Space for Questions and Belonging
Space for Questions and Belonging
by Christina Brinks Rea
It was the first time since my profession of faith that I had ever been excluded from communion. Opening day mass on my first day of graduate school at the University of Notre Dame: the auditorium was packed, and I remember being surprised at how efficiently the eucharistic ministers served the throngs of students and faculty who had turned out for the event, well over a thousand people. But when the server arrived at my row, I crossed my hands over my chest. I knew I wasn’t welcome at this table.
Despite this beginning, my years at Notre Dame turned out to be a largely positive experience of ecumenism. Among my professors were lay Catholics, priests, and a nun; a Protestant or two; and Jews, including a rabbi. It was a rich experience in every way, as I learned to see the Bible through a wider lens, and as I studied side-by-side with people who had very different beliefs than I did but who shared the same deep reverence for scripture.
But it was also an eye-opening experience, as I found myself to be, for the first time in my life, in the religious “minority.” I am a lifelong CRC member, and attended Dordt University and Calvin Seminary. I had always been an insider, and here I was an outsider. The “real presence” theology I had learned and loved at Calvin Seminary was, at Notre Dame, so egregiously wrong that I could not take communion. My description of a communion practice at a Grand Rapids CRC that I had found meaningful brought a round of laughter from a majority Catholic class and professor, before they told me exactly what was wrong with it. Notre Dame has its own definition of “unchastity,” and I fall on the wrong side of it. My husband and I have made family planning choices that are wholly acceptable in the CRC, but that put us in the category of “unrepentant sinner” at Notre Dame.
But all the while, I went happily each Sunday to the lone, little CRC in South Bend, where I found love, acceptance, and a ready welcome at the table. My experience at Notre Dame gave me a deeper appreciation for the Reformed tradition, and greater compassion for the outsiders in our midst. It was also a valuable reminder that no one denomination’s judgments are absolute, but God’s alone.
So why not simply separate ourselves, based on our views on LGBTQ inclusion? Why not join with like-minded people and call it a day? Some are saying that’s our best bet in the CRC. Part ways as amicably as we can, so that we don’t have to fight this out, so that we can be at peace, separately. There are many good reasons to stay together, and in her book, Heavy Burdens: Seven Ways LGBTQ Christians Experience Harm in the Church, Bridget Eileen Rivera gives us one more. Denominationalism is not the solution here, she says, because debates about human sexuality involve “the stigmatization of a person’s humanity, not just their theology” (p. 188).
Rivera is a gay Christian who holds a traditional view of marriage, and has chosen celibacy as the way to live out her faith and convictions. But she also recognizes the harm that results when LGBTQ people are required to arrive at the same conclusion before being able to join a church. This communicates to LGBTQ people that their belonging is conditional and will be revoked if they don’t stay in line, or if they even begin exploring another way of thinking about things.
She goes on to point out a double standard in our churches. Heterosexual people are ready and willing to show grace to one another on the complicated, thorny issues of sexuality that concern them, such as birth control, or divorce and remarriage. We may have different views on these things, but we recognize that they involve complicated and personal questions, and we give space for one another to explore and even come to different conclusions without questioning one another’s salvation. And yet, we do not give LGBTQ people the same grace and the same space to explore or even ask questions about complicated, thorny issues of sexuality that concern them. Indeed, it is now the case that to join the CRC, one must have already thought about these issues and arrived at a particular conclusion. Those who are still exploring are not welcome - or at least only conditionally accepted.
One of the things I value most about my upbringing and education in the CRC was the invitation to think and to study, both the book of God’s Word, and the “book” of creation. As a young person, the CRC welcomed and embraced me as I thought through such wide-ranging topics as predestination and election, six-day creationism vs. theological evolution, and women’s ordination. I was given freedom to explore these topics, and never made to think that it was wrong to ask the questions. Human sexuality is at least as complicated as any of these, and it touches not just on our theology but on our very humanity. Can we be a denomination where we are permitted to ask the questions and think things through at our own pace? How can we not be?
There was a time when Catholics and Protestants tortured and even killed one another for their views on baptism and communion. Now, we can sit side by side in the same classroom. My strong hope for the CRC is that we will not part ways, but continue to worship side by side with each other, whether we are “affirming” or “traditional,” whether we have settled views on matters of human sexuality or - like so many - are still asking the questions.
