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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Oh yeah, Dr Beeching
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
the biggest opponents of such laws tend to be older women who take the "I wasn't allowed that convenience when I was young, so I think it's unfair your life is allowed to be so easy" line.
Starlight I'd hope you'd agree that someone's lifelong struggling with how to live out their sexuality is hardly on a par with whether someone was allowed to breastfeed their infants.
For the record, in 25 years of ministry I don't ever think I have explicitly preached against homosexuality or homosexual practice at all, and have been suspected by my peers of pro-gay leanings since at least 1995 (when a March for Jesus I had helped organise encountered a Gay Pride march on the city square and we explicitly stated we were not a counter-demonstration). I realise this may come as a surprise to some here.
I understand that is still a long way from active acceptance. Orfeo suggests apologising to the constituency involved. Certainly when I have made major theological shifts before I have, as appropriate, done my best to do precisely that for the individuals or constituencies involved.
But none of that can completely undo their genuine suffering, any more than overnight blanket acceptance would undo years of suffering on the part of the likes of Vicky Beeching. If gay couples were to trample on that in a stampede to embrace acceptance then it doesn't do much for the cause, in my view. There needs to be a collective recogition of everyone's suffering as a result of our various imperfections.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Comparing any organisation favorably with the Church of England could be taken as damning with faint praise!
We need to take into account the fact that many Methodists and URC are fairly old. They haven't grown up with gay church members clamouring to get married, and they probably don't come across that sort of activism very often now. In the vast majority of congregations I suspect it's not an issue of burning relevance. I also imagine that many Methodist churches are seeing a declining number of weddings nowadays anyway, so there's not much of a wedding focus. It would be interesting to see some stats, if there are any.
quote:
As others have noted, Beeching comes from a charismatic evangelical background (in interviews she said she used to attend a Vineyard church), but has now moved into liturgical worship in cathedrals.
It's to the Church of England's shame that, while there, she can't hear and experience the affirmation extended by other episcopal churches.
Ah. That's interesting. She may be moving in a general post-evangelical direction in general, then.
Except that Beeching identifies as evangelical.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I heard the tail end of the interviews on the BBC R4 Sunday programme this morning, with someone referring to a group called Living Out - so I searched for it, only to find a book called "Living it Out" by two women with the same double barrelled surname, which had an opposite view of things. Which came first? I did get to find the LO group. Not impressed. More than not impressed - fuming.
I would like to ask the people who put forward the views they do a few questions.
1. Do you feel same sex attraction? If No, shut up, you have no relevant experience, and feeling attracted to someone else's spouse and controlling it isn't going to be the same. As Vicky said, you can still hope for a partner for you.
2. Are you living a celibate life successfully? If Yes, lucky old you. But you aren't normal. Most people need companionship and contact with other people. Somebody once commented that it isn't good for a human being to be alone. Someone then made a help meet for them. Not a helpmate to hand them their tools while doing DIY. But someone who could be described with the same word used in other places to describe the sort of helper God is. Who are you to deny that sort of relationship to someone who does not share your gift of being happy in a solitary life.
3 Are you living a celibate life unsuccessfully, unhappy with being alone, paying a "single supplement" which is the equivalent of paying for an invisible friend, paying for a home on your own, and commenting on TV programmes out loud to yourself, never having a hug when you feel down, or a kiss in happy moments, being made to sit n the children's table at family parties*, and go out from worship to take the children's activities. Then show some empathy. You know what it is like. Who are you to force someone else into that life when they have been given the opportunity to share their life with a soul mate?
These people are so convinced that they are right in the face of all the evidence. (And Vicky isn't even in a relationship, so what ae they on about? She is living as she is supposed to live, is she not? And, though I don't know her music, but I gather that hitherto, she has been regarded as a channel for the Holy Spirit.)
*On a programme about childlessness last week. Not my family! The woman concerned then said what lovely people her nephews and nieces were, but she felt infantilised - in her 50s.
Celibacy =/= not having companionship. Celibacy =/= being solitary. Many celibate people live in community with others, obviously monks/nuns/friars/sisters but also lay people. I agree that being called to celibacy is not that common, but it's not the picture of loneliness you're painting it as.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I have the impression that the sort of church making the arguments used in the arguments against Vicky do not go in for communal living.
And a person will still have to find the community they will fit into.
And don't you recognise when someone is having a bad day?
