Seeing Gray

I'm finishing up a book my mentor sent me a couple months ago called, "Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White: Thoughts on Religion, Morality and Politics" by Adam Hamilton. He is a United Methodist pastor in Kansas, coming into the Methodist Church after first starting out on a more evangelical path. The book's premise is that we spend a lot of time fighting within our culture and our churches between being liberal or conservative, and what we need to do is demand a radical center, and realize that there's more that we have in common than what divides. In his own way, I think Hamilton is trying to do what I have tried to do: remove the barriers that have been erected in the median of the road that keep the people in one camp or the other from really seeing each other. He is talking about "traditionalists" vs. "progressives". Mine has been the mission of bridging the gaps between Christianity and the LGBT community.

The book has been a challenging read. And that's a good thing. The most difficult for me has been the chapter on homosexuality. Because Hamilton is trying to present the arguments of "traditionalists" and "progressives" as he searches for that radical center, I feel he misses one of the central truths about us "practicing homosexuals": there is no gray about us being children of God. The chapter consists mostly of a sermon he delivered which was in the context of the debate that was happening (and still is) among the Methodists about full inclusion of LGBT people. The governing body of the Methodist Church failed to remove the language that says that being gay is "incompatiable" with the church's teachings. Protestors mobilized in the assembly hall, and one woman stood on the balcony and appeared ready to jump when Hamilton and another man grabbed her and pulled her back. The incident kick started his thinking on the issue. And I'm glad it did. However, I think he has more to do in his own understanding. My sense was that he may have at one time in his life believed that the passages in the Bible oft cited and quoted to disasterous ends at gay people (and I do mean at) were talking about LGBT people in the current era. His sermon felt remote and unwilling to take a step toward "radical inclusion" rather than staying in this nebulous center. Perhaps this is the safe place for him to be as a United Methodist pastor in Kansas. He says the sermon disappointed and angered people on both ends of the spectrum. And I could see why.

Still, the main idea of striving for gray is a worthy goal. I have certainly wanted us in the Anglican Communion to reach a place where those things that seem to divide us are seen as meaningless. Our common bond is in Christ. And no matter our politics, our skin color, our sexual orientation... those elements merely place us in the body of Christ. But we are still "in" Christ, not "outside" of Christ. Even with that, we have a responsibility to acknowledge how we have injured our various body parts and make efforts to bandage and heal those parts. That has been true in the area of race, and it is very true in the area of sexual orientation.

I admire Hamilton for attempting to find a radical center on homosexuality for his "traditionalist" readers. But for those of us who are gay and therefore lumped under "progressive", it is incredibly hard to read a straight married man's rationalization for why anyone thinks it's OK to refuse full inclusion to LGBT people of faith. Our center is God and God's singular desire as expressed throughout scripture and history is to include us in the kingdom with our straight brothers and sisters. And there is no gray in that statement.