All posts by Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He was called to Atlanta in 1994 to pastor All Saints MCC. Five years later he founded Gentle Spirit Christian Church. He lives in Decatur with his husband Bill, who he met in 1982 while living and working in Ohio and legally married in 2015.
Seeds of Hope

“If I Tell My Church They Will Say I’m A Sinner”

I’ve been questioning my sexuality. I think I’m bisexual but I’m not sure. But I’m scared if I tell my friends they will not like me anymore and if I tell my church they will say I’m a sinner. Do you have anything to help?

Dear Gen Renaud,

It seems your concerns appear to involve a lot of fear of the unknown. You fear that if you pursue the life of your sexual orientation will you end up being rejected by your friends and your church will judge you as a person worthy of hell.

I have come to recognize that your fears and concerns are rooted in the way you were taught to view God. So in essence, the only way that you will be able to get past those fears is to change the way you view God. So let’s see if we can help with that.

A book written by Bruce Bawer called “Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity” helps us to understand the real source of our fears when it comes to sexuality. The source of this fear is the difference between an attitude of love and an attitude of law. On page 5 of this book Mr. Bawer states:

Simply stated, conservative Christianity focuses primarily on law, doctrine, and authority; liberal Christianity focuses on love, spiritual experience and… the priesthood of all believers. If conservative Christians emphasize the Great Commission — the resurrected Christ’s injunction, at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, “go to all the nations and make them my disciples” — liberal Christians place more emphasis on the Great Commandment, which in Luke’s Gospel reads as follows: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

What these few words means is we have a choice as to whether we see God as a strict authoritarian who demands that all come to God in a specify way or we see God as a loving Creator who desires that all would come to God and would treat each other accordingly.

You seem to be focused on the point of view that is based on the law and authority figures who have decided they speak on behalf of God.

Yes, you can make a choice as to how you shall view God and who you will choose to believe.

However, I must tell you that to believe God would create something with free will and then ultimately destroy that creation because it didn’t follow the law is rubbish.

Why did Jesus when asked, state that the Greatest Commandment was to love God and to love your Neighbor? He never said in order to be okay with God and not go to hell you must obey the law of the church (synagogue), rather he spent all of his ministry telling folks to love God and giving them example after example of how they could show and could live that love. The women caught in adultery, the raising of Lazarus, the blind person healed, the Roman Centurion slave healed, the women with the issue of blood healed.

Read Jesus’ words:

When you have done this to the least of my brothers or sisters you have done this to me. (Matthew 25:40)

Be not be judges of others, and you will not be judged. For as you have been judging, so you will be judged, and with your measure will it be measured to you. And why do you take note of the grain of dust in your brother’s eye, but take no note of the bit of wood which is in your eye? (Matthew 7:1-3)

Then Jesus said to the people and to his disciples: “The scribes and the Pharisees have the authority of Moses; All things, then, which they give you orders to do, these do and keep: but do not take their works as your example, for they say and do not. They make hard laws and put great weights on men’s backs; but they themselves will not put a finger to them.” (Matthew 23:1-4)

But a curse is on you, scribes and Pharisees, false ones! because you are shutting the kingdom of heaven against men: for you do not go in yourselves, and those who are going in, you keep back. A curse is on you, scribes and Pharisees, false ones! for you go about land and sea to get one disciple and, having him, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. A curse is on you, blind guides, who say, Whoever takes an oath by the Temple, it is nothing; but whoever takes an oath by the gold of the Temple, he is responsible. You foolish ones and blind: which is greater, the gold, or the Temple which makes the gold holy? (Matthew 23:13-17)

Yes, my child of God you can chose to live in fear by the law, authority and or judgements of those around you or you can choose to live by the words of Jesus and his examples.

If your church decides to call you a sinner then know there are other churches you can belong to which teach about a loving God. I challenge you to read the words of Jesus and see that all fear has been cast out and in its place given that of perfect love.

God Bless,
Pastor Paul

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.