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
Jade Constable
quote:
Beeching identifies as evangelical.
I didn't say she shouldn't.
I identify as a Methodist, although my formal worship now takes place more often in a liberal catholic CofE setting. That doesn't make me CofE (as the Ship has made very clear to me!), but it problematizes my claim to have a clear, single spiritual identity. More and more Christians are developing multiple allegiances and poles of attraction these days, and I've read on the Ship about evangelicals who've taken up monastic practices, and so on.
We live in interesting times. The 'evangelical' label is highly desirable, but it may soon become too elastic a term for those towards the more conservative end. They'll have to invent a new label quite quickly, before everyone insists on calling them fundamentalists!
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I have the impression that the sort of church making the arguments used in the arguments against Vicky do not go in for communal living.
And a person will still have to find the community they will fit into.
And don't you recognise when someone is having a bad day?
It might be nice if you didn't call celibate people lonely, abnormal freaks though. It's not for you - that's fine. But it is right for some people and that doesn't make them weird or wrong. It seems ironic to criticise those making those arguments for their misunderstanding of sexuality, but then have a total misunderstanding of what celibacy involves. The kind of church making the arguments against Vicky is irrelevant here - it is you misunderstanding celibacy, not them.
And no, how can I know you're having a bad day if you don't say so? Psychic ability isn't a requirement of Ship membership. I'm sorry you're having a bad day, but it's no excuse for making inaccurate and hurtful comments about celibate people in the same breath as criticising people for making inaccurate and hurtful comments about gay people.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
It only takes one black swan to disprove the belief that all swans are white.
I am celibate. I didn't chose it, it was, little by little, thrust upon me. With one episode as the icing and the cherry on top when I met someone who was attracted to me (the real me, not my boobs in isolation), not married, and who then decided that he was called to be celibate.
I'm not going to attack people who are called to celibacy and are happy in it, of course not. But there are a number of women in my generation, which outnumbered the men of the same cohort who did not have the choice, in the same way as the women of WWI did not have the choice.
What I was attacking was the sort of person who decides, while not having to make that decision themselves, that people whose loves are of the same sex as themselves are not to have the consensual relationships that present themselves. Celibates who do not do that I have no argument with, as I have no argument with married people who do not do that.
Oh, and in my tirade I forgot the bit where everyone you used to go to parties with gets married and switches to couples dinner parties and one's social life shrinks almost to zero, and then all the female friends have babies and establish new social groups with the women they meet through the children and zero is reached. And the bit where all the activities in one's worshipping community are tied up with the children.
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I tried to add this to the above, at the end of the second paragraph, but thought about it too much and ran out of time.
Being a natural celibate is not normal - that does not mean I mean to use abnormal as an insult. I used normal in a mathematical sense. I'm a bit literal like that. I did not at any point say freak, so you read that in to it. I also did not say that natural celibates are lonely. I think I have touched a sore point, so allowed you to read into what I wrote more than I intended, and if so, I'm sorry about that. (I realise that comes across a bit like those political apologies where the person does not apologise for the actual act, but only for the effect of it. Sorry about that, too.)
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The 'evangelical' label is highly desirable, but it may soon become too elastic a term for those towards the more conservative end.
It already is: there's a sense in which the conservative end is now "post" evangelical in an entirely different sense from the post modern emergent "post evangelical."
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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quantpole
Shipmate
# 8401
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Posted
I made the mistake of reading some of the responses on facebook. Not unsurprising but saddening nonetheless.
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Penny - sorry for the misunderstanding. What I picked up on the most was 'Most people need companionship and contact with other people.' That was what struck me as not understanding celibacy, since most Christians who are celibate surely have companionship and contact with other people through the church? I mean I am coming at it from the A-C angle so thinking primarily of religious and single consecrated life (though there are also more low church intentional communities), but even just celibate lay people will have companionship and contact with somebody surely? But then, I'm understanding those things as not necessarily being romantic or physical. I was reacting to an idea of celibacy being a life of loneliness, which suggested to me a lack of experience of celibacy in a religious context - but sorry for assuming.
Of course, celibacy is a calling and imposing it on people just because they are gay/bisexual is utterly wrong and contrary to the whole idea of a calling.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quantpole:
I made the mistake of reading some of the responses on facebook. Not unsurprising but saddening nonetheless.
Here, I think the positives are more instructive.
