Category Archives: Book Reviews

Chris Glaser: Presbyterian and pan-denominational leader

At the 1976 Presbyterian General Assembly, More Light Presbyterian founder David Bailey Sindt was joined by others, including seminarians Bill Silver and Chris Glaser. In fact, Silver’s candidacy for ordination through the New York Presbytery was on the agenda because the presbytery was uncertain how to respond to his ordination request, and they kicked it upstairs to the General Assembly for “definitive guidance.” The assembly responded by creating a task force to study, solicit churchwide input, and report back. Openly gay seminarian Chris Glaser was appointed to the task force.

The public hearings across the country were tedious at best and homophobic at worst, and Glaser later wrote.

Yet many of us on the task force found the hearings frustrating: we had already learned so much that we found ourselves astounded and exasperated by the ignorance of the majority of those who testified … Many attacked us for being on the task force, questioning our own morals, character, and judgment … Our faith and our intelligence were offended as person after person used their time (and ours) to read from a dusty Bible its handful of verses presumed to be about homosexuality–as if we hadn’t heard them before, as if we couldn’t recite them verbatim!

After more than a year of study and dialogue, it was time to prepare a report to be submitted to the 1978 General Assembly for consideration and action. Fourteen members supported an inclusive majority report

May a self-affirming, practicing homosexual Christian be ordained? We believe so, if the person manifests such gifts as are required for ordination …

Five dissenters supported a restrictive minority report:

That no possibility for the ordination of a self-affirming, practicing homosexual person should be granted …

When the report became public, conservative opposition mobilized and when General Assembly 1978 rolled around, they were ready. The majority report was quickly rejected, and the commissioners (delegates) went beyond the minority report, adopting a resolution with a 90% majority stating,

“homosexuality is not God’s wish for humanity” [and] “unrepentant homosexual practice does not accord with the requirements for ordination.”

This resolution would control Presbyterian policy for a generation.

Glaser’s path to Presbyterian ordination had encountered an insurmountable roadblock. He diverted into non-ordained ministry. He founded and directed The Lazarus Project, an LGBT ministry in Los Angeles. He remained an active leader of More Light Presbyterians and contributed as editor and writer for More Light Update and later, Open Hands Magazine, an award-winning pan-denominational publication. He also penned numerous books; to date, a dozen have been published. Finally, in 2005 he was ordained, but through the Metropolitan Community Churches rather than the Presbyterian Church.

Rev. Glaser continues to write, speak, and lead workshops and retreats, and his latest offerings can be found here. Chris has also been an invaluable source and fact checker for my own work, and his endorsement will appear on the book’s back cover:

Queer Clergy is a comprehensive, carefully documented, and highly readable account of a movement that transformed mainline Protestant denominations into more welcoming spiritual communities for LGBT Christians. There is still much work to do, but Holmen’s well-written history reminds us of our basis for hope.

This is the ninth installment in the series Cast of characters countdown. I will continue to post biographical notes about the iconic pilgrims and prophets on the road to full inclusion who are featured prominently in my soon-to-be-released book, Queer Clergy. Here’s the list of prior posts:

1968 Troy Perry (founder of the MCC)

1970 Robert Mary Clement (gay priest who marched in the first Gay Pride parade)

1972 William Johnson (first out gay man to be ordained by a traditional denomination)

1977 Ellen Marie Barrett (first out lesbian ordained to the Episcopal priesthood)

1974 James Siefkes (Lutheran pastor behind the formation of Lutherans Concerned)

1974 David Bailey Sindt (founder of More Light Presbyterians)

1975 Steve Webster (organized the first gathering of gay Methodists)

1975 Dr. Louie Clay (founder of Episcopal Integrity)

Ellen Marie Barrett: Ordained as an Episcopal Priest in 1977

In 1970, the Episcopal General Convention authorized diaconal ordination for women, a non-sacerdotal role. Two years later, Bishop Paul Moore, Jr., of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, interviewed Ellen Marie Barrett, an early female candidate for ordination to the diaconate.

I asked her to sit down on the sofa across from the wing chair where I usually sit when someone comes to see me. Ellen is tall, with dark brown hair conservatively styled. She, like many tall people, stoops a little as she walks. Her most arresting feature is her eyes, which appear honest, deep, and welcoming … In conversation, she seems rather soft, until the discussion finds its way into an area of faith or conviction. Then you strike rock.

