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I don’t guess I need to say much of anything about the National Cathedral inviting Max Lucado to preach as many have said anything I’d say more eloquently.
I will say this though — as a priest with lots of faithful LGBT friends, I just don’t know how many more times we can ask faithful LGBT folks to just be fine with having their fundamental dignity put up for debate and diminution.
I respect the leadership of the National Cathedral — and I place a high value on Church unity. But inviting Mr Lucado does little to advance unity in our own Church and does much to undermine our place as a home for LGBT folks.
Unity cannot mean that we constantly say to one group of us that we view them as an object for conversation or dialogue. If we deem our LGBT siblings in Christ as fully members of the Body of Christ then I’m not sure how we invite someone who has advanced “reparative therapy.”
I have friends I respect with whom I disagree on this. With that said, it is heartbreaking to me that we seem to place so high a value on “unity” with folks outside our tradition that we are willing to send a message that we place little value on our LGBT siblings in our Church.
It’s not just that the preacher in question is out of step with our Church. It’s that he’s been so vocal about it — when someone has made the “this is like bestiality and incest” comparisons it moves them into a different category to my mind.
There are preachers who could bring the Gospel, disagree in charity, and come to the table in good faith. I’m just not sure that, without clarifying those past really inflammatory comments, this would be a person I’d expect to hear in the Episcopal Church.
I do not, for a minute, believe that folks who do not support same sex marriage within the Church are all homophobes or the like — I do think that comments about bestiality and incest in the context of this disagreement are not good faith arguments.
There are many who chose this Church because it finds within the Creeds and doctrine a support for human dignity that extends far beyond LGBT related issues. They also chose this tradition because of its sacramental integrity.
Choosing to invite Mr Lucado undermines that choice and obscures the grounding upon which we have built our case for the dignity and worth of all people in God’s eyes. If he has had a change of heart, then let us rejoice with him and hear that word.
I’m the first to push for unity in the Church. I’m also someone who values bringing people together who disagree. I also think that we’re asking a lot, again, of LGBT members to ignore the kind of rhetoric that has been so death-dealing for so many LGBT youth.