Beeching's received support from across the theological spectrum, even from those who currently hold a traditional view. I say "currently" as many have said that her interview is causing them to rethink their beliefs.
A few evangelicals are desperately trying to argue that she's left the fold. They know that persuading the flock to ignore her is the only hope they've got.
This continues to have all the signs of a game changer. Beeching's as media-savvy as it gets: she's already networking LGBT Christians like crazy via Twitter. The old school focus on producing reports and persuading bishops is already looking obsolete. The church used it to control dissent; as shown by the bungling of its director of communications, it has no idea how to control this.
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
I assume that Arun Arora only creates "communication" but doesn't process it for himself.
Sounds like quite a lot of church spokesmen, and not just C of E ones, either.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
I assume that Arun Arora only creates "communication" but doesn't process it for himself.
Sounds like quite a lot of church spokesmen, and not just C of E ones, either.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
He screwed the pooch, but TBF, Beeching's his worst nightmare: a fellow evangelical who's off-message and better at his job than he is. (Although on current showing, that'd be damning her media skill with faint praise.)
Neither managers like Arora, nor Christian gay-bashers, have a clue what to do about this. Unlike Jeffrey John or Gene Robinson, Beeching's got no past to use as a weapon; she's walked their path, and it almost destroyed her. She's a world away from the secretive, male Anglo-Catholic clubhouse. She was an evangelical superstar when this hit them out the blue. I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.
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quantpole
Shipmate
# 8401
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Posted
I wouldn't call it quite out of the blue. In some ways her coming out shouldn't really change how she is viewed - she already supported SSM so was completely off message as far as those who are now 'against' her are concerned. It's interesting that there didn't seem to be much debate about her stance on SSM before this, considering the reaction to Steve Chalke. Maybe it's because she is not in any official position of responsibility so wasn't deemed a danger. That certainly seems to be changing now.
What really got me about the article on the EA website was how he said how supported he was when he came out. Well of course he was, because he is toeing the line. Evangelicals love nothing more than someone battling temptation, 'not giving into the devil' etc.
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The 'evangelical' label is highly desirable, but it may soon become too elastic a term for those towards the more conservative end.
It already is: there's a sense in which the conservative end is now "post" evangelical in an entirely different sense from the post modern emergent "post evangelical."
Sorry, I don't understand ... (I know what the "emergent" post-evangelical means).
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quantpole:
It's interesting that there didn't seem to be much debate about her stance on SSM before this, considering the reaction to Steve Chalke. Maybe it's because she is not in any official position of responsibility so wasn't deemed a danger.
And because she is a "Christian rock star" and - dare I say? - a woman?
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The 'evangelical' label is highly desirable, but it may soon become too elastic a term for those towards the more conservative end.
It already is: there's a sense in which the conservative end is now "post" evangelical in an entirely different sense from the post modern emergent "post evangelical."
Sorry, I don't understand ... (I know what the "emergent" post-evangelical means).
I read it as the conservative end of the spectrum moving from evangelicalism to fundamentalism.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Jade, thanks for that generous reply.
There are all sorts of solutions around to the situation of enforced singleness - I must admit the invitation to the local weekly OAP lunch and Bingo didn't quite seem like one for me. Nor the idea that people who grew up with the Beatles will feel at home singing that it's a long way to Tipperary. Churches vary a lot, and what is on offer can depend on the existing demographic of the group.
That wasn't really what I was getting at - and I think it is worth reiterating. People should (Ugh) "check their privilege" before imposing restrictions on others that they do not have to observe themselves.
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The 'evangelical' label is highly desirable, but it may soon become too elastic a term for those towards the more conservative end.
It already is: there's a sense in which the conservative end is now "post" evangelical in an entirely different sense from the post modern emergent "post evangelical."
Sorry, I don't understand ... (I know what the "emergent" post-evangelical means).
I read it as the conservative end of the spectrum moving from evangelicalism to fundamentalism.
You've got the move in the wrong direction - I'd actually see a liberalisation (but only up to a point).
It's more a disowning of labels than adopting another one - and in the debate we're in it's jolly easy to throw labels at each other. The hard part is to dialogue - and there are guilty individuals on both sides.
