What Conservative LGBTQ+ Christians Can Teach Us About Love

Dawne Moon and Theresa Tobin are back to discuss their book Choosing Love, which represents the culmination of their research over the last several years into the community of conservative LGBTQ+ Christians. This book expands on many of the topics we covered in our first conversation while adding insightful material on the varied ways this community understands their conservative Christian identity, how it intersects with other aspects of their identities, how they understand and practice love, the relationships between love, justice, politics, theology, and activism, and much more.

Some topics we cover in this conversation include:

• The concept of "sacramental shame" which names how LGBTQ+ Christians must perform shame about their identity to be accepted in religious communities
• How straight, cis Christians often fail to understand the weight of asking queer people to be celibate or suppress their sexuality
• The tensions within LGBTQ+ Christian advocacy organizations around intersectionality and strategic approaches
• What it means to be "conservative" in these communities
• Balancing activist ideals with the reality of theological convictions
• The socially constructed nature of Christian ideals about gender and sexuality
• The importance of humility in faith conversations and how it is modeled in this community
• The connection between love and justice in movements for social change and inclusion

Theresa and Dawne have done important and original work that has much to teach both conservative Christians and liberal secularists about this overlooked but important community.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction
• 3:38 Introducing Dawne and Theresa
• 9:06 Stories of LGBTQ+ Christians
• 18:26 The Sacrament of Shame
• 30:48 Conservative Identity vs. LGBTQ+ Affirmation
• 52:03 The Importance of Humility
• 1:13:41 Love, Justice, and Human Connection

Transcript

Randy: 0:06

I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle's a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.

Kyle: 0:15

We also invite experts to join us, making public a space that we've often enjoyed off-air, around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.

Randy: 0:24

Thanks for joining us, and welcome to a pastor and a philosopher walking to a bar.

Kyle: 0:38

So today on the show we have a couple returning guests. We haven't talked to them for three years. I think it was season one, maybe season two, I don't remember. Three years ago, we had Dawn Moon and Teresa Tobin on. Dawn is a sociologist and Teresa is a philosopher, both at Marquette University. So I know Teresa, she was one of my professors. And we had talked to them previously when our we did our first series on anything related to LGBTQ, anything. And we had kind of waited for a while for reasons having to do with your church to explain in that uh series, and then we had a s I think it was four episodes in a row just about that, and we capped it off, I'm pretty sure, with with this one. I think so. Um interviewing them about some original research that I found very uh conceptually compelling at the time, and it also had an interesting empirical basis because Dawn is a sociologist, and so they she has been studying um conservative LGBTQ Christians for a long time. Um and they were in the midst of trying to work out the ideas that eventually made their way into this book that we're gonna talk about in this interview. And so reading this is kind of like a culmination of uh things I've been hearing Teresa talk about for a very long time, plus that conversation. And so I kind of had high expectations going into it because I know how thoughtful they both are and how careful they've studied this. Um and I want to say admit them. Um the the first chunk of the book is all the stuff we talked about in our first episode, just more fleshed out. Um and then the the end is some really interesting stuff that we get into in this conversation about um conservatism, about justice, about love, about humility. Um it goes in some really interesting places and some hard places, some places that are complex and there aren't clear answers, and some of that comes out in this conversation as well. So I was super glad to have them back. I loved the conversation and I hope to talk to them again.

Randy: 2:28

Yeah, yeah, it's a great book. Uh by the way, it's called Choosing Love. What LGBTQ plus Christians can teach us all about relationships, inclusion, and justice, and I loved it. Um the first half in particular is quite human, and there's lots of stories, and it's just emotional. I found myself heartbroken at a number of points in the book, and I found myself completely hope-filled at other points in the book. Um, and when I would tell people, they would ask, What are you, you know, what are you reading for the podcast? Or what what what book is that? I'll say it's a book about queer Christians experiencing in conservative spaces, conservative Christian spaces, gay Christians who are also conservative Christians. And the answer I'll get a lot of times when I tell people that is holy cow, I didn't know they existed.

Kyle: 3:14

Yeah, I didn't know that was a thing.

Randy: 3:16

But the reality though is like if you go to a church, like a conservative Christian church, there's there's gay Christians worshiping in and around you all the time. You probably if you don't know any, that's because of what's going on at your church and the the messages that are happening. But gay Christians are everywhere in conservative Christian spaces, and they're trying to be erased in some of these Christian conservative spaces. And in some of these Christian conservative spaces, they just don't know what to do with the the queer Christians that are that are part of their churches, that are want to serve, and want to be loved, and want to be in a relationship, and want to get plugged in, want to get connected to the life of Christ. And this book is about their experience and how maybe we can do better in the Christian church.

Kyle: 4:03

Yeah. And if you care what David Gushy had to say about this book, who was uh previous multiple-time guest on our show, uh, he says this book offers a thick description based on participant observation of the inner worlds of LGBTQ plus Christians from conservative backgrounds. It probes the psychological spiritual dynamics that are created at this so often so painful intersection. It describes individuals and organizations working to bring constructive change, and in the end it modestly but clearly charts key hallmarks of a constructive path forward. I think he's right. It does exactly all of those things, and it's uh people that I know and care deeply about, so that makes it all that much better. Well, Teresa Tobin and Don Moon, welcome back to the Pastor and Plause for Walking to a Bar.

Theresa: 5:01

Thank you. Thanks so much for having us.

Kyle: 5:03

So we said uh three years ago, I think, that when you wrote this book, we're gonna have you back on to talk about it. And here it is. Here we are. So uh the book is called Choosing Love What LGBTQ plus Christians Can Teach Us All About Relationships, Inclusion, and Justice. Just finished it, it's a doozy in a very good way. Um I loved it. Yep. It's pithy and it's moving and it's approachable. And um, I think you nailed what you were trying to do. Yep. Based on our previous conversation. So can you for listeners who haven't heard that first conversation, first of all, guys, go listen to it. It's in the show notes. How did this book come about, just really quickly?

Dawne: 5:42

Um sure, yeah. Well, so I I had studied um I'd studied uh church debates about homosexuality in the 90s. I um then went on to a time studying um Jewish-Palestinian dialogue, among other things. And then in the early 2010s, a family member came out as gay and he was evangelical, came from an evangelical family. And um, because of that, I learned that this whole movement was happening, and it really seemed like like everything I'd been doing in my life had was leading to this moment. And um and I was like, okay, I just have to, I what is going on? And um his his brother-in-law, another cousin, um, sent was sending me like things that he was reading, blogs, articles, um, as he was trying to sort out how he should respond. And um, some of them were coming from the Marin Foundation in Chicago, two miles from my house. And I was like, I gotta meet these people, what's happening? And so um, so the project began. Um, and then um an opportunity came up to apply for a grant where I needed to work with someone in the humanities, and I remembered having met Teresa like some years prior and not spoken to her since, and asked if she um would want to join me because of what she had been working on. It seemed like it would be a good fit. So I don't know if she needs to be.

Theresa: 7:12

So, what I had been working on was um I was really struck by this concept of spiritual violence that survivors of clergy's sexual abuse had named as a distinct harm that they had experienced in addition to sexual, emotional, and physical harm. Um, but the spiritual harm of being um violated by people who were religious authorities in sacred spaces using sacred, you know, objects and texts, and how that impacted their capacity for relationship with God, how it harmed them and their capacity for faith, and that that was felt as a distinct loss. And then in talking with Don and realizing that that concept was much broader than just those experiences that LGBTQ Christians, women, a lot of people had had experiences of spiritual violation based on their the way they had been kind of spiritually formed in um Christian communities in particular. I was looking at Catholic communities. Um, that's my background. So the spiritual violence that LGBTQ plus conservative Christians were enduring, it was a sort of natural fit for Don and I to start working together.

Randy: 8:17

This book is there's there's so many personal stories in it. Do you know how many people you talk to about in the course of researching this?

