1. GOD WANTS US TO MOVE

   by Scott Godwin9 . 26 . 22
   

I’ve worked in the fitness and exercise field for a long time. While scientists and professionals are correct to say that exercise is good for your physical health, I’ve learned from experience that there is so much more to the story: We were born to move.

God has a plan for our lives, and it requires the movement of our bodies. Of course, there is a place for contemplation. We could probably do better at observing the Sabbath, but we shouldn’t forget that God also made us for a life of activity. Scripture speaks of fighting, traveling, loving, conquering, and living. Jacob wrestles with God. The Israelites are constantly journeying or being displaced. Idleness is punished and often leads to sin.

Our bodies and their limitations remind us that we can’t be “anything we want to be.” They have a purpose. To fulfill that purpose is the ultimate source of all joy and happiness. In 1 Corinthians, Paul asks: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (6:19–20).

How might we glorify God in our bodies? Physical activities can be similar to prayer, insofar as they both require care and attention. To worship is to be attentive; our bodies and minds are directed toward glorifying the Lord. Similarly, physical activities—such as gardening, cooking, woodworking, hunting, or fishing, for example—by demanding our concentration and the full engagement of our bodies, can resemble an act of worship. They, too, can glorify the Lord.

They also bring us closer to being who we were meant to be, to being fully human. A life of activity pushes us to try new things, to meet new challenges. The more we move, the more we are spurred toward greatness. And the more we use our bodies well, the more we also “move” spiritually closer to God.

But we have to want it. Life is like a dojo, to use a martial arts metaphor. If we show up and then keep showing up, we’ll one day be stronger, physically and spiritually. Our relationship with God is strengthened when we seek him out, in our bodies and in our hearts.

What we do with our bodies counts. We often forget that our bodies and souls are one. We see this in Scripture, where the spiritual life is often described with active, physical imagery: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). Caring for one benefits the other.

So here’s some practical advice I would like to offer to all Christians. Pastors should encourage their congregations not only to pray more, but also to challenge themselves physically, to turn off the screens and engage with the world in a tangible way, to move. An absence of challenges degrades the best of the best. We weren’t all built to be great athletes, but we can all get up and do something worthwhile. Most importantly, we can all live an active life of faith. As Christ said: “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Matt. 9:37).

Recently, at my aunt and uncle’s fiftieth anniversary party, the two dazzled and surprised over a hundred of us with a choreographed dance they’d studied on YouTube and perfected at home in their small house in rural Alabama. I found out later that it took months of daily practice to get it just right. It was one of the best things I’d ever seen. They were moving with purpose.

Christianity has been called “the way” for a reason; we’re supposed to move toward something. Movement is a gift. Our bodies and the physical world are a gift, and they remind us that the God in whom we “breathe and move and have our being” has given us this gift and the ability to act—to move closer to him. “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it” (1 Cor. 9:24).

Scott Godwin writes from Atlanta, Georgia.

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WHEN PADRE PIO REVEALED A PRINCE OF THE CHURCH HAD BEEN ABORTED

 

WHEN PADRE PIO REVEALED A PRINCE OF THE CHURCH HAD BEEN ABORTED

By Mary O'Regan

 

I remember being a little shocked when Donal Enright disclosed to me that in the 1960s he had helped several women who were suffering during the aftermath of their illegal abortions.  Donal was a disciple of Padre Pio - Pio had given him a great role to be at the side of post-abortive women and guide them to realize the gravity of their sin. At the time abortion was not legal in Italy. Donal met these women when they were milling around San Giovanni Rotondo and hoping to confess to Padre Pio. But Donal was not the only spiritual child who knew post-abortive women who confessed to Padre Pio.

One woman had an illegal abortion and was distraught when Pio informed her that her baby boy could have been a great prince of the Church. The lady in question was a neighbor of Alberto Cordone who was a spiritual child of Pio's. Alberto had impeccable integrity. She told Alberto of her confessions with Pio which led to Pio revealing that her son could have been a cardinal. 

This was in the mid 1940s. The lady knelt in Pio's confessional and when she had given him an account of her sins which she thought was complete, Pio invited her, "Try to remember the other sin." She responded, "Padre, I think I gave you all the sins I know and I think this is it." Padre Pio was not satisfied, and he gave her a harsh penitential exercise; "Go to the cross and say 15 Ave Marias and 15 Our Fathers". The cross was at the top of the mountain, it was reached by going up a very bad road and was considered by all to be a dangerous expedition. But the lady did as Pio asked, and when she went back to him, hoping to get absolution, he said to her, "Do you remember all your sins?" Again she was adamant that she had previously confessed all of them, "Padre Pio, I've confessed everything." Pio was patient and blamed it on her memory, "No, you still don't remember all." Then he assigned the same penance as last time, "You've got to go to the cross at the top of the mountain again." 

