Screen shot of the article “PresbyHonest”
A minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) says that not only must the denomination accept those who are transgender, asexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer and intersex, the PCUSA must also come out and “celebrate that the church — the body — is itself queer.”
The article by Layton E. Williams, a teaching elder at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, is posted on the web site of Presbyterians Today, an official publication of the PCUSA.
Speaking of both the PCUSA’s approval of LGBTQ ordination and its more recent celebration of same-sex marriage, Williams thinks that this “positive upturn” of events isn’t enough. “What God calls for isn’tinclusionof queer people. It’s justice. And for that, the church—the body of Christ in the world—must name and embrace its own queerness.” (Emphasis in the original text).
And it isn’t just the PCUSA Williams thinks must come out. It is also the Church universal. “The body of Christ in the world — must name and embrace its own queerness,” she wrote.
“Coming out,” she wrote, “means welcoming the utter transformation of your life—not into something new but finally into whom you were created to be. This is the work the church must do.”
Williams wrote that the church treats LGBTQ people like “a Frankenstein arm that has been stapled on to the body of Christ.”
According to Williams, the popular thinking is that queer people haven’t always been part of the body, but “we’ve included them by letting them get ordained or married in our sanctuaries.”
“Let me tell you something: We are not a Frankenstein arm. We are a true part of the body. Many parts, actually. We are the toenails and kneecaps and lungs and beating heart. And the church has not added us on; we have always been here. God has included us from the beginning; the body of Christ was born this way,” she wrote.
She continued that “The body of Christ is queer because it isn’t defined or bound by human constructs or binaries. It transcends and subverts norms and boundaries. It contains multitudes. But the body is also queer simply because its queer members are a vital component of its identity.”
She illustrated her argument by recounting a time when she was dating a “cisgender,” — a person who identifies with the gender assigned at birth — heterosexual man.
“We were in a queer relationship. My queer identity made the relationship itself queer, even though he was straight. The body of Christ is queer in this same way because it contains queer identities.”
“It is time for the church to sit down nervously at its own Table and confront its internalized queerphobia. It is time for the body of Christ to come out,” she wrote, and she offered the help of those who have come out in the past to help the church through the process.
Since the body of Christ is made of many bodies, Williams said, “the nuances and intersections of experienced oppression within it are multitudinous. We are queer and have disabilities. We are trans and people of color. We are bisexual or asexual or genderqueer and face discrimination even in our own queer communities.”
The work of recognizing and addressing these realities, she explained, “will take longer than any of us is comfortable with. Though they are a good start, it will take much more than a marriage license or an ordination service. But it is the only path toward justice. It is the only path toward becoming whom God has made us.”
21 Comments. Leave new
It hasn’t taken long, has it? So glad we’re gone.
Sorry to break the news to you the Quakers beat you to the punch on LGBT diversity issues, oh about 300 years ago. UU, UCC about 70 years ago. The MCC is and of itself a church for, by and made for LGBTs, for about the last 50 years.
I am sure she hold to the LGBT religious subculture orthodoxy that Jesus really, really loved Thomas, and sort of had the hots for Mary, all at the same time. What a man.
As I have stated many, many, many times, the PCUSA is a post christian, post modern secular political party. I am sure Barry Sanders 2016 and “Co-exist” bumper stickers is already on her electric hybrid.
The movement has very skillfully welded behavior to personhood. Apparently some very educated people do NOT know the difference.
One can do what they want because they have committed “love” for the other person. That makes for a lot of leeway in many circumstances. Just because one is committed and in love allows them to……well, you know the rest.
“If one sits in the dark long enough, he begins to think it is light.” – Rabbi Schneerson
I have no doubt that the louisville sluggars are just loving this, each day as evangelicals leave the pcusa, the freak shows like her are going to start “coming out” throwing this in all our faces, even though every church that has followed the episcopal church is in steep decline, the change in standards does not make churches grow. But I’m sure that Fourth Pres has a nice endowment to help off set the likes of her.
Something tells me we’re not is Kansas anymore, Toto.
You can often tell when people have lost an argument when they resort to name calling and labeling.
Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;* do not claim to be wiser than you are. Romans 12.16
Let us therefore no longer pass judgement on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of another. Romans 14.13
Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. Romans 15.7
We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another, and compare themselves with one another, they do not show good sense. 2 Corinthians 10.12
Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters.* Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another, speaks evil against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. James 4.11
Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. James 5.9
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4.12
What’s your point?
James H: Hit the nail right on the head sir!
These are wonderful verses, but you omitted some other key New Testament verses.
Looked at the statistics for 4th Pres. They are a large church with lots of members on the roll. But looking beneath the surface you get a slightly different picture.
In 2003 their membership was 5,195 with average worship antecedence of 2,600. In 2013 their membership was 5,540 attendance averaged 1,360.
This is sadly the future of PCUSA. Theological orthodoxy has already been pushed to the margins, and will disappear in the coming years. The PCUSA will become essentially Unitarian, and become open to any belief form.
Sounds like their rolls need cleaning.
Its already there if you go by the Presbyterian Panel poll that a majority of TE’s not in a pulpit, believe there is more than one Way. A small majority of TE’s in a pulpit believe the same.
Run, don’t walk, to your nearest browser and enter “Presbyterians Today.” Then, search for “Layton Williams.” You won’t be sorry. Her article is hilarious!
At least, it is hilarious in my opinion. But that is because I think that most pretense is funny, and this is some of the most pretentious writing I have seen in a long, long time. Go Princeton!
The reader comments (overwhelmingly in favor) are likewise entertaining.
And they want to be taken seriously.
I think the denomination needs to change its letters to PCUSGAY. I don’t like the word Queer. It doesn’t go with PCUSA.
The pcusa as queer?? The pcusa, a synagogue of satan run by demons who will one day be thrown in the Lake of Fire, Rev. 20 and 21.
Remember,
“Liberalism is not Christianity. It is a different religion.” (For many of us, it is hard to remember 90 to 100 years ago.)
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