Holy Terror, part 7: Love

In his book, Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality Mel White talks about progressive values. In the last post I talked about progressive political values, those based on the Constitution. In this post we move on to progressive moral values, those based on the Bible.

Yes, the previous section discussed that the Constitution is more important than the Bible in a democracy. But the Bible is still quite important. We must rescue it from abuse.

* We reclaim the Bible as a primary source of our progressive moral values and we will resist fundamentalist efforts to claim the bible as their own.

White describes the Bible as the Greatest Book Never Read. Lots of people profess to believe what is says. It seems very few have actually read it. White describes the lives who suffered for the Bible: John Wycliffe and William Tyndale – both had translated the Bible into English and the king felt threatened. There are those sustained by it – Captain Howard Rutledge in solitary confinement sustained by verses he memorized as a child. White gives the example of his own father, a pillar of the church, who defied advice of church leaders and rode with his son in a Pride Parade.

* We reclaim our faith to help empower & inform our progressive moral values and will resist any fundamentalist efforts to define God for us.

White heard stories for E. Stanley Jones, a famous evangelist, talk about what he had learned from Gandhi. Jones said Gandhi had loved and respected the teachings of Jesus, yet remained Hindu. Jones reportedly asked Gandhi, "What makes you different from the average Christian?" Gandhi replied, "I think Jesus meant it." Jones asked how he and his colleagues might be more effective in sharing their faith. Gandhi replied:

First, I would suggest that all of you Christians must begin to live more like Jesus. Second, practice your religion without toning it down. Third, emphasize love and make it your working force for love is central to Christianity. Fourth, study the non-Christian religions more sympathetically to find the good that is within them, in order to have a more sympathetic approach to the people.

White responds:

Gandhi and Jones taught me how to be entirely "out" as a Christian and at the same time be totally accepting of anyone who disagrees. Trusting that the Spirit of Truth with touch us both in the process.
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Unfortunately, this means dialogue, and, as the well-known language theorist Stanley Fish has said, a fundamentalist "doesn't want dialogue about his beliefs; he wants those beliefs to prevail. Dialogue is not a tenet in his creed, and invoking it is unlikely to do anything but further persuade him that you have missed the point."

White is concerned for the large number of people, mostly sexual minorities, who have been so damaged by religion they have stopped their spiritual journeys. That, says White, has serious consequences for our liberation movement and for progressives in general. Without this force for love our values are likely to break down at a critical moment.

* We reclaim the values of the Jewish prophets: justice and mercy; therefore we will resist injustice and seek to be more merciful to those who suffer injustice.

I've written before about the many Bible verses that discuss justice and mercy as part of discussing how the tax system purposefully underfunds schools to make sure the poor and racial minorities do not have the education to rise to the middle class.

Here are a couple more definitions. From Gandhi: "'Mercy' means helping those who suffer, and 'justice' means cutting off that suffering at its source."

And from Dietrich Bonhoffer: "Our role is NOT just to bandage the victims pulled out from under the wheel, bu to put a spike in the wheel itself."

White's hope: We see that sexual minorities are in desperate need of mercy and justice. Those who have been damaged by Fundie actions will see that Jesus was not a fundamentalist nor held fundamentalist beliefs.

* We reclaim the primary value of Jesus love. Therefore we will resist thoughts, words and actions that are unloving and put nonviolence into practice with out friends and enemies alike.

Those damaged by fundamentalism hear White speak and they come to him with a burning question, "How can you be sure that God loves you, too?"

The answer is to let Jesus speak for himself. The stories of Jesus assure us he loves outcasts best. From his first sermon Jesus condemned the Pharisees "who knew the law by heart but had forgotten that love is the heart of the law."

As for outcasts: Jesus was born of an unwed mother in a conquered nation and spent time as a war refugee in Egypt. Jesus did not graduate from college or even high school and made his living as a laborer. Jesus gathered quite a collection of outcasts as his disciples. Jesus healed the outcast leper, the outcast woman with a flow of blood, the outcast lunatic in the graveyard, the outcast man blind from birth. He accepted a drink from the outcast woman at the well. Jesus healed the centurion's "special servant" – an outcast both because he is part of the occupying army and because that "special servant" is almost certainly a gay lover.

White concludes this chapter by writing:

Becoming and activist is simply a matter of putting love into action. For activists, love is something you do, not something you just talk about, and that's when the fun begins.