When she returned from her perilous climb up the mountain, she still claimed not to remember the other sin, and Pio asked her to go to the cross for a third time. When she returned to his confessional, she was resolute that she did not remember anything else, but Pio questioned her, "What do you mean, you don't remember anything? Don't you know he could have been a good priest, a bishop, even a cardinal?" The woman was thrown into deep thought and as she remembered her abortion, tears welled up in her eyes and she defended herself, "Padre, I never knew abortion was a sin." Pio was not moved to soften his stance, "What do you mean, you didn't know this was a sin? That's killing."

The lady thought the cloak of secrecy had granted her immunity, "Nobody knows about this, only me and my mother, how could you say it could have been a priest or a cardinal?"

But Pio knew. The mere fact that Pio said the boy could have been "a good priest" is exceptionally telling because Pio rarely if ever said that a priest was good, he was harder on priests than he was on anyone else, he even denigrated himself so harshly it was hard for Pio's enemies to insult him worse than he insulted himself. This genuine account is not just the story of the mother's tragedy, but ours as well, because it follows that if he had been a good priest according to Pio, he'd have been a good prince of the Church, and they are in short supply. 

Pio ended the conversation with the woman of the dead son by saying solemnly, "It's [abortion] is a sin, a very great sin."

May I wish you and yours a very happy feast of St Padre Pio. 

UPDATE:  I have done further analysis and I believe that the baby boy would have been born circa 1946 and would be 76 years old now; he would be considered an older Boomer. The average age of a cardinal is 72, and the current Pope was 76 when he was elected Pope. 

His mother, the penitent, the post-abortive mother presented as someone who went to confession at least twice a year at Christmas and Easter. This is not as regularly as Pio advised, but had she been away from the sacraments for years, he would have sent her away without speaking to her and would have made her wait before any dialogue took place, or he would have stated her sin without trying to induce her to tell him. The mere fact that he first gave her penance tells us that it was a recent abortion, because otherwise Pio's concern would have been to make her feel how long she had been away from confession before her actual sins were voiced. 

The woman's surprise at hearing the wrongness of abortion indicates that she was among the first generation of Italians that needed to be instructed as to its evil. 

This confession took place just after World War II had ended and when the War was raging, destitute Italian women took to prostitution and the abortion rate rose. Before the War, abortion was exceedingly rare and thus there was little spoken catechism devoted to it; the woman had never heard it said that abortion was sinful, because before the War, abortion was genuinely something that was not at all common. The post-abortion woman was not a prostitute but when she confessed she was very young and she did not remember a time when abortion was so uncommon as to be unknown among ordinary Italians and she came of age when it was regrettably more accepted and thus she was aghast when Pio emphasized its evil. 

 

Christians slam California Gov. Newsom for 'disgusting' pro-abortion billboards quoting Jesus: 'Satanic'

A Catholic priest said Newsom's billboards exhibit 'one of the worst distortions of a Bible passage I've ever seen'

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking flak from Christians who are offended by his multi-state billboard campaign that promotes abortion by quoting Jesus.

Last week, Newsom took to Twitter to tout the billboards his gubernatorial campaign is erecting in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and four other "anti-freedom" states where abortion is restricted or outlawed.

Some versions of the billboards, all of which urge women in such states to come to California to get abortions, advertise the state's easily obtainable abortions by quoting Mark 12:31, where Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these."

Newsom tagged several GOP governors in his Twitter thread, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves. The billboards are also going up Indiana, South Carolina and South Dakota.

NORTH CAROLINA PREGNANCY CENTER DEFIANT AFTER PRO-ABORTION VANDALISM: ‘SPIRITUAL WARFARE’

"The idea that Newsom is using the words of Jesus Christ, the Holy Scriptures, to promote the killing of unborn children as somehow loving and commanded by God is quite frankly disgusting," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law & Justice, in a statement to Fox News Digital.

"This is a blatant, political fundraising ploy to boost his own political profile and presidential aspirations. The people are smarter than that. It just won’t work," Sekulow added.

