Happy 40th birthday, MCC!

Kittredge Cherry, left, shakes hands with Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning human rights activist from South Africa. They met at the World Council of Churches meeting in Johannesburg in 1994. She was part of the MCC delegation there.

I put together a set of photos to honor the 40th anniversary of Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination that ministers primarily in the lesbian, gay, bi and trans community. The photos show highlights from my own ministry in MCC during the 1980s and 1990s.

An amazing affirmation happened when I went to the copy shop to scan these photos from my old photo albums for this blog tribute. I had been having some doubts about whether it was worth the cost and effort to post old photos of events that happened 15 or 20 years ago. When I got to Kinko’s, I needed a lot of technical assistance to work the scanning machine. The clerk was a young black guy who seemed understandably frustrated at having to go over the basics with an older white woman like me.

Then he saw the photo of me shaking hands with anti-apartheid activist Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Suddenly we connected. We had a fascinating discussion about religion, politics and Barack Obama while he happily scanned all my photos. It was a holy moment, and a reminder that the events of the past do still have meaning and power. What we did matters, and our actions live on to make an impact in the future.

MCC was founded in 1968 in Los Angeles by Troy Perry, a Pentecostal minister who was defrocked for being gay. He was incredibly brave and visionary to create a church where gays and lesbians were welcome back in 1968, when homosexuality was still considered a sin, a sickness and a crime. He put an ad in the local gay newspaper and held the first worship service in his living room on Oct. 6, 1968. Twelve people attended. Now it has grown to almost 300 churches in more than 30 countries.

I joined MCC in 1985 and became an ordained minister. I served as program director at MCC San Francisco, then joined the denominational headquarters in Los Angeles, where I had the privilege of working closely with Troy and current MCC Moderator Nancy Wilson.

I was part of many historic GLBT events, such as the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Rights. These photos capture just a few moments from those memorable times.

I believe it’s important to preserve our history. In searching the Web for images from MCC, I noticed that there are a few classic photos from the 1960s to the early 1970s, and many recent photos, but almost none from the years in between. Therefore I post these images from MCC in the 1980s and 1990s as a tribute to MCC and to all GLBT people of faith who dare to believe that God loves us just as we are.

So here are the photos and the stories behind the pictures.


Protesters for gay and lesbian rights in the church picketed a National Council of Churches “Faith and Order” meeting in Berkeley, California, on March 19, 1993. The “Faith and Disorder” protest was led by Rev. Kittredge Cherry, MCC’s National Ecumenical Officer. Signs say: “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re going to church,” “Ruth and Naomi, Jonathan and David, me and my girlfriend,” “Thank God I’m gay” and “We’re everywhere.” People in the photo are, from left, Brian Cross (New Life MCC Berkeley member), unknown protester, Bill Pugh of MCC-SF, Kittredge Cherry, Leslie Addison of MCC-SF, and Beth Downey.

“Sometimes faith in God’s order calls all Christians to act in ways that may seem disorderly because they disrupt the social order established by human society,” Rev. Cherry said in opening remarks at the Faith and Disorder worship service held afterward in the Pacific School of Religion chapel. About half the NCC members present, including NCC General Secretary Joan Campbell, attended the service. Nearly 150 people filled the chapel. Photo by Audrey.


Kittredge Cherry speaks at Hands Around the God-Box, a prayer demonstration to end homophobia in the church. Kitt organized it as MCC's national ecumenical director. It was held at the National Council of Churches headquarters in New York City in 1994 on the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. MCC founder Troy Perry is clearly visible in the crowd.


MCC founder Troy Perry, center, joins Kittredge Cherry, right, and her life partner, Audrey, in 1993, at the MCC General Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.


Women’s retreats were the highlight of the year at MCC San Francisco in the late 1980s. Women at the 1989 MCC-SF Women’s Retreat had fun sewing a patchwork quilt. Retreat leaders holding the quilt include Kittredge Cherry, left, who organized the retreats as MCC-SF program director.


