Last year I wrote a book entitled, When Christians Get it Wrong, confessing, among other things, that Christians often get it wrong in how they speak about homosexuality. Today it was not Christians but the supporters of LGBT persons, at least one particular group, that I think got it wrong.
Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago area annually sponsors a Leadership Summit that brings together outstanding voices in leadership from the academy, the public and private sector and the church. Speakers have included luminaries like U2's Bono, former President Jimmy Carter, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
This year a group called change.org started a petition drive to protest Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz' plans to speak on leadership at the event. Willow Creek was described as having a "long history of anti-gay persecution" on the change.org website. 766 people signed the petition and Mr. Schultz chose not to speak. This would seem, at first glance, to be a victory for change.org and for the LGBT cause.
Here, however, this particular group of LGBT supporters got it wrong. The question change.org and others might want to ask is, how do we positively influence people who see the world differently than we do? Petitioning Howard Schultz to not speak, characterizing Willow Creek as persecuting LGBT's (Willow is arguably the most influential church in the U.S. and one that is far more moderate than many evangelical churches) and then succeeding at seeing Schultz back out of speaking at the conference will serve to further alienate moderate evangelicals and actually hurt the LGBT cause.
There are some 160,000 leaders from as many as 40,000 churches (representing millions of Christians around the world) who will be present at the Willow Creek event. Rather than influencing these pastors and leaders towards greater understanding and compassion, change.org has created greater misunderstanding and alienation. Rather than building bridges it has created walls.
There are many different voices within Christianity when it comes to homosexuality. Some Christians see the biblical teaching on homosexuality as reflecting the culture and times in which the Bible was written and not reflecting God's eternal perspective on homosexual people. Others believe these scriptures represent God's timeless will for how human beings practice intimacy. Some of the latter are militant in their anti-homosexual position. But most thoughtful evangelical pastors struggle with the tension between their desire to welcome and and love all people and their desire to be faithful to the scriptures regarding sexuality as they understand them. Willow Creek is among the latter and their pastor, Bill Hybels, from my perspective, is someone who has sought to welcome and love gay and lesbian people while holding to traditional understandings of these biblical texts.
I believe change.org's petition mischaracterized Willow Creek and ultimately negatively impacted the cause they seek to support.
Follow Adam Hamilton on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RevAdamHamilton
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Withdraws from Willow Creek ...
Howard Schultz Willow Creek | Mogulite
Starbucks CEO Withdraws from Willow Creek Leadership Summit ...
Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2011
Religion and Sexuality : Pictures, Videos ... - Huffington Post
Worship services are not about you and your issues. The focus is on God. Conferences and events have themes, and the focus is on the theme or stated interest or group. For a minute, one's stance or lack of it or musings about these issues may be useful or interesting. They do not define what the deal is about.
Everybody at the church is involved in a process of growth. The agreement is around worshiping God and serving God and others together. One's sex thing, whatever that may be, just does not run much in the grand scheme of things.
It is about God. In God's presence, all else bows down and falls away. Everything else is just not that deep.
Practically speaking, nobody cares what the whooping and hollering is about. Come and worship. Join in and serve. That is what the church is all about.
Schultz may have had some other agendas going. He is now engaged in his own pressure tactics. He is wrong again, and is within his rights to make wrong choices.
That church is not hateful as alleged. All who want to worship and serve are welcome. Those interested in making a spectacle can show up as well. That is what we do, and we are open to all.
I guess I'll have to ask and look up what their "traditional understandings" of the texts are before I can agree or disagree with the article.
By the way, our specialty as a Christian community is reaching out and inviting in the lost, wayward, despicable, unloved and unwanted. Hopefully you will always see churches get in with those you do not like. That is the business they are in.
Those on the extremes embrace and accept this truth - they realize that their beliefs are simply the word of an unprovable God.
Moderates on the other hand, try to have it both ways. They root their assumptions in these irrational beliefs, but don't want to admit that they do. They try to "justify" this irrationality through "rational" precepts.
And therein lies the danger - they are wolves in sheep's clothing. Far from being the obvious wild-eyed faith-driven bigots, they give cover to those who wish to discriminate, but seem reasonable. If anything, these people are far more dangerous than the truthful (but hateful) who know their beliefs are just that - beliefs.
If anything, these are the very people who must be condemned, highlighted, and even refused a platform to stop spreading hate in the name of supposed rational, moderate thinking.
Rev. Hamilton has embraced gays in his church. As a result, he has both lost and gained members. He lost the daughter of someone I know.
Several years of his sermons are on the church web site. He addresses many issues that many Methodist pastors avoid, such as accepting people of other religions.
I don't know all the details, but maybe this guy Howard Schultz had a change of heart and could have made an impression on some close-minded people. I think instead of being this side versus that side, we should try to make that side understand and appreciate this side's point of view.
Being homosexual harms no one.
Maybe if everyone followed the Golden Rule-pastors included-the world would be a better place.
Sometimes protesting in a nonviolent way such as this is the start of change.
I think you got this one wrong, Mr. Hamilton.
What a great declarative sentence: Being homosexual harms no one.
Sums up this situation and many others brilliantly.
And you're quite right about the Golden Rule. Would be nice if more people -- and especially the religious right -- would follow it.
Fanned & Faved!
The fact other "luminaries" have spoken at this event legitimizes the damage this church does to LGBT people. WC's position is you can be gay; you just can't BE gay. Sex is only for married people and since they only see marriage as between a man and a woman, any sex a gay person would have (even though you'd been in a committed, monogamous relationship for decades) would be a sin and not in line with their teachings and beliefs.
Mr. Hamilton's position is that the LGBT needs to accept the damage that the evangelical christian community has done. It doesnt work. Accepting the evangelical community positions, teaching, etc, it would not change the evangelical community's position. This "sit-down-and-take-it" position has been used against women, blacks, hispanics, Jews and other oppressed groups. Progress isn't made by accepting tyranny or oppression but by speaking out against it. Opinions are changed by being true to one's self.
Mr. Schultz's presence would not have changed anything. It wouldn't have advanced the cause or reversed the damage these gays-can-change groups have done. Hopefully, Mr. Schultz's actions will cause other "luminaries" to rethink associating with groups like this and legitimizing their actions.
I hope Mr. Hamilton reads the line: "Those walls weren't built by the LGBT community and Mr Schultz' presence at this event would have done NOTHING to erase the walls that the modern evangelicaÂl movement has erected with those that disagree with them."
And I hope he takes "the damage that the evangelicaÂl christian community has done" seriously.