Dawne: 8:26

Um yeah, we we interviewed 64 people. We um, I mean, and it's sit-down formal interviews, um, some of them multiple times. Um we also, because we're both white, we um hired a research assistant, Alicia Crosby Mack, who is African American, um, who was also a founder of one of the organizations that we were looking at. Um, and so we were able to um pay her to interview 40 more um LGBTQ Christians of color in particular. Um, so that brought the total up to um 104 interviews or 104 people, uh 117 interviews.

Randy: 9:10

So the stories, especially in the first half of the book, I would say, I mean, really, those stories kind of echo all the way through. Um but they're arresting and they kind of lay the foundation for for for why you're writing the book and in what you're writing about. Can you share with our listeners just a couple of those stories in particular? The first one I'm thinking of is the first story you read. The first thing you read in chapter one is Darren's story, um, which is a crazy story. Can one of you just bring our listeners into Darren's world a little bit and why why you featured him in the book?

Dawne: 9:44

Sure, yeah, I'll I'll do that. Um so Darren is an African-American gay man. Um he um he he asked us to use his real name. It's Darren Calhoun, that's who he is. You can find him on Instagram. Um and he um he was raised in what he called a not too churchy Catholic family. And then when he went to college, he was saved um in a Pentecostal church and was becoming a minister in that church, and um he had already been out as gay, and that was like, you know, no drama around that. Um, but then as he was um as he was saved, he you know, was talking about his testimony. He didn't really feel like like you know, doing gay things anymore, you know, he was talking about that, testifying, and his pastor took him aside and said, you know, you can never talk about that. No one will ever be able to receive you if you talk about that. And that introduced this, you know, this uh experience of shame for the first time. And um eventually his pastor had him to like his pastor kind of invented his own kind of reparative therapy. He had him living in a church, the church um was in Chicago, but owned another building in Indiana, another church, and he was living away from everybody that he knew in Indiana, in the church, sleeping on the altar, fasting two days a week, and just like praying for deliverance. He had to ask for permission. He's told his story. You can find he's he tells it on his podcast um Second Sunday. He told it in um either Time or People magazine several years ago. Um, but he um he was he had to ask his pastor for permission to go grocery shopping, you know, anything like that. Um at times he was like cleaning the church, you know, for $50 a week or whatever. And um after four years of isolation, he just, you know, he'd been praying, he'd been reading self-help books, he'd been like learning that like maybe he had some real human need for connection, that that wasn't a shameful thing. Um, and eventually he heard Jesus saying, like, why are you hiding from life? That's not what I want from you. And when he told his pastor that, um, the pastor was like, Oh, I could keep you locked in my basement if you want to come back to Chicago. And he's like, No, I'm hearing you say that, but that's not what I'm hearing Jesus say. I don't think I need your basement. Thank you very much. And so he just moved back. And the pastor told everyone in the church, just leave him be. Like, don't, don't talk to him. He's got to work his stuff out. Don't, you know, like wouldn't let like he'd been a worship leader, he wasn't allowed to pick up a microphone, and he just was basically ghosted by everyone around him. They wouldn't talk to him, and so he left that church, went to um a uh predominantly white, affirming, but um no, welcoming but not affirming mega church, um, where he was allowed to say he was gay, he was allowed to, but he had to be celibate. Um, he was allowed to serve the church, he was allowed to, you know, lead ministry, lead worship. And um, but every time, you know, like things would have he kept getting like called in, he was under constant surveillance, right? And so he would um, you know, like one day he was like, you know, his pastor called, you know, you've got to come in and meet the pastor, right? And he's like, Okay, what's going on? And the pastor's like, you know, we need to, you know, we need to have a conversation because someone saw you on a date. And he was like, What are you talking about? And he basically he'd been spotted by a fellow church member eating at a restaurant with someone who's a man. And he was like, So what does that mean to be on a date? Like, am I not allowed to leave my house and have a nice time with other people? Uh, does it have to be in a group? And do straight people in the church, if they're not married, they're not supposed to be having sex, are they allowed to have dinner together and have a nice time? Like, and you know, and the pastor to his credit was like, you know, you're right, we have some things to think about here, but it was just this constant, you know, having to, you know, to answer for himself, having, you know, being under constant scrutiny and constantly feeling like he was in trouble and at risk of losing his ministry at any time. Um, and uh he was there for a long time during the course of our research, um, and eventually got a position as a worship leader in an affirming church and was just like, wait, when my pastor calls, I feel panic. You know, like, and then you know, it turns out the pastor's just like, you want to get lunch tomorrow? Like it's nothing. Like they're not, you know, like he's not in trouble, he's not busted. Um, and you know, so it was just this like this experience, it was, you know, of like we're trauma after trauma after trauma imposed by churches, by people who loved him and claimed to love him and claim to want what was best for him, and just realizing that, you know, that, you know, I mean, one thing that he'd said, you know, at the predominantly white church, he also had to deal with the the racism, right? And like the, you know, like that he didn't he had to like kind of tone down his way of worshiping. He had to explain himself if he wanted to leave them singing songs that were, you know, from the African-American tradition or from a different tradition that than you know the traditions that people have been accustomed to. And you know, he's done lots of activist work in all kinds of of of uh realms. And um, you know, and he the way he put it one time was like, I don't know, I'm just programmed to deal with people's stupid questions. Like I just I just have a I have a heart for that. I can do it. Um uh the last time I talked to him, it seems like maybe that was getting to be a little, a little tiresome. Um yeah, that's Darren. He he is and he, I mean, this is someone who just exudes love. Is so, I mean, the story that the book opens with is a story of him just, you know, like really showing me for the first time in my life, having grown up going to church, having a mother who was a pastor, like he was the one who like helped me understand what Christian love could be that wasn't just a sort of like, I love you but hate everything about you, you know, kind of um sort of give with one hand and take away with the other kind of love.

Randy: 16:18

Yeah, because that's the kind of Christian love you'd experience you've experienced is I love you but hate everything about you. Is that why you say that, Don?

Dawne: 16:27

Yeah, yeah.

Randy: 16:27

Yep. All right, thank you. And then Kai's story. Um let me just read the the quote from Kai that you have in the beginning of chapter two, because I think it's a it's a confrontational idea for those of us who have been raised in the church, those of us who have been kind of just told this is the way the world is, um, that homosexuality homosexuality is bad, and kind of embracing that idea and um leaning into it is actually love, right? Um here's a story of what that does to a person. This is a person named Kai. They said, I found myself unconsciously shutting down connection. And that was something that I think a lot of my friends had a hard time understanding because I'm an introvert. I do love people, and I can listen to stories and laugh and have a good time, and so it was bizarre to them that inside I was crumbling in every moment because I was so fervently policing myself and making sure that I did not let myself go too far emotionally with someone, lest I start to have this idea that I would want to share a life with them and experience intimacy at any level with them. And I think that's where the shame piece really began to come become clear to me. I was exp experiencing Christian life in a very different way than all of my other friends were, and it took me a long time to be able to look back on that and say, those were days when I hated myself, and I hated myself for the sake of demonstrating how much I loved God. Now that last sentence there, and you go into it more in the in the chapter, but can you go into that that idea of the sacrament of shame that you talk about in that chapter, based on, you know, in many ways what Kai Kai shared there, that I hated myself in order to have God love me more. Um that's a kind of nasty way of thinking about humanity, about yourself, about God. Um can you talk about shame and what you mean by a sacrament of shame and go into that lived experience of these folks that you guys have talked to?

