[Dialogue] 1/21/10, Spong: Uganda, Homophobia and the Incompetence of Certain Christian Leaders

[elliestock at aol.com]

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Thursday January 21, 2010 

Uganda, Homophobia and the Incompetence of Certain Christian Leaders

Does the Ku Klux Klan have the right to parade through a black community, hurling racist insults at the people of the neighborhood and raising racist fervor throughout the land because their right to free speech is guaranteed by the constitution? Does a neo-Nazi group have the right to demonstrate in a Jewish community, shouting anti-Semitic epithets at the citizens who live there, when it leads to hate crimes of passion that all Jews may have to absorb? Is the violence produced by prejudiced rhetoric allowable in the name of free speech?
Do American evangelical Christians have the right to go to a country like Uganda in order to pour out their uninformed and deeply destructive homophobic hatred under the guise of the freedom of religion? When that hatred results in the development of a public consensus that puts homosexual persons at risk, does it become more excusable if it arises from religious people or is sustained by a misguided use of Holy Scripture? Is violence somehow more legitimate in a free society if it is promulgated with stained glass accents? How do we balance the corporate responsibility of the whole society against the individual acts of those who claim that God, revelation or the Bible has given them the authority to embrace a different view of reality?
Those are some of the questions that were raised for me when I read the recent story behind the political campaign in Uganda to criminalize homosexuality and even to make it a capital crime. This campaign appears to have resulted directly from evangelical American Christians eager to transfer their culture wars to the fertile soil of Uganda in search of allies who might assist them in the preservation of their own dated and homophobic prejudices. This is the story behind the headlines.
In March of 2009, three American evangelical Christians went through Uganda pretending to be experts on homosexuality and simultaneously filling the people there with a view of homosexuality that is widely discredited in Western scientific and medical circles. They claimed to be able to "cure" homosexuals, even though there is absolutely no evidence that this is possible and massive data demonstrating that it is not. Their point of view assumes a definition of homosexuality as a sickness, a definition dismissed and rejected by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association. In these public lectures they raised the specter of a "gay agenda" being imposed on Ugandan society. They described what they called "a hidden and dark conspiracy" on the part of "the international homosexual lobby," which was designed "to destroy Bible-based values and to disrupt the traditional African family." For three days these people delivered these incredibly uninformed diatribes to live audiences. These talks were then audio-recorded for distribution throughout the land to literally hundreds of thousands of Ugandans, including political leaders, government officials and schoolteachers. The impression these visitors gave was that they were committed Christians who felt so intensely about the evil of homosexuality that they had come to raise the consciences of the Ugandan people, whose lives and culture might be at risk from the homosexual threat. The homosexual man, they said, seeks only to sodomize teenage boys, while the gay movement's goal is to destroy marriage and "to replace it with sexual promiscuity."
The facts, we now know, are that these three men were not acting out of just their personal homophobic agenda at all, but had close connections with two organizations. The first is known as "The Fellowship" or "The Family," a highly secretive right wing political organization, which operates out of a house on "C" street in Washington, D.C. At this address a major Christian lobbying effort is housed and here evangelical members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate gather to devise strategy. It was also in this "C" Street house where the sexual misconduct that involved Senator John Ensign of Nevada, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana and Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, all identified as evangelical Christians, was discussed and tactics were devised to do damage control. Members of "The Family" are the sponsors of the National Prayer Breakfast, which nets this group a profit in excess of $1,000,000 a year. They have lobbied for the criminal investigation of "Americans United for Separation of Church and State" and in favor of the "Houses of Worship Act," which would allow clergy to endorse political candidates from their pulpits without losing their tax exempt status. Through Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) "The Family" has redirected millions in U.S. aid to Uganda for sex education programs promoting abstinence and not coincidentally gaining for "The Family" a foothold in that country. This money caused an evangelical revival in Uganda, but it was also used to conduct "condom burnings," which was a major factor in the dramatic rise of HIV/AIDS in that nation. This was the group that served as the major sponsor for those American evangelical "sex experts" and the ones who thus saw to it that their rabid anti-homosexual message was effectively marketed to all of Uganda's decision makers and most of their citizens. A second group identified as a sponsor was Exodus International, a discredited body that profits enormously from its claim to be able, for a fee, to convert homosexuals i nto being heterosexual.
