When my friends found out that I was reading Left Behind, their reactions were telling. None of them thought I was reading it for fun or because I agreed with authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Instead, they made slightly guilty, slightly disgusted faces. “I know I should read it, but I just can’t,” one of them said. “I guess I’ll have to read it sometime,” another said. “I know people in my congregation do.”

I found Left Behind to be disturbing, infuriating, and ridiculous. But I am grateful that since I read it I have a better idea of what fundamentalists are doing to the book of Revelation. The most subversive book in the Bible, one filled with hope for diverse groups in an oppressive culture, has been transformed by Left Behind into violent, sexist, homo-phobic propaganda. Lutherans can’t afford to ignore Left Behind or to think of Revelation as too weird for mainstream Christians. We must claim the hope Revelation offers and not let LaHaye and Jenkins’ assertions about what is “biblical” speak for us.

Homosexuality is “out”
Amy Johnson Frykholm interviewed Left Behind readers from various church and social backgrounds. Her conclusions are published in Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America. She describes “a position that is common among readers and common to the books—that homosexuality is a sign of the depravity that leads to the end of the world” (77).

The characters support this conclusion, which Frykholm says is necessary to the books because they are grounded in a worldview in which women must desire men—first their husbands and then (a male) God. “Homosexual characters frequently arise in the books, especially as enemies of the Christians or lackeys of the Antichrist. Early in the series, Buck [a protagonist] has several conflicts with a woman named Verna . . . . Her lesbian identity explains her power struggle with Buck and why she always gave Buck the ‘willies.’ She is repeatedly contrasted with Chloe [Buck’s wife], whose femininity is obvious in her deference to Buck, her ‘selfless and loving’ nature, and the fact that she is never ‘catty or a nag.’ Later the authors introduce another homosexual character, this time an artist who works for the Antichrist. As with Verna, Guy Blod is meant to be funny, a character at whom we should laugh. Guy giggles and prances through his scenes. His sexual identity is set up in contrast with the authentic masculinity and hetero-sexuality of the Christians. We last see Guy worship-ping the statue of the Antichrist that he himself has made” (77-78).

Born-again is “in”
This characterization of gays and lesbians is even more disturbing when coupled with the books’ lack of compassion for anyone who is not a born-again Christian. Barbara Rossing, a professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, is the author of The Rapture Exposed. She points out that for people who believe in the rapture, in the end times ”the rules are suspended and ethics shift” (14). Only born-again Christians matter, because they are the only ones who will be saved. Everyone else, and even the planet earth with all its plants and animals, is expendable.

Nowhere is this attitude of the books and its influence on readers seen more clearly than through the character of Hattie Durham. Hattie is not a lesbian; she is an “unbeliever.” Frykholm describes the reactions to Hattie of two Left Behind readers, Jill and Carissa. “Jill, a new convert to evangelical Christianity, forcefully expresses her dislike. ‘Hattie, she just gave me the chills. And the amazing thing is that they [the Tribulation Force] have taken her in and I’m like, I know God wants us to take care of these people, but I can’t believe you are doing that! Put her out in the cold! She’s jeopardizing their lives and it just amazes me. I do read it and think, “Oh, she is making me ill.”’ Jill expresses a physical revulsion to Hattie brought on by her refusal to become a Christian . . . . For Jill, ‘these people’ are, as one character puts it, ‘unlovable’ and she cannot imagine herself expressing compassion for them . . . Carissa agrees . . . ‘Just put her out. Slap her first, then put her out . . .’” (94-95). In a world where one’s very survival is at stake, the books insist that the only beings who deserve to survive are evangelical Christians.

The many books of the series make this exclusionary mindset not just accept-able but normative: it’s presented as how “the good guys” are supposed to behave in a hostile world. Needless to say, it is far from the actual message of Revelation. And, as it turns out, what Revelation does say is as important as what Left Behind leaves out. Combining the two—what Revelation has to say about diversity and what Left Behind fails to say about being a Christian—is as good a way as any to come to the radical message of Revelation.

Considering baptism
The sacrament of baptism is conspicuously absent in the Left Behind books (Rossing and Haffen, 6). When Left Behind characters convert to Christianity, it is by means of a decision, what the books call “a supernatural transaction” in which the prospective Christian must sincerely admit his or her sin and call on Christ to be saved. There are no outward signs that this trans-action has been successful: being raptured is the only event that separates those Christians who were sincere from the rest. The non-raptured pastor Bruce Barnes tells Chloe and her father, Buck, “Jesus Christ returned for his true family, and the rest of us were left behind” (LaHaye and Jenkins, 198).