Theresa: 18:26

Yeah, thank you for highlighting um Kai's experience because I think it's it's um it's illustrative of many experiences, but it's particularly pointed. And I think what we observed over and over again was that um conservative Christian churches were requiring their LGBTQ members, churches and their families were requiring their LGBTQ members to uh uh demonstrate and perform and feel shame about their gender and sexuality as the condition for acceptance and some semblance of acceptance in God's community of supposedly universal and unconditional love. And so you know, a lot of a lot of Christians define a sacrament as a sign of God's presence, a tangible sign of God's presence in a person's life. And so what we were observing was that for LGBTQ plus Christians, um a kind of constant awareness and perform awareness of their unworthiness for relationship, right, was the and performance of shame, the fear that they were unworthy of relationship, like that constant performance of that and and feeling of that, was the condition for being um allowed to be in God's community of love. And so, and fame, it was, you know, fame is a is an emotion, um, it's a fear of being unworthy of relationship. And so it wasn't like just you know, it's it's thinking that like I'm bad, not just that I did something bad, but that I'm bad, that connection with me will harm you, will will just paint you, will um make make you worse, and you shouldn't be in relationship with me. And so it wasn't just like having a kind of intellectual thought like I'm a bad person, but as you can see in Kai's story, like this inner internalized sense of sort of constantly surveilling and policing their own emotional connection with friendships, with their parents, with any kind of relationship at all, because anytime they might feel anything towards someone, uh, friendship, compassion, right, wanting to serve people, feeling like, oh, I gotta cut that off. I can't be in relationship because I'm I'm not worthy of relationship. And that's the only way I can be in a community of God's allegedly universal and unconditional love. But that's contradiction and it's unlivable. And so for Kai, Kai really leaned into that. And you can read the rest of the chapter, the next few quotes. Kai spent years praying, like, God, I'm I'm willing to take on this sacrifice because I love you so much and I want to be loved by you so much, and I'm willing to take this on to suffer this. If this is my cross, I'll bear it. And then a couple things happened. Um, first of all, Kai actually experienced not only sort of mental health consequences, you might imagine, but physical consequences. So Kai started having, Kai had a heart rate of 19 and was in the hospital, and people were trying to figure out what was wrong with Kai. And nothing was wrong with Kai, and the only thing they could trace it back to was the stress of having to try and navigate that constant inner policing and surveillance of like, I'm not worthy of relationship, I can't be in relationship, I can't get too close to people. Um, so that was one thing that started happening. But um, but then Kai also began to, out of their own humility and love for other LGBTQ people, look at how the church's teachings were harming them and have this moment of like, okay, here's this teaching I've been believing in and leaning into and upholding, and I see that it's how badly it's harming this person that I love. And then nobody deserves to be treated that way, and that opened them up, their humility to say, I'm gonna pay attention to that person's experience and allow it to open me up to say, well, maybe maybe I'm wrong about what God thinks of them and of me, and maybe I'm wrong about what the church has always taught me. So it kind of opened up and created a wedge for them to begin that journey of sort of asking those questions.

Randy: 22:26

Um so yeah, thank you. The this dynamic in that chapter that you highlighted and what you're speaking to, Teresa, um, is so familiar to me. Um because I mean, I process with people regularly who are, you know, and by people I mean I'm a pastor. So people in my congregation or people who are, you know, know of me as a pastor, might not be in my church, but because I'm affirming or I've I've changed my mind about uh human sexuality as a pastor, people trust me in other churches, even so I'll talk to them. And what I hear over and over again in these conversations, where a person who's non-affirming is like it feels like they're trying to get to an affirming place. But we, and I'll say we because this was me up until five years ago, right? Um, we don't really understand the weight of what we're asking our LGBTQIA siblings to do and to embody and to be when we say just just be celibate, just cut off that sexuality part of yourself, just cut it off. Just just let it go dormant, just just don't pay attention to it. It's just one thing that God's asking of you, no big deal. And it's it doesn't seem so weighty and so heavy to us who are straight and cisgendered and you know have no problem expressing ourselves in that way. Can you speak to that dynamic of what that might do to a human who's being asked to cut off and turn off a part, an inherent part of themselves, and how dehumanizing that might be?

Dawne: 23:53

Yeah, I mean, it's asking them not just to like don't eat meat or something, you know, just like forsake this one thing, this one person like how many of them would even do that, but right, right, right. Um, it's it's asking people to cut or telling people they have to cut off their capacity for love, their capacity for connection with other people, and that their capacity to love, that their capacity to connect with other people is damaged and dangerous. And so it's cutting them off from all relationships, right? I mean, we've talked we've heard from people who, I mean, and not just in interviews, but also just you know, going to conferences and hearing people's testimonies, um, you know, people who, you know, we're not allowed to teach Sunday school, we're not allowed to um to serve people the way that Christians are told they're supposed to serve people, right? They're cut off from all of these things, and then, you know, and then treated as if, you know, any um struggle with that is just proof at how like sex-crazed gay people are, right? When it's like, you know, in churches where you know people who aren't married by the time they're 25 are looked at as like, uh oh, we gotta set you up. We gotta, you know, we have singles ministries so that singles can meet each other. We have classes on how to like communicate better in your marriage, like the entire church is built around marriage. Celibacy is mistrusted, right? Except gay people should do that, right? If they're allowed to even say they're gay in the first place. And, you know, like, you know, I I heard from people who are like, my church would never hire a single man who in his 30s, right? Like, how could you trust him? There's something wrong with him, and yet, right, like I'm gonna say gay people, um, I'm you know, there's different, you know, overlapping dynamics with bisexuals and trans people, um, but you know, are are told, like, well, you you should be celibate. That's okay for you. And, you know, meanwhile, you know, like one person who had been celibate for for a long time had had said, you know, I mean, if this church wants me to be celibate, they've got to give me some kind of future besides dying alone and being eaten by my cats. And they're not giving that. They don't care enough to provide me with any kind of future or any kind of connection with other people. It's just like, you know, be sure you're celibate, or we're gonna bring you in on charges or whatever, you know. Um, and so it's really it's it's denying this basic reality that human beings need relationships with other people, that we're created for connection with other people. And to say, like, well, except you, not you, because obviously you can't do that because you're so broken. Um, it's it's really toxic and harmful. And the that dynamic of sacramental shame, like you have to prove you're you know you're unworthy of relationship just to let us, you know, just for us to let you like breathe our air, right? Like has so many contradictions in it that it just there's not really a way to make it make sense for a long time for a lot of people. And so, you know, you you we saw all of these um these harms that people came to um as a result of that. I don't I don't know if that would convince anybody, but it's it's just it's really it's denying people their humanity.

Theresa: 27:32

Yes, yeah, their personhood. I mean, to the extent that people they're they they come to a place of like what they feel is that oh, it's their very existence that's the problem, right? It's not a misuse of their capacity for relationship, but the very capacity itself is a problem. And if that's central to what it means to be a person created in God's image and God's God's desire is for relationship, and that's the capacity in me that's unjust totally broken, damaged, and dangerous, then it challenges my very personhood and coming and people saying you're monstrous, you're an abomination, right? So the idea of your very existence is a problem, is where it leads.

Kyle: 28:09

Yeah, that's so.

Dawne: 28:10

And just can I just add one thing? So a lot of times people prayed and prayed and prayed to God to please make them worthy, please take this away. They didn't want it, right? And God didn't take it away, right? So then they felt like, you know, the more they prayed, the more they felt like God was ignoring them and making them remain unworthy of love.

Kyle: 28:32

Yeah. And this is what I love about your take is you drill right down to the core of what this logical entailment of this position really is, because it's really easy for a conservative Christian to hear it and think, it's just sex. We're talking about sex, right? But it's more than that. Uh it's it's your capacity to love and be in relationship with other human beings and therefore to be a flourishing human being because that's what we are. That's right. But even if it fucking was just sex, like like what a glaring double stand. Like we have it's like we've forgotten when evangelicals decided they were sex positive. We forgot that when it when it came to LGBTQ people, right? Because I would never do that, but I'm gonna hold it out for you as a real thing, and also those people over there who think it's a vocation, right? Uh, and somebody on our side can do it, so I guess you can do it too. Uh, forgetting that if you were I would receive that as nonsense if you were to tell me that I could set aside my my my attraction to women and and my desire to be in a sexual relationship. It would just be incoherent. There was a there was a quote in here, I don't know who it's from, because you didn't name the person, but a participant at one of your conferences said, I'm not any one part of who I am first. Yes. I'm black, I'm multiracial, I'm a husband, a parent, a pastor, a Christian, I'm all of those things at once all the time. I'm not sure what being Christian even means to them if they can separate that from everything else they are. You never heard it put so succinctly.

