The Future Is in the Margins
by Rebecca Brothers | 24 April 2024 |
My favorite comedian/philosopher, Jackie Kashian, once said about immigration, “Nobody packs up everything and flees to a new country because things are going well,” and I reckon the same could be said for churches. Nobody packs up everything and flees from a church because things are going well. Nobody becomes a spiritual refugee because they felt loved and safe and affirmed where they were.
There comes a point, I believe, in every spiritual refugee’s life when they stop asking “How long can I stay?” and start asking “How fast can I leave?”
When I saw the title of the Adventist Today article: “Rocky Mountain Conference Leadership Will Disband Boulder Church If It Accepts a Gay Member,” my first thought was, “Huh? I thought the decision to accept or reject members lay with the local church, not the conference office.”
But I was an Adventist too long for any optimism to last. Forget whatever policies exist on paper: things work differently in practice. Female Adventists are respected, as long as they stay quiet and circumspect and don’t experience the Spirit’s call to ordained ministry. LGBTQ+ Adventists are respected, as long as they stay quiet and celibate and content with second-class status.
And speaking as a queer female ex-Adventist who, like Dave and Peter Ferguson, found spiritual refuge in the Episcopal Church, I am in awe of the Fergusons’ courage in seeking church membership, just as I was in awe of the optimism I saw in liberal Adventists before the General Conference’s vote concerning women’s ordination in 2015.
The world needs more of those optimists. The world needs more Daves and Peters. We have so much to learn from them: their honesty in the face of persecution, their faith in humanity, their commitment to justice, their belief that society can and should be better, their willingness to step out as pioneers to show us the path to that better world.
The late great Rachel Held Evans once wrote:
The folks you’re shutting out of the church today will be leading it tomorrow. That’s how the Spirit works. The future’s in the margins.
I have every bit of confidence that the leadership of the Adventist Church will eventually look back on this episode in church history and collectively grieve what could have been: a chance to break down the walls they built, a chance to practice radical hospitality and empathetic pastoral care, a chance to add more seats to the table. Fear and ignorance won today, but if I’ve learned anything from Christianity, it’s the promise that love bats last.
“It’s Friday,” as Tony Campolo likes to say in his sermons, “but Sunday’s coming.”
May it be so. Amen.