Pastor's Corner

In Atlanta, Hell is Exactly 33 Degrees Fahrenheit

Christians talk an awful lot about hell. But have you ever stopped to imagine what hell is really like? I mean really. Stopped and imagined. Eyes closed. The world pushed away. Just you and whatever vision of hell is in your head — or at least at the edge of your thoughts.

Got it? Okay. Now let’s compare notes. Was it anything like this?

  • Shivering and reduced circulation.
  • A slow, weak pulse, slowed breathing, lack of coordination, irritability, confusion and sleepy behavior.
  • Slow, weak or absent respiration and pulse — and the irrational desire to engage in “paradoxical undressing” as one loses rationality, nerves become damaged and one begins to feel incredibly hot.

Now, before you think I’ve lost my mind with that third bullet, let me explain the source of that term “paradoxical undressing”: The three descriptions above constitute the three stages of hypothermia.

So am I saying that hell is cold rather than hot? No. At least not literally.

Rather, I believe that hell is existing in the absence of God’s love. Or rather, living in the absence of the awareness of that love. Call it a distancing.

And if you wanted to distance someone from God, to really cause them to doubt or forget or even curse God, how might you do it? Well, here’s one recipe:

  • Saddle them with a mental illness, an addiction, a crippling life circumstance or a seriously bad choice (or series thereof).
  • Let the condition(s) above distance them from friends and loved ones.
  • Jeopardize their livelihood.
  • Cause them to lose their home.
  • Degrade their health.
  • Let them sleep on the streets.
  • Put them at the mercy of cold weather.
  • Let hypothermia set in.
  • Allow them to die alone.

If any version of that happened to you, would it strain your relationship with God? Even a little? (Maybe some of it has. I don’t want to assume, I’m just painting a picture.)

As I write this, I’m personally aware that a variation on what I’ve just laid out has happened to at least three people in our midst in recent days. Three children of God, my friends. Three blessed souls subjected to what I would argue is hell on earth.

And not only is this preventable, but the tools to prevent it exist and get used. So how do three people die anyway? Let’s just say that at least one of the tools is, shall we say, tragically mis-calibrated. That tool is called a warming center, and there’s more than one in the city of Atlanta. Several of them open once the temperature dips below 41 degrees, and several more open when it dips below 36 degrees. They’re all mostly small, accommodating anywhere from five to 100 people in a metro area with an estimated 3,000 homeless. They’re also all privately operated by nonprofits.

The largest warming center of them all, operated by the City of Atlanta, can accommodate more than 100 people but is seven miles from downtown, outside 285, and at least a 46-minute public transit journey from Five Points. It also doesn’t open unless the temperature dips below 33 degrees.

And that, my friends, is how three people have ended up dead before the official start of winter. Are you upset yet?

Most mornings I start my day with a cup of coffee, a meditation, a morning prayer and the posting of a thoughtful saying I’ve nicknamed “For the Day’s Journey” that anyone can join me in keeping in mind as we go through the day. One morning this week, my daily saying was this one by the theologian Rob Bell:

Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death.

It’s a dramatic oversimplification, but in service of a point about Christianity’s less than pretty moments. And almost immediately after posting it on Facebook I received the following comment:

… let’s all pray that the city has the common sense to open all three large warming centers tonight, we all know that a black woman died under the same kind of weather circumstances two weeks ago… I am putting a Facebook event page together asking folks to help us get the people moved to the warming centers…

The writer of that comment being so in tune with my thoughts in the moment that I briefly considered charging him rent for the space he’s clearly occupying in my head.

Unfortunately, what he was suggesting that particular 50-degree day — that people volunteer to help move the homeless to warming centers — only works if they’re actually open. It’s been a topic of debate in my circles for the last three weeks.

And I’ve heard a whole range of excuses, chiefly these two:

  • It costs too much. So now we know there’s an actual calculus of some kind when it comes to the value of a human life here in the richest nation the earth has ever seen.
  • The temperature isn’t low enough. The overnight low temperature in the last six days having been 46, 43, 39, 37, 46 and 39 degrees as I write this.