Randy: 29:52

Yes. Yes. Which is in response to this Christian movement that says, I'm Christian first and everything else second, third, fourth, whatever.

Kyle: 30:00

Which is what you have to do to carve off the sexual nature, so so simply, right? You have to say, Oh, there's a fundamental aspect of it.

Randy: 30:07

Well, and it's kind of a response, an angry response to I what they would call identity politics, I would say. It's kind of this like anti-woke kind of slogan that we get to toss out there, and if you disagree with it, you're you love Jesus less because that's not your first print primary identity, you know? Right. All of its nonsense. Because, like this gentleman said, all of who I am is all of who I am. How do I separate that out and parse that out? I can't do it.

Kyle: 30:31

Which gets us to this um intersectionality idea, and I think you were gonna ask something about that, so now would probably be a good time to insert that because that's a significant theme of your book. Um, I don't know what you were gonna ask, but if you want to just explain that idea and its origin and the role it plays quickly, that would be good.

Dawne: 30:48

Okay, yeah, so um the term, the term itself, the five-syllable word or whatever, um, comes from um legal scholar Kimberly Crenshaw, um, who coined the term in the late 80s, um, because of her legal scholarship to talk about ways that the law could fail black women by insisting that they could only bring court, you know, bring suits to court on the basis of sex discrimination or on the basis of racial discrimination, but not both at the same time, because that would be double-dipping, right? Um even though, you know, the the plaintiffs were people who were fired because they were black women, right? Um, but she's talking about a term that, you know, a concept that, you know, um black and other feminists of color have been talking about probably forever, which is that um, you know, a lot of times we think of racism and sexism and then, you know, all of these other forms of oppression as sort of like separate, separate variables or separate vectors. And um, you know, we can just we're just gonna deal with this one now. Um, and what happens in activism when people do that is that you know, you end up with um, you know, white women running feminism and claiming that like whatever benefits white women will trickle down to women of color and trans women and women with disabilities, poor women, um, and um, you know, uh, you know, um civil rights activists often you know seeing the civil rights of men as like what they're they're fighting for, and seeing women's concerns as taking away from that within their own communities. And so as scholars, the the concept invites us to think about how these systems of oppression work together and can't really be separated, um, and invites us to, you know, rather than like, you know, kind of, you know, people use the language of marginalization, meaning like pushing, you know, certain aspects off to the side and saying, like, here's the real story. The real story is white men's story. Um, but what happens if you you know bring the people in from the side and make them the center of the story? How does that make the story itself look different? Um, and so that's what we're we're trying to do here.

Randy: 33:11

Thank you. I'm a little bummed that you brought intersectionality this early because I have lots of 14 other nicer questions. We can backtrack. We don't have to go on a little bit. It's okay. Here we are. Um so, all that said, I I fully believe um in the concept of intersectionality. I think it's something that we need to pay attention to and something that we need to take really, really seriously, and has is just a legitimate real thing, right? And I say that only because I know people who think it's not a real thing and who are, you know, kind of shit on the the idea, and I I just don't agree. However, in in chapter six in particular, one of the things you go into in fairly decent detail is this thing that happened with Matthew Vines in the Reformation Project. Now we chatted with Matthew a couple months ago, it was a great conversation, and we love Matthew, but also don't agree with Matthew on everything. Um can you tell our listeners, I don't want to sum it up, you know, in my crude way, can you tell our listeners about like what's the intersectionality in the Reformation Project and kind of how things got really kind of rough for a while for for Matthew and the Reformation Project around this idea of intersectionality? Can you can you just detail that story for our listeners a little bit?

Dawne: 34:29

Um, you know, so when Matt, I mean, and we love Matthew too. Like, I mean, I just, you know, I have a very warm, soft space in my heart for him and um and what he's trying to do. So when he started the Reformation Project, he you know, he had this plan, right? He he had done his podcast with that laid out this, you know, where he like sorted through all the affirming theology, sifted out the stuff that what that didn't like hold muster with his like you know, evangelical hermeneutic, and um and uh you know, made a YouTube video, it went viral, he turned that into his book, and um and he wanted to create a movement to empower people all over the country to um work within their churches for reform, right? To like work within their churches to teach people of this affirming way of understanding scripture. And um he hired a bunch of social justice organizers to help with that. And you know, social justice organizers see racism as a problem 100% of the time, right? Like it's always a problem. And so they brought to the task the and and members of the board as well, you know, like brought to the task, like, you know, we can't really talk about homophobia without also talking about racism and other kinds of oppression as well, because you know, something like you know, 30 something percent of LGBTQ people are also people of color. The um the the history of homophobia is intimately connected to the history of racism, right? Both of them are about using sexuality as the basis to say these people are closer to animals and less human than uh than than than us, right? Than the insiders, than the um the people with power. And um and it started seeming to some people like like the Reformation Project was moving, was kind of getting off track, right? And it's like, you know, how can we like you know, we're just we're trying to like get our churches to like do this heavy lifting of like changing their what they see as their traditional understanding of the Bible and marriage and gender and Adam and Eve and like you know, everything that they they think that um that God holds dear. And to then also be like calling them racist at the same time is a distraction. It's putting people off, it's making people not want to uh you know, to listen to us. We don't seem conservative anymore if we're gonna be like both, you know, talking about homophobia and racism. Like what how are we even conservative anymore? And um, and so you know, eventually he put out a statement saying, you know, we're gonna get back to our, we're gonna stay in our lane, you know, we're gonna go to back to our founding values. We love God, we love the Bible, we love the church, like that's what we're about. The other stuff, it's not that it's not important, it's just not for us to do. We need to work on this. Um, and you know, I think some people were like, Great, that's that's what I thought you were doing all along. And other people felt really abandoned by that and were just like, wait, what? Like, what have I been doing here? Um and you know, and the people who I spoke to after that um that came out were pretty gracious about it, you know, like that you know, it wasn't that people were like coming after him with with torches and pitchforks or anything, it was just like they felt betrayed, they felt unseen, I think, um, and just felt like, oh, okay, I thought I was contributing to a movement that cared about me and people I love, and that's not the priority, and so uh so here we are. Um, so yeah, I I mean I I I that's my understanding. Maybe you have a different understanding.

Randy: 38:41

No, yeah, no, I think that's that's what I read in the chapter, and I mean, yes. So again, while I affirm this idea of intersectionality and see it as a really important thing for us to to grapple with, my issue with that chapter, and that part of that chapter, is the thinking that somehow seems to be the case that um perhaps it could this be liberal? Now this is I'm gonna make so many people mad and maybe maybe you two, I don't know. But I'm a liberal. We read your quote.

Theresa: 39:12

We read your outline.

Randy: 39:14

I'm a progressive, but I'm kind of a b a bad progressive, right? So could this be liberals shooting themselves in the foot a little bit because they aren't willing to work with people as they are? In other words, what if it's impossible to get through to conservative Christians about loving and affirming LGBTQIA people if we feel the need to include addressing the white supremacy in the same conversation? Could that make one impossible? Could it be that focusing on their fear and hatred of LGBTQIA people could be an eventual bridge to seeing the way that they have that same fear and hatred of people of color, but you have to maybe you have to take one before the other in order to not have them shut down? Or could it be that this idea of intersectionality is true, but it might not, it might actually be counterproductive to getting some people to actually change their minds about one thing, and then maybe we can address the other. Those are were my thoughts as I read that chapter, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Dawne: 40:07

Yeah, I think all of that could be true.