Frykholm points out that Bruce Barnes actually seems to be a good man. “Presumably, his public display of faith was flawless, his actions impeccable. Even his own wife did not suspect . . . . He was entirely sincere and yet completely inauthentic at the same time. The alchemy of salvation, whatever that entails, had not successfully transformed him” (Frykholm 147). Those who believe the Left Behind theology cannot say, with Martin Luther, “I am baptized,” when they are beset by doubts about their own salvation. For them, the rapture is to be awaited with both hope and fear, because it is the only time they can be sure that the mysterious “alchemy of salvation” has worked for them.

Our Lutheran understanding of the gift of baptism is nothing like the “transac-tion” in Left Behind. Because we do nothing to earn or deserve our baptism; we don’t have to worry about whether we are really part of Jesus’ true family. And because we can’t do anything to earn or deserve our baptism, we can’t make distinctions between ourselves and others based on who is a better or worse, truer or more false Christian. In We Were Baptized Too: Claiming God’s Grace for Lesbians and Gays, Marilyn Bennett Alexander and James Preston say that “Baptism . . . is not the act of humanity, but the act of God. It is not earned, paid for, or sought after. Baptism is a pure gift that no one deserves but all can receive . . . . Baptism becomes the foundation for justice within the Church because it is an impartial gift, an act of equality among all people” (73-74). Baptism removes both our fear about whether we are really saved and our justification for judging others.

This view of baptism demands the same radical acceptance of diversity that is at the heart of Revelation. Rossing points out that the author of Revelation addressed a group of Christians who lived in a world that really was as hostile to Christianity as the modern world is portrayed to be in Left Behind. Yet the response of these Christians was very different from the violent one of the protagonists in Left Behind. “Love of neighbor and hospitality to strangers was Christians’ surest response to life on the brink of the end times” (17).

The vision in Revelation
In his book For the Healing of the Nations, Justo Gonzalez points out that Revelation was written at a cultural crossroads, where people of many different beliefs and lifestyles came together. The phrase “every tribe and language and people and nation” occurs, in several variations, no less than seven times. But unlike Left Behind, Revelation doesn’t focus on who is in and who is out, or on who is the truer Christian among a diverse people. In fact, Revelation calls people in the dominant culture to “realize that, no matter what they may have thought, their own people and tribe and nation and language is no more in God’s plan than one of the many peoples and tribes and nations and languages whom God is calling to make, as Revelation would say, ‘a kingdom of priests serving God’” (91-92).

The author of Revelation exposes another vision, a false vision, competing for allegiance with the true one revealed to John. This false vision is the great harlot seated on many waters, oppressing the tribes and nations and forcing them to bring their wealth to her. Gonzales says that if we choose the harlot’s vision, then “our task is to make sure that we, and others like us, are the ones who sit upon many waters” (111). This, I submit, is LaHaye and Jenkins’ dream—a world in which the “right” people, Jesus’ “true” family, live in their underground bunkers with their weapons and their computers while everyone who doesn’t agree with them is first slapped and then “put out” into the hostile world where true Christians have no obligations to care for or help them.

“But,” Gonzalez says, “that is not the vision of John of Patmos. According to his vision, out of these many nations and tribes and peoples and languages, God will build a kingdom in which all have royal and priestly honor. According to that vision, a great multitude, from all different nations and cultures, will jointly sing, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.’ According to that vision . . . we must be multicultural, not just so that those from other cultures may feel at home among us, but also so that we may feel at home in God’s future” (112).

Our earthly relationship with God begins with baptism, a free gift that doesn’t depend on our status as male or female, Caucasian or Asian, gay or straight. Revelation says that it will end when we are welcomed into a heavenly choir, a great and diverse group of people, valued for their differences, praising God together. It is this vision that we must proclaim. It is this vision on which God's future will be built.<

Endnotes
Alexander, Marilyn Bennett, and James Preston. We Were Baptized Too: Claiming God’s Grace for Lesbians and Gays. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.

Frykholm, Amy Johnson. Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Gonzalez, Justo. For the Healing of the Nations: the Book of Revelation in an Age of Cultural Conflict. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1999.

LaHaye, Tim, and Jerry Jenkins. Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale, 1995.

Rossing, Barbara. The Rapture Exposed: the Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2004.

Rossing, Barbara, and Ann Haffen. "Up for Discussion: The Left Behind Series." Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2004.

Cathy Ward-Crixell holds a Master of Arts degree from the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Divinity degree from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. She is married to a pastor and lives in Nebraska. She is writing a novel.

