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Right-Wing Pastor Tells Christians To Boycott Same-Sex Weddings. These Christians Disagree.
Prominent Southern Baptist leader Rev. Al Mohler is calling on evangelical Christians to boycott same-sex weddings — even among their loved ones — saying attending them only serves to celebrate the “sinfulness of homosexuality.”
But for many of Mohler’s fellow Christians, his defiant stand against marriage equality is already falling flat.
Mohler, who serves as president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, recommends skipping out on same-sex nuptials in his forthcoming book We Cannot Be Silent, scheduled to hit bookshelves on October 27. According to the Religion News Service, he argues that attending such services is tantamount to an endorsement of same-sex marriage, which the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) officially opposes.
“At some point, attendance will involve congratulating the couple for their union,” he writes. “If you can’t congratulate the couple, how can you attend?”
Mohler parrots several common conservative tropes used against LGBT people in the book, which is subtitled “Speaking truth to a culture redefining sex, marriage & the very meaning of right and wrong.” He contends that same-gender relationships are sinful even if science proves people are born with different sexualities, because “even the natural world” is “tainted by human sin.” He also calls for transgender people to consult with their pastors about having surgery to revert back to the gender they claimed before transitioning.
Mohler said he wouldn’t even attend a same-sex wedding that involved one of his children or grandchildren, and encouraged others to follow his example.
“I don’t want to underestimate the difficulty of these questions, but I don’t think a faithful Christian can recognize or celebrate … what we don’t think is a marriage,” Mohler told RNS.
Mohler, a famous conservative hardliner who also decries the Catholic Church as preaching a “false gospel,” is hardly new to anti-LGBT advocacy. Although he recently condemned ex-gay therapy, the 55-year-old pastor and seminary president has spent years decrying marriage equality, opening a major 2014 conference on homosexuality in Nashville by insisting that Southern Baptists should never recognize or tolerate same-sex relationships.
He also accused megapastor Joel Osteen of “ministerial malpractice” in 2011 for saying he would attend a same-sex wedding even if he disagreed with LGBT relationships.
“You cannot celebrate what you say you know to be sin,” Mohler wrote at the time. “You cannot honestly say that same-sex marriage defies the law of God, and then join in the celebration of that ceremony.”
Yet even as the Baptist preacher turns up the volume on his anti-LGBT rhetoric, his message appears to be increasingly less effective. His latest clarion call to avoid same-sex espousals is already receiving pushback from pro-LGBT Christians, a rapidly-growing subset of American Christianity that includes several major denominations. Groups such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and United Church of Christ (UCC) now ordain people who are openly LGBT and allow ministers to perform same-sex weddings, and a 2015 Public Religion Research Institute survey found that the better part of most major American religious groups now embrace marriage equality.
These progressive faithful include Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man ordained as an Episcopal bishop. Although he took issue with Mohler’s theology of marriage, he theorized that Mohler’s stance against wedding attendance may be more about strategy and psychology than spirituality — namely, keeping people from experiencing a joyous LGBT wedding.
“In my experience as a pastor, parents who refuse to attend their gay child’s wedding do virtually irreparable harm to that relationship, and often come to regret it later,” Robinson, who is also a fellow at the Center for American Progress, told ThinkProgress in an email. “Those who do attend are often struck by the intentionality of the ceremony’s words and actions, in contrast to the taken-for-granted nature of some heterosexual weddings.”
“Perhaps Rev. Mohler is worried that if parents attend such a wedding, all they will see is a sacred and holy commitment being made between two people and an invitation to God to be present in the couple’s relationship — as Christian as any marriage could be,” he said.
Alex McNeil, head of pro-LGBT advocacy group More Light Presbyterians, also noted the transformational impact same-sex weddings can have on attendees. McNeil’s denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), boasts around 2 million members nationwide.
“Jesus called us to love one another, not boycott our friends and family,” McNeil said. “Perhaps Rev. Mohler is concerned that if he attends a same-sex wedding, the real miracles won’t be Jesus turning water into wine, but hatred into compassion.”
Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, a UCC minister and head of marriage equality advocacy group Campaign for Southern Equality, said Mohler’s comments fail to account for the caused by skipping out on the wedding of a loved one. Beach-Ferrara, who works out of a church, argued that Mohler and other Christians who oppose marriage equality should spend more time considering Jesus Christ’s teachings on reconciliation than pushing for exclusion.
“As a minister, I have officiated weddings that parents do not attend because they disapprove of the marriage, and I can tell you first hand about the heartache this causes a couple,” Beach-Ferrara said. “But those who are absent also miss out — on the joy of celebrating love and family, on all that can happen when we open our hearts to the Holy Spirit, which is surely present when two people take sacred vows to commit their lives to one another. And these great costs are exactly why God urges us toward reconciliation instead of alienation, connection instead of estrangement.”
Granted, Mohler’s comments are primarily directed at fellow evangelical Christians, not liberal mainline denominations who long ago distanced themselves from the Religious Right. But even among theological conservatives, the movement for LGBT equality is on the rise: Evangelical leaders such as ethicist David Gushee and activist Matthew Vines have both come out in favor of LGBT rights and marriage equality, and several SBC churches are starting to embrace LGBT members.
The SBC has generally responded to LGBT-affirming congregations by kicking them out of the church, and the denomination’s new stance against “ex-gay” ministries is largely perceived as a half-measure at best. But with so many American Christians embracing same-sex unions — and attending same-sex weddings — it’s an open question as to how long Mohler and others can ignore calls from fellow Christians to treat LGBT couples the same as everyone else.
“So many American families include LGBT people and are finding a way to stay together, to grow in their love,” Beach-Ferrara said. “I pray that, in time, Rev. Mohler can open his heart to all that happens when we show up for those we love instead of condemning them.”
The post Right-Wing Pastor Tells Christians To Boycott Same-Sex Weddings. These Christians Disagree. appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Jack Jenkins
thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/10/17/3713009/al-mohler-dont-go-to-weddings-because-jesus-or-something/
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