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America,” said that affirming and nonaffirming labels are overly simplistic. Chu married his husband in the Reformed Church in America and is an ordained elder there, but his ordination process, which for most people takes three years, has dragged on for six due to the denomination’s broader debate over LGBTQ inclusion.

“To just say ‘nonaffirming denomination’ does a disservice to the reality on the ground, which is the truth that we are individuals, couples and congregations who are wrestling through a lot of complicated political and social terrain.”

A Christian Reformed Church member

Natalie Drew, a trans woman, never expected to land in a Christian Reformed Church congregation. The CRC, a close cousin to the RCA, codified its opposition to homosexual sex at the denominational level this summer. But Drew doesn’t choose churches based on whether they’re affirming.

“I don’t want to belong simply because they have an official policy. I want to feel like I belong because the people there treat me as if I’m truly their family,” Drew said. “It could have happened in a lot of places. It just happened to happen at CRC church.”

In light of the denomination’s opposition, Drew’s church, like many others, is reconsidering its future in the CRC. Drew said she’s not part of those conversations and doesn’t care to be. She loves the church’s commitment to ancient creeds and social justice work, and what ultimately matters is that she, her wife and her kids are welcome.

“For LGBTQIA people out there, who are struggling right now, there are churches out there,” she told RNS. “You don’t have to give up your faith to be who you are.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Suspended New Orleans deacon pleads guilty to molesting preteen boy

— VM Wheeler, 64, admits indecent behavior with juvenile in latest twist to Catholic church’s molestation scandal

This 2012 file photo shows a silhouette of a crucifix and a stained glass window inside a Catholic church in New Orleans.

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

The clerical molestation scandal that for decades has engulfed the Roman Catholic church in New Orleans took another turn on Tuesday, when a suspended deacon pleaded guilty to charges that he sexually abused a preteen boy two decades earlier, before the defendant’s ordination as a clergy member.

Virgil Maxey “VM” Wheeler III, 64, pleaded guilty to four charges of indecent behavior with a juvenile filed against him in state court in Jefferson parish, which neighbors New Orleans. He agreed to serve five years of probation in exchange for that plea, avoid contact with the victim for the rest of his life and register as a sex offender for 15 years, court records show.

Meanwhile, prosecutors dismissed charges of sexual battery of a child younger than 13 that they had initially leveled against him. The dismissed charges could have carried 10 years in prison if he had been convicted, based on Louisiana law in effect at the time of the admitted abuse.

Court documents spelling out Wheeler’s plea noted that the abuse occurred between 2000 and 2002.

Despite Tuesday’s plea, Wheeler is still facing a civil lawsuit demanding damages for his now acknowledged victim.

That suit claims – among other assertions – that prominent local Catholics unsuccessfully mounted a pressure campaign to get the victim to abandon his allegations against Wheeler, who was also a well-known attorney in the area, including an offer of $400,000 for the victim to stop cooperating with law enforcement officials.

Wheeler was once friends with the family of his accuser, whose identity is known but has not been published in news reports because media outlets do not name victims of sexual abuse without their permission.

The unresolved civil lawsuit alleges that the victim’s mother – knowing Wheeler dreamed of becoming a deacon – had reported to local church officials years ago that Wheeler had tried to coax the victim and the victim’s brother into bed during a ski trip when the victim was 12.

Nonetheless, church officials have maintained that the victim did not fully disclose details of his abuse at the hands of Wheeler until the summer of 2020. The New Orleans church by then had ordained Wheeler as one of its deacons, who are similar to priests, though they can join the clergy despite being married.

But the victim’s report against Wheeler prompted New Orleans’s archbishop, Gregory Aymond, to suspend Wheeler from his work as a deacon at a church in a suburban part of the city. Prosecutors in Jefferson parish charged Wheeler late last year. He declared himself not guilty at first but reversed himself Tuesday.

The victim on Tuesday read a statement in court that in part discussed how his pursuit of justice demonstrated how “you can turn pain into power”.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the New Orleans archdiocese would add Wheeler to a list of clerics who have worked – or were ordained – locally and have been credibly accused of sexually abusing minors or vulnerable adults.

Aymond’s initial release of that list in 2018 – the same year as Wheeler’s ordination – led to a wave of lawsuits against the church, which has since filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The list’s release was meant as an act of transparency aimed at parishioners who had lost faith amid new revelations at the time linked to the global church’s clerical abuse crisis, dating back decades.

