The Moment We Have Been Preparing For

Closing Address, Q Christian Fellowship Conference, Atlanta

Note: Today I had the special privilege of offering the closing keynote address at the Q Christian Fellowship conference in Atlanta. This organization describes its mission as follows: “cultivating radical belonging for LGBTQ+ Christians and allies.” Below is the text of my Sunday morning address, which followed a beautiful worship service culminating in the Eucharist.

Psalm 72

¹ Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
² May he judge your people with righteousness
and your poor with justice.
³ May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
⁴ May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor.

⁵ May he live while the sun endures
and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.
⁶ May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass,
like showers that water the earth.
⁷ In his days may righteousness flourish
and peace abound, until the moon is no more.

¹¹ May all kings fall down before him,
all nations give him service.

¹² For he delivers the needy when they call,
the poor and those who have no helper.
¹³ He has pity on the weak and the needy
and saves the lives of the needy.
¹⁴ From oppression and violence he redeems their life,
and precious is their blood in his sight.

I. Governments and LGBTQ People

Adolf Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, on a platform of restoring German greatness, national unity, and economic recovery. He vowed to defeat Germany’s enemies both internal and external. A significant part of his campaign rhetoric was the promise of restoring traditional German/Christian values and moral order, with nods in the direction of a generic Germanic Christianity. In power, the Nazi regime enforced a substantial traditionalist program including enforcement of old traditions of masculinity and femininity, and a strongly anti-gay (then called homosexual) agenda that ultimately included concentration camps for some gays and lesbians. This of course was in addition to the agenda more people remember, of antisemitism and racism.

National “renewal” movements almost always gain their momentum by supposing both a vision of national unity and a list of enemies of national unity. Populist political mobilization usually involves defining some portion of the population as the true or real national community, and proposing an aggressive attack of this real Nation against the enemies of the people – the aliens, interlopers, threateningly different others. Triumph for the nation means defeat for the internal enemies.

There is something very twisted about human collective psychology here. People may be attracted to a message of national unity in the abstract but such a vision is more likely to gain passionate adherents and accelerating momentum if the populist leader can list a concrete set of enemies to defeat as an essential part of the fight for national greatness.

This is why it is always very slow and very hard work to do something like build a civil rights movement with a strategy based on casting a positive vision of the Beloved Community, in which everyone is viewed with compassion and treated with justice and love, and with conscious effort never to attack enemies or opponents.

This is much harder and slower work than opposing such a movement with a strategy of deriding individuals and groups of people as enemies, communists, threats to the regional or national Way of Life.

The recent election results nationally and the longer-term pattern in many states can be interpreted in various ways. There was not just one thing going on. It is best not to oversimplify. But one thing that it does appear to mean is that not just dozens of state governments, but also the United States government (USG), will now resist a vision of inclusion of all on equal terms as the true meaning of America and American values.

These governments will now be at best indifferent to and in some cases actively hostile to an active state commitment to the type of civil rights and inclusion agenda that has dominated the liberal imagination since at least the late 1950s. The USG will certainly no longer be focused on exercising its domestic or international power to advance equal civil and political rights and an environment of emotional and physical safety for LGBTQ+ people.

While I see no evidence yet that the new regime is itching for full-scale governmental assault on all queer people, I do see disturbing evidence that trans folks are already being targeted directly. There are other groups that seem directly in the crosshairs, potential targets of the crushing use an abuse of government power – major political and legal adversaries of the new president, and certain immigrant and refugee (especially undocumented) populations. I should also note that women as a group cannot feel especially secure in an environment in which a history of sexual predation no longer disqualifies from the highest public offices.

This is an opportune moment to offer the sad observation that a significant chunk of the German Christian community fully or almost fully embraced the Nazi traditional values program in the early 1930s, and a similarly large chunk in our land today endorses the reactionary traditional values program of the state and new federal governments that I am speaking about. It is by now very clear that Christian populations who once held a national majority and do still hold many local and regional majorities, but in recent times have had to contend with an overall loss of social control and religious participation, are ripe for the picking when populist politicians are building their national greatness campaigns.

Let’s call this version of Christianity reactionary authoritarian majority-culture Christianity. It has emerged in similar forms on several continents – beginning with Europe – and many countries.