Many Twitter users echoed Sekulow's sentiment, including Matthew P. Schneider, a Roman Catholic priest who serves as adjunct professor of theology at Belmont Abbey College in Charlotte, North Carolina. He described Newsom's billboards as "one of the [worst] distortions of a Bible passage I've ever seen."

"Shame on [Newsom] and his government," Schneider said. "The most basic level of loving your neighbor as yourself is not killing your neighbor, yet that's exactly what abortion does."

"This is satanic," tweeted Ryan Hilderbrand, a Roman Catholic priest from Indiana.

"Imagining the devil in his advertising office at the top of the highest skyscraper in hell giggling to himself as [Newsom] uses Jesus’ own words to support killing babies," said Catholic Answers, a Catholic media ministry that went on in a nine-tweet thread to excoriate the Democrat governor for having "twisted" the words of the Bible.

Explaining how the verse Newsom cited was removed from the context of Jesus affirming the Old Testament command "to love the Lord your God with all your heart" as "the greatest commandment," Catholic Answers tweeted, "No surprise here. Satan, having no imagination, can only ‘create’ by perverting the good not of his making. Likewise, it seems, for Gavin Newsom."

"Wow ... So murdering your innocent unborn child is somehow ‘loving your neighbor,’" tweeted The Christian Outlook, a Christian media outlet. "Let's all pray for [Newsom], that he might get saved and see the value God places on every life, born and unborn."

JOSH BARRO SLAMS GAVIN NEWSOM AS ‘GROSS AND EMBARRASSING,’ SAYS ‘SLEAZY’ GOVERNOR WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT

"Your religious beliefs have no place in our politics. Except when we want to use them to troll people we hate, that’s fine," tweeted canon lawyer Ed Condon, who also founded Catholic publication "The Pillar."

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a bill-signing ceremony on Feb. 9, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

"'Good Catholic' [Newsom] is now using Bible scriptures to encourage women to come to California to abort their babies," wrote David Giglio, a former congressional candidate who is also a Catholic. "A truly shameful display. Meanwhile, in CA crime continues to skyrocket, the cost of living is out of control, and the state can't even keep the lights on."

 

 

1. QUEEN ELIZABETH, SERVANT OF GOD

   by Rowan Williams9 . 12 . 22
   

In one of the inevitable rounds of media interviews in the days following Queen Elizabeth’s death last week, one journalist asked a key question. “The Queen was anointed at the coronation, wasn’t she? Did this make a difference to how she saw her role?”

The image of the anointed monarch is one that pervades Scripture, giving us the title—“Christ”—by which we acknowledge our Savior. For the literary and historically-minded, it is an image that also haunts Shakespeare’s dramas and the starkest debates and conflicts of British political history. It has been used to mystify and exalt monarchy in ways that most of us would now find uncomfortable at best.

But if we step back a little from the history and think a moment longer about the theology of anointing, we might understand better what the journalist’s question was driving at. Anointing—in baptism or ordination—signifies that someone is being given a new place in the community of God’s people. It is not a job description, nor is it a blank check for power and privilege. It creates a relationship, with God and with the community of faith, and promises grace to make that relationship live and thrive.

The coronation service has this much in common with ordination: It singles out someone to occupy a position whose point is to manifest something about the whole community’s life—and to do so first by just being there, holding the ideals and aspirations of the community (and also carrying its projections). It is the rationale of the theological tradition that tells us that priesthood is not about an individual’s successful or meritorious performance but about fidelity to a position, for the sake of the community’s peace and well-being. It does not exempt priests from censure and judgement where needed, nor does it confer on them an unchallengeable right to win every argument. That is not the point. They are there so that we can gather around something other than our preferences and anxieties and prejudices; around a gift of “kinship” in which we can stand together before God.

And this is what the royal anointing means at its most important level—a gift of the Holy Spirit to hold a fragile human person in faithfulness to this place where community can gather for restoration and renewal. There is no doubt at all that this was exactly what Queen Elizabeth believed about her role. It was a vocation for which she had been blessed and graced, and the anointing was at the heart of it. Sometimes at Windsor Castle she would show visitors her small book of daily devotions from the weeks leading up to the coronation itself—prayers and meditations that had been written for her by the then archbishop of Canterbury. It was obvious that these meditations had sunk in deeply, and that she still shaped her life according to what was laid out there.

People wondered why she did not abdicate as she became a little more frail (though her physical health remained extraordinarily robust until the very last months). But she never saw her role as something she could lay down. In this, she echoed Pope John Paul II, disregarding the pressure of advancing age and vulnerability because the position was not one in which what mattered was success, performance, public glamor. But what she did do was plan very carefully for the transition to her successor, sharing out responsibilities, shifting expectations, gently preparing the nation as much as she could for her departure.