As a direct result of these efforts, one month after their visit a little known Ugandan politician named David Bahati, having been designated as "a rising star" by "The Family" since he first floated the idea of making homosexuality a capital crime, introduced into the legislative branch of the Ugandan government a resolution to adopt a slightly milder version of his killing sentiment called the "Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009." The effect of this bill, when passed, would be to criminalize homosexuality in Uganda by making imprisonment the punishment for being found guilty of this practice, execution for those who are openly homosexual and heavy fines for anyone who publicly spoke out in defense of gay people or who supported their cause. The Ugandan Minister of Ethics, speaking in support of this law, has declared that in Uganda homosexuals "can forget about human rights." The speeches on homosexuality by these American evangelicals were part of a carefully worked out strategy to align Uganda first and then all of Africa with their own culture war agenda in the United States. 
In this project, about which many Christians now recoil in horror, American evangelicals and other religious leaders have long given their tacit approval as well as their overt and covert support. One thinks of Rick Warren, who was invited to give the invocation at President Obama's inauguration over the visceral objections of gay groups who knew of Warren's intense homophobia. He is only one of the nation's religious leaders whose words legitimize the activity that we are now seeing in Uganda. Other ordained pastors serving small and large churches alike regularly play to the darker sides of their congregations and pour the fuel of their own uninformed negativity and sometimes their overt hatred into the public bloodstream of debate. The rhetoric of evangelist Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell has often been the excuse for violence against homosexuals. The failure of mainline leaders like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to condemn the overt homophobia of Africa's Anglican bishops in general and of Uganda's Anglican leaders in particular is just one more compromise of Christian integrity. The frequent statements from Pope Benedict XVI that refer to homosexuality as "unnatural" and "deviant" also play into the hands of the spirit of violence now erupting in that land. Perhaps the charge that they are uninformed refers not only to their ignorance about homosexuality, but also to their inability to understand the gospel. John's Gospel does describe the purpose of Jesus to be that of giving abundant life to all. The proposed Uganda law is hardly in touch with that. Unfortunately, being ignorant is neither a crime that can be prosecuted, nor does it appear to be an impediment to leadership in the Christian Church. When uninformed religious leaders present themselves as experts in an area of life in which they have no expertise whatsoever and cause hatred to rise and persecution of the gay minority to be practiced, I believe we should hold them to be morally culpable. Perhaps it is time for Roman Catholic doctors, scientists and psychiatrists to inform Pope Benedict XVI that his ignorance about homosexuality is no longer a private opinion, but a harmful public expression of his own prejudice. Perhaps it is time for Anglican leaders to confront the Archbishop of Canterbury with the fact that his weak and ineffective leadership has become not just a matter of longstanding private embarrassment, but is now contributing to a vast public evil. Perhaps the time has come to make laws that will punish and prohibit uninformed evangelicals from using the cover of their own biblical ignorance to violate the rights of others by encouraging illegal hate crimes. Perhaps it is time to say to those who, under the guise of religion, engage in counseling based on their vast ignorance, are in fact practicing medicine without a license and that they will be subject to prosecution. 
Being religious, being able to quote the Bible or the teaching authority of the Church is no guarantee that ignorance is not being disseminated. I remind my readers that the evil of the Crusades was Vatican led; that the Inquisition was church directed; that slavery, segregation and apartheid were all supported with appeals to scripture; and that women were subjugated and left-handed children were violated by prejudiced ecclesiastical leaders. We can tolerate this kind of ignorance no longer. The unholy alliance between religion and homophobia must be expelled from the Christian Church. The need to act is now. The Christian Faith requires it. Justice demands it. 

