For the Bible Tells Me So -- Review
Cross posted at Faithfully Liberal -- For the Bible Tells Me So — A Review --
Who would have thought that the consecration of a bishop in New Hampshire of all places would send a fissure though the global church – not just the Anglican Church, but the church as a whole. But the consecration of an openly gay man has done just that, laying bare the divisions over sexuality that permeates the Christian Community. The Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire has become the symbol of our unease with our sexuality and its place in the church.
I just finished viewing a screener copy of Daniel Karslake’s important and surely controversial documentary, For the Bible Tells Me So. I watched it in preparation for my participation in a panel discussion after a screening of the film at the Santa Barbara LGBTQ Film Festival. I’ve known about the film since before its creation, for my friend Rev. Steve Kindle, who is featured in the film, was part of the origins of the idea. I’ve waited some time to see it and it was worth the wait.
The film begins with Anita Bryant, back in the 1970s denouncing the “gay agenda.” Interspersed through the film are angry denouncements of homosexuality on the part of Christians, like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Dobson, and the ubiquitous folk from Topeka’s Westborough Baptist Church.
But that is not the essence of the film. Instead it is the stories of real families who struggle with their children’s sexual identity and their own religious formation. Five families are interviewed – including the family of Bishop Robinson, whose own spiritual foundations are not Episcopal, but Disciples of Christ. His parents still members of the same Kentucky Disciple church that he grew up in share their pride in their son and the journey they took to embrace him as he is, despite their earlier formation. Another famous family is that of former Congressman Richard Gephardt, whose daughter Chrissie is a lesbian. Some of the stories, like those of the Gephardts and the Robinsons are happy, but not all are. Mary Lou Wallner tells the story of her estrangement from her lesbian daughter Anna, largely on the basis of her faith formation and understanding of the Bible – an understanding she got largely from Focus on the Family. That story ends tragically in the suicide death of her daughter. But out of that tragedy came hope, for Mary Lou began to study and found that her previous understandings had been wrong. Now she speaks out on behalf of the gay and lesbian community. There is another family that is conflicted – they love their daughter and welcome her, but they can’t accept who she is. That’s a work in progress. Finally there’s the story of Jake Reitan, a young gay man who grew up in a solid – Lutheran – Christian family. It took time for his family to embrace him as he is, but in the long run they became advocates, standing with him as Soul Force demonstrated at the Focus on the Family headquarters.
The powerful statement these stories make is that this is a personal issue. Whatever your views of homosexuality or of the Bible, things change when it affects your family. How you read the Bible is influenced by your own experiences. That is true of me – I’m a graduate of a leading evangelical seminary, whose president is featured in the film (unfortunately affirming traditional interpretations of these texts that excluded), but when my brother came out, things changed. Our hang up is with sex, but when we realize that this is my brother, or my sister, or my son or my daughter, what do we do? Dick Gephardt says it well – when Chrissie came out, fearing that she might be disowned, he declared a parent’s unconditional love. Love won out. As Mel White put it: “Once they realize who we are up close and personal that fear goes away.”
The film deals with the families, but it also deals with the texts. A series of speakers, ranging from Mel White, Peter Gomes, Desmond Tutu to Rabbi Stephen Greenberg, Disciples pastors Larry Keene and Steve Kindle, and an American Baptist woman pastor Sandra Sparks. Each of these speakers takes on our cultural presuppositions, formed by our faith traditions, and the Biblical texts – of which there are only about six, few of which even apply today in any real way. We hear that Leviticus declares a man lying with a man to be an abomination, but then it also says the same about eating shrimp. As Larry Keene, a Disciple pastor and former Pepperdine professor points out, the question isn’t so much what the Bible seems to say, but how we read it and use it today.
At the heart of the debate is the question of choice – is it a choice or not? The film takes on this question creatively, through the use of a brief, at times humorous, but pointed cartoon. This piece sits in the middle of the film, providing both comic relief and movement forward on the discussion. And as most reputable science states, this isn’t a choice, it is one’s identity. If so, then we must ask: what next for our society?
We live at a time when the vast numbers of people are biblically illiterate and read the Bible in bits and pieces, influenced largely by their own upbringing. This reading is combined with great amounts of fear. It is true that our society’s greatest fear is of male homosexuals – a fear of a feminization of a man. To be gay is to be – in the eyes of many – feminine. Gay men, such as White and Robinson, make it clear that this isn’t true. But the fear is still there, and it’s a fear we must address. Our fear leads us to plead with gays and lesbians to stay in the closet, but as Mel White points out, the “closet is a place of death.” Young gays, feeling suppressed and forced into a closet, with no one to talk with, too often and very tragically, take their own lives. And why? Because our society is permeated by fear of the other and formed by outmoded interpretations of the Bible.
Is this film biased? Of course it is. It is a strongly stated, but not in your face, statement of the dignity and equality and the humanity of our gay and lesbian friends, neighbors, and family members. It is a film that must be seen. At this point it is in fairly restricted distribution, but hopefully this will change – for the church must change so that the world might change.
If the film begins (with the exception of the Anita Bryant outburst) with an introduction of the Robinson family, it appropriately ends with his joyous and yes controversial consecration as Bishop of New Hampshire. The world will never be the same – and that’s a good thing.
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