Though the progressive bishop was impressed with Barrett, he did not recommend her for ordination to the diaconate because she was an out lesbian. Barrett attended seminary. When she finished in 1975, she again asked Bishop Moore to approve her for ordination to the diaconate. He relented, and she was ordained a deacon in December, 1975 before a few church ladies, a few students, and her proud Southern mother. The ordination barely disturbed the church mice even though Barrett had been elected co-president of Integrity, an Episcopal LGBT advocacy group, at its inaugural national meeting earlier that year.

The following summer, the Episcopal General Convention went further; church canons were revised to allow women to be ordained to the priesthood, and many lined up for ordination when the policy would become effective in January, 1977. Deacon Barrett was among the hopeful women, but she and Bishop Moore weren’t prepared for the firestorm that awaited them. TV networks were there for her January ordination, which was a Time Magazine feature story.

The bishop and the lesbian priest were hounded mercilessly with calls, letters, and rejection. The last years of the decade of the seventies degenerated into the “height of homophobia” within the Episcopal Church. Barrett didn’t have a comfortable career and faced crushing depression. Eventually, she joined the Order of St. Benedict as Sister Bernadette.

In researching her story, I located her in the Diocese of Newark, and I asked her to comment. Months passed, and I heard nothing. Then, a long email arrived. With Sister Bernadette’s permission, the entire email appears as a poignant coda to the Episcopal section of my book.

Here’s a snippet:

Would I do it again? Knowing what I know now? That’s not a question that can possibly have an answer. Today is a very different time. I have no idea whether God would have moulded my combination of weakness, pig-headedness, and some talent into what another time would need. I was what I was, and I did what I did, in the context of a particular time and socio-political climate.

Am I still convinced it was the right thing to do? Yes. Done the right way by the right person? Who knows? It is what it is. And priesthood is as much a part of me as green eyes and once black hair turning white.

I am a priest forever. That’s all.

This is the fourth installment in the series Cast of characters countdown. I will continue to post biographical notes about the iconic pilgrims and prophets on the road to full inclusion who are featured prominently in Queer Clergy. Here’s the list of prior posts:

1968 Troy Perry (founder of the MCC)

1970 Robert Mary Clement (gay priest who marched in the first Gay Pride parade)

1970 William Johnson (first out gay man to be ordained by a traditional denomination)

1972 Ellen Marie Barrett (first out lesbian ordained to the Episcopal priesthood)

1974 James Siefkes (Lutheran pastor behind the formation of Lutherans Concerned)

1974 David Bailey Sindt (founder of More Light Presbyterians)

William R. Johnson: 1972 Gay Ordination

The Christopher Street Liberation Day parade from Greenwich Village to Central Park on June 28, 1970 was peaceful. Though police turned their backs on the marchers, they honored their parade permit.

Across the nation in San Francisco, police were less respectful at a much smaller event that same day, consisting of a couple of hundred queers at a ”Gay In” at Golden Gate park; police arrested several of the participants. San Francisco was years away from its later reputation as an LGBT friendly city.

Five years earlier, on New Year’s eve 1965, San Francisco police had broken promises made to the clergy organizers of a ball sponsored by the Council on Religion and Homosexuality. When police attempted to crash the ball, the word went out to the clergy organizers: “Get down here and wear your collar.” Lutheran pastor Chuck Lewis kept flash bulbs popping, and his assistant, Jo Chadwick, stuffed his film negatives in her bra to prevent the police from confiscating the photos. At a later press conference, clergy offered the “cloak of the cloth” moral authority, and the eyes of the nation witnessed the reality of police harassment of the gay community.

Five months after the arrests at the “Gay In” at Golden Gate Park, another historic event would quietly unfold across the Bay. Sitting atop “Holy Hill,” the neo-Gothic structures of the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) stand in stately vigil over San Francisco Bay across from the Golden Gate bridge. The stone and timber halls of PSR had long witnessed Christian activism. Founded by Yankee congregationalists from the east in 1866, the seminary prided itself on a “courage born of rashness.”

Four hundred students and others attended a homosexuality symposium in the seminary dining hall on November 11, 1970. When someone made an incendiary comment about gays, a young seminarian found himself rising to speak. His spontaneous comment changed his life and the course of church history.

I am not a faggot, I am not a queer, I am not a fairy–but I am a practicing homosexual. And I can say that with joy–it is an affirmation which I make with pride.

