As the United Methodist Church splits, a letter to our congregation

My pastor, spiritual advisor, and friend David Tubbs and I have discussed LGBTQ+ issues and the church for quite some time, and at some length. He first asked me to address the Good Shepherd congregation several years ago as the United Methodist Church wrestled with these questions. Given that the actual changes are only now occurring, I didn’t do so until yesterday. Here is what I said:

I know that a lot of us have a fire-and-brimstone preacher or two in our past. Mine was Brother Jim, at a Southern Baptist church I attended in my early to mid-adolescence in Anniston. He was a kind and decent man who loved me and wanted the best for me. He was also absolutely certain that gay people were going to hell, and he was passionate about sharing that periodically with his congregation.

There are a handful of verses on which these claims are based. The ones you probably know best are in Leviticus and Romans. And I’m not going to discuss them.

Oh, it’s easy to read them and determine that unrepentant LGBTQ+ people are going to hell, particularly underpinned by those aforementioned preacher voices ringing in our ears. The thing is, when we consider different translations and historical context, there are also solid arguments that none of these verses condemn homosexuality–that what’s been ingrained into us simply isn’t so. However, in my experience, this constant conditioning isn’t undone by a moment or two of counterargument, no matter how enlightened.

So instead, I’ll invite you to consider Matthew 22:35-40, in which Jesus commands us to do two things–things He put above all others:

“… and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.'”

It’s a short, profound list, isn’t it? Take them into your mind, heart, and spirit and ask yourself: which is more consistent with these two greatest commandments? A hostile reading of the “anti-gay” verses in the Bible? Or an innocuous one?

When our daughter Amelia told Lea and me that she was transgender, the first thing I said to her was “I wish you weren’t. Because every single thing you do in your entire life is going to be harder. And life is hard enough.”

Parents, I know we all worry about our children, and it doesn’t stop when they’re adults. Now imagine your child is part of a demographic frequently and specifically targeted for ridicule and even violence, and often in the name of our God.

My daughter and everyone like her are as fearfully and wonderfully made as any of the rest of us. Indeed, there is nothing I believe now about LGBTQ+ people that I didn’t believe before she told us. However, my resolve to work toward a better world for her is cemented.

Christ’s church is monumentally threatened right now, to a degree rarely seen in history. Clearly, one of the most severe causes is our sustained rift over people who love and identify in different ways. I’m encouraged at signs that we’re moving in the right direction, because a true, Christ-centered church means a better world for not only my daughter and those like her, but for all of us. However, I’m also gravely concerned about the powers of inertia and sustained rhetoric.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, I ask you to consider those two greatest commandments, and then actively entertain the notion that those fire-and-brimstone preachers just might have the whole gay thing wrong.

Thank you for reading, and God be with you all.
Bo Williams

As the United Methodist Church splits, a letter to our congregation

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