Last week, the Guardian was first to report that one of the claims filed as part of the bankruptcy case was from a former New Orleans seminarian who in the 1990s alleged that he was harassed at a local college which trains priests, including by Aymond, who was the school’s rector at the time. Aymond vehemently denies the claim.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

LGBTQ students wrestle with tensions at Christian colleges

Sean Fisher, one of the student coordinators for QPLUS, the LGBTQ student organization for the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, stands in the organization’s dedicated lounge on the college’s campus in St. Joseph, Minn., on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. To Fisher, a senior in environmental studies who identifies as non-binary, the Catholic colleges’ recognition and funding of the organization represents a new era.

By GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO

As monks chanted evening prayers in the dimly lit Saint John’s University church, members of the student LGBTQ organization, QPLUS, were meeting in a dedicated, Pride flag-lined lounge at the institution’s sister Benedictine college, a few miles away across Minnesota farmland.

To Sean Fisher, a senior who identifies as non-binary and helps lead QPLUS, its official recognition and funding by Saint John’s and the College of Saint Benedict is welcome proof of the Catholic schools’ “acknowledging queer students exist.”

But tensions endure here and at many of the hundreds of U.S. Catholic and Protestant universities. The Christian teachings they ascribe to are different from wider societal values over gender identity and sexual orientation, because they assert that God created humans in unchangeable male and female identities, and sex should only happen within the marriage of a man and a woman.

“The ambivalence toward genuine care is clouded by Jesus-y attitudes. Like ‘Love your neighbor’ has an asterisk,” Fisher said that late fall evening.

Most of the 200 Catholic institutions serving nearly 900,000 students have made efforts to be welcoming while staying true to their mission as Catholic ministries, said the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.

Among Protestant institutions, a few are pushing the envelope, and most are hoping to stay out of the messiness, said John Hawthorne, a retired Christian college sociology professor and administrator.

“Denominations won’t budge, so colleges will need to lead the way,” Hawthorne added. Otherwise, they might not survive, because students are used to values far different from churches’ teachings, as highlighted by last week’s Senate passage of legislation to protect same-sex marriage.

“Today’s college freshman was born in 2004, the year Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage,” Hawthorne said, suggesting there might not be enough conservative students in the future for some of the universities to survive.

The consequences extend beyond the experiences of current students, many of whom enroll not because of faith but academics, athletics or scholarships. Some will likely become church leaders in an already divided society, where the recent shooting at an LGBTQ club in Colorado was only the latest reminder of the threats against that community.

The majority of Christian colleges and universities list “sexual orientation” in their nondiscrimination statements, and half also include “gender identity” – far more than did so in 2013, said Jonathan Coley, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University who maintains a Christian higher education database of policies toward LGBTQ students.

But translating that into practice creates tensions affecting most campus life, including enrollment at single-gender institutions, housing, restroom design and pronoun use.

Backlash follows from opposing corners: At some conservative schools, some students and faculty have filed discrimination complaints, while at more affirming institutions, some parents and clergy argue that approach doesn’t align with their mission.

“We have to learn to live with this tension,” said the Rev. Donal Godfrey, chaplain at the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution in a city with a history of LGBTQ rights advocacy and a conservative Catholic archbishop opposed to same-sex marriage.

New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ Catholics, keeps a list of over 130 Catholic colleges it considers LGBTQ-friendly because they provide public affirmation, including courses and clubs, said its director, Francis DeBernardo.

“Catholic colleges and universities were … and still are the most LGBTQ-friendly places in the church in the United States,” DeBernardo added.

The Cardinal Newman Society, which advocates for fidelity to church teachings on all Catholic education issues, maintains its own list of recommended schools, a little more than a dozen the organization considers “faithful.”

“For these colleges, being ‘Catholic’ is not a watered-down brand or historical tradition,” Newman president Patrick Reilly said via email.

Other campus leaders see tension in Catholic teachings, which tend to skew conservative on human sexuality but progressive on social justice.

Even Pope Francis, who seemed to nod toward change when he remarked “who am I to judge?” about gay priests, more recently approved the refusal of blessings for same-sex unions.

“It’s kind of a tightrope,” said John Scarano, campus ministry director at John Carroll University, a Jesuit school near Cleveland with “safe zone trainings” as part of its ministry to LGBTQ students.

When parents and prospective students come to him undecided between John Carroll and Franciscan University, 100 miles away in Steubenville, Ohio, Scarano tells them, “Here, your Catholicism is going to be challenged” by different perspectives.

At the Franciscan-run school, “we don’t move away from the truth of the human person as discovered in Scripture, the tradition of the Church, and the teaching authority of the Church — this is our mooring, and we believe that to follow Christ is to be faithful to the Church’s teachings,” said the Rev. Jonathan St. Andre, a senior university leader.