Despite his impromptu “coming out” and over the objections of the seminary president, William R. Johnson continued in seminary and the Golden Gate Association of the United Church of Christ (UCC) ordained him to the ministry in June 1972 around the third anniversary of Stonewall. The UCC had accomplished another historic “first”—the first ordination of an out gay man by any traditional Christian denomination.

Thus began a distinguished career as the pastor to countless gay Christians, including many closeted clergy, and as the pan-denominational prophetic leader of the movement toward full inclusion. Rev. Johnson served as inspiration and strategist for the fledgling LGBT advocacy organizations that appeared in Protestant denominations during the 1970s, including as founder and first leader of what came to be known as the UCC Coalition. Later, he served for many years in the UCC home office.

Pastor Johnson has only recently retired. Elmhurst College, his alma mater, has honored him with an annual lecture series in his name. Pastor Johnson has also been a fact-checking source and supporter during my compilation of Queer Clergy: A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism.

He offers this endorsement of the book:

“I have always known that this historical overview of the religious LGBT movement was needed not only to tell our movement stories to the masses but to make same-gender loving people aware of a significant but often overlooked part of their own history. This is a significant work by justice ally Obie Holmen — a singular contribution toward the full inclusion of LGBT people within Christian community and society. Many will be surprised by the breadth and depth of the movement in the Church.”

Where to buy the book

Print copies are available from Amazon, the publisher, Barnes and Noble, Cokesbury, or an autographed copy straight from me. Amazon offers it in digital, eBook format for Kindle, and Barnes and Noble offers it for Nook. For iPad or other Apple users, you may order through the iTunes bookstore. Search on RW Holmen.

This post is part of the series Cast of characters, which are biographical snippets and summaries of the stories of the iconic pilgrims and prophets on the road to full inclusion who are featured prominently in Queer Clergy. As with all these posts, this is merely a summary of the full story, which is woven into an overarching narrative in the book. Here’s the full list of these posts:

1968 Troy Perry (founder of the MCC)

1970 Robert Mary Clement (gay priest who marched in the first Gay Pride parade)

1972 William Johnson (first out gay man to be ordained by a traditional denomination)

1974 James Siefkes (Lutheran pastor behind the formation of Lutherans Concerned)

1974 David Bailey Sindt (founder of More Light Presbyterians)

1975 Steve Webster (organized the first gathering of gay Methodists)

1975 Dr. Louie Clay (founder of Episcopal Integrity)

1976 Chris Glaser (longtime Presbyterian activist)

1977 Ellen Marie Barrett (first out lesbian ordained to the Episcopal priesthood)

1978 Loey Powell (early UCC lesbian pastor and activist)

1980 Mark Bowman (founder and leader of RMN and editor of Open Hands Magazine)

1982 Melvin Wheatley (Methodist bishop and straight ally)

1987 Ann B. Day (Led the UCC ONA for twenty years)

1990 Jeff Johnson, Ruth Frost, Phyllis Zillhart (Extraordinarily ordained Lutherans)

1990 John Shelby Spong (leading straight ally in the Episcopal House of Bishops)

1992 Janie Spahr (Presbyterian leader of “That All May Freely Serve”)

1994 Ross Merkel (defrocked Lutheran allowed to remain on call with a “wink-and-a-nod” from his bishop)

1996 Walter Righter (Episcopal Bishop whose heresy trial opened the door for queer clergy)

2000 Jimmy Creech, Greg Dell, Joseph Sprague, and Jack Tuell (Methodist trials to punish clergy who performed covenant services for same-gender couples)

2001 Anita Hill (extraordinarily ordained Lutheran)

2003 Gene Robinson (gay bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire)

2004 Karen Dammann and Beth Stroud (Methodist clergy put on trial for being lesbians)

2007 Bradley Schmeling and Darin Easler (defrocked Lutheran clergy who were the first to be reinstated)

2011 Scott Anderson (first gay Presbyterian to be ordained following policy change)

2011 Amy DeLong (out, partnered Methodist minister on trial)

2012 R. Guy Erwin (gay professor elected as ELCA bishop)

Robert Mary Clement: Gay archbishop

On a June summer’s evening in 1969, a gay Catholic priest and his partner heard a disturbance a few blocks away from their Greenwich Village home. It seems a routine police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, had gone awry, and the queers didn’t go quietly. Riots continued for the next couple of days, and the gay liberation movement was born.