MCC’s delegation to the World Council of Churches 1994 meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, consisted of, from left, Kittredge Cherry, MCC ecumenical director; Sylvanus Maduka, head of MCC in Nigeria; and Nancy Wilson, MCC ecumenical officer (before she was moderator). We shocked many WCC leaders by urging them to stand up against homophobia in the church, and got a warm welcome from South African GLBT Christians.



Kittredge Cherry preached at MCC of North London in February 1994.

Queer artist warns of god politics

“Beware of the god” projection by Deborah Kelly of GBK Gallery

As the U.S. election nears, it’s time to consider a queer artist’s warning against mixing religion and politics. Words appear in the sky as if written by God, but their creator is actually a queer feminist activist/artist in a major international art show in Singapore now. “Beware of the god” is projected into the clouds by Australian artist Deborah Kelly. Her stated goal is to warn against the influence of religion on politics. The words were projected over the Singapore Harbor recently as part of the Singapore Biennale 2008, a big exhibition of international contemporary art. The show lasts from Sept. 11 to Nov. 16, although Kelly’s projection ran only for the first week. In recent years, Kelly has worked the same magic in the skies above Sydney where she lives. As a lesbian Christian, I find Kelly’s light projection to be a beautiful and mysterious reminder of God’s presence and our unfortunate human tendency to turn God (capital G) into our own many gods (small g) -- idols that express and feed human ego. When I visited Kelly’s website, www.bewareofthegod.com, I was surprised to find that some of her work is a much bolder -- a direct attack on homophobia and misogyny in the church (and outside the church, too). Sometimes she may go too far. But we need our warriors, too. Her “Beware of the god” series includes sticker postcards that are free for the asking. Her own explanation is on the back. It begins, “ Pop the sticker somewhere that’s plagued by holy rollers, God botherers, or bearded blokes wielding vengeful-deity theories…” Click here for the full text and more info.

“Beware of the god” sticker postcard by Deborah Kelly of GBK Gallery

A lesbian looks back at wimmin’s music

Singer-songwriters Ferron and Bitch make music together on video above. Ferron is on the right and Bitch on the left in the photo below from Short Story Records. I’ve fallen in love with a “wimmin’s music” song that I hated when I was a twenty-something lesbian in the 1980s. Almost a quarter-century has passed since I heard lesbian folksinger Ferron sing “Shadows on a Dime,” but the song plays over and over in my mind lately. I used to find the song depressing. Now it feeds my spirituality and seems haunting and true, probably because I am in the position that Ferron sings about: I'm looking backward down the track To see us dreamers in our prime. I remember when I bought the Ferron cassette tape in 1984 in the tiny women’s bookstore in my hometown of Iowa City. I was living in Japan and came home for a visit. My partner and our other American friends gave me long shopping lists of hard-to-find items that I was supposed to buy for them while I was in the States. Ferron’s “Shadows on a Dime” was on my partner’s list, and I tracked it down at the hole-in-the-wall women’s bookstore. No doubt that store is long gone, like most of the other women’s bookstores. My partner loved that Ferron tape and played it over and over despite my objections that it was gloomy. The meandering, almost tuneless melodies became etched in my mind against my will. Time passed, we moved to California, the tape broke. Lesbian feminist women stopped calling themselves “wimmin” (coined because we didn’t want anything to do with “men”)… but I never forgot the song. And I grew to love it. Today I longed to hear “Shadows on a Dime” for real, so I looked it up on Google. Wow, now I can watch Ferron singing it on video! I can buy an updated version on her new album Boulder, released just three months ago. I can print out all the lyrics, which were muffled and mysterious until now: A tethered bird in a tethered cage… The song turns out to be about working in a factory and loving another woman. It has an authentic working-class voice that is seldom heard in lesbian-oriented media today. I learned from Ferron’s website that critics call her “the Johnny Cash of lesbian folksinging.” Her bio is full of amazing details, like how she ran away from home as a teenager, but couldn’t turn to the Catholic Church for help -- because they had banned her for using the word “bra” in the church youth group. And Ferron is still touring! In fact, TODAY she happens to be playing at the Iowa Women’s Music Festival in my hometown, Iowa City. So I’m posting this today as a tribute to Ferron, who shaped my spirit with lyrics like this: But I don't forget the factory I don't expect this ride to always be Thanks, Ferron. I never hear stuff like this on “The L-Word.”

