Pride Month & Recovering Bigots

 

For many Christians, Pride Month is a perfect opportunity to workout one’s confession and repentance muscles. A friend in Denver sent me this photo of a “recovering bigot” making flesh-on-flesh amends with the children of God he once maligned Jonathan Merritt

Let the dreams we dream be larger Than we've ever dreamed before 

Let the dream of Christ be in us Open every door! (Refrain) 

Refrain: Draw the circle wide, draw it wider still.

 Let this be our song: no one stands alone.

Standing side by side, draw the circle, draw the circle wide...

LGBTQ2S+ Pride Month is almost at an end, so in a couple of days we'll take down our flag which is highly visible driving onto our court. We weren't sure whether we should take it down each night because of the vandalism experienced by many homeowners and institutions. Of course, some municipalities and school boards have chosen not to display any Pride symbols but many others have courageously gone ahead despite opposition by a vocal and sometimes belligerent minority.

In certain communities religious groups have led the push-back against Pride displays so I'm glad our congregation, Trenton United, did fly the flag once again, as have so many other United Churches. Trenton United was also the only congregation to have a table at Pride in the Park on the day of the Belleville Pride parade.

I was moved by the Twitter post by Jonathan Merritt with the photo of the "recovering bigot" offering hugs at a Pride parade. And by his comment about exercising confession and repentance muscles.

For those of us of a certain age, bigotry toward LGBTQ2S+ persons was so culturally ingrained that it didn't show up on our moral radar as such. Gay jokes were everywhere, homosexuality was illegal in many places (it still is in lots of countries) and living openly as a LGBTQ person was rare. Christianity was at the forefront of the prejudice and used sketchy biblical analysis to support this.

Was I bigoted? Without a doubt, and I was in my 20's before the shift in my perception began. Even then it took years before I came to a place of understanding and acceptance which was truly different than my religious upbringing. I've noted before that we raised our three children with openly gay persons in our circle of friends and their outlook was always more progressive than ours as we sought to dispose of our baggage.

Am I a recovering bigot? I would say yes, because that baggage may be largely gone but there is still the occasional "carry-on." Lots of us deal with this, including LGBTQ persons.

Not long before I retired from congregational ministry a gay couple joined our church after attending a memorial in our sanctuary for the people slaughtered in a club in Florida. I talked regularly with one of the two men who was in his early 70's and he shared his story of growing up as a Christian in the US, marrying a woman and having children. He struggled with his sexual orientation for decades and spent years in therapy. He loved his family and his congregation and so dealt with self-loathing and bigotry toward himself. He finally came to a place of knowing that God loved him as he was, but admitted that he still had his moments of struggle.

I hope we can be recovering bigots in different areas of our lives as we grow in Christ and "draw the circle wide" and that our confession and repentance muscles will get the workout they need.

The Rainbow, Icelandic artist Ruri