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Jolly Jape
Shipmate
# 3296
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Posted
Really? I would have thought the first sign (however inadequate) of liberalisation would be the gracious acceptance those, such as VB, who are not "active" (and what a loaded term that is), who are not, in con evo parlance, "adopting a sinful lifestyle". That is not a good summary of what we have seen, quite the reverse. There seems a much lower threshold, that of failing to uphold the party line, which brings on the opprobrium.
Of course, this isn't new, much the same happened to the celebate Jeffrey John, but it seems more like a retreat to the laager than any sign of humility, much less a softening of attitudes
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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)
Posts: 3011 | From: A village of gardens | Registered: Sep 2002
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quantpole:
I wouldn't call it quite out of the blue. In some ways her coming out shouldn't really change how she is viewed - she already supported SSM so was completely off message as far as those who are now 'against' her are concerned. [...]
I'd probably include her declaration of support for equal marriage: before the end of 2013, Beeching was viewed as thoroughly "sound" on evangelical doctrine. There wasn't a hint of the "well, he would say that, wouldn't he" attitude to Steve Chalke's affirmation of gay relationships.
Intriguing point about the lack of response to Beeching's pro-equal marriage views. If anything, I think much of that's down to her fellow evangelicals' surprise. As for the rest, so long as an evangelical remains generally "sound," silence is the preferred tactic.
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luvanddaisies
the'fun'in'fundie'™
# 5761
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Posted
Maybe also because she's a woman. Women don't often preach in con-evo circles.
She's a music-leader, but there aren't many Christian songs about equal marriage or homosexuality (or priestly genitalia, or abortion... - hey, there's a whole Dead Horse songbook waiting to be written, maybe the 8th Day crowd could get onto the lyrics and those of us with musical backgrounds could knock out the tunes - or we could use existing tunes like Wesley did, in which case the 8th Day denizens could just crack on to the finished product. They could complete the Dead Horse circle by ending up here ![[Biased]](wink.gif) . Anyway, I digress, badly. Sorry) - so maybe there's less 'problem' there. Steve Chalke preaches, and at big events like Spring Harvest. Maybe it was less of an issue when Beeching publicly supported equal marriage because she wasn't seen as being as likely to be mentioning it in a sermon, whereas Chalke might?
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." (Mark Twain)
Posts: 3711 | From: all at sea. | Registered: Apr 2004
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Jade, thanks for that generous reply.
There are all sorts of solutions around to the situation of enforced singleness - I must admit the invitation to the local weekly OAP lunch and Bingo didn't quite seem like one for me. Nor the idea that people who grew up with the Beatles will feel at home singing that it's a long way to Tipperary. Churches vary a lot, and what is on offer can depend on the existing demographic of the group.
That wasn't really what I was getting at - and I think it is worth reiterating. People should (Ugh) "check their privilege" before imposing restrictions on others that they do not have to observe themselves.
Yes, I agree with all of that. I think also coming from a younger person's perspective (where there are more casual group activities eg going down the pub after a service) I hadn't taken into account the older single POV. Also it just depends on how much contact one needs as in individual - I personally am happy in a relatively solitary life as long as I have weekly Eucharist and an animal or five! Oh and yearly Greenbelt ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
Of course, this isn't new, much the same happened to the celebate Jeffrey John, but it seems more like a retreat to the laager than any sign of humility, much less a softening of attitudes
I can see what you're saying but I do see a softening in the sense that VB hasn't been pilloried in the same way as SC.
The case of Jeffery John doesn't help actually. For hardliners, there's distrust of him claiming celibacy now, since he was admittedly not before - in contravention of CofE teaching and Canon Law. As the argument goes, he was prepared to lie once (as were those who knew about it) - it's established that he's prepared to hide the truth. Why wouldn't he do so again?
VB may well help the liberalisation, as she's being honest about her celibacy. Acceptance of an orientation being valid before God is the first step towards wider acceptance in the con evo ideals. Acceptance of same sex activity will I'm sure follow - but it will also be accompanied by division across all denominations for those individual fellowships that cannot, in their conscience, condone it.
[ 20. August 2014, 06:57: Message edited by: ExclamationMark ]
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quantpole
Shipmate
# 8401
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Posted
Having thought about it I guess the biggest difference with her coming out compared to what she said about SSM is that this is in the national newspapers, being interviewed on radio etc. So, whilst previously she could be ignored this is demanding a response.
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Starlight
Shipmate
# 12651
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Posted
I see from her twitter that Vicky's not very happy with Robert Gagnon's swipe at her.
