What is a Christian? Can I identify as a Christian when others say I am not?
previously published at www.indwellingspirit.org March 28, 2008
Yes, we know the word "Christian" is one of the most misused words in the dictionary. People who don’t attend any church will insist that they don’t have to go to church to be a Christian. Okay, I’ll bite: what does one do, or have to do, in order to be a Christian?
And who says? Am I a Christian if I say I am? Or must I be judged to be one by others? Do they have to be real Christians in order for their opinion to matter? We could go on and on with this, especially among LGBTQ people, because people who do go to church are constantly insisting that “you can’t be gay and Christian.” Well maybe they can’t! Some people are so uptight they can't be Christian and chew gum at the same time!
But who says you can’t be gay and Christian? Ask the tens of thousands of lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgender or queer Christians if they exist. It all comes down to how “Christian” is defined and whether there is even an objective definition out there.
Dr. Rembert Truluck offered a simple suggestion in his essay, “A Gay Christian Response to Southern Baptists”: a Christian is one who is Christ-like. Dr. Truluck is not picking on the Southern Baptists unfairly, and neither am I. He has the credentials to take them on as an insider, not an outsider. He received his Doctor of Theology degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He was a Southern Baptist pastor, and even served as a writer of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Lessons for six years.
So when Dr. Truluck suggests that “Southern Baptists ceased to be Christian (Christ-like)” it is worth paying attention to his reasoning.
This is not a stretch, but fundamentally good Bible study: Jesus began his teaching and healing ministry by including people who had previously been left out by his faith tradition, the synagogue Judaism of the first century.
In Luke 4:18–19, we see that Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth, his boyhood home.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Curiously, the passage goes on to say that “the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” Meaning: people were watching Jesus, and wondering what he meant to imply. From the very outset, there were those who held Jesus in suspicion because he included people whom others excluded from their faith communities.
Right up front, the Bible itself offers clarity on who and why people are included or excluded from fellowship. And guess what? Narrow-minded so-called Christians lose on this argument!
Jesus went on to welcome women into circles reserved for men, to praise Samaritans who were hated by Jews, to preach tolerance for the leper, the foreigner, and the eunuch (a sexual misfit if ever there was one).
“Jesus in the Gospels defined his ministry by those he included that previously had been left out,” says Dr. Truluck. “When the people rejected the inclusive message of Jesus, he left town. When Southern Baptists defined themselves by who they left out (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people) in changing the bylaws of the Southern Baptist Convention to exclude any church that accepted openly gay and lesbian members, Southern Baptists ceased to be Christian (Christ-like).”
When I first read this I almost whistled out loud—as if to say that was a brave or even dangerous comment to be so critical of the second-largest Christian body in the U.S., and one that must still believe it has hegemony in political circles. But as an insider, Dr. Truluck is entitled to be severe in his criticism of that denomination.
More importantly, he is completely right that one important definition of who is a Christian, or what is Christian behavior, is to make the comparison with Christ and his behavior. If Christ included those whom others exclude or “preclude” (the term used by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for almost 20 years), they are at variance with Jesus Christ.
Of course, the conservatives would argue (if you could ever have a civil discussion with them!) that Jesus never included homosexuals.
Don't be so sure!
That becomes a matter of heated debate over the “dangerous memories” (Dr. Theodore Jennings, The Man Jesus Loved), and somewhat obscure passages of the New Testament. [And see Joe Perez’s review of Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ.]
It could be argued that neither Jesus nor the Beloved Disciple were gay (John 13:21–26; 19:25–27; 21:20–24); that Cleopas and his companion sharing a home in the village of Emmaus (Luke 24:13–32) weren't gay, that the centurion and his pais (lad or boy; Matthew 8:5–13) weren't gay. It can also be fiercely—and responsibly—argued that those of us who are LGBT are given clues in these places in the Gospels to “read between the lines”: Jesus means include us, too, who formerly were excluded.
In recent years, thousands of local Christian churches have moved strongly in the direction of full inclusion for LGBTQ people, and some denominations have also moved “to the left,” such as the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. They probably didn’t do so because they studied the Bible in this way or carefully read Theodore Jennings’ book, and then decided that Jesus was gay so it’s okay. More than likely, the movement to inclusion is because of this central idea: if we are Christian, then we ought to be Christ-like. If Christ excluded no one, then Christians should exclude no one.
It is not merely a little “side issue,” of no particular importance, or another "slippery slope" of liberalism, to include LGBTQ people, if we see that Jesus defined his ministry and his Gospel by those he included who had been excluded elsewhere. In fact, his inclusion is fundamental, central and of the highest importance to what it means to be Christ-like.