It was typical of her striking lack of egotism. When I held the role of archbishop of Canterbury, I had to meet a large number of political leaders across the world; I can truthfully say that not one impressed me in the same way the queen did. Not one had the same degree of attentiveness, unpompous clarity of mind and response, lack of prickly or defensive reactions. She could be abrupt, she could be caustic; she had a powerful sense of the absurd and a real impatience with clichés and flannel. Yet her profound kindness was always in evidence, and her dry and deflating humor was a great gift in keeping matters in perspective.

I watched with admiration as she—year by year—became just that bit more explicit in her public addresses (especially at Christmas) about her Christian faith; never obtrusively or aggressively, but in a way that made it absolutely clear that she knew whence she derived her vision and her strength. At the same time, her engagement with other faiths was surprisingly strong and positive, and I would hear imams, rabbis, and swamis alike sing praises for her empathy and shrewdness. Like her husband, she would listen attentively to sermons and be ready to discuss and challenge afterward. It was a very particular privilege to give her Holy Communion on the occasions when she visited the Church of England’s General Synod.

A servant of God, without doubt; a generous, courageous, patient, and prayerful person. And not least, someone whose living-out of her role kept alive the question of how increasingly secular societies find any kind of durable unity in the absence of the great common symbols of grace, in the absence of that “canopy” that offers us an identity larger than our own tribe and interest group and holds us in a kinship we haven’t had to invent for ourselves.

Rowan Williams is a former archbishop of Canterbury.

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Pope John Paul II said, ‘Of all the unimportant things football is the most important.’ I feel the same way about rock music...

But I do like soccer and in my humble opinion there never has been a footballer to match George Best R.I.P.

 

Reiki: A False Spiritual Healing
that Excludes God

Pablo H. Breijo

The art of spiritual healing massage and the transmission of energy are some of the characteristics associated with “Reiki” (pronounced RAY-kee), a kind of “alternative medicine” of Japanese origin that has been accepted in recent times in some Catholic hospitals and retreat centers in the United States. Reiki “masters” claim that by laying hands on or above a sick or injured person, they can draw universal healing energy into the person.

Despite the Church condemnation, many nuns like Sr. Gianforte, above, and Sr. Eileen Curteis, below, continue to practice Reiki as ‘masters’

This has led the American Bishops Conference to publish a document entitled “Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy,” warning of the dangers of this practice.

The document begins, “The Church recognizes two kinds of healing: healing by divine grace and healing that utilizes the powers of nature,” (§ 2) options that do not exclude each other. On the contrary, Reiki therapy “finds no support either in the findings of natural science or in Christian belief.” (§ 10)

Reiki is a Japanese word comprised of two parts: Rei which means “energy of the universe” and Ki, meaning “life force energy.” It signifies, therefore, “universal life energy.” Reiki followers portray it as an art of natural healing by which “energy” or “love” is transmitted through the “laying on” of hands. Reiki says nothing about God and asks nothing of God: simply a “force” is exerted.

The Bishops remind Catholics of the fact that “access to divine healing is by prayer to Christ as Lord and Savior” and in no other way. Therefore, since there is no justification for the healing in either faith or science, “a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no man’s land that is neither faith nor science.” (§ 11)

The document calls on priests and lay faithful to renounce such superstition, because it “corrupts the worship of God turning one’s religious feeling and practice in a false direction.” (§ 11)

The text concludes that “would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions, such as Catholic health care facilities and retreat centers or persons representing the Church, such as Catholic chaplains, either to promote or to provide support for Reiki therapy.” (§ 12)

The invisible threat of the ‘New Age’

An initiation into one of the three degrees of Reiki

The practice of Reiki is framed within the context of New Age therapies and beliefs.

Many persons who find science or institutional religion too intellectual and cold, seek alternatives in these more emotional and individualistic practices.

Reiki also includes many elements of the occult and magical thinking, which seek to use and control impersonal energies, something very different from the Catholic Religion. The latter deals with a personal God who one cannot control and insists on man’s vocation to serve God and his neighbor.

The insistence of Christianity on service, accountability and answering to a personal God does not sit well with today’s narcissistic and egocentric civilization, fertile ground for the New Age movement.