The Steubenville institution strives to develop students’ “healthy sense of the gift of their human sexuality,” he added via email – but with no tolerance for harassment of those who disagree.

Students’ safety is a priority, said Mary Geller, the associate provost who oversees student affairs for the 3,000 undergraduates at Saint John’s and Saint Benedict, the single-sex institutions in Minnesota.

“We’re set up in the binary, but we know there are people coming to us who don’t live in the binary,” Geller said. They now admit students based on the gender they identify with, and consider transfers for those who transition.

That has enraged a few parents, like a father complaining “that we have students with male body parts in a female dorm,” Geller recalled. “I just said, ‘Sir, I don’t check body parts.’”

With the help of legal advocates, some students at evangelical and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints schools are suing.

Last year, 33 LGBTQ students or former students at federally funded Christian schools filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education, claiming the department’s religious exemption allows schools that receive federal dollars to unconstitutionally discriminate against LGBTQ students. The plaintiffs have grown to more than 40.

In May, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights launched a separate investigation for alleged violations of the rights of LGBTQ students at six Christian universities — including Liberty University.

The independent evangelical university is one of several that have greatly expanded their rules prohibiting students from identifying as LGBTQ or advocating for such identities.

Liberty forbids LGBTQ affinity clubs, same-sex displays of affection, and use of pronouns, restrooms and changing facilities not corresponding to a person’s birth sex. As of this year, its student handbook, called “The Liberty Way,” bans statements and behaviors associated with what it calls “LGBT states of mind.”

“Liberty is very anti-gay,” said Sydney Windsor, a senior there who first decided to attend Liberty to quash her sexual attraction for women and now identifies as pansexual. “I found friendships ending and me getting bad grades because of differing opinions or things I said or posted. It’s years of irreversible trauma.”

At some evangelical schools, the argument has now moved from fighting over student’s sexual and gender equality to fighting for LGBTQ diversity in faculty and staff hiring.

This year, Eastern University, located in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, and affiliated with American Baptist Churches USA, amended its policies to allow for the hiring of faculty in same-sex marriages — one of only a handful of evangelical schools to do so.

“If we can get faculty to come out and to have queer people openly represented on campus, that would be really big,” said Faith Jeanette Millender, an Eastern University student who identifies as bisexual or queer and is active in the school’s LGBTQ group.

A high-stakes clash between students, faculty and the school’s board of trustees over hiring LGBTQ faculty is unfolding at Seattle Pacific University, a 131-year-old school affiliated with the Free Methodist Church.

The faculty held a vote of no-confidence in the board, one-third of which is appointed by the denomination, because it insists on keeping the policy barring people in same-sex relationships from full-time positions. Faculty and students have also sued the board in Washington State Superior Court for breaching its fiduciary duty, arguing the policy threatens to harm SPU’s reputation, worsen an already shrinking enrollment and possibly jeopardize its future.

“This entrenchment around human sexuality feels so incongruent with the on-campus experience and what we teach our students,” said Lynnette Bikos, professor and chair of SPU’s clinical psychology department and a plaintiff in the suit against the board.

Chloe Guillot, a 22-year-old graduate student at SPU who is one of 16 plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the school, said it was a matter of social justice.

“I’m wrestling with my own identity and I know how much Christianity has brought harm to communities, whether its people of color, women, or LGBTQ people,” Guillot said. “I have a responsibility to step into those spaces and be willing to fight back. As someone who is a Christian we need to hold ourselves accountable.”

In late November, a group of students and faculty decorated several campus buildings with rainbow-colored Christmas lights.

The administration has responded to one of the suits in a court filing saying that it expects students and faculty to “affirm the University’s statement of faith, and to abide by its lifestyle expectations, which together shape the vision and mission of the institution.”

Kathryn Lee, who came out as lesbian last year, while still a professor at Whitworth University, an evangelical school in Spokane, Washington, said debates over LGBTQ issues will persist for years.

“What’s unfortunate in my view is that in some people’s minds how do you define Christian education and it will be, ‘Oh, where are they on LGBTQ?’” she said. “I find that tragic.”

To students like Fisher in Minnesota, concrete actions will show if LGBTQ people can truly be welcomed on Christian campuses.

There are still too many incidents. Ryan Imm, a Saint John’s University junior and QPLUS leader who identifies as gay, recalled an anti-LGBTQ slur used on his residential floor. Sitting together in the QPLUS lounge, both students pointed to signs of hope — like the popular drag show at Saint Benedict.

