Review of Our Strangely Warmed Hearts: Coming Out Into God's Call by Karen P. Oliveto. 2018, Abingdon Press, Nashville.
by Ben Roe, for the newsletter of Affirmation: United Methodists for LGBTQ Concerns
Bishop Karen P. Oliveto was elected and consecrated a bishop in 2016 in the Western Jurisdiction of the UMC. She has written an outstanding book, combining historical overviews of culture and United Methodist Church, drawn from her PhD work at Drew, with ten first-person witnesses of LGBTQ United Methodists. It may be the first publication by Abingdon of the voices long-silenced by the rules and prejudices of the denomination. Finally: a UM publication that actually gives voice to LGBTQ people!
She dedicates the book “to those who have served faithfully in silence, Who found their hearts strangely warmed by the presence of God through the ministries of The United Methodist Church. Those for whom the Holy Spirit made a way when there was no way. In gratitude for their service and witness.” This captures the experience of GLBTQ persons over the past couple of centuries, and especially over the past 46 years in the UMC.
Bishop Karen then draws on the research and writing she did for her PhD: 93 footnotes in the first chapter, “The Gay Liberation Movement: Homosexuality and American Culture,” and 80 in the second, “The United Methodist Church and Homosexuality”! While she starts with the well-known Stonewall Riots in 1969, she quickly points out how gays have been a part of American history from the start: on March 10, 1778, George Washington's documents show a “court martial of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin for attempted sodomy.”
It is a masterful treatment of the history of homosexuality in American culture, beginning with the whole problem of definition, and the fact that “homosexual behavior has been noted in virtually every culture, each culture has interpreted and valued this behavior differently.” She gives a brief overview of different interpretations found in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and then points out the invention of the term “homosexual” in 1869 by the Austrian-born German journalist, activist, and writer of memoirs, K.M. Kertbeny. She traces the movement from “sin” to “sickness”: from religion to psychiatry and psychology, from “temporary aberration” to a state of “inversion” – a state of being, “a kind of interior androgyny” says Foucault. “As a result of this medicalization, homosexuality became both a disease and a crime.”
She catalogs the growth of a gay community from Chicago in 1924 to the post-World War II founding of the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, in the midst of the scapegoating culture of the 1950s. She notes Evelyn Hooker's research as beginning the normalization of gay people, that showed no significant mental illness in her homosexual subjects compared to her straight subjects. The movement out of the “sickness” model was marked by the change in diagnostic criteria by both the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations in the 70s.
Stonewall was the beginning of a political movement which she traces through the AIDS crisis, same-gender marriage and the gay Christian movement. Of particular interest to me was the section on the role of religion in society, using Peter Berger's The Sacred Canopy and Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life to take the discussion deeper into how culture and religion function in human life. This is a helpful insight: “Since religion plays such a prominent role in defining reality and structuring human society, it is not surprising then that LGBTQ persons recognize religion to be both oppressor and liberator.”
Another highlight is the story of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, growing out of the work of Ted McIlvena and Cecil Williams of Glide Church in San Francisco, and the goals of the group, beginning with the experience of gay people and moving into the study of human sexuality itself.
She shows the growth of denominational caucuses like Affirmation (1975) and Dignity (1969) and the founding of the MCC in 1967. The restrictions on ordination in multiple denominations are outlined and the first ordination of openly gay Bill Johnson in the UCC noted, as well as the ground-breaking work by John Boswell, showing that Christian tradition is not always anti-gay.
She closes this chapter enumerating the five gifts Nancy Wilson writes that LGBTQ persons offer to church and society: coming out, eroticism, humor, creativity, and a more complete image of God.
Most if not all of our readers are painfully aware of the history of the UMC as it has dealt with the “issue” of homosexuality—by making it an “issue” and not about the human beings affected by the reality. The second chapter of the book gives this painful history, and even uses the image of “The Door is Locked” to describe the 1984 General Conference. She points out the gravity of the initial decision in 1972, to change the words in the Social Principles from a pastoral focus to a condemning and judging one: tacking on one sentence in the midst of heated debate (and, I would add, late in the evening on the closing day of the Conference) “set the tone for all future discussions on homosexuality and the UMC.” She correctly characterizes the effect of the 1976 ban on funding any true dialogue as “silencing voices.” Youth had called for a study of homosexuality for 11 years, and after the 1988 GC approved a commission to do the study, the 1992 GC only “received” it. Bishop Karen enumerates the results of the study (it is out of print). This chapter is as well-documented as the first, and corrects the record on the Commission on a Way Forward, which was said to consider all sexuality issues: its focus is entirely on homosexuality and how the denomination can maintain unity.
Section Two of the book points out that “What has been lacking in our denominational debate has been conversations with LGBTQ United Methodist clergy and laity.” In a particularly damning statement of truth, she says “the denomination has allowed non-LGBTQ people define the lives of LGBTQ people and invalidate their personal relationships with Jesus Christ.” So, using the statements of ten LGBTQ persons, she moves the discussion forward by including these voices. Each “letter” is represented one way or another, and includes a cross-cultural view from a variety of individuals, people of color and the Philippines Central Conference.
As readers of this newsletter know, the stories are powerful, painful, wrenching, and finally hopeful, because that is often our experience. Now in a book published by a publisher affiliated with the UMC, stories may at last be heard, thanks be to the first openly-Lesbian bishop, who is committed to giving voice to the voiceless and living out Beloved Community.
In the closing pages of the book, she points out the steep cost of treating people as an “issue”: the loss of gifted, called, and committed laity and clergy to other churches, denominations, and even death. “The United Methodist Church has veered from its love ethic and grace-filled theology, failing to recognize the way God's love and grace is moving in the lives of its LGBTQ members.” It is time to turn back to the grace-filled love ethic in our Wesleyan roots and reclaim their depths.