Reiki’s pantheist roots (1)

In the article “Reiki, not for Catholics. Not now, not ever,” Mary Ellen Barrett relates the occult origin of Reiki. She notes that it was founded in Japan in the late 1800s by a man named Mikao Usui, a businessman interested in arts, medicine, Buddhism and a member of the Rei Jyutu Ka, a metaphysical group dedicated to developing psychic abilities. She continues:

“It is said that in a difficult period of his life when his business was failing and he was feeling spiritually empty, Usui was atop Mount Kurama fasting and suddenly received a ‘great Reiki’ over his head. He was, then, infused with the Reiki, was healed spiritually and acquired the Reiki cure.”

From whom he received this “gift” is not mentioned, but since it was clearly not from God, it is not difficult to realize it was from a preternatural source, the Devil. In 1922, he opened a center for training and cures in Reiki practice in Tokyo. All practitioners of Reiki must go through an initiation by a master to learn the hands-on healing practices. Barrett continues:

“It is interesting to note that the techniques for laying on hands are taught by Reiki Masters but the Reiki itself, the healing force, is said to be passed from teacher to student via an ‘attunement,’ which opens up a well of life force energy. People who have experienced attunement report undergoing such altering life changes as having their third eye opened, increased psychic abilities, releasing of negative feelings and energy and, oddly, a change in food preferences. ...

Buddhist Mikai Usui received the occult ‘gift’ of Reiki on a mountain

“Like many New Age practices Reiki is merely a hijacked Eastern philosophy with Pantheistic roots, some elements of Christian doctrine and a dash of self-deification. The story of Mikao Usui climbing a mountain and returning with supernatural powers is designed to evoke the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert before His death, or Moses’ time in the desert or Mohammed’s. Even the idea of passing the power along in a formal attunement takes liberally from the apostolic succession of the Catholic Church.

“In using the familiar concepts and terminology of legitimate religious traditions, the Reiki master makes people of faith comfortable with a practice that defies logic and is at a cross purpose with the practice of Christianity. This life force of which they speak can be likened to the Christian doctrine of the soul.

"While we, as Catholics, ... do not believe that the soul is moveable from one to another, nor is it a healing force. Our doctrine calls for healing of a soul through confession, prayer, spiritual direction, reception of the Blessed Sacrament and the like. The soul itself does not heal. Rather it enables us to seek the healing grace provided by God through the Sacraments.”

 

Walter Brueggemann: How to read the Bible on homosexuality

VIEWS Walter Brueggemann / September 4, 2022Print this:

Walter Brueggemann, one of the world's most renowned biblical scholars, whose scriptural scholarship includes a specific focus on the Hebrew prophets, taught from 1961 to 1986 at the Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves, Mo. Born in northeastern Nebraska, he earned a Ph.D. in education from St. Louis University in 1974. (Photo courtesy of Walter Brueggemann)

What Scripture has to say

It is easy enough to see at first glance why LGBTQ people, and those who stand in solidarity with them, look askance at the Bible. After all, the two most cited biblical texts on the subject are the following, from the old purity codes of ancient Israel:

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination (Lev. 18:22).

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them (Lev. 20:13).

There they are. There is no way around them; there is no ambiguity in them. They are, moreover, seconded by another verse that occurs in a list of exclusions from the holy people of God:

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord (Deut. 23:1).

This text apparently concerns those who had willingly become eunuchs in order to serve in foreign courts. For those who want it simple and clear and clean, these texts will serve well. They seem, moreover, to be echoed in this famous passage from the Apostle Paul:

They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error (Rom. 1:23-27).

Paul’s intention here is not fully clear, but he wants to name the most extreme affront of the Gentiles before the creator God, and Paul takes disordered sexual relations as the ultimate affront. This indictment is not as clear as those in the tradition of Leviticus, but it does serve as an echo of those texts. It is impossible to explain away these texts.

Given these most frequently cited texts (that we may designate as texts of rigor), how may we understand the Bible given a cultural circumstance that is very different from that assumed by and reflected in these old traditions?

Well, start with the awareness that the Bible does not speak with a single voice on any topic. Inspired by God as it is, all sorts of persons have a say in the complexity of Scripture, and we are under mandate to listen, as best we can, to all of its voices.

On the question of gender equity and inclusiveness, consider the following to be set alongside the most frequently cited texts. We may designate these texts as texts of welcome. Thus, the Bible permits very different voices to speak that seem to contradict those texts cited above. Therefore, the prophetic poetry of Isaiah 56:3-8 has been taken to be an exact refutation of the prohibition in Deuteronomy 23:1:

Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off … for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered (Is. 56:3-8).