“It’s almost like people forget there’s dissonance,” Imm said.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Why I find pope’s ideas on women priests disturbing

— Pope Francis must call together and listen to women, not only religious but lay women as well

Pope Francis meets a group of women at the end of his weekly general audience at the Paul VI hall in the Vatican on March 2.

by Virginia Saldanha

Recently the Jesuit-run America Magazine interviewed Pope Francis on various topical issues, among them the question regarding what he would say to women who are already serving in the church, but who also feel strongly about the call to be a priest in the Catholic Church. 

Pope Francis reinforces the gender binary by pointing to the Petrine principle which means Jesus chose Peter as head of the Church and 12 male apostles because Jesus our high priest was male!

Pope Francis suggests that women have no place in the Petrine principle.

On the other hand, the Marian principle is a mirror of the Church as a woman and as the spouse of Christ. So, he suggests that women have to be content with being the mirror image of the Church which represents the feminine spouse of Christ — what a convoluted explanation to convey to women that we are an important part of the Catholic Church dominated by men.

“There are numerous articulate and excellent women theologians who have already been speaking of women’s positions in the Church”

As a woman, I do not know whether to laugh or cry at Pope Francis’ suggestion about women’s position in the Church. How can an institution that is ruled solely by men be ‘woman?’  How can such an institution be the ‘spouse’ of Christ?

I wonder if perhaps this theological idea of the Church as a woman and as the spouse of Christ and the male priests as representing Christ could be the root of the sexual abuse of women by clergy.

Pope Francis suggests that women’s place in the Church is a theological problem that needs to be sorted out by coming up with a theology on women.

When Pope Francis says” we need to come up with a theology on women,” does he mean the male leaders come up with a theology of women?

I would like to remind Pope Francis that there are numerous articulate and excellent women theologians who have already been speaking of women’s positions in the Church.

Pope Francis’ reiteration of the Petrine and Marian principles is an indication that he as the leader of the Church has not bothered to read the writings of feminist theologians of the past 50 years.

Feminist scripture scholars have pointed out that Jesus never ever ordained any priests.  The last supper had both men and women present when he said “Do this in memory of me.” Women disciples in the scriptures were Jesus’ most faithful followers.  He even chose a woman to carry the good news of his resurrection to the world.  Would Jesus not want women leaders in the Church?

The third explanation that the pope gives is what he describes as the ‘administrative’ one.

He points out that In the Church there is the ministerial and ecclesial role which is reserved for men. Then there is the administrative role which has so far been dominated by men, but Pope Francis has recently begun opening it up for women’s participation.

He concedes “we have to give more space to women.”

While women appreciate the steps Pope Francis has taken to bring reform in the Church and the Roman Curia, his response to women’s ordination has disturbed a lot of progressive-thinking women and men, especially when he calls it a theological problem.

“Women’s voices have been missing at the decision-making table in the Church”

It is pertinent to note that the theology that Pope Francis has quoted has been articulated by men from a male perspective.

Women entered the field of theology only after the Second Vatican Council.  Since then women have been studying scriptures and interpreting them through a woman’s lens which has brought in new and fresh perspectives that men could never see.

But somehow the Church has not recognized these perspectives nor listened to what women have to say.  Women’s voices keep getting dismissed based on a theology that has not been updated to include women’s thinking about God and how God speaks to women in the context of their lives.

The reason why women need a place at the ‘table’ is that it is only through ordained ministry that one gets to make decisions that affect all in the Church.  Women’s voices have been missing at the decision-making table in the Church.

The forthcoming Synod on Synodality is about listening to the voices of all.  Women in the Church have been the most enthusiastic participants in synodal discussions at the grassroots, but their voice has not been heard, because the male leaders in the Church get to choose whose voice gets heard.

No one can deny that women are the most active participants at the parish and pastoral level of the Church.  Yet women continue to be kept down like the proverbial ‘slaves’ in the Church.  Yet what women all over the world are asking for is active ministerial roles, but they are being dumbed down by theological mansplaining.

Pope Francis has asked that all join the listening sessions. Somehow the bishops chose only those who they feel comfortable with while others are just never listened to. Can Pope Francis find a way to listen to voices from groups that have remained on the peripheries?

If the pope is really serious about fostering a culture of ‘encounter’ and ‘listening’ in the Church, he will call together women, not only religious but lay women as well, and listen to them. Today modern means of communication can easily facilitate this.  May Spirit Sophia continue to work and inspire the Church towards wholeness.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!