– John Shelby Spong
 



Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong


Mark Dickinson from Ottawa, Ontario, writes:
I have just finished reading Eternal Life: A New Vision. Thank you for writing this wonderful book, and thank you for sharing your vision of life eternal fulfilled. I embrace your vision with enthusiasm and I share in your celebration of our spiritual life.
In the early chapters of the book, you spend some time describing your journey, as a child and as a youth, within the boundaries and constraints and limitations of a conservative Protestant tradition. I can identify with many of your memories, and I can recall (20 years ago or so) sharing many of the "fundamentalist" beliefs and ideologies with young Sunday School students that I taught for 10 years within a Lutheran church outside of Ottawa. The stories of Genesis and Exodus and the narratives of the gospels rolled easily into the empty, hungry minds of the children and, in the spirit of most stories (and especially folklore), left these children excited and intrigued. But now, looking both backwards to where I started and from what I see today, communication or rather education of our young people becomes a little more complex and challenging.
If many (or rather, most) adults have difficulty jettisoning the literal interpretations of the Bible, how do we pursue the important task of presenting allegorical, symbolic stories abut the history of God's journey with humanity in a format and language that our young children can absorb and understand? Consider the following analogy: If we don't learn how to ride a bike before we can balance ourselves on two legs (and hopefully walk a few meters), should we not then continue to educate our very young with the images and stories that capture their imaginations and speak to their intellect (at that age)? Possibly, the problem with our Christian education process is that we never leave "the uncomplicated pictures" that we experience in the early grades of learning and that rather than maturing and growing in our divine-human journey, we remain closed in an understanding that we should have outgrown a long time ago. In other words, is the problem equally as much how we teach, (i.e. training adults not to remain in a child's thinking) as what we teach?
Mark Dickinson from Ottawa, Ontario, writes:
I have just finished reading Eternal Life: A New Vision. Thank you for writing this wonderful book, and thank you for sharing your vision of life eternal fulfilled. I embrace your vision with enthusiasm and I share in your celebration of our spiritual life.
In the early chapters of the book, you spend some time describing your journey, as a child and as a youth, within the boundaries and constraints and limitations of a conservative Protestant tradition. I can identify with many of your memories, and I can recall (20 years ago or so) sharing many of the "fundamentalist" beliefs and ideologies with young Sunday School students that I taught for 10 years within a Lutheran church outside of Ottawa. The stories of Genesis and Exodus and the narratives of the gospels rolled easily into the empty, hungry minds of the children and, in the spirit of most stories (and especially folklore), left these children excited and intrigued. But now, looking both backwards to where I started and from what I see today, communication or rather education of our young people becomes a little more complex and challenging.
If many (or rather, most) adults have difficulty jettisoning the literal interpretations of the Bible, how do we pursue the important task of presenting allegorical, symbolic stories abut the history of God's journey with humanity in a format and language that our young children can absorb and understand? Consider the following analogy: If we don't learn how to ride a bike before we can balance ourselves on two legs (and hopefully walk a few meters), should we not then continue to educate our very young with the images and stories that capture their imaginations and speak to their intellect (at that age)? Possibly, the problem with our Christian education process is that we never leave "the uncomplicated pictures" that we experience in the early grades of learning and that rather than maturing and growing in our divine-human journey, we remain closed in an understanding that we should have outgrown a long time ago. In other words, is the problem equally as much how we teach, (i.e. training adults not to remain in a child's thinking) as what we teach?



Dear Mark,
I think you are correct. I might expand your thinking to include not just that we remain in childlike thinking, but we literalize the stories so that if the child rejects them, the child is made to feel that he or she has done something wrong or that either God or his and her parents will be disappointed. We do not do that with secular myths and stories. We do not teach our children that there really was a Little Red Riding Hood or a Humpty Dumpy who fell off a wall. The stories capture genuine human experiences. In Little Red Riding Hood the story is about young girls entering puberty being urged to stay on the "straight and narrow" path lest they be caught by a wolf and eaten up. The story of Humpty Dumpty points to and illustrates the fact that in life there are some things that once done are irrevocable.
Religion, because it seeks to provide human security, always seems to have a need for certainty and to literalize a supposedly inerrant source, serves that purpose.
Another factor is that so many adults have never moved beyond their childhood religious fantasies, so that they do not know how to cope with hard human realities; hence they seek comfort in the simplicity of yesterday in the protective arms of a heavenly parent.
As a church pastor, I believe the first step in assisting growth into maturity is to open the adults to new possibilities and hope that this knowledge will trickle down to the children. I do not believe in trickle-down economics; that usually is limited to the possibility that the wealth of John D. Rockefeller will trickle down to Nelson Rockefeller and not much further. I do, however, believe in the possibility that good ideas and even good theology will trickle down to a new generation. There is ample evidence that bad ideas and bad theology have done so.
Thanks for writing.

– John Shelby Spong






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