Novels show Jesus from the heart

My Jesus in Love novels about an erotically alive Jesus are compared to the Christ the Lord novels of bestselling author Anne Rice in the following review. I am honored by the comparison made by Atlanta writer Trudie Barreras, and excited about her insight into the books. Trudie chose to write the following piece because she was impressed by the books and the connections between them. She sent her reflection to both Anne Rice and me. So far, Ms. Rice has not responded.

The Wisdom Way of Knowing
by Trudie Barreras

This reflection takes its heading unashamedly from a small volume with the same title published in 2003 by Cynthia Bourgeault. Her book The Wisdom Way of Knowing is subtitled “Reclaiming an Ancient Tradition to Awaken the Heart.” In this book, as in the conferences in a recent retreat I attended which Cynthia directed, she emphasizes the importance of “heart knowledge” as opposed to “head knowledge”. This is not describing “emotion” in the usual sense of feelings of affection or eroticism so much as a deep awareness of the reality of love as a creative force. This is the type of love referred to in 1 John 4:18 (“perfect love casts out fear”).

A deep deprivation that I think current believers have experienced is the failure of our spiritual guides to help us to open up to this heart knowledge. In essence, along with the conflict between science and religion, we have tended to boil everything down to creeds and dogmatic assertions, none of which actually speak to the reality of life as we know it. Also, there is a complete failure to truly experience Jesus as both divine and human. Most especially, in this era of obsession with sexuality, which the churches demonize and the secular world worships, there is a complete refusal to deal with the possibility of the human aspect of Jesus as a sexual being.

Two authors whose works I have read and re-read since January of 2008 deal with this problem in powerful novels. They are Anne Rice, author of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt: A Novel (2005) and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (2008), and Kittredge Cherry, who wrote Jesus in Love (2006) and At the Cross (Jesus in Love) (2008).

Although the works are very different in some ways, they are marvelously similar in others. I will share some brief reflections on each to illustrate my thoughts, although I don’t want to go into so much detail that I would “spoil the stories” for anyone who hasn’t read them.

Rice’s first book, meticulously researched from a historical perspective, has to infer a great deal about the way the child Jesus perhaps grew into an awareness of his human/divine nature from very few scriptural clues. I believe she has accomplished a remarkable explication of “how it might have been”, and her story drew me totally into context in which Jesus might have begun to discover his calling. The story is poignant, beautiful, and one I wanted to share with a number of friends and family. Her second book deals with some major cultural factors that might indeed have led Jesus to his “revolutionary” rejection of the legalism and moral judgmentalism of the Jewish culture of his time. Her story begins with the description of what is essentially a “gay bashing” of two innocent young boys, and proceeds to discuss the near destruction of a beautiful young girl because her father thinks she has been “dishonored”. In both her books, Rice describes the difficulties Jesus might have encountered because of the “questionable” manner of his conception and birth. Her perception brings into clear focus the difficulties posed by legalistic attitudes that insist God is more concerned about justice than mercy.

Cherry in essence begins where Rice’s narrative ends, that is, with Jesus going into the wilderness after his baptism in the Jordan, the calling of the disciples, and the marriage at Cana. Cherry’s primary objective is to depict Jesus as fully human in terms of sexuality, while maintaining, as Rice does, that Jesus was not genitally sexually active. Her rational for this, which I find marvelously sensitive and cogent, is that Jesus realizes his divine nature would inevitably produce an “imbalance of power” that would not permit the full and free interaction of “consenting adults” which sanctifies all human sexual interaction. Jesus also recognizes, in Cherry’s vision, that he is “married” to the Holy Spirit. After his Resurrection, the consummation of this marriage will in essence allow him to be married to every believer, and to the entire Church, a theme that surfaces powerfully in the Epistles.