A year later, the priest and his partner prepared to participate in a parade to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots. A light beamed from the Oscar Wilde bookstore, and as if drawn by a beacon, a few faceless strangers shuffled out of the shadows to gather in awkward silence. By the time the sun first peeked over Brooklyn across the East River, a crowd of hundreds milled about the bookstore that had become the de facto headquarters for the audacious planners of Christopher Street Liberation Day to celebrate the first anniversary of Stonewall. At the time, they didn’t realize they would make history in the first Gay Pride march.

Father Robert Mary Clement, a priest associated with Old Catholicism, a non-Roman spinoff, donned his priestly garb, like he did every Sunday, while his partner prepared a placard and orange flyers that they would distribute at the parade. Father Clement’s presence in the parade garnered much attention, especially by the press and the picture-takers, second only to the drag queens; after all, he marched as an openly-gay priest, in collar and cassock, carrying the banner, “Gay People This Is Your Church.” Meanwhile, his partner distributed their colored fliers inviting queers to attend The Church of the Beloved Disciple.

A few weeks later, the tiny congregation of the Church of the Beloved Disciple paid more than they could afford to rent the spacious sanctuary of Holy Apostles Episcopal church in lower Manhattan, but as the time drew near for the Sunday afternoon service, it appeared that their invitation to the Christopher Street marchers would go unheeded. Father Clement peeked out from the sacristy fifteen minutes before the start and there was no one there, but then:

Two o’clock, we opened the side sacristy door for our procession. We couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t just that every seat in the church was filled, the aisles were packed. That church, which would hold maybe six hundred plus in a squeeze, had over eight hundred people in it, and we don’t know how many people were turned away that day who couldn’t get in.

Because we had all the Protestants, the Orthodox, the Catholics. And on top of it all, you had, the most incredible thing, we had Jewish people, a lot of them. Because they wanted a home. Even though it was Christian, people were seeking God, they were seeking a relationship to the divine, and they would come to us because everyone else had rejected or turned them away. They had nowhere to go. [emphasis added]

In the early years of the decade of the ‘70s, the Church of the Beloved Disciple would be a safe haven for gays and lesbians of lower Manhattan. Father Clement and his partner would later relocate to California where Father Clement became an archbishop for an independent Catholic group, and he has remained active in the interfaith LGBT movement on the west coast.

Where to buy the book

1968 Troy Perry (founder of the MCC)

1970 Robert Mary Clement (gay priest who marched in the first Gay Pride parade)

1972 William Johnson (first out gay man to be ordained by a traditional denomination)

1974 James Siefkes (Lutheran pastor behind the formation of Lutherans Concerned)

1974 David Bailey Sindt (founder of More Light Presbyterians)

1975 Steve Webster (organized the first gathering of gay Methodists)

1975 Dr. Louie Clay (founder of Episcopal Integrity)

1976 Chris Glaser (longtime Presbyterian activist)

1977 Ellen Marie Barrett (first out lesbian ordained to the Episcopal priesthood)

1978 Loey Powell (early UCC lesbian pastor and activist)

1980 Mark Bowman (founder and leader of RMN and editor of Open Hands Magazine)

1982 Melvin Wheatley (Methodist bishop and straight ally)

1987 Ann B. Day (Led the UCC ONA for twenty years)

1990 Jeff Johnson, Ruth Frost, Phyllis Zillhart (Extraordinarily ordained Lutherans)

1990 John Shelby Spong (leading straight ally in the Episcopal House of Bishops)

1992 Janie Spahr (Presbyterian leader of “That All May Freely Serve”)

1994 Ross Merkel (defrocked Lutheran allowed to remain on call with a “wink-and-a-nod” from his bishop)

1996 Walter Righter (Episcopal Bishop whose heresy trial opened the door for queer clergy)

2000 Jimmy Creech, Greg Dell, Joseph Sprague, and Jack Tuell (Methodist trials to punish clergy who performed covenant services for same-gender couples)

2001 Anita Hill (extraordinarily ordained Lutheran)

2003 Gene Robinson (gay bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire)

2004 Karen Dammann and Beth Stroud (Methodist clergy put on trial for being lesbians)

2007 Bradley Schmeling and Darin Easler (defrocked Lutheran clergy who were the first to be reinstated)

2011 Scott Anderson (first gay Presbyterian to be ordained following policy change)

2011 Amy DeLong (out, partnered Methodist minister on trial)

2012 R. Guy Erwin (gay professor elected as ELCA bishop)

Troy Perry: Founder of MCC

Months BEFORE Stonewall, outed Pentecostal pastor Troy Perry invited the gay community of Los Angeles to a worship service, and the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) was born. This is a brief account of his story.