Theresa: 40:10

All of it's true. It's all true of what we observed, truly. I mean, I think, and I think going back and looking at that chapter, I think it's even implied in Matthew's original statement. If you read between the lines, and I also think what that chapter is trying to do is talk about tension and talk about how different people in different spaces in this movement are trying to navigate those tensions to do work on multiple fronts. I mean, Darren Calhoun, I think he's an A star of this whole thing. And when you get to the part where he's talking about that experience, he's like, look, I recognize the value in what Matthew's trying to do, and I recognize I'll benefit indirectly from it. Right. It's just not a place for me anymore. And I've devoted a lot of my time and energy here, and I need to be doing other work, right? So when we when we looked at the at the you know, the Marin Foundation that then became CFI, and then the Reformation Project and the evolution of that, and then GCN that then evolves into QCF, you can see these evolutions on these fronts where different groups of people are holding those tensions and trying to make choices about how to navigate them and do the work that needs to be done in multiple spaces. And, you know, there's places in that chapter where we we remember at CFI talking about when that evolution happened, like some people, some white conservative Christians felt like maybe that wasn't the place they could go anymore because it had abandoned the sort of neutrality position. But then we wonder, like, okay, then where are the who are those people calling when they're wondering if they should throw their kids out on the street, right? So I mean, there's lots of work to be done on lots of fronts. Um, I think part of what we were also observing in what we learned a lot about was like Martin Luther King's notion of really holding tension creatively and not letting, you know, which means I think partly being open to continuing to evolve, take in new information, be open to the criticisms that are gonna come. It's gonna be impure, it's gonna be imperfect, right? And being open to being flexible and adaptable to the evolution of those spaces and the work that can be done there. So that's kind of one of my takeaways from that. But I don't think we're in disagreement with what you're saying or based on what we observed.

Randy: 42:31

Okay.

Dawne: 42:33

Can I just add, like, there's um there's not one thing, one strategy that's gonna like, you know, if if only everyone just was like me, then everything would be great, right? Like, there's not one strategy that's gonna like create the better world that we want to live in, right? It's gonna take all the strategies and it takes people doing what they do best, what makes sense to them in the place where they are with the people that they're talking to, right? But if you're an LGBTQ person of color, it doesn't make sense a lot of the time to bracket racism while you're talking to a room full of white people, right? Like that, like I mean, some people do it, like some people, I mean that takes some work, right? And like some people might feel like that's what they're cut out for, but for a lot of people, that's not feasible, right? It's just not and and then and then the question is like, do the people that I've been working with see me? Like, do I actually belong here? Like, you know, like those kinds of things.

Randy: 43:36

Yep, and that's completely fair. Yeah, thank you.

Kyle: 43:38

Yeah, I appreciate your uh openness and graciousness about that very honest question, which I also had a version of. Um, I try to be a little softer, but I had a version of the same question.

Randy: 43:49

Like sorry for being a dick sometimes.

Kyle: 43:51

Well, I think what's behind a lot of this is what it means to be a conservative, and that's uh a significant focus of that chapter, which I think is chapter six. And it's it's hit it's hit us on this podcast. I don't want to like pretend that we've like, you know, agonizingly dealt with it or anything like that. It's not been super significant, but it's something we've had to think about as we have conversations about this issue in particular, knowing that a lot of our listeners are conservative. What is our goal with those conversations? And I'm very liberal, and Randy's getting more liberal by the day. The more time he spends with me, the more liberal I am. Infectious. Yeah, it kind of is. But like at the end of the day, I I think most definitions of conservatism, even the charitable ones, ultimately to, in my view, an untenable position that doesn't accord with the predominance of the evidence about most things. Um that puts me in a particular kind of category. So when you guys are talking about, let's dig into this conservative view and see if you try to take this neutral position so that you can have those conversations with those people. Are you putting yourself in a weird position where you're actually upholding something they're gonna have to unearth and excavate anyway later? Um so I totally 100% am on board with that. On the other hand, we kind of decided on the podcast that we want to pitch our conversations about this, at least some of them in particular that are geared in this way, to an audience that we think will make the most difference pragmatically. Like, where can we actually have an impact in the world? It's probably not in the queer community, it's probably in the community of folks like Randy five years ago, who are pastors secretly listening to our show, who want to think about this, but have presuppositions that they're just not able to question. And willing or able, I think, like psychologically able. Um because it's hard to see the connection. I remember last time when you guys were on, we talked about the connection that was obvious to you at the time between um gender egalitarianism and uh a kind of um LGBTQ affirmation. That is not obvious to evangelicals at all. Um, the idea that they need to think more deeply about what gender complementarity actually implies.

Randy: 45:52

Well, I think they're scared that it is, actually. Like I think many evangelicals actually don't want to affirm women in ministry and leadership and equality and egalitarianism, all that, because they kind of feel like there's more under that rock. If I lift that up, I'm gonna have to answer other questions. I think that's real. Yeah, it could be that kind of but I think by and large, you're right.

Kyle: 46:15

Yeah, and so like you know, we kind of decided, you know, if if we're gonna make any difference at all for the queer people in conservative churches, it's gonna be by talking to the people who hold the power in those churches in a way that they can sit through a conversation, you know. Um and that's that's weird, and I can't imagine it being at the level of what Matthew's dealing with, right? Um, so I appreciate that you recognize the complexity of that and don't think like there are clearly obvious answers um to that. Um so let's, if you can, dig into a little bit your understanding of conservativeness and how that plays into this whole thing.

Dawne: 46:53

I mean, I think it means a lot of things to a lot of different people, right? We're talking uh, you know, about a huge, like, you know, just even being religiously conservative. You've got the people who are very rationalist and like concerned about like the the what what exactly did this word mean in ancient Greek and what did it mean in this other book, right? You've got you've got the very rationalist and you've got the very charismatic, and you've got um all these, you've got denominations and you've got non-denominations, and you've got you know, all of these different experiences, and you've got this evangelical culture, right? The sort of um the culture of books and media and all of this stuff that kind of goes around that, that's not necessarily church, but that's part of being part of this culture. And you know, we're talking about people who come from, you know, some of them were Methodist, right? Some of them were um, you know, or Presbyterian, like they or you know, all of the denominations, right? Um, you know, we've and we and we talk to people from you know independent megachurches, and we talk to people, you know, from all that whole gamut. Um, and so what it means to them to be recognizably conservative is is different for a lot of people, right? For some people, it's how you what what happens when you go to church, right? That like, you know, for people from a more like charismatic or a more um sort of uh you know rock and roll kind of church, you know, where you've got the band and the drums and the guitars and the big screens, you know, sitting in like some, you know, uncomfortable wooden pew-filled hundred-year-old building, listening to the collected works of Charles Wesley on the organ is not bringing them closer to God, right? Like that is not, that's not it, right? Um so they're conservative because they're that's that's what their churches are, right? Like those are the that's what it means for them. And so just like going to the affirming, you know, PCUSA church down the street is not, is not, doesn't do it, right? Um for some people it's about the the way they treat scripture, right? When I studied um a liberal church in the 90s that was like working toward becoming um officially affirming, you know, there were people who were like, you know, there it was a it was a mixed church, it was a very large, mixed congregation, and they were having the debates right there. And, you know, the people who thought homosexuality was sinful would be like, well, what do we do with Romans 1 26? Like, you know, what do we do with this? And people would be like, oh, so I suppose you support slavery too. Paul supported slavery, you know, like they just didn't have an answer to the question. They would just deflect, or you know, or just be like, you know, the Bible's just an old book of stories, or you know, and that, you know, like, you know, for someone who cares a lot about what the Bible says, to say, like, well, you don't have to worry about that part, obviously, does not hold water, even though like they might not worry too much about like whether you can eat cork and shellfish or whether you can part your beard one way or the other or whatever, you know, like, but you know, they don't want to, you know, just feel like their approach to scripture is like just throw out the parts you don't like. Um, you know, for some people it's you know the the techniques of communing with the Holy Spirit, right, that you don't find in a liberal church, right? And so, and for some people it's about being part of a conservative community, it's about um, you know, wanting to be wanting to hear the fire in brimstone, wanting to, you know, have to like think about the ways that they have failed and can do better, wanting, you know, like wanting to hear a little of that, you know, uh hellfire kind of stuff, you know, sometimes. You know, it means just lots of different things.