The conditions have to be exactly right, but unfortunately, the conditions often are exactly right in late-modern post-Christian, or on the way to post-Christian, societies: formerly legally or at least culturally established majority Christian national cultures (Orthodox in the East, Catholic in places like Poland, Anglican in UK/commonwealth lands, evangelical and Catholic in places like the US) becomes first frustrated, then worried, then absolutely panicked over their relative loss of power in society, over the spread of populations that reject their values, and over political decisions and legal judgments that enshrine policies that they fundamentally reject – like abortion rights or gay rights or immigration or even racial integration in some cases.

If a politician comes along at just the right moment and says – I stand with you, I will restore you to the status quo ante, I will overturn the changes you do not like – it seems to be the most natural thing in the world for these reactionary Christian populations to be all about such politicians. Here the agenda of national greatness and Christian restoration merge and blend. The fine details of who suffers and what is done to them don’t matter all that much.

For me, considering all this, a passage like Psalm 72 speaks quite plaintively. The psalmist prays for a king who…

Delivers the needy when they call,
the poor and those who have no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life,
and precious is their blood in his sight.

When government actually does this, and our group experiences the concrete benefits, we have reason to be very glad and very grateful. Especially under Democratic presidents since Obama, this is how the USG has ranged itself in relation to LGBTQ+ people.

Let me tell you two personal stories that illustrate what I mean.

1) In Romania, 2013:

• A crowd of right-wing extremists, nationalists, neo-Nazis, and church-goers attacked the screening of “The Kids Are All Right” movie at the Peasants Museum in Bucharest during LGBT history month.

• The crowd sang the national anthem and waved flags

• The projectionist was told to start the movie early

• Protesters held crosses and religious icons

• Protesters took photos of themselves in front of the screen while holding up a flag with Nazi signs

I was speaking in Romania shortly after this event, and somehow a meeting was arranged between me and the Romanian foreign minister in his office in Bucharest – it was during a moment of border crisis with Hungary. Just the two of us, we spent 45 minutes discussing why the Obama administration was pressing hard on the Romanian government to act to protect its LGBT population and the screening of this movie as well as other events associated with LGBT History month. I was not a representative of the USG but I did have a tangential relationship with Obama’s administration and was viewed as someone who could make sense of what US policy was and why it mattered.

2) In an African country in 2024: I was asked to prepare an online presentation for US Embassy staff in this country that had recently legislated some brutally anti-LGBTQ laws. The Biden-appointed US ambassador directed staff to contact me about preparing a briefing for the entire embassy staff, including many local staff, as to how moral values could be understood to oppose anti-gay laws rather than support them. In the end, the logistics of the event could not be worked out – but the point is that the USG under first Obama and then Biden was using its considerable global power to act on behalf of LGBTQ populations.

That era is now over. RIP.

It is comforting indeed when the power of the state swings around to aid us and the people we love, especially when we are aware of the long, dreadful history of religious and legal persecution of LGBTQ+ people.

But the mutability of government policy is especially obvious now. What one government gives, the next can take away. If the government withdraws its active support for the rights, dignity, and well-being of LGBTQ+ people, we lose a very powerful ally. And it may well have trickle-down effects as well, if bad actors feel more free to test the legal and moral limits of action against us and our loved ones.

This reality forces us to ask this fundamental question – if this is how it is going to be -- if this is our new context -- where shall we go for succor and strength ‘in such a time as this’?

I ask specifically about Christian LGBTQ+ people such as those gathered here. Especially given the reactionary turn of many of our fellow Christians, we know that we will not get any help from this quarter. And the older secular gay rights movement is likely to be in defensive mode, trying to protect basic civil rights gains; not much energy for outreach or partnership with Christian LGBTQ+ groups like this one should be expected.

II. The Moment We Have Been Preparing For

The situation might look pretty dire overall. Except for the fact that here we are.

Groups like Q Christian Fellowship – and sister organizations – and the hundreds of congregations that are truly and not just cosmetically inclusive – and the many nurturing online spaces – have been developing for a decade or more now. This is not a baby movement anymore. There is maturity here, and wisdom, and resources, and experience, and lessons learned.

Now is the time when we find out just what exactly we have built. Or dare we say it: what God has built.

Now is the time when we find out exactly how much ‘social capital’ has been accrued over these years – how much resilience, connection, solidarity, kinship, allyship.

Now is when we find out exactly how sturdy are the inclusive, post-rejectionist, churches that have been pioneered -- at such great cost, with great struggle, with many setbacks – over these years.