Troy Perry was born to a family of bootleggers in the Florida panhandle, and he exhibited a youthful bent toward preaching. Perry became a Baptist preacher at age 15, married a preacher’s daughter at age 19 with whom he fathered two children, and was assigned as pastor to a Pentecostal Church in Santa Ana, California at age 22. Six years later he attempted suicide after he had been defrocked and divorced, and then life got interesting.

In October 1968, 8 months before the Stonewall riots of Greenwich Village marked the birth of the gay liberation movement, Perry held a worship service in his Los Angeles home for members of his gay community. Twelve persons dared to show up. They sang. They read Scripture. They prayed. Perry preached. They shed tears as they shared bread and wine.

That was the first worship service of what became the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) movement with hundreds of predominantly gay congregations popping up around the country and around the world in what would become the first welcoming church for gays and lesbians at a time that the rest of Christendom, including the mainline, Protestant denominations, remained hostile.

In the early years, the MCC survived several arsonist fires, including a horrendous tragedy in New Orleans that claimed the lives of 32 persons. By the time of Perry’s retirement in 2005, the MCC had grown to over 250 congregations in 26 countries with 43,000 members.

Of course, the book goes into greater detail.

Where to buy the book

1968 Troy Perry (founder of the MCC)

1970 Robert Mary Clement (gay priest who marched in the first Gay Pride parade)

1972 William Johnson (first out gay man to be ordained by a traditional denomination)

1974 James Siefkes (Lutheran pastor behind the formation of Lutherans Concerned)

1974 David Bailey Sindt (founder of More Light Presbyterians)

1975 Steve Webster (organized the first gathering of gay Methodists)

1975 Dr. Louie Clay (founder of Episcopal Integrity)

1976 Chris Glaser (longtime Presbyterian activist)

1977 Ellen Marie Barrett (first out lesbian ordained to the Episcopal priesthood)

1978 Loey Powell (early UCC lesbian pastor and activist)

1980 Mark Bowman (founder and leader of RMN and editor of Open Hands Magazine)

1982 Melvin Wheatley (Methodist bishop and straight ally)

1987 Ann B. Day (Led the UCC ONA for twenty years)

1990 Jeff Johnson, Ruth Frost, Phyllis Zillhart (Extraordinarily ordained Lutherans)

1990 John Shelby Spong (leading straight ally in the Episcopal House of Bishops)

1992 Janie Spahr (Presbyterian leader of “That All May Freely Serve”)

1994 Ross Merkel (defrocked Lutheran allowed to remain on call with a “wink-and-a-nod” from his bishop)

1996 Walter Righter (Episcopal Bishop whose heresy trial opened the door for queer clergy)

2000 Jimmy Creech, Greg Dell, Joseph Sprague, and Jack Tuell (Methodist trials to punish clergy who performed covenant services for same-gender couples)

2001 Anita Hill (extraordinarily ordained Lutheran)

2003 Gene Robinson (gay bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire)

2004 Karen Dammann and Beth Stroud (Methodist clergy put on trial for being lesbians)

2007 Bradley Schmeling and Darin Easler (defrocked Lutheran clergy who were the first to be reinstated)

2011 Scott Anderson (first gay Presbyterian to be ordained following policy change)

2011 Amy DeLong (out, partnered Methodist minister on trial)

2012 R. Guy Erwin (gay professor elected as ELCA bishop)

Last minute edits

Last week, I read my Queer Clergy manuscript for the umpteenth time. As I tell my wife, sometimes I really like it and other times I think it is fluff. This latest re-reading of the manuscript marked up by Pilgrim Press copy editor, Kris Firth, was positive. Perhaps it was her editorial feedback:

I applaud you on your scholarship, writing, and the scope of the material, but also on the excellent condition of the manuscript. It’s obvious that you have had editorial review prior to submission.