Randy: 50:53

Yeah. And can I refresh my memory? I I think you might have said this at the beginning of the conversation, but when did you start the research for this book?

Dawne: 51:02

Um, 2013.

Randy: 51:04

Okay. So in your book, I can feel I can feel this reality, and in my lived experience in the church and in the world in America, I can really feel this reality. But did things shift in 2016? Um, and by that I mean it felt to me like there was an openness in this conversation about whether you can be a traditional orthodox conservative Christian and be affirming of homosexuality, like like we talk in the church, you know? And then all of a sudden 2016 happened and it felt like bam, the door got like just abruptly out of nowhere shut on that. And whether it's race or sexuality or a number of other these other things, all of a sudden it felt like we got thrown back 30 years all of a sudden. Did you have that same experience in your conversations and your research?

Theresa: 51:55

We did, and I think we saw it, we we were observing how it's playing out in these organizations we were following and in the movement. Um, and we talk about that a little bit where, you know, there were had been this emphasis on kind of, you know, Justin Lee had talked about social justice and the and the Good Samaritan parable and how that had helped him see connections between forms of oppression he had experienced, um, you know, but uh other people that he hadn't really considered. Um and a big shift between what was happening kind of at that conference and then the next time we went, um, there was a sort of radical shift to refocusing on the individual, on stories, on interpersonal relationships, on changing hearts and minds again. So I think we did see um see that happen in the evolution of the movement, and then the way different parts of the movement responded to that. Um and what we which we were just talking about and talking about in chapter six.

Kyle: 52:51

Yeah. A lot of what you focus on in chapter six is the kind of um reaction you might get from a liberal like myself who hears the phrase conservative Christian LGBTQ person and thinks it's a contradiction. Um and I want to say that contradiction has only tightened since what Randy's talking about because now and I'm not the only one saying this, political theorists are saying this, sociologists I think have been saying this, you can correct me on that, but like the Overton window has shifted, so to speak, and like what it means to be a a conservative, much less a Republican, but a conservative politically in the United States is quite different than it was uh twenty years ago or even ten years ago. It's not about economics anymore. Nobody nobody is arguing about you know trickle down, nobody cares, right? Um it's about mostly two things gender, including the LGBTQ stuff. Used to be about abortion, but it's not so much that anymore. Uh I think the trans thing has has replaced that. Um it's social stuff, right? What we would call social stuff, right? The the softer stuff about personal identity. Um with that new reality of what it means to be conservative, at least politically, do you see the kind of position of the people you're describing who want to hold on to a conservative identity but also are affirming of LGBTQ plus people? Do you see that as a kind of a stable um position space? Or do you see that giving way eventually?

Dawne: 54:19

You know, I feel like the there's just been such the ground has shifted so much in the last eight months. Um, and you know, we were done writing the book uh eight months ago, you know, so we haven't um we haven't seen how people are navigating this world now that we're in so much. Um but yeah, I mean I think I mean and I would I would I would add that you know immigration seems like it's also kind of up there with um beating on small trans children. Um I don't know, I mean it seems like just you know, listening to your interview with Matthew, actually, um from whenever that a couple months ago, um, you know, like it seems like he might be a case of that's sort of like circling the wagons, right? And like, you know, I really need to like get into this space and I need them to accept me. And all of these other people that they associate me with, all of these queers who are saying all these objectionable things that have nothing to do with evangelicalism or the church or Christians or anything, are are holding me back. Um, you know, and so there is that kind of like, I think there's a fear happening. Um, and you know, at the same time, I think that there's um, you know, there are a lot of people who are disgusted with what's going on and terrified. And so, you know, I just have to hang on to hope for that. Um, but I don't we haven't looked at it systematically.

Randy: 55:58

Yeah.

Theresa: 55:58

No, and I'll just add one thing that I think what what we were trying to also center were how people understood themselves, right? So that not so much our take on whether the positions that they held for themselves were gonna be stable or or not, but but for people that live at that place of contradiction that you know, you and I I formerly might have said, like that, how can that be? And and trying to make sense of that, they live there and that is who they understand themselves to be. And so really trying to center like, what is it, why is that important to them? And how are they not wanting to resolve that in a neat way that that makes it stable again, right? But to say, like, no, this is who I am, because this community in certain whatever it is, I mean, Don highlighted the differences in the way people understood that, but that was important to them because their religious faith and community, however, they understood that in conservative lens was important to them, important piece of who they were and are, and their love of God and Jesus. And so I think that was what we were in this case really trying to center.

Randy: 57:03

Yep. Yeah, and I think I think there's a lot of people who want to keep their their conservative credentials, right? Who have kind of seen the light, I would say, about human sexuality, and that, you know, this is something that you can be fully Christian and follow Jesus and uh affirm all the stuff of the faith, and you can love queer people and you can embrace them and affirm them and you know, all of that. But I think there's this fear of like, if I compromise on my theory of the atonement, or if I compromise on the way I see the cross, or if I compromise on women in leadership, or if I compromise on the way I see the Bible, that means that I'm gonna be just giving them more fuel for the fire to say you're nothing but a liberal whack job and I can write you off with everybody else. I understand it because I do think that that's just the way people in the church operate, which is just like you're getting less and less trustworthy the more you talk about, you know, all these liberal things. And so there's a fear of that. I just it's why I said I'm a bad liberal, right? Like I'm I'm a liberal, but I think liberals can be stupid at about a lot of things and and hurt themselves in in their cause for the sake of being really idealistic, right? That's just one example. The more boxes and the more committed we are to putting ourselves in these boxes and staying in these boxes and in the fear of like maybe disagreeing with my tribe, which is kind of you know just the opposite of fundamentalism. I think there's just this thing that says, in order for me to be taken seriously by this group of people, I have to affirm all these other things as well. That becomes a problem and untenable. And at the same time, I see the practicality and the pragmatism of it. Do you know what I mean?

Dawne: 58:42

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, that's the the the tension that that we're talking about, right? Like, you know, once, you know, like Teresa was saying, like, once the, you know, so the Marin Foundation took this intentional new intentional neutrality position. Yes, it was not a gay organization, it was a Christian organization, and so people could call them and say, My pastor says I should put my 14-year-old out on the street. Do you think I should do that? And they could hear someone in the other end of the phone saying, like, no, I think Jesus loves your kid and Jesus wants you to love your kid. And then the people working there like took that line, they they played it out, but it just was becoming more and more unlivable to say, like, how can I say I'm neutral on like whether these people I love should be allowed to marry each other or you know, whether trans people exist. I can't just be neutral on that. And because of that, right, they ended up losing this church space that they had, you know, that had been donated to them or that they paid low rent or whatever, right? And the the the the bi weekly meetup stopped happening, and uh, you know, like One of the, you know, previous directors and someone who had just been hired as an intern started the Center for Inclusivity that was like explicitly affirming from the get-go. Like those people who were wondering whether to put their kids out on the street, we're not gonna call that organization at any time. And I I don't know who they called. I don't know if there's another group that has stepped in to take those calls. There probably is. We, you know, it didn't end up in our uh, you know, research, but that doesn't mean any, you know, it's like not like we did a whole census or anything. And that that's the tension.

Randy: 1:00:34

Yes.

Dawne: 1:00:34

And it's a really important tension. And it's like, you know, it's it's difficult to say, you know, you just gotta live with the tension, right? But like the Marin Foundation's bi-weekly meetup groups were literally called the living in the tension gatherings. And they like read from Martin Luther King's letter from a Birmingham City jail every single time they met because that's what they were trying to do, right? Like that is the important thing to do, and that's what has to happen to like make a movement, you know, to allow it to thrive and keep going, is that it has to be uh, you know, con const constantly aware of you know, like different ways that that that could work, different things that could work.

Randy: 1:01:21

Yeah. So much there. We've been talking about that for a long time.