Vicky cites this sentence from Gagnon's article, which I think sums up his absurd psychobabble nicely:
quote:
Her error lies in thinking that she can rectify any deficit in her feminine self by absorbing in another woman what she perceives to be lacking in herself.
That sort of thing is standard for Gagnon, and his rants are typically filled with things like "all gays are narcissistic by nature".
Unfortunately, and horrifyingly, he's managed to convince a lot of conservatives over the years that his biblical interpretation can be taken seriously. His bible reading can be summarized as "of the various ways this passage can be interpreted, it should be interpreted in the most anti-gay way possible, because the rest of the bible is very anti-gay (repeat in a circular way for all other passages)."
Many years ago when someone challenged me to respond to Gagnon's views, my only reply was: "I think you severely misrepresent him as being reasonable."
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Byron
Shipmate
# 15532
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Posted
Regardless of whether Gagnon's right about NT exegesis, the second he moves to psychology, he reverts to amateur status.
Even if he didn't, that was an appalling personal attack. If he doesn't apologize publicly and unreservedly, depending on his tenure conditions, Pittsburg Theological Seminary should consider sanctions. It goes way beyond the boundaries of legitimate debate.
Crap like this drags a fine school into disrepute.
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I tried to add this to the above, at the end of the second paragraph, but thought about it too much and ran out of time.
Thanks for your responses to Jade; my reaction was similar to hers and I appreciate the exchange between you.
quote:
Being a natural celibate is not normal - that does not mean I mean to use abnormal as an insult. I used normal in a mathematical sense. I'm a bit literal like that. I did not at any point say freak, so you read that in to it. I also did not say that natural celibates are lonely. I think I have touched a sore point, so allowed you to read into what I wrote more than I intended, and if so, I'm sorry about that. (I realise that comes across a bit like those political apologies where the person does not apologise for the actual act, but only for the effect of it. Sorry about that, too.)
I agree that being Asexual is not statistically normal, but I would tend to avoid using 'not normal' in that sense outside of a clear statistically context because the connotations of 'not normal' in general conversation are not good and likely to touch a nerve. I winced at your second point.
I also agree with you that society often fails to cope well with single people, especially as one's social group marries off and that much provision for older people hasn't yet realised that Boomers are now 'older people' and so cultural references etc are different!
Also agree about not imposing celibacy. One thing which shifted me to accepting equal marriage was the experience of being in a relationship as I realised how much more there was to that than sex and the extent to which my position was coloured by my asexuality which means that I don't find celibacy burdonsome.
Have been reading posts from Sarah and Lindsey on their experiences as a celibate LGBT couple. Celibate by calling not imposition. They write about what they call the 'celibacy mandate' and challenge it because of the unfair expectations that go with it
Carys
Carys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Carys:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I tried to add this to the above, at the end of the second paragraph, but thought about it too much and ran out of time.
Thanks for your responses to Jade; my reaction was similar to hers and I appreciate the exchange between you.
quote:
Being a natural celibate is not normal - that does not mean I mean to use abnormal as an insult. I used normal in a mathematical sense. I'm a bit literal like that. I did not at any point say freak, so you read that in to it. I also did not say that natural celibates are lonely. I think I have touched a sore point, so allowed you to read into what I wrote more than I intended, and if so, I'm sorry about that. (I realise that comes across a bit like those political apologies where the person does not apologise for the actual act, but only for the effect of it. Sorry about that, too.)
I agree that being Asexual is not statistically normal, but I would tend to avoid using 'not normal' in that sense outside of a clear statistically context because the connotations of 'not normal' in general conversation are not good and likely to touch a nerve. I winced at your second point.
I also agree with you that society often fails to cope well with single people, especially as one's social group marries off and that much provision for older people hasn't yet realised that Boomers are now 'older people' and so cultural references etc are different!
Also agree about not imposing celibacy. One thing which shifted me to accepting equal marriage was the experience of being in a relationship as I realised how much more there was to that than sex and the extent to which my position was coloured by my asexuality which means that I don't find celibacy burdonsome.