Actually, the MS hadn’t been edited previously, except by me, but I confess to nit-picking scrupulosity. In any case, her suggested edits are now in place, and the “page proofs” will be available for final review soon. Galley copies are in the hands of potential reviewers, and I wait, mindful of my days as a trial attorney, sucking in a long, deep breath as the jury shuffled out of the courtroom to begin deliberations.

Gays in the Pulpit

I have several writing projects underway. I recently posted about Prowl, a compilation of five short stories based upon my Vietnam experience. I have also been working on a sequel to A Wretched Man. Third, last spring I started work on a non-fiction piece, tentatively titled Gays in the Pulpit, which will be a forty-year retrospective on the gay rights movement within the church. Now that we are settled into our new digs in Arlington Heights, I have again picked up that project in earnest.

I am personally acquainted with many of the more recent heroes of the push for full inclusion including Lutherans Anita Hill, Ruth Frost, Phyllis Zillhart, and Emily Eastwood; United Methodist Amy Delong; and Presbyterian Scott Anderson. If you click on their names, you will link to prior blog posts about these individuals.

My current research is also introducing me to earlier heroes. In 1968, Troy Perry was a gay Baptist/Pentecostal preacher who founded the Metropolitan Community Church, which now numbers over 250 predominantly gay congregations internationally. Father Robert Mary Clement was a gay priest who marched in the first gay pride parade in Greenwich Village and whose Beloved Disciple Church ministered to the gay community of New York City in the early ‘70s. Bill Johnson was the first openly gay man ordained by an established denomination way back in 1972 by the United Church of Christ. Ellen Barrett was the first out lesbian to become an Episcopal priest in 1977.

As I am reviewing the data from these early days, I have received invaluable assistance from Rev. Clyde Steckel, retired dean of the United Seminary of the Twin Cities. Rev. Steckel was witness to and participant in the UCC steps toward gay inclusion in the ‘70s. The record in the UCC is striking because they were so far ahead of the other mainline denominations. The UCC accomplishments in the 1970s foreshadowed the actions of the Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists a full generation later.

More to come.

A Wretched Man Movie?

About six weeks ago, I was contacted by a Hollywood screenwriter who expressed interest in adapting A Wretched Man, a novel of Paul the apostle into a screenplay. Following discussions and negotiations, we have today reached agreement. The screenwriter, who has been in the movie industry for nearly a decade, shares my vision and passion. In his first email to me, the screenwriter commented:

I am fascinated by the story and believe that it could make a really intriguing film—something independent, honest, touching … a film that takes these Biblical giants and makes them accessible, human, and endearing. What I like about your take on the story is that when Paul is wounded—it actually seemed to hurt. I think a movie like that would speak to many.

Whether A Wretched Man reaches the silver screen or not remains a long shot. After a screenplay is completed, the screenwriter must then persuade a producer or other monied interests to invest in a film, but I am convinced that the screenwriter has the appropriate experience, expertise, and contacts to give it a good shot.

Indulge me in a bit of fantasy. For those of you who have read the book, what actor should play the role of Paulos? Shall I, a la Hitchcock, play a cameo role? Perhaps the character of Eli the sage? Or Jubilees, the phantom seer?

Submissive wife?

At the Republican debate last night, Michelle Bachman was asked whether she was a submissive wife. Perhaps the question itself was sexist, but prior Bachmann statements suggested that she accepted certain Biblical writings about women rather literally, and the question was asked against that background:

It is a philosophy that Michele Bachmann echoed to congregants of the Living Word Christian Center in 2006, when she stated that she pursued her degree in tax law only because her husband had told her to. “The Lord says: Be submissive, wives. You are to be submissive to your husbands,” she said. [referring to Titus 2:5]

Last night, Bachman responded to the question by suggesting she “respected” her husband. Equating “to submit” with “to respect” is more than a tiny stretch, but I’m sure her minions were satisfied with her Biblical exegesis.

Coincidentally, New Testament scholar Dom Crossan suggested a better way of dealing with Paul’s alleged sexism in a Huffpost blog article yesterday. It is Crossan’s thesis that Paul was actually a flaming women’s libber that subsequent generations of the church needed to tone down. The blog post was merely a snippet in a popular medium of a theme that Crossan, Marcus Borg, and many current Biblical scholars have promoted in more scholarly media.

