Christian Hate and Evangelical Anxiety

Yesterday, the PFLAG Group I help lead held a picnic at Frame Park. It was your average picnic — what we call in the midwest “Hot Dish.” Everybody signed up to bring something, we had some lawn games and face painting for our kids. Pretty much what you would see at any church picnic or family reunion. What set this apart were the protesters. That’s right. Protesters. Members and leaders of a local independent Evangelical church came to protest our “Sinful Lifestyles.” Now, if you’re not familiar with PFLAG, our base mission is to be a support group for parents and families of members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Our first chapter was formed in 1972 (as “Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays” — we now only use PFLAG and not the former name), and we have over 400 chapters across the United States. I often say that we are the most boring group in the LGBTQIA-supporting umbrella. But yet, here we were, having our picnic protested simply for daring to exist in a public place.

There is much more to be written about what this means for the LGBTQIA+ Community, and the implications if right-wing Christians are now in the business of protesting ordinary picnics. But as a pastoral theologian, I want to spend a little time reflecting on the dangerous topic of what’s going on in their minds.

For the most part, when their pastor wasn’t busy yelling at us and calling me a “Judas Priest,” (which I think he thought was very clever, and I found hilarious since I’m a metal fan) they kept to themselves about 30 feet away. Here’s the part of the interactions I’m focussing on here: Individuals or small groups kept coming over and trying to engage us individually while we were sitting and eating. Here’s a non-verbatim, somewhat idealized example (I was actually pretty hot — after all, these people were again PROTESTING AN ORDINARY PICNIC and giving Jesus a really bad name):

A: “Sir, you’re a priest?”

Me: “Yes”

A: “Then can I talk to you about Jesus?”

Me: “Are you having a problem with your faith?”

A: “No, but I’d like to tell you about Jesus.”

Me: “This is a private picnic. I am eating with my friends, whom your group is actively insulting on a loudspeaker over there. Please go away.”

A: “But I just want to talk to you about Jesus.”

Me: “Jesus is the savior of the world. He is also my Personal Lord and Savior. I have asked you to leave me alone. You are now harassing me.”

A: “But Jesus….”

At that point, I just ignored him. So why do they engage in this behavior? I mean, they’re obviously not going to succeed at what they claim they are there to do. Holding up “Homosexuality is a Sin” and “Remember Lot’s Wife” (don’t get me started on that one, that story had nothing to do with homosexuality) signs is not going to predispose anyone there towards hearing the Gospel. Disrupting a picnic is not going to make anyone want to listen. Refusing to go away when you are told you are harassing a person makes you an A**h*** no matter what religion or ideology you are trying to convince someone of. Plus, the kind of talk about sin they were using is code language that sometimes works on lapsed Christians who grew up inside the Evangelical (or Catholic) tradition but makes absolutely no sense to anyone outside the Christian faith. So if this method was obviously not going to work, why do they do it this way? Two reasons — and neither have to do with Jesus as actually presented in the Gospels, but all about their insecurities.

1. This is about assuaging a vengeful God to save themselves. I will assume they are sincere in their belief that anyone who does not accept Jesus as their “Personal Lord and Savior” will burn in hell for eternity (I have a problem with this from a theological perspective, but that’s not the topic here). There is a corollary that God expects followers to witness to everyone around them. If they don’t then the follower can be held responsible for that person not being saved. I remember reading the story of a young evangelical who dreaded airplane flights because he felt that if he didn’t witness to the person on the plane next to him, that person might die without accepting Jesus and would not be saved, and then HE would be to blame. This belief is a product of the “American Work Ethic” and hard to reconcile with the Gospels. The Gospel of Luke is very clear about how you handle rejection of your message, “But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’’’ (Luke 10:10–11). Then you LEAVE. In lectionary-based churches, we’ve just finished the Gospel readings in Matthew that talk about spreading the Word as agricultural parables. God (and disciples as well) sow the seed of the Gospel everywhere. Some of it falls on good ground and sprouts. Other seeds don’t. That’s not a function of what the sower does but the ground it falls on. It’s clear in the Gospels that what is required of a follower is witnessing to the Gospel — not continuously haranguing someone who doesn’t want to hear your particular interpretation. Doing that makes it all about you and your anxieties, not about the Gospel.
2. This is about martyrdom and actively seeking persecution in order to make themselves feel righteous. If you believe the above about God being vengeful, angry, and really only willing to relent from punishing you for eternity unless you say some specific magic words, then how do you make God happy? How do you prove to God your worthiness? By being persecuted for your faith. But how do you do that if you are an American, white, heterosexual, cisgendered protestant? (That’s me also, full disclosure) How can you be persecuted if you have all that privilege baked into you as a member of a group that has controlled America since our founding? How about going to “witness” to some group you know will reject you, and then acting in ways that will absolutely ensure they will reject you? BINGO. After being told to go away multiple times, you can go home feeling good about yourself, because now you’ve done something that PROVES you’ve suffered for your Angry Parent God, and perhaps He will relent from punishing you for all the secret thoughts you are ashamed of. Instead of being a person with privilege, you can now claim you are a victim. One of the protesters yesterday repeatedly put his foot into our rental area and practically begged us to have him arrested (Note: we did not — it was pathetic). The early church had a problem with this. Christians would go around doing things to provoke the authorities to punish them — actively seeking martyrdom. This was such an issue that the Council of Elvira in 306 had to issue an edict saying that Christians that provoked the authorities by smashing idols were to be refused the title of martyr. There really is no functional difference in what these people are doing. It’s Christian masochism at its doctrinal worst.

There is really no way to square what they were doing with what the Gospel teaches us about spreading the message of Jesus, because their method makes witnessing to the all-encompassing love of God for us functionally impossible, and they prefer it that way.

I’m sure we will run into these people again. We are in many ways the perfect foil. They get the rejection they crave without the in-your-face confrontation some other groups in the LGBTQIA+ umbrella might employ. I’m angry with them because they are triggering for those in our group who have experienced hate speech before. I also feel sorry for them, because their faith is obviously weak, narrow, and fragile if it requires such performative actions that signify nothing. I also fear for the children in this church. Imagine growing up inside that, especially if you happen to be LGBTQIA+.

The late Rachel Held Evans, who was someone who rejected her upbringing in such a church once wrote an excellent post on this subject:

As an introvert, the thought of chasing down a jogger in a public park so I could ask him if he ever committed adultery made me physically ill. So, even though I prided myself on being known on campus as “Bible Girl,” I chose not to live for Jesus on the days Mark spoke in chapel. Instead, I stared at my shoes, flush-faced and ashamed, as a few of my classmates rose reluctantly to their feet. They always came back from those trips looking confused and tired and stressed about whatever class they’d skipped for Jesus. I gathered things didn’t go exactly as planned. “Well, at least we planted some seeds,” they always said. But we knew what that meant.

“Planted seeds” are the consolation prizes of failed evangelists.

And this is the failure of this way of thinking. Planting the seeds of the Gospel is what we do as followers of Jesus. The thing is, we have to give up control. How the harvest yields is up to God. Certainly, trying to fertilize the harvest with hate will not help the yield.