I believe that Cherry’s descriptions of the eroticism between Jesus and various of his followers are beautifully and tastefully handled. Most important, I believe her writing truly sanctifies sexual love. I have been waiting a long time for someone to put into such powerful terms a truth that I’ve long felt but have been personally unable to articulate. I have been extremely uneasy that in the years since the “sexual revolution” began – years when Lady Chatterley's Lover went from being the ultimate in risqué to very ho-hum compared to the paperbacks available in every supermarket – the churches and our culture have continued to equate sex with sin. Even Metropolitan Community Church, which I hoped might give us some meaningful progress in terms of developing a sexual ethic in continuity with the Law of Love seems to have been unable to meet the challenge. Cherry’s book, however, in describing vividly and reverently what Jesus might have done, and how he might have perceived himself as a sexual being, provides that long-awaited insight.

I recently shared with Kittredge, and she featured on her Jesus In Love blog, a photograph of my “Nursing Madonna” statuette, and the story about the way in which Mary’s “nudity” was covered up with a Kleenex poncho by some member of the First MCC of Atlanta congregation when I put the statue on display in our meditation chapel. This is, indeed, exactly what I hope that Cherry’s wonderful novels will eventually counteract – a degree of prudishness that fails to deal with the true reality of Jesus as God With Us and the Holy Spirit as the “Beloved” who marries us to our true nature as a community of loving believers in Christ.
________

Trudie Barreras is a writer and a member of First Metropolitan Community Church of Atlanta. She may be contacted by e-mail at: tbarreras@bellsouth.net.

How do GLBT folks fit into Buddhism?

Rainbow Buddha by Elaine (http://www.artbyelaine.co.uk/7029.html)