OK, I read the darned thing . . .

Well, I sat down and did it. I have read and re-read and read again the “final report” of the ELCA task force on sexuality. After doing so my options were to either: a) bang my head violently against blunt household surfaces until the report made sense, or b) put thoughts to paper. So here I sit at my laptop, bruised but not bowed.

Overall Reaction:
After more than a decade and a half of “studying” human sexuality one would think the Church would be really good at it. But at first glance the report comes across as one gigantic attempt to avoid any decisions, any stance or “changes.” A closer look reveals this is not entirely fair or accurate. But it is hard to come away from this document without a sense of “Well since we were terrified of making people on either side of this issue mad, we just gave up and decided to annoy everybody.”

Part One of the report states that having a vote at the 2005 assembly on the issues involved would not be “helpful” and would produce “winners and losers.” So the logical conclusion is to keep GLBT Lutherans in the ELCA as “institutional losers”. The line in Part One that leapt off the page at me is found on page six , where it reads “Many people have asked for a simple answer to the question: ‘Does the Bible say that sexual activity between two people of the same sex is always a sin?’” The report asserts this question is at the heart of the divisions in the ELCA over human sexuality. I guess my reaction to that is the Bible clearly says mixed gender sexual activity out of wedlock is a “no-no,” yet we don’t debate or study the issue of acceptance and ordination of sexually active heterosexuals. (In fairness the report does recommend further discussion on that issue.) For me this is the report and the study’s credibility gap. The report never once examines the issue of equality. It “acknowledges,” it “recognizes,” it “respects and affirms,” but never once does it really examine the issue of discrimination.

But the recommendation that really caught me off guard was the idea on page seven of “creating a space” in our church, figuratively and geographically, where the ELCA will try not to notice there are gay and lesbian clergy or gay and lesbian couples or gay and lesbian youth or . . . or . . . or . . .

The end result is that we, as a church, are going to say it’s okay for North Dakota to say all the gays are going to hell and have no place at our table, but if California doesn’t feel the same way the ELCA won’t punish us. Gee . . . thanks. And it gets better! On page eight, the line about calling gay clergy quietly—to “refrain from making the call a media event either as an act of defiance or with the presumption of being prophetic”—is one of the most remarkably smarmy statements I have ever read in a church document. If a church calls a gay pastor, it is to be done in the closet and preferably in one of the “spaces” where such things could be overlooked. The report uses the term “authorized faith communities.” Wow . . . separate AND unequal. That’s quite an accomplishment.

The section on responses to the study has some interesting nuggets if you dig deep. The admission that the whole idea of the study might be offensive and painful to gays and lesbians is finally acknowledged. But then the report goes on to say what is at stake is the “deeply serious question of whether or not all homosexual conduct is inherently sinful.” And then it puts icing on that cake by saying, “While we see no scriptural rationale for changing the church’s traditional teaching that homosexual erotic behavior violates God’s intent, we remain open to possibility of new biblical and theological insights.”

Well, okay, some have argued that there was no “scriptural rationale” for the church to ordain women, but common sense finally won out. Again I find myself wanting to scream in frustration at selective biblical interpretation. There is no scriptural rationale for changing the teaching that some foods are “unclean,” but modern technology and food preservation make that a moot point. When we are willing to say that in the twenty-first century we keep food in the fridge, so the sundry laws there are not relevant, why isn’t the ELCA willing to take the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association at their word when they say sexual orientation is not a choice or a condition that can be “changed”? And once again we get the message that “homosexuality itself is not condemned by the church,” it is whether the conduct is sinful or not that is being debated.

“We hold tight to these biblical insights even as we try to discern how they speak to us in the present.” Not in all cases apparently. The report does go on to affirm that “We are and remain a welcoming church in which all are invited to participate fully in the life of our congregations.” Yet “participate fully” does NOT include marriage for same-sex couples or God’s gift of sexual intimacy, particularly where gay and lesbian clergy are concerned.

There is some good to be found here. True, there are no real steps forward, but even having the discussion is a very positive step. At least we can say there are no real steps backwards. Yet, I still feel that in an attempt to avoid division, we have opted to remain a divided church. Congregations like St. Mark’s here in San Francisco or Holy Trinity Lutheran in Chicago will continue to proclaim the good news to ALL people only now with slightly LESS fear of being punished for doing so. Yet elsewhere in the very same ELCA, a gay or lesbian teenager can be told from the pulpit that they are sick and can be cured if they just pray hard enough. I find the chance to end that mixed message to be the greatest missed opportunity of both the study itself and the final report.