So what’s low enough? Apparently, according to the City of Atlanta it’s exactly 32 degrees — which as you’ll recall from fifth-grade science class is referred to as “freezing” because it’s the temperature at which water changes from a liquid to a solid state. It becomes ice. And how much of the human body is water? Sixty percent. In fact, according to H.H. Mitchell in the Journal of Biological Chemistry:

  • The brain and heart are 73 percent water
  • The lungs are 83 percent water
  • Skin is 64 percent water
  • Muscles and kidneys are 79 percent water
  • Bones are 31% water

I feel qualified to speak on the subject of being outdoors in all kinds of weather because my own congregation meets outdoors every Sunday morning. And in the 12 years since we started doing that, we’ve realized that any weather conditions that result in a wind chill below 40 degrees are just too uncomfortable even for a church that moved outside on purpose so as to truly be a “Church Without Walls”.

And it’s not as though we show up unprepared. We wear layers, we bring blankets, we build a fire. And all this just to get through an hour under a picnic shelter that keeps us dry (but also shields us from the sun, which is great in July and not so great in January).

So at this time of year we watch the weather forecast for 10:30am Sunday in Candler Park pretty closely, and we try to make the call by Thursday or Friday of each week as to whether we’ll move to our version of a warming center, the chapel at First Christian Church of Decatur, where our offices are located. (And in fact, this weekend’s call was to move indoors.)

Before we started doing that, we endured some comically quick outdoor services in the winter — our record being a bright, brutally cold Sunday where we came, worshipped and left so quickly that one parishioner who showed up 15 minutes late surveyed our usual meeting place and concluded that we must have cancelled the worship service altogether.

So if we can learn that, why can’t the City of Atlanta? What exactly is their calculus that guides them to act as though any outdoor temperature above 32 degrees is just fine for an unsheltered human?

Consider this: According to the National Weather Service’s Wind Chill Chart, even a five-mile-an-hour wind can make a 35-degree temperature feel like 31 degrees.  A 10-mile-an-hour wind makes it feel like 27 degrees.  A 15-mile wind, 25 degrees. And so forth.

Are we collectively not smarter than a fifth-grader here? Or are we ourselves just cold to the reality of what’s happening? Three. People. Have. Died. In essentially autumn weather.

Actually I’m not sure who’s in a bigger hell right now, the homeless or us. When my church distributes hygiene kits to the homeless, the most frequent expression of thanks I hear is “God bless you.” So I’m thinking that the average homeless person is actually acutely aware of God. I’m thinking they actively yearn for God’s love. That they recognize acts of kindness as blessings from God. And that they immediately reflect that blessing back onto the giver of that kindness.

Which we probably need, now that I think about it. Maybe we’re the ones being ministered to. Maybe we’re the ones who are the most separated from God right now: We with our collective calculus about the worth of a human life and, connected to that, our inability to correctly calibrate our live-saving tools to reflect actual science and experience. We who have homes, meals, hot water, heating, clothes, and the love and friendship of those around us.

We have all those things but we can’t be bothered to reflect those blessings back onto the least among us. Instead, we’re apparently content to live in a city that famously issued one-way bus tickets to homeless people in advance of the Olympics, and where that particular chicken has come home to roost in the form of an investigation by The Guardian showing that Atlanta is one of the top two mainland U.S. destinations for homeless people being bussed out of other cities.

So have we learned our lesson? With Atlanta the host city for the multimillion-dollar Super Bowl LIII, I think we’re about to find out. And whether we bus anyone out of town again or just chase the homeless away from where tourists are most likely to be, we’ve still got our little 33-degree problem. Or if, God forbid, a homeless person dies on a cold street during the Super Bowl, will the spinmeisters determine that it was of natural causes?

I mean, whatever we need to tell ourselves, right? And in the next breath we can go on about affordable housing, that old shibboleth I’ve been hearing on politicians’ lips again lately. But does housing help addicts recover? Does it treat mental illness? Does it come with a living wage? Because if not, then we’re not politically serious about homelessness; we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

But it feels so good! It feels like we’re helping. It feels like we care. It feels like we get it. And we couldn’t be more out of touch: Out of touch with our fellow humans, and therefore out of touch with God’s will for all of us.