Kyle: 1:01:25

Yeah, really good. Yep. Um can I get you to comment on the constructed nature of Christian ideals, particularly conservative Christian ideals of sex and gender? So here's a quote from your book. This is on page 53. You say the conservative church's intense antipathy towards LGBTQ people distorts love, making it seem incapable of transcending social constructions of gender and sexuality. And in context, I think what you're referring to as social constructions, there is complementarity. So the conservative social construction of gender and sexuality. That struck me because all those people would hear that as like, what? I don't have a social construction. That's not what gender is, right? It's God ordained, it's nature, it's uh the objective fact of the world. So as someone as myself who believes that those things in fact are social constructions, that's something I disagree with Matthew about. We talked a little bit about in that interview. Um how do you what do you what do you mean by love's ability to transcend the construct of gender and sexuality?

Theresa: 1:02:32

Well, we were talking a little bit about this, about this earlier. And, you know, I think first of all, if it wasn't a construct, it wouldn't seem like there would need to be so much work to keep it going. You know, it it so much um, you know, manuals and reminders and you know, policing and surveilling, and and and you know, here's here's what you gotta do. I mean, it it there's a lot of work.

Randy: 1:02:58

It's like its own religion.

Theresa: 1:03:00

Yeah. Well, I mean, we think what we say in chapter two is that we we kind of came to that conclusion that like complementarian view was the greater than the Ten Commandments. It seems to be the seed crystal around which um the entire understanding of God's plan for the universe is organized, so much so that like people were kind of getting the message that like murder could be forgiven, but being gay couldn't. I mean, right? Like that there was something about this that was so central. And so when that takes over and is the sort of lens through which you see everything and become so ingrained that it distorts your capacity to love people. So people that you do love and that you want to love who suddenly appear in your life or your world as the departure from that or a threat to that, or you know, things start to spiral and those people become problems because you fear, right? Because of the fear of needing to maintain the construct over the openness and vulnerability to the discomfort and the fear of like, oh my gosh, ah, what does this mean? This is really uncomfortable, and I don't know what to do with this, but I love you and um help me understand, right? And kind of maintaining that relationship rather than maintaining allegiance to the this ideal, which ultimately becomes kind of an idol, right? I mean, it it it so that's I think part of what we were getting at, and that we saw over and over and over happen, but we also saw people, you know, who came to understand what they had been, like the Robertson story, um, I think is a good story of people who started out with that sort of way that their fear around just real attachment and allegiance to this view of gender and sexuality, they thought they were loving their son Ryan, right? But everything that they were doing was suddenly treating Ryan as a problem to fix rather than the son that they had always known and trusted and were trying to be in relationship with. But they had a long journey that they also speak very publicly about of coming to realize that um uh and then really coming to make that a life's mission to really share their story openly and publicly to help other people see that. But that's the kind of thing I think we're talking about in in that part of the book. Feel free to add, Dawn.

Dawne: 1:05:26

Uh yeah, I don't know. I mean, do you want it, do you want it, do you want Teresa or me to tell you the Robertson story?

Kyle: 1:05:33

No, we we did that in the first episode.

Theresa: 1:05:35

So if if listeners aren't familiar with that, see how get people to listen to your first episode.

Kyle: 1:05:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And thank you, by the way, for listening to our podcast.

Randy: 1:05:45

That's awesome, Don. Um, I didn't want to end this conversation without talking about humility. And, you know, especially in the first half of the book, there's a there's a great emphasis on humility. Humility, particularly epistemic humility, is something that we talk about on this podcast a lot and value highly. And Christians seem and sound like they value we value humility greatly, you know. It's all over our sacred text. Um, however, we certainly, if you look at the way we act rather than what we say, which I think is much more important, we certainly value certainty way over humility. And certainty is just a prideful way of living, right? So in in I would say religious people are just really good at being certain and thinking, I've got all the answers. Not gonna change my mind, because why would I? This is the way God thinks. Um Don, I'm particularly interested in your perspective because you've you you spoke to dozens and dozens of Christians for this project. You've spoken to much more than that throughout your research and life. Um and there's this this beauty about humility to say that says, I'm I I I I might be wrong about about this real big thing, about something that's really important to a lot of people and really important to me. This is what I believe right now, but I could be wrong about it. Or when we sh were shown new information, are we willing to flex on that, and on what our understanding was and actually just be willing to change, be humble enough to change our minds? Christians are not good at that. I mean, I just full stop. We're we're just not good at that. I'm wondering, Don, now this is just like a curiosity for me how has that colored and shaped the way you see Christianity in general, um, with this stubbornness to the way Christians think and what they're convinced they know about a lot of things, and in particular what we're talking about here about human sexuality. I mean because it's frustrating as shit to me. Let me just say that.

Dawne: 1:07:44

Uh you know, I mean, I just I feel like I need to start by saying um you don't have to be Christian to be arrogant, right? There are lots of arrogant non-Christians. And, you know, part of what, you know, the note that we end on is like the arrogance that like secular progressives can have. And um, you know, that like we actually all need humility. We actually all need to like work, you know, against the tendency to dehumanize the people that we see as other. Um and um that that's that's the way forward. Um, you know, just you know, just personally, I mean, there there are times when I, you know, when I've heard someone make some, I mean, it might be a pronouncement, or it might be uh like I'm just asking questions here, like a kind of fake humility, like maybe God does think that women are like closer to animals than men. Maybe God does think black people are closer to animals than white people, like or you know, whatever, like one of these, like, you know, sort of like just asking questions kind of things that I just it's so um like how are you not embarrassed at how pompous you're being, you know? Like, how do you not see what a buffoon you are, you know? And I I I have, I mean, and I say that, you know, having you know, at times been very arrogant, you know, having been very sure of myself, having been very sure that those clowns are all wrong, you know, and um, you know, I mean somebody can say something really annoying, but also be a sweet and kind person, you know, and um I think when people like turn their uh you know their arrogant assumption into like a political program, you know, like when uh you know Antonin Scalia said that like you know, um, you know, sodomy should be illegal because it's objectively disgusting, right? It's like what are you doing? You know what? Actually, Anton and Scalia, uh thinking of you having sex is also disgusting, right? Like, why do you think anybody is like delighted by that thought? And yet, you know, this is somehow the basis for the Supreme Court's decision to like allow sodomy laws to persist until 2003. Like, you know, I mean it's it's really it's astounding sometimes, and it's certainly like I mean, like I was saying before, kind of hinting at like my like I grew up going to church, my experience of church was that it just made no sense, right? The things that people were saying um were did not were not reflected in how they acted. You know, people were making these arbitrary claims, you know, including like my dad, you know, would be like you need to obey me because the Bible says so, you know, or whatever. When it was like, well, if you weren't talking such bullshit, maybe I would, you know. And um, you know, all of it really made Christianity implausible to me. That is why I'm not Christian, right? It was the implausible things that people asserted with this arrogance, like, you know, and sometimes it was like you must blah blah blah. And you know, and sometimes it was this like, we love everybody, you know, in this like complete bullshit way. Um, that just, you know, and doing this research actually, you know, it was there was a different person who one time was like a former pastor, was like went off on a rant, you know, that was kind of a hellfire and brimstone sort of rant, but it was um supportive of LGBT people, you know, it's like this is what the but what it says in the book of Matthew, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, and and I was like, when you talk about Jesus, he sounds like a good guy. And that was actually news to me. It was actually the good news, right? Jesus was a good guy. And it was like, I was like 45 years old at the point when I like got that idea. I had never in my life, growing up Christian, ever gotten the inkling of why people were so into Jesus. Like he didn't ever seem like a good guy. He seemed like the guy people use to justify whatever bullshit they wanted to say. So I don't, I guess that's just me personally. It's not my research. But yeah.

Randy: 1:12:29

Thank you. Thank you for for being honest there. And what does it mean, Don? Uh, it says in the back of the book, you you call yourself a disappointed humanist. What does that mean?