This text issues a grand welcome to those who have been excluded, so that all are gathered in by this generous gathering God. The temple is for “all peoples,” not just the ones who have kept the purity codes.

Beyond this text, we may notice other texts that are tilted toward the inclusion of all persons without asking about their qualifications, or measuring up the costs that have been articulated by those in control. Jesus issues a welcoming summons to all those who are weary and heavy laden:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Mt. 11:28-30).

No qualification, no exclusion. Jesus is on the side of those who are “worn out.” They may be “worn out” by being lower-class people who do all the heavy lifting, or it may be those who are “worn out” by the heavy demands of Torah, imposed by those who make the Torah filled with judgment and exclusion. 

Since Jesus mentions his “yoke,” he contrasts his simple requirements with the heavy demands that are imposed on the community by teachers of rigor. Jesus’ quarrel is not with the Torah, but with Torah interpretation that had become, in his time, excessively demanding and restrictive. The burden of discipleship to Jesus is easy, contrasted to the more rigorous teaching of some of his contemporaries. Indeed, they had made the Torah, in his time, exhausting, specializing in trivialities while disregarding the neighborly accents of justice, mercy and faithfulness (cf. Mt. 23:23).

A text in Paul (unlike that of Romans 1) echoes a baptismal formula in which all are welcome without distinction:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ (Gal. 3:28).

No ethnic distinctions, no class distinctions and no gender distinctions. None of that makes any difference “in Christ,” that is, in the church. We are all one, and we all may be one. Paul has become impatient with his friends in the churches in Galatia who have tried to order the church according to the rigors of an exclusionary Torah. In response, he issues a welcome that overrides all the distinctions that they may have preferred to make.

Start with the awareness that the Bible does not speak with a single voice on any topic. Inspired by God as it is, all sorts of persons have a say in the complexity of Scripture, and we are under mandate to listen, as best we can, to all of its voices.

Finally, among the texts I will cite is the remarkable narrative of Acts of the Apostles 10. The Apostle Peter has raised objections to eating food that, according to the purity codes, is unclean; thus, he adheres to the rigor of the priestly codes, not unlike the ones we have seen in Leviticus. His objection, however, is countered by “a voice” that he takes to be the voice of the Lord. Three times that voice came to Peter amid his vigorous objection:

What God has made clean, you must not call profane (Acts 10:15). 

The voice contradicts the old purity codes! From this, Peter is able to enter into new associations in the church. He declares:

You yourselves know that it is unlawful for Jews to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean (Acts 10:28).

And from this Peter further deduces:

I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him (v. 34).

This is a remarkable moment in the life of Peter and in the life of the church, for it makes clear that the social ordering governed by Christ is beyond the bounds of the rigors of the old exclusivism.

I take the texts I have cited to be a fair representation of the very different voices that sound in Scripture. It is impossible to harmonize the mandates to exclusion in Leviticus 18:22, 20:13 and Deuteronomy 23:1 with the welcome stance of Isaiah 56, Matthew 11:28-30, Galatians 3:28 and Acts 10.

Other texts might be cited as well, but these are typical and representative. As often happens in Scripture, we are left with texts in deep tension, if not in contradiction, with each other. The work of reading the Bible responsibly is the process of adjudicating these texts that will not be fit together.

The reason the Bible seems to speak “in one voice” concerning matters that pertain to LGBTQ persons is that the loud voices most often cite only one set of texts, to the determined disregard of the texts that offer a counter-position. But our serious reading does not allow such a disregard, so that we must have all of the texts in our purview.

The process of the adjudication of biblical texts that do not readily fit together is the work of interpretation. I have termed it “emancipatory work,” and I will hope to show why this is so. Every reading of the Bible—no exceptions—is an act of interpretation. There are no “innocent” or “objective” readings, no matter how sure and absolute they may sound.

Everyone is engaged in interpretation, so that one must pay attention to how we do interpretation. In what follows, I will identify five things I have learned concerning interpretation, learnings that I hope will be useful as we read the Bible, responsibly, around the crisis of gender identity in our culture.

The reason the Bible seems to speak “in one voice” concerning matters that pertain to LGBTQ persons is that the loud voices most often cite only one set of texts, to the determined disregard of the texts that offer a counter-position.

1. All interpretation filters the text through the interpreter’s life.

All interpretation filters the text through life experience of the interpreter. The matter is inescapable and cannot be avoided. The result, of course, is that with a little effort, one can prove anything in the Bible. It is immensely useful to recognize this filtering process. More specifically, I suggest that we can identify three layers of personhood that likely operate for us in doing interpretation.