Also, in a textbook “duck and cover” the report goes out of its way to mention four times that the 2005 Assembly is NOT the place to try to settle any of these questions.

Yeah right . . . ! See you in Orlando!

It's time to close our Bibles
for a few months

For more than a year now, as we’ve tried to “journey together faithfully,” we Lutherans have had our heads buried in Scripture. Some of us are convinced that the Bible unequivocally condemns homosexual activity. Others of us are convinced that context renders these biblical condemnations less than absolute—or altogether irrelevant today. And plenty of us remain somewhere in the middle, uncertain as to what exactly the Bible says—or means—regarding same-sex relationships. 

Well, it’s time to close our Bibles for a few months. We won’t find the answer we’re looking for there—at least not in the places we’ve been looking.

In fact, we haven’t even asked the right question yet. Supposedly we’ve been studying whether to offer blessings to same-sex couples and whether to ordain persons in committed relation-ships. But in reality the study materials haven’t really focused on those questions. Instead they’ve mired us in a quite different question: whether homo-sexuality, either in orientation or expression (and it’s just plain arrogant when straight people assume a distinction between the two) is sinful. 

But this has never been the right question. The church has only ever blessed heterosexual marriages between sinners. The church has only ever ordained pastors who have also been sinners. And don’t talk about “willful, ongoing” sin as the crucial distinction. We bless marriages between persons quite willfully devoted to conspicuous consumption. We don’t hesitate to ordain people who smoke—even while wearing their collar, even around children. So the “sin” question misses the point. And while I personally do not think homosexuality is sinful, I recognize that this argument isn’t going to be settled anytime soon.

Moreover, even the questions about blessing and ordination are misguided. They’re so specific that they keep us from seeing the question that would offer us a way forward. The real question is this: How should we as a church respond when persons come to us seeking full participation in our church—as they are, without becoming like us? Especially when they are persons whom the Bible has seemed to suggest have no part among God’s people unless they become like us? That’s the situation we face. And that’s the situation faced by the early church when the Gentiles sought full participation without the precondition of first becoming Jewish in diet and circumcision.

There are texts in Acts 10, 11, and 15 that tell us how the early church responded to that situation, but the Sexuality Task Force chose not to put those texts before us in the Journey Together Faithfully study materials. They chose not to offer us the one biblical model for constructively engaging our situation. No wonder we got nowhere. In contrast, the early church did not rush back to the Torah to see whether Gentiles needed to be circumcised in order to join the church. If they had, they would’ve gotten mired in the same dilemma we are, asking whether what the Torah seemed to say about Gentiles ‘back then’ still applied in the first century. And while there were some who wanted to do that, the church dared to try a different approach.

Though not without some fierce squabbling, the church ultimately decided to listen to the lives of the Gentiles who sought to join them. Rather than challenge them with biblical texts, rather than insist on always presenting “fair and balanced” opposing views, the early church simply listened to the stories of God’s activity in their lives. Then the church asked, is it possible that God’s Spirit is already active in the lives of these people in ways we would never have guessed? Is it possible that God is surprising us even now? These are the questions that we must ask today. And we can only ask them by closing our Bibles long enough to quietly and respectfully listen to the lives of those gay and lesbian Christians before us now.

If we were actually to do that, I suspect that many of us—a majority, a two-thirds majority, I bet—would find ourselves saying, “I’m not sure exactly how to square up the biblical passages, but after truly listening to the stories of these people I have to agree with Peter (Acts 10:47), ‘How can we as a church withhold blessings and ordinations from these persons whom God has so clearly blessed with love and/or called to ministry?’” 

Sierra Pacific Synod Assembly “Marked with the Cross of Christ Forever”
April 29—May 1, 2005 in Oakland
The 2005 Sierra Pacific Synod Assembly will be held April 29—May 1, 2005 at the Oakland Convention Center in Oakland, CA. Members of Lutherans Concerned/San Francisco Bay Area Chapter will be present as visitors and voting members, and THE party, hosted by Lutherans Concerned will be on Saturday, April 30. We hope to see you there!

LC/SFBA Board Meetings:
March 20, 2005
April 17, 2005
May 15, 2005
Board meetings are open to all. They are at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, 1101 O'Farrell Street in San Francisco (unless otherwise noted). Free parking in St. Mark's lot.

Two Lutheran physicians have written a excellent study paper:.
“Heterosexism, Homosexual Health, and the Church: A response to 'A Call to Study and Dialogue in the ELCA.’” You can access it online at: http://eot.com/~vati/peterson.
Highly recommended reading!