Have been reading posts from Sarah and Lindsey on their experiences as a celibate LGBT couple. Celibate by calling not imposition. They write about what they call the 'celibacy mandate' and challenge it because of the unfair expectations that go with it
Carys
Carys
Thank you for that blog link, extremely helpful and I agree with what's said there. The 'celibacy mandate' is as devaluing to celibacy as it is unfair on LGBT Christians - celibacy becomes a punishment, not a vocation. IME celibacy is a decision you make with God, rather than having it imposed on you by an unsympathetic God or begging God for the vocation of celibacy when you don't have it.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Pomona
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Posted
Also, because I missed the edit window - obviously, sexual attraction and desire both exist on scales, and not necessarily together. They manifest themselves differently for different celibate people, and you can be non-asexual and also not find celibacy too burdensome.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Starlight
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
Even if he didn't, that was an appalling personal attack. If he doesn't apologize publicly and unreservedly, depending on his tenure conditions, Pittsburg Theological Seminary should consider sanctions. It goes way beyond the boundaries of legitimate debate.
He's been spewing this sort of vile bile for the past decade. If PTS has been looking the other way for all that time, I doubt they'll rein him in now. I'm not sure that the fact that his awful statements are targeted at a particular person in this case is any worse or better than the usual when he says this about all gay people in general.
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Penny S
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Thank you for the link to that blog, Carys.
All I was originally trying to do was to use my own experience as a model for what shouldn't be imposed on others.
I omitted the colleague who advised me that I should pretend not to be intelligent in order to attract a partner.
I did, at one time, read various religious books to see if they had any good advice for the single, even from traditions I would not otherwise give thinking room to. They didn't quite have nothing, but what they did have showed that they had at no time consulted anyone who lived that kind of life. I gave up when one book said that, as a woman, I could not relate to Christ without having a male as my "head", so I should seek out a couple, the man of whom would act as what, in other traditions, would be called a spiritual director. Not relevant to SSM, of course, especially for men.
The particular point that has affected my attitude to this argument is the way life can wave the possibility of companionship in front of one, and then pronounce that it is not going to happen. Not because the potential companion is in another relationship, or turns out to be secretly a religious with other vows, but for reasons which to outsiders make absolutely no sense. It is not a nice place to be. Sort of like the universe is going Nyah Nyah Nyah at one. On a bad day. There were bits in that blog that would have touched that sore point at one time - where they imagined an extreme situation.
For the universe to become embodied in the members of one's church turning their distaste and their Biblical authority on one would be even worse. Not imagining that there is something profoundly wrong about oneself, but being told again, and again, and again that one is disordered and responsible for that disorder by making a choice one never made, must be an incredibly awful place to find oneself.
And the people who push people into that place, while never having to be anywhere like it themselves, and talk through the ignorant top of their heads really need to shut up and listen, and think, and learn empathy.
[ 21. August 2014, 12:17: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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Byron
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
[Robert Gagnon's] been spewing this sort of vile bile for the past decade. If PTS has been looking the other way for all that time, I doubt they'll rein him in now. I'm not sure that the fact that his awful statements are targeted at a particular person in this case is any worse or better than the usual when he says this about all gay people in general.
I agree it's often moral hairsplitting, but under several codes, comments about specific individuals are viewed as crossing a line. (Defamation, etc.)
I guess Gagnon (if ever a name were appropriate ...) would just reframe it as a general comment about lesbian and gay people.
What's baffling is a) how a man with such a dazzling liberal arts education can spew this ordure, and b) why a world class seminary for a mainline, affirming church ever gave him a job.
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Byron
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Posted
A bump, 'cause Gagnon's rolled out a followup piece, in which he doubles-down on his whacko psychoanalysis.
I'll say this of his theological rivet counting: if they awarded qualifications for emotional intelligence, he'd struggle with the GED.
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quetzalcoatl
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
A bump, 'cause Gagnon's rolled out a followup piece, in which he doubles-down on his whacko psychoanalysis.
I'll say this of his theological rivet counting: if they awarded qualifications for emotional intelligence, he'd struggle with the GED.
It's amazing how arrogant this piece is, as if he can tell someone (who he doesn't know), that they're incomplete.
The irony is, that no therapist or analyst would lecture people like this.
I wonder if he's involved with some gay-conversion outfit, of which there are quite a lot in the US.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Starlight
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Byron:
A bump, 'cause Gagnon's rolled out a followup piece, in which he doubles-down on his whacko psychoanalysis.
It possibly deserves framing as an example of crazy word vomit at its finest.
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
The irony is, that no therapist or analyst would lecture people like this.