Dawne: 1:12:40

It comes from a joke that George Carlin made. He said, um, uncover, you know, scratch uh uh any cynic and you'll find a disappointed humanist. And I'm not a cynic. I, you know, without hope, we have nothing. I have hope. I have hope. Um, but you know, I I'm a humanist, I'm a secular humanist. I think all of this was created by humans, and um and uh, you know, we're awful disappointing.

Randy: 1:13:11

Got it. Thank you. That's good.

Kyle: 1:13:13

Yeah, it's a last question for me um for both of you. You talk a lot about the connection between love and justice. We haven't even talked that much about love, and that makes me very sad because it's literally the title of the damn book.

Randy: 1:13:25

Yeah, yeah. Um I mean, I think we have indirectly, but whatever.

Kyle: 1:13:28

Yeah, but like I want you to define it, and I want to go into all these things, so we'll have to maybe have a separate conversation. But um you talk a lot about the connection between justice and love towards the end, and you quote a lot of very famous uh social justice activists, and you make a compelling and to me a little bit surprising case for the place of love and justice and the sort of the interrelationship between them. At one point you say, this is on page 168, love repeatedly falls out of the equation as people strive for justice. Can you explain that and what you think that that tight connection really is?

Theresa: 1:14:01

Don, I know you're gonna say you've been talking too much, but this is your you say it so well. I think we need to say this. No, I mean, I could say it, but she please. Well, I mean, I'll forget some of the parts, but you know, justice is justice fights and movements are often fueled by anger, perhaps righteous anger. It doesn't have to be out of control rage, but righteous anger, which itself is on some constructions, and I think what Don and I would agree is is rooted in love. You care about and love people who you see are being mistreated or not getting their due. And so you're fueled, right, by a kind of love to fight for people's rights and to fight for people's place and their ability to be affirmed in their humanity. Um, but if that if the fight for justice becomes, it loses, right, that that anchor and that origin in love and becomes all fight, right? And and you forget to be in relationship with the people you're fighting with and for, to keep listening, to keep open, to keep humble to the ways in which you know their voices are being amplified. It's not just your agenda, but whose agenda is, it's our agenda, right? How how are we in relationship and loving one another in community in this fight for justice? But also um how are we treating and thinking about and relating to people who may uphold the structures that we're opposing? And if we begin to um fail in love or forget love, or it becomes increasingly, you know, not part of the equation anymore, then we can end up reproducing the very dynamics that we're trying to um dismantle. And so for us, I think there's a lot of complicated ways in which love connects with justice, but those are those are some of them that it's really essential ultimately, and it's really the root of um and the anchor of of justice. But conversely, I mean, uh love without justice isn't really love.

Randy: 1:16:01

Right.

Theresa: 1:16:02

So they're we think they have a kind of mutually important relationship.

Randy: 1:16:07

Yeah. Yeah, I loved in that chapter the emphasis that you put on basically in this in this movement, in having a movement fueled by love, which is so such a beautiful thought. Um, it's so easy to turn our the hatred that that you get, that we get, um, into ri reciprocating with hate. But you you have a number of quotes in here, but the one I love the most that struck me was by Valerie Carr. Is that how you say your last name?

Theresa: 1:16:36

Cower, I think. I think it's cower.

Randy: 1:16:38

Thank you. Valerie Valerie Cower, a Sikh thinker and writer, brilliant, beautiful writer. And she said this, and I would just love to hear your take on this as we end our time. She said, The more I listen, the less I hate. The less I hate, the more I am free to choose actions that are controlled not by animosity, but by wisdom. Laboring to love my opponents is how I love myself. This is not the stuff of saintliness. This is our birthright.

Theresa: 1:17:08

Yeah, I highly recommend uh her book, um, See No Stranger, is where that comes from. And she's she's talking about um, you know, confronting people who have physically harmed her, you know, spewed all kinds of slurs toward her, and really trying to think hard about what does it mean not to be. I mean, I know one of you wrote like not to be, not to internalize hate and let it eat me alive, because then I'm no longer um the agent of what I'm what I'm doing. And it's not driven by wisdom, it's driven by and fueled by animosity and this other power, right? But the idea of like loving people and the labor of love to both um try to be curious about and understand how in the world someone could come to a position of such hatred toward me, right? And and that's not the place for everybody. I mean, you you don't, if somebody's actively harming you, she's not saying that's what you should be doing. But what she's saying is, you know, those are that's where allies come in. They can be accomplices in listening. That's what she calls them. Accomplices in listening. It's an important role for allies. But the idea of really trying to understand how in the world another human being could come to this place of hatred and treating people this way, and then try to um make choices then about how to engage and interact with them in a way that is rooted ultimately in hope that they can be better and that they can do better, um, that doesn't return the dehumanization with dehumanization, but also doesn't internalize it and accept it. And so I think we were really moved and taken by her analysis. And thinkers have been saying some version of this for a long time, but she she capsule encapsulated it well. Yeah.

Dawne: 1:18:51

And our the people that we we listened to, saw, you know, spoke with model that you know, like there's that's what we learned from them, right? Is that they're actually living out this wisdom that civil rights organizers have been talking about forever, right? That like you they they they understand where these people who are harming them are coming from. They know they don't, you know, they understand their humanity. They, you know, at one point I was like, it seems like you know, you're kind of we're just worshiping different gods. And you know, people were like, I would never say that because they say I'm not worshiping God. And to have somebody say that to me is so harmful, I would never say that about them. And you know, just the just the love and the hope that they had, right? You know, we we tell the story in the book, you know, this this young man who was talking with these, you know, he was gay, this um couple, you know, that you know, his parents kind of generation that he had grown up within the church. He had a lot in common with the guy who was like a second dad to him, you know. And they were like, we understand all of these arguments about the Bible and everything. We just can't get there with you, you know, we just can't go say it's saying it's okay to you for you to like marry a man. And he was like, you know, that's devastating, it was devastating, right? Like he, you know, was sobbing on the side of the road for half an hour. Like he he really like it was devastating. But he the way he also saw it was it was hopeful because it was just a failure of Christian love, and they could learn to do better because that's what they were trying to do as Christians anyway, and like he they they could that that's what the hope is for everybody is that we can all be better at loving, and so to have that hope rooted in the understanding that human beings are made to love each other, to see each other's humanity, and that it actually takes work to to dehumanize somebody, it actually creates a psychological, like jarring feeling to like be dehumanizing somebody, like that gives people hope, and that hope is in their ability to love.

Randy: 1:21:09

Yes, the book is Choosing Love, what LGBTQ plus Christians can teach us all about relationships, inclusion, and justice. And I want to say if you are listening and you're a Christian, you're a Jesus follower who's just felt for a long time like I want to be affirming, but I there's just a few things holding me back. This book is for you. Uh go find this book on wherever you find books, it's everywhere. Uh, Dawn Moon, Teresa Tobin, thank you so much for joining us again, and thank you for this book. It's a gift.

Dawne: 1:21:38

Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us, and thanks for for for liking our book.

Theresa: 1:21:45

Yeah.

Kyle: 1:21:45

Does this represent a terminus in your professional collaboration or is there more to come?

Theresa: 1:21:51

I hope there's more to come. We started working on there's more to come version of another arm of stuff this summer.

Randy: 1:21:59

I'm assuming terminus is a really professoral way of saying we're not gonna work together anymore.

Kyle: 1:22:04

It's the apex, it's not supposed to be uh derogatory, it's just where you stop.

Theresa: 1:22:09

And I think like we're both interested in love and justice and that relationship, exploring that more.

Kyle: 1:22:14

And yeah, please do.

Dawne: 1:22:15

I don't want to do um work without Teresa.

Randy: 1:22:20

Love it. That's amazing. Thanks for listening to a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar. We hope you're enjoying these conversations. Help us continue to create compelling content and reach a wider audience by supporting us at patreon.com slash a pastor and a philosopher, where you can get bonus content, extra perks, and a general feeling of being a good person.

Kyle: 1:22:50

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Randy: 1:22:58

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Kyle: 1:23:06

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