Christians Say Hello.
Gay Activists Say Hmmm.
By JOHN LELAND,
NYTimes on the Web, June 6, 2005
ASBURY PARK, N.J., June 5 -
From her glassware booth at the annual gay pride celebration here, Bobbie DeVoll
had some thoughts on Sunday about the evangelical church group at the booth next
door.
"I asked them if they were trying to change us," Ms. DeVoll said. "They
said they were here because they wanted to change."
They had come, 150 to 200 of them, from a conservative Baptist church in Basking
Ridge, as part of an outreach that the pastor, Tim Lucas, called Gay Pride Meets
Christian Humility. On a hot seaside afternoon, they wore light blue
T-shirts bearing the name of their ministry, Liquid, and gave out free bottles
of water.
Joseph Satterfield, who took part in the celebration and accepted a bottle of
water, eyed the group with some suspicion. "My only concern is their
motivation," Mr. Satterfield said. "It's fine that they're here, as long
as they don't try to convert people. There's a secondary purpose behind
giving out bottled water. It's that secondary purpose we need to worry
about."
Churches have attended gay pride marches before, usually to support the marchers
or to protest. But Mr. Lucas hoped that Liquid, which is part of a
conservative Baptist church that considers homosexuality a sin, could take a
third position, avoiding both the scolds of some evangelical Christians and the
acceptance of more liberal churches. Without endorsing homosexuality, he
said: "We want to dismantle the invisible hierarchy of sin that many
evangelicals promote that puts gays and lesbians at the top of the list.
That sense of self-righteousness and superiority runs rampant in our church like
a cancer."
Parade organizers who met with Mr. Lucas before the event remained wary.
"This idea raises flags," said Laura Pople, president of Jersey Pride, the
organizers of the event, in its 14th year. Ms. Pople said she had been
recruiting support from liberal clergy but had avoided churches like Mr.
Lucas's.
"Theirs is a community that fundamentally takes issue with who I am as a
person," she said. "I'm not changing. So the issue is, is there a
way to get along? But we would be foolish not to be as forearmed as
possible."
For the members of Liquid, an alternative ministry within Millington Baptist
Church, the event was a mission into new territory. At a final strategy
meeting last week, a handwritten sign in the back of the room listed reasons for
the outreach, and the first was "to challenge stereotypes of 'Christians.' "
Mr. Lucas wore spiked hair and an Amsterdam Motorcycles T-shirt. He
advised the church members not to get into arguments or try to convert anybody.
"We're not going there to hand out tracts," he said. "These people have
been marginalized and hurt, often by us.
"If they say, 'What are you doing here?' keep it simple. Just say, 'We're
here to show you God's love.' "
Alternatively, Mr. Lucas said, they might draw criticism from other conservative
Christians, including members of their parent church, which was not invited to
participate. "People might say, 'So you think I have to change so God will
love me?' " he said. "Or they'll say, 'So you're a gay church, huh.
Baptists are coming around to gay marriage?' You just say to them, 'No,
I'm just here to serve.' "
If all went well, he said, "we'll earn the wrath and condemnation of religious
folks, and find more people on the fringe, much like it was for Jesus."
"He surrounded himself with the prostitutes and tax collectors, the people the
religious establishment morally disapproved of."
Mr. Lucas, who said he had had little contact with gay people before now,
describes himself as "an ex-homophobe whom Jesus is changing." Four years
ago, when his wife wanted to invite a gay colleague to dinner, Mr. Lucas
rejected the idea, using an expletive and an anti-gay slur.
While he still believes homosexuality is a sin, he said, "we try to look at it
from a biblical perspective, but to transcend that to discuss the ways we are
all sexually broken."
For the church and its young congregation, he said, one of the challenges is to
set moral absolutes in a youth culture that considers intolerance the worst sin.
"That word 'tolerance' often connotes a fuzzy moral system, saying all beliefs
are O.K.," he said. "That's not what we believe. There are
boundaries that God wants us to draw. We accept all people, but it doesn't
mean we endorse the choices you make morally in your life."
At the Liquid booth on Sunday, Chris Newkirk, 35, a freelance copywriter and
Liquid's director of communications, led a shift of volunteers discreetly giving
out bottles of water. Most of the people taking them did not ask what
Liquid was; some thought it was a nightclub.
Mr. Newkirk said that he did not used to tell friends, including gay friends,
that he was part of a conservative church. "For me this is a milestone, to
be in that community and say, 'I'm a Bible-reading Christian,' " Mr. Newkirk
said.
As the day wore on, Mr. Newkirk said he was surprised by how many of the people
he talked to were Christians, and how many had been hurt by the church.
"I had a moment with a lesbian couple where I apologized for Christianity," he
said. "In a sense that's what we're doing here, but I didn't expect to
utter the words out loud. I'm a follower of Christ, but I'm not a follower
of Christianity. Christianity has done a lot of these people a lot of
harm."
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