Well I'm actually strongly reminded of Sigmund Freud when I read Gagnon's stuff. So while it's true that no qualified therapist in the present day would say or think any of this kind of stuff, Gagnon's writing does come across as very similar to a discredited guy from a hundred years ago who made stuff up as he went along.
quote:
I wonder if he's involved with some gay-conversion outfit, of which there are quite a lot in the US.
As far as I can tell, he strongly supports the use of conversion therapy in general and believes that it works for some people. For those it doesn't work for he passionately believes they should stay single or marry someone of the opposite sex anyway.
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quetzalcoatl
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i don't think that all Freud's ideas are discredited; actually, part of my training was in psychoanalytic therapy, so obviously some of it is still useful.
I think Freud's attitude to patients was common at that time, a rather haughty 'we know best' one. See the following image of the famous Salpetriere asylum, under Charcot.
http://tinyurl.com/k6ebeds
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Barnabas62
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I doubt whether much can be gained from psychoanalysing Gagnon from a distance either.
Suffice to say that, on the basis of his writings, he would appear to have problems beyond the dreams of analysts.
To misquote Gag Halfrunt from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,
" Vell, Gagnon's just zis guy, you know". Don't think he's got two heads unlike Zaphod, but the one he's got seems capable of of producing significant misfiirings.
He does seem emotionally dumb.
[ 03. September 2014, 10:05: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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quetzalcoatl
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Posted
Well, forgive a tiny bit of psychoanalysis - he scrutinizes others' psychological problems, (badly), hmm, I wonder why.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Byron
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It's amazing how arrogant this piece is, as if he can tell someone (who he doesn't know), that they're incomplete.
The irony is, that no therapist or analyst would lecture people like this.
I wonder if he's involved with some gay-conversion outfit, of which there are quite a lot in the US.
Gagnon's emotionally deaf in that piece, that's for sure. This is all an abstract "issue" for him. He feels confident psychoanalyzing Beeching 'cause he thinks the Bible tells him so. Guy's EQ comes across so low it's given me pause: if that article's representative, he may truly not understand the harm he's doing.
I doubt the same can be said of his employers at Pittsburgh. This crap is dragging their name through the mire. They need to find a way to step up.
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3M Matt
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To return to the OP subject:
there were a couple of aspects of Vicky Beeching's coming out that irritated me a little bit.
For the last couple of years she has spoken as a voice of the progressive evangelicals and been vocally pro gay marriage.
She's done so under the banner of "I'm a theologian". She could have remained silent on this issue until such time as she felt ready to come out...I think to speak on it while still "in the closet" was perhaps a tad disingenuous.
The second issue is more troubling to me:
She received a lot of mainstream secular media coverage after coming out.
One thing that got a lot of headlines was when she described how, as a teenager, she was subjected to an "excorcism" for being gay.
Wow. The mainstream media loved that. The narrative was "poor girl..victimised by the nasty evangelical church.".
Now, I have a bit of an issue with this, on a couple of accounts.
Firstly, this "Exorcisim" apparently occurred in front of the mains stage at some pentecostal-charismatic type event after she went forward for prayer. Those of us who know these kind of events know that these things are faintly rediculous, but that excorcism for everything from being gay to having a nasty cold (accompanied by fevered praying in tongues) can be the norm for these events.
I'm not saying I think it's ok (It's not - it's crap theology for starters, and worse pastoral care.) but I am saying that just sticking that out there to the mainstream media probably portrayed it as something rather different to how even Vicky herself, familiar with pentecostal/charasimatic culture would have viewed it at the time.
More notably. Vicky Beeching is has had a 10 year extremely successful career, both in terms of fame and I would expect, fortune. She has had that almost entirely because of the evangelical church.
Fairly recently, she has established a quite successful career in the mainstream media as a "media commentator" and (apparently) "theologian".
I think it's fair to say her profile in the first career helped launch her second career. Given that she has not yet even completed her PhD, can I suggest, without sounding too harsh, that her second career has probably been, well, not exactly harmed by being an attractive young blonde female?
Is sexual stereotyping /discrimination only bad when it works against you?