Now is when we find out whether the peace with God, the liberative vision, the holistic Gospel, the renewing winds of God’s Spirit that we have felt here, survives contact with an outside world – including state power – that is more openly hostile than at any time since the current evangelical/post-evangelical Christian LGBTQ+ movement began during the early Obama years.

The very good news is that with God’s help we are ready for this. What we do in spaces like this has never been dependent upon the blessing of the majority-culture church – indeed, it has emerged from the rejection those churches have inflicted.

It has also never been dependent upon the support of state or national governments.

Certainly it has helped that we had a favorable political environment for many of the years since this movement started. But the loss of that context should not affect us – as long as the state honors its constitutional obligations to respect our freedoms of religion, speech, and association. All we really need from the state is to be left alone.

If the state should choose to oppress, not to leave us alone; to attack, not to respect our rights – well, then, we will be in good company historically. And we will not cease to be who we are or do what we do.

Even if driven underground, this movement will continue to proclaim the good news that God loves all people with all that they are, that all of God’s children are beautiful and beloved, made in God’s image, made by God for flourishing and not for oppression. There is no conceivable external force that can make a community like this renounce such beliefs or refrain from advancing such commitments and sustaining the community so laboriously built over so many years.

Looking again at the Nazi years, we have much evidence that can help us think ahead to worst-case scenarios and scenarios just less than worst case.

We can anticipate that reactionary majority-church Christians will applaud all kinds of steps that could be taken to set back LGBTQ+ dignity and rights. Ater all, that’s what many of these groups have been pressing for over many years time. There is a direct line from the Moral Majority to this moment. Indeed, I anticipate that many in this sector of US Christianity will press for a more aggressive anti- LGBTQ+ line from the federal government than what is currently being promised and threatened.

Bystanders who are not anti-LGBTQ+ zealots but are frightened of the state and its most aggressive partners – for example, in online spaces – will do what bystanders do. They will try not to get in the way, try not to attract negative attention, will keep quiet. I do not anticipate that many bystanders will become allies in the next few years, though God’s Spirit blows as it wills…

But those whose hearts and loyalties have already been transformed – whose churches and friendship networks and families have already been broken and remade – whose vision of God’s faithful covenant love has already been radically broadened – we are going to do what comes naturally. We already died to the old way of doing Christianity, and there is no going back. We are going to remain in community with each other. We will weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. These will perhaps be hard, humbling times. But the witness of Christian history is that such times are some of our very best.

All over Nazi Germany in 1933, and Nazi-controlled Europe after 1939, those ‘enemies of the state’ targeted by the regime, or who loved those targeted, or had an unshakable vision of a God who sides with the oppressed even when the oppressors include “church” and “state” together – did what they knew they must do. They stood with their friends, loved ones, and even strangers who were targeted. When advocacy was still possible, they did that. When advocacy time ended and civil disobedience time began, some did that. When civil disobedience time ended and underground rescue time began, some did that. They did what they sensed was needed at the moment, until the storm passed.

So what to do now? If you have meaningful opportunities to speak truth to state power, do that. If you feel the need to bear local witness against outbreaks of harassment, do that.

But to my fellow Christians, I say again, it is always the right time for us to be the church. To love all 100 of the 100 sheep. To leave not one behind. To strengthen the bonds of Christian community. To proclaim the teachings of Jesus and the holistic Gospel. To stand in solidarity with the oppressed. To endure rejection and hostility for Christ’s sake and in his way.

The Good News of the Gospel includes but goes beyond the very good news that all people are equal at the foot of the cross and in the offer of eternal salvation.

The moral demands of Jesus include but go beyond the very real demand that people of all genders and sexual orientations and abilities and races and ages and classes be included in the church on equal terms.

The New Testament instructs us in a way of life that looks like this section from Romans 12:

⁹ Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; ¹⁰ love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹ Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. ¹² Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. ¹³ Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers.

¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. ¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. ¹⁸ If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

For around 15 years we have been unlearning harmful theologies and biblical interpretations, building alternative forms of Christian community, and attempting to heal from past traumas. For most of this time we did so in an increasingly supportive national political and legal context.

With the end of that context, and that era, we will be tested to move to the next stage of our own journey. A final word from 1 Peter 3:

¹³ Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? ¹⁴ But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, ¹⁵ but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, ¹⁶ yet do it with gentleness and respect. Maintain a good conscience so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. ¹⁷ For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. ¹⁸ For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.

We do not know when this storm will pass. But we know who we are, and whose we are. And so, we are ready.