In June 2018, the RCA General Synod commended the “Great Lakes Catechism on Marriage and Sexuality” for consideration by the Commission on Theology (COT) and the wider RCA. In response, a diverse group of people from the LGBTQ community, parents, pastors, educators and others shared their thoughts with Room for All and the COT, offering alternative perspectives on a faithful ethic for living as sexual and gendered people of God. Room for All is grateful for the opportunity to share those responses in “Outsights” over the next several weeks.
The God in my Bible
Elder Darren J. Major, New York
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The history of this church has been dotted with moments of “theological reflection” that have created a barrier to God. These moments have consistently been led by groups of misguided theological scholars who are self-appointed spokespersons for the will of God in the church. From slavery to the ordination of women…these men just keep getting it wrong and refuse to learn from the errors in the past. Resting on unearned privilege and a self-serving interpretation of the Bible, they are again taking us down a dark road that we will spend decades walking back. As a black gay cis-gender man, I am emboldened to work to press “stop” on this descent. They are getting it wrong…again.
They got it wrong with slavery. After the Dutch Reformed Church solidified itself in New Amsterdam, its theologians decided that it was God’s will that they began to engage in slave trading in Africa. Dutch involvement in the slave trade and slavery in the Americas were sanctioned by a majority of Reformed theologians. They decreed that Dutch merchants could purchase Africans and that Dutch-speaking persons could hold slaves owing to the “Curse of Ham,” that horribly inaccurate idea that claimed that God had “elected” (cursed) black peoples to be slaves for white folk.
And to make matters worse, those ancestors decided that God called them to save the souls of the savages but also be selective about baptism. This baptism doctrine was rolled out once they realized that baptism for my people created a feeling of freedom and pride. They couldn’t have “those people” tapping into God so baptism was a blessing offered only to a select few. This is just one example of how the church has willfully drafted false theology and used it to block access to God for people seen as “other.”
The Great Lakes Catechism is another misstep drafted by a new generation of spokespersons for God. It is not based on grace-filled theology, dismisses our capability to interpret Scripture for ourselves and is a brand of discriminatory rhetoric that serves to homogenize this church further. The Levitical Law is the first example of the privileged deciding what is “best” for the “chosen people.” What does any of it have to do with God and God’s plan for us?
I would be better able to digest anything beneficial about the catechism if its writers admitted to cherry-picking the Bible to best fit the unspoken agenda of creating a straight white church run by men.
I know that this is not the will of God. At least not the God in my Bible.