First, we read the text according to our vested interests. Sometimes we are aware of our vested interests, sometimes we are not. It is not difficult to see this process at work concerning gender issues in the Bible. Second, beneath our vested interests, we read the Bible through the lens of our fears that are sometimes powerful, even if unacknowledged. Third, at bottom, beneath our vested interests and our fears, I believe we read the Bible through our hurts that we often keep hidden not only from others, but from ourselves as well.

The defining power of our vested interests, our fears and our hurts makes our reading lens seem to us sure and reliable. We pretend that we do not read in this way, but it is useful that we have as much self-critical awareness as possible. Clearly, the matter is urgent for our adjudication of the texts I have cited.

It is not difficult to imagine how a certain set of vested interests, fears and hurts might lead to an embrace of the insistences of texts of rigor that I have cited. Conversely, it is not difficult to see how LGBTQ persons and their allies operate with a different set of filters, and so gravitate to the texts of welcome.

2. Context inescapably looms large in interpretation.

There are no texts without contexts and there are no interpreters without context that positions one to read in a distinct way. Thus, the purity codes of Leviticus reflect a social context in which a community under intense pressure sought to delineate, in a clear way, its membership, purpose and boundaries.

The text from Isaiah 56 has as its context the intense struggle, upon return from exile, to delineate the character and quality of the restored community of Israel. One cannot read Isaiah 56 without reference to the opponents of its position in the more rigorous texts, for example, in Ezekiel. And the texts from Acts and Galatians concern a church coming to terms with the radicality of the graciousness of the Gospel, a radicality rooted in Judaism that had implications for the church’s rich appropriation of its Jewish inheritance.

Each of us, as interpreter, has a specific context. But we can say something quite general about our shared interpretive context. It is evident that Western culture (and our place in it) is at a decisive point wherein we are leaving behind many old, long-established patterns of power and meaning, and we are observing the emergence of new patterns of power and meaning. It is not difficult to see our moment as an instance anticipated by the prophetic poet:

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? (Is. 43:18-19)

The “old things” among us have long been organized around white male power, with its tacit, strong assumption of heterosexuality, plus a strong accent on American domination. The “new thing” emerging among us is a multiethnic, multicultural, multiracial, multi-gendered culture in which old privileges and positions of power are placed in deep jeopardy.

We can see how our current politico-cultural struggles (down to the local school board) have to do with resisting what is new and protecting and maintaining what is old or, conversely, welcoming what is new with a ready abandonment of what is old.

If this formulation from Isaiah roughly fits our circumstance in Western culture, then we can see that the texts of welcome are appropriate to our “new thing,” while the texts of rigor function as a defense of what is old. In many specific ways our cultural conflicts—and the decisions we must make—reverberate with the big issue of God’s coming newness.

In the rhetoric of Jesus, this new arrival may approximate among us the “coming of the kingdom of God,” except that the coming kingdom is never fully here but is only “at hand,” and we must not overestimate the arrival of newness. It is inescapable that we do our interpretive work in a context that is, in general ways, impacted by and shaped through this struggle for what is old and what is new.

3. Texts do not come at us one at a time

Texts do not come at us one at a time, ad seriatim, but always in clusters through a trajectory of interpretation. Thus, it may be correct to say that our several church “denominations” are, importantly, trajectories of interpretation. Location in such a trajectory is important, both because it imposes restraints upon us, and because it invites bold imagination in the context of the trajectory.

We do not, for the most part, do our interpretation in a vacuum. Rather we are “surrounded by a cloud of [nameable] witnesses” who are present with us as we do our interpretive work (Heb. 12:1).

For now, I worship in a United Methodist congregation, and it is easy enough to see the good impact of the interpretive trajectory of Methodism. Rooted largely in Paul’s witness concerning God’s grace, the specific Methodist dialect, mediated through Pelagius and then Arminius, evokes an accent on the “good works” of the church community in response to God’s goodness.

That tradition, of course, passed through and was shaped by the wise, knowing hands of John Wesley, and we may say that, at present, it reflects the general perspective of the World Council of Churches with its acute accent on social justice. The interpretive work of a member of this congregation is happily and inevitably informed by this lively tradition.

It is not different with other interpretive trajectories that are variously housed in other denominational settings. We are situated in such interpretive trajectories that allow for both innovation and continuity. Each trajectory provides for its members some guardrails for interpretation that we may not run too far afield, but that also is a matter of adjudication—quite often a matter of deeply contested adjudication.