She's had the opportunity to achieve something very VERY few people do in life: To make a good living out of doing something she loves. She has acheived that because of her talent, yes, but largely because of the evangelical church. Without it, odds are she would have been working 3 jobs and busking at open mike nights in run down clubs for the last 10 years. (Not because she's a bad musician or songwriter - she's not, but it's just a fact of the industry)
To put her story out to the world in such a way as to draw scorn upon the very people who, to a great extent, "made" her career seems...well..uncharitable.
Ultimately, nobody forced her to be a world famous Christian rock star. It's not something you just "fall into", (as many failed/struggling muscians will give testamony to) and it would have been enormously easy for her to walk away from it anytime she liked..but the fact is, she felt the pros outweighed the cons.
So going for the sympathy vote about how the big bad church was nasty and mean to her seems rather unfair.
That's by no means all her fault, a lot of it is how the media portrays her story, but she's supposed to be a "media commentator" so she's smart enough to know exactly how her story would go down.
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3M Matt.
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Pomona
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Posted
3M Matt - not sure why it was disingenuous for her to be for marriage equality while still in the closet. It makes sense that she may have felt comfortable with intellectual arguments for marriage equality before she felt comfortable with her own sexuality. Coming out is still an emotionally challenging thing, even nowadays. It's hard.
Also, I didn't get the impression that she's been blaming the church wholesale - rather, talking about the reality of life for LGBT Christians in more conservative churches. Do you think she should pretend none of what happened to her ever happened? I get that some churches are uncomfortable with what she's talking about that, but I think that's because they realise repentance is needed for how they treat LGBT people. Too many evangelical churches assume there are no gay people in their churches, and that LGBT rights is a 'liberal issue'.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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Byron
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Posted
3M Matt, you paint it too black and white.
By her own account, Beeching was raised in charismatic evangelicalism, and wrestled to reconcile her sexuality and her faith throughout her teens and twenties, until an auto-immune condition brought things to a head. I very much doubt she was thinking in the calculating way you describe. It'd be a heckuva lot muddier, with conflicting feelings and beliefs.
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Starlight
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Posted
3M Matt,
I disagree with pretty much every opinion expressed in your post. I think you are being insufficiently empathetic toward the difficulties gay people can face in involvement in churches and to the psychological harm that the church's anti-gay attitude does. The evangelical church has been absolutely horrible to gay people for years. If Vicky uses her media savvy to convey the smallest piece of the realities of that through the media, then good for her, it might wake up a sleepy nation to the atrocities the church has been committing and lead some in the church to repent of their sins.
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Callan
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# 525
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Posted
Originally posted by Starlight:
quote:
Well I'm actually strongly reminded of Sigmund Freud when I read Gagnon's stuff. So while it's true that no qualified therapist in the present day would say or think any of this kind of stuff, Gagnon's writing does come across as very similar to a discredited guy from a hundred years ago who made stuff up as he went along.
To be honest I was reminded of the story about Karl Popper and Alfred Adler. Adler was convinced that power, rather than sex, was the wellspring of human motivation and, hence, diagnosed the inferiority complex as the basis of neuroses. Popper told Adler of a case which, he thought, was not explicable in those terms. Popper asked him how he could be so sure if he had never met the person concerned. "I know it through my thousand fold experience" Adler explained. "And next time you will make a similar diagnosis based on your thousand and one fold experience" retorted Popper.
Originally posted by 3MMatt:
quote:
I'm not saying I think it's ok (It's not - it's crap theology for starters, and worse pastoral care.) but I am saying that just sticking that out there to the mainstream media probably portrayed it as something rather different to how even Vicky herself, familiar with pentecostal/charasimatic culture would have viewed it at the time.
I think that Robbie Burns may have summed that one up for you:
O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
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Snags
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Posted
I have to say I was struck at how careful she was not to play the "poor me" card, and not to put the boot in on the Evangelical church or the event in question.
Obviously if she's talking about various experiences over her life then journalists are going to pick out the dramatic ones. She was also clearly aware that she was talking to people who were not naturally sympathetic to Christianity and particularly not to the cardboard cutout bogeyman of Evangelical Christianity, and went out of her way to say that she:
- still identifies as Evangelical
- bears the church no ill-will
To try to frame it as a calculating bite of the hand that feeds is, I would suggest, a wee bit disingenuous if not overly cynical (and I write as someone who is shot through the cynicism).
{Edited for code}
[ 04. September 2014, 13:57: Message edited by: Snags ]
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Vain witterings :-: Vain pretentions :-: The Dog's Blog(locks)
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