The basic thesis is that Paul was essentially egalitarian—there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female—in his own writings but the pastoral Epistles (1st & 2nd Timothy and Titus) were written by others in order to correct Paul. This is the central thesis of The First Paul, co-authored by Borg and Crossan and reviewed here. This seems to me to be a more intellectually honest way to approach the sexism of Titus and the 1st Timothy passage below:

I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. 1st Timothy 2:12

Although his thesis is not new, Crossan adds a new argument; he uses a defaced, early fresco to further his point. Crossan claims the defacement of the fresco demonstrates the shift away from the egalitarian early church to the patriarchal church of a later generation.

The historical Paul is being pulled — kicking and screaming — away from Christianity’s radical past and into Christianity’s Roman future. As with owner and slave so also with male and female, hierarchies rejected by Christian radicality — in, for example, Galatians 3:26-28 — are being retrofitted into Roman normalcy.

Dom Crossan and Paul the apostle

Former Catholic priest John Dominic Crossan is a co-founder and highly visible spokesman for the Jesus Seminar, a progressive group of New Testament scholars active in the last twenty years seeking to identify “the historical Jesus”.

Recently, he has turned his attention to Paul the apostle. A few years ago, he co-authored, with Marcus Borg, an excellent book entitled The First Paul (2009), which I reviewed in three separate posts. Here’s a link to the three posts in reverse order. The central thesis of the book is that the thirteen New Testament books traditionally ascribed to the pen of Paul the apostle may be broken into three groupings: a) the radical and authentic Paul who was a social visionary vis a vis the existing culture—an opponent of slavery and proponent of a strong role for women, b) the conservative Paul, three books that may have been written by Paul but probably weren’t and which evinced a retreat from his radical social views, and c) the reactionary Paul, the so-called pastoral epistles consisting of 1st & 2nd Timothy and Titus, which were definitely not written by Paul and indeed were written to correct Paul’s radicalism, to re-establish the Roman social order of slavery and patriarchy.

Crossan is again writing about these themes in a highly public forum, the Huffington Post. His article is not only on the religious section of the Huffpost, but appears on the main page under the banner The Search for the Historical Paul: Which Letters Did He Really Write? As I write this, there are over 200 comments to Crossan’s Huffpost article, and like many public cyberspace forums, the “trolls” dominate. Many are anti-Christian, and a few are conservative Christians who insist, even if the human authorship is not Paul, that the subsequent letters were “spirit-breathed” and thus all letters are consistent and true (the holy trinity of inerrant, infallible, and inspired).

Crossan’s article is brief and seems not to plough new ground but merely restates the conclusions voiced earlier in the collaboration with Borg. Here is the central thesis of the Huffpost article:

The problem is that those post-Pauline or Pseudo-Pauline letters are primarily counter-Pauline and anti-Pauline. What happens across those three sets of letters is that the radical Paul of the authentic seven letters (Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon) is slowly but steadily morphed into the conservative Paul of the probably inauthentic threesome (Ephesians Colossians, 2 Thessalonians) and finally into the reactionary Paul of those certainly inauthentic ones (1-2 Timothy, Titus).

Crossan’s article includes this recently rediscovered and cleaned up fresco of Paul dating to the 13th century. Note that Paul holds not one scroll and not thirteen scrolls but ten, signifying that the dubious authenticity of the pastoral epistles is not merely a recent understanding. Indeed, in 2nd century lists of authoritative books that served as precursors to the formalized New Testament canon, the pastoral epistles are generally not included.

By the time The First Paul was published in 2009, my own manuscript for A Wretched Man, a novel of Paul the apostle was already completed and in the hands of the publisher. Thus, my research did not include The First Paul, but my conclusions were similar–but I had a special authorial problem. In a novel about the life of Paul, how could I suggest that six books traditionally attributed to him were not actually his? Written after his death, such books were not part of his story in a strict sense. Additionally, how could I make the point that he held radical views regarding slavery and women to rebut the traditional stereotype of Paul derived from the NT letters to Timothy and Titus?

My solution was two-fold. First, the novel included the circumstances and the writing and the delivery of the seven “authentic” letters. The six “inauthentic” letters were not mentioned at all, an implicit but indirect statement that they were not part of Paul’s story. Second, Timothy and Titus were important characters in the novel, protégés of Paul. In a purely fictional device, I placed offensive words about women quoted from the NT book of Timothy in the mouth of Timothy the character and offensive words about slavery from the NT book of Titus in the mouth of Titus the character. In both instances, the novel offers a strong rebuke from the lips of Paul.