A lesbian Buddhist friend recently asked me for tips on how to “fill the void” between Buddhists and lesbian and gay people when she gave a speech at a Buddhist conference. Her impression was that the Buddhists had little connection to GLBT folks. It's true that GLBT Buddhists are not as visible as gay, lesbian, bi and trans folks who follow Christ. GLBT Christians have had to come together and speak out because conservative Christians are directly attacking us, singling us out as the worst sinners, using the issue of homosexuality to raise money, etc. It appears, at least within American Buddhism, that Buddhists are more tolerant about homosexuality. However, reality is more complex. I shared the following four concepts with my friend, and I will post them here for discussion. I want to emphasize that I honor Buddhism and its followers, even though I consider myself Christian. Comments from all perspectives are welcome. 1. Like Christianity, Buddhism can be used to support homophobia There are definitely GLBT Buddhists in America, and some tend to have an idealized view of Buddhism. In our conversations, some blame Christianity for patriarchy, male dominance, and war. (Discrimination against lesbians and gays is part of sexism and patriarchy.) They're surprised when I say that in Japan I heard Buddhism used to justify male dominance and war. Maybe the critical experience is conversion -- if you were raised Christian or in a Christian culture, converting to Buddhism is a fresh start and a chance to build your own spirituality. If you were raised Buddhist, then Christianity can set you free. Here is an excerpt from an email on this subject that I sent to Toby Johnson, a gay author, activist and friend. He's a follower of Buddhism, although he once told me he is "as much a heretic to Buddhism as I am to Christianity." *** In Japan Buddhism was and is used to support male dominance. Their native animistic, goddess-oriented spirituality, Shinto, was used to justify World War II aggression against Korea and China (maybe Thailand, too). The horrors equaled some of those perpetrated in the name of Christ. My point is that any religion can be abused. It's not that any particular religion is "good." All religions have the potential to benefit society if they are practiced with "good" intentions…. I do think that Buddhism has a special role to play in America now. It seems to have a very positive effect on some people who grew up Christian or Jewish, and became disillusioned with their original religion. For example, some people can't access Jesus' message of love if they were saturated from birth with destructive Christian dogma. Buddhism gives them a fresh start with God. In Japan, I found that the opposite was true. I met quite a few Japanese feminists who rejected Buddhism because of its history of patriarchal oppression in their society and in their own personal experience. They found Christianity to be fresh and liberating. That was the atmosphere in which I chose to be baptized into Christianity in 1983 at an interdenominational English-speaking church in Kobe, Japan. Our church had members from all over the world. *** 2. Gay consciousness can be integrated with Buddhism Great info on how to integrate gay consciousness with Buddhism can be found at Toby Johnson’s website. Toby is a psychologist and former monk who studied myth with Joseph Campbell. Here's an excerpt from his site: "Johnson champions the Mahayana Buddhist World-savior myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara which portrays a lovely, androgynous (gay-like) young man, usually shown barechested in a relaxed meditation pose, who saves the world by willingly taking upon himself, out of compassion and kindness, all the incarnations of all sentient beings to free those beings from suffering. All human beings are incarnations of this one single Being (a mythological version of the planetary mind Gaia)." 3. Affirmation vs. tolerance of GLBT experience I'm sure that there are many varieties of Buddhism, but do most of them actually affirm GLBT people? I haven't found much pro-active affirmation for GLBT people in Buddhist teachings or teachers. A case in point is a lecture that I attended at the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles a few years ago. Lesbian pop singer k.d. lang introduced her Tibetan lama Chödak Gyatso Nubpa to discuss GLBT sexuality. His basic message was: We're all sinners, and the sin of homosexuality is no worse than other sins. This is the same message preached by many Christians. The lama also emphasized that he had taken a vow of celibacy, so for him all sex was bad. If a Catholic priest had given the same speech at the Center, there would have been a riot, but somehow it was acceptable to hear it from a Tibetan lama. 4. Buddhism may focus on oneness more than on unique GLBT gifts Gay and lesbian Buddhists tend to focus on oneness and see the particularity of their sexual orientation as largely irrelevant. At least that’s my experience. On the other hand, people who pursue "gay spirituality" emphasize that GLBT people have a unique experience and/or role that is valuable to the greater whole. A debate about "gay spirituality" versus "everybody spirituality" has generated a flood of comments at the Jesus in Love Blog. Here are excerpts that relate it to Buddhism from Toby Johnson's comments at the blog: *** "Having a different kind of consciousness of sexual attraction and living differently from the "norm" encourages certain talents and skills. One of those skills is the ability to see through the assumptions of conventional society. This shows up in "camp" humor and irony. Gay people tend to be able to step outside what everybody else takes for granted and see through it. That can also be understood as seeing from a broader perspective, i.e., seeing the "bigger picture." … What I think "gay spirituality" means is bringing our "gay talents" to the area of religion…. It is a great skill--one pleasing to "God," I think--to be able to rise above your religious opinions and see through to something higher and more subtle (this is what the Buddhists call Enlightenment). It is a "gift from God" that gay people get to be skilled at this. *** In closing, I repeat that I honor Buddhists and the Buddhist path. Perhaps surprisingly, GLBT Buddhists seem to be some of the most enthusiastic supporters of my gay-Jesus books and websites. I am writing from my limited perspective as an appreciative outsider to Buddhism, and I welcome comments from others with different viewpoints. May the discussion enlighten everyone!

P.S. After I originally posted this, I discovered that others are also blogging lately about Buddhism and homosexuality. The Buddhist Blog does an excellent job of explaining Buddhist sexual ethics -- including the Dalai Lama’s less-than-enlightened statements on gay and lesbian sexuality. Don’t miss the great comments! The Saint Sinner Shiksa Blog offers a more personal account on “Is there something in particular that attracts homosexual women to Buddhism?” Thanks, Riverwolf, for introducing these blogs!