4. We are in a “crisis of the other”

We are, for now, deeply situated in a crisis of the other. We face folk who are quite unlike us, and their presence among us is inescapable. We are no longer able to live our lives in a homogenous community of culture-related “look alikes.” There are, to be sure, many reasons for this new social reality: global trade, easier mobility, electronic communication and mass migrations among them.

We are thus required to come to terms with the “other,” who disturbs our reductionist management of life through sameness. We have a fairly simple choice that can refer to the other as a threat, a rival enemy, a competitor, or we may take the other as a neighbor. The facts on the ground are always complex, but the simple human realities with each other are not so complex.

While the matter is pressing and acute in our time, this is not a new challenge to us. The Bible provides ongoing evidence about the emergency of coming to terms with the other. Thus, the land settlements in the Book of Joshua brought Israel face-to-face with the Canaanites, a confrontation that was mixed and tended toward violence (Judg. 1).

The struggle to maintain the identity and the “purity” of the holy people of God was always a matter of dispute and contention. In the New Testament, the long, hard process of coming to terms with “Gentiles” was a major preoccupation of the early church, and a defining issue among the Apostles. We are able to see in the Book of Acts that over time, the early church reached a readiness to allow non-Jews into the community of faith.

The new thing emerging among us is a multiethnic, multicultural, multiracial, multi-gendered culture in which old privileges and positions of power are placed in deep jeopardy.

And now among us the continuing arrival of many “new peoples” is an important challenge. There is no doubt that the texts of rigor and the texts of welcome offer different stances in the affirmation or negation of the other. And certainly among the “not like us” folk are LGBTQ persons, who readily violate the old canons of conformity and sameness. Such persons are among those who easily qualify as “other,” but they are no more and no less a challenge than many other “others” among us.

And so the church is always re-deciding about the other, for we know that the “other”—LBGTQ persons among us—are not going to go away. Thus, we are required to come to terms with them. The trajectory of the texts of welcome is that they are to be seen as neighbors who are welcomed to the resources of the community and invited to make contributions to the common wellbeing of the community. By no stretch of any imagination can it be the truth of the Gospel that such “others” as LGBTQ persons are unwelcome in the community.

In that community, there are no second-class citizens. We had to learn that concerning people of color and concerning women. And now, the time has come to face the same gospel reality about LGBTQ persons as others are welcomed as first-class citizens in the community of faithfulness and justice.  We learn that the other is not an unacceptable danger and that the other is not required to give up “otherness” in order to belong fully to the community. We in the community of faith, as in the Old and New Testaments, are always called to respond to the other as a neighbor who belongs with “us,” even as “we” belong with and for the “other.”

5. The Gospel is not to be confused with the Bible.

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The Gospel is not to be confused with or identified with the Bible. The Bible contains all sorts of voices that are inimical to the good news of God’s love, mercy and justice. Thus, “biblicism” is a dangerous threat to the faith of the church, because it allows into our thinking claims that are contradictory to the news of the Gospel. The Gospel, unlike the Bible, is unambiguous about God’s deep love for all peoples. And where the Bible contradicts that news, as in the texts of rigor, these texts are to be seen as “beyond the pale” of gospel attentiveness.

Because:

                        our interpretation is filtered through our close experience,

                        our context calls for an embrace of God’s newness,

                        our interpretive trajectory is bent toward justice and mercy,

                        our faith calls us to the embrace of the other and

                        our hope is in the God of the gospel and in no other,

the full acceptance and embrace of LGBTQ persons follows as a clear mandate of the Gospel in our time. Claims to the contrary are contradictions of the truth of the Gospel on all the counts indicated above.

These several learnings about the interpretive process help us grow in faith:

• We are warned about the subjectivity of our interpretive inclinations;
• we are invited in our context to receive and welcome God’s newness;
• we can identify our interpretive trajectory as one bent toward justice and mercy;
• we may acknowledge the “other” as a neighbor;
• we can trust the gospel in its critical stance concerning the Bible.

All of these angles of interpretation, taken together, authorize a sign for LGBTQ persons: Welcome!

Welcome to the neighborhood! Welcome to the gifts of the community! Welcome to the work of the community! Welcome to the continuing emancipatory work of interpretation!

Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann is one of the world's leading Old Testament scholars and the author of nearly 150 books. From 1986 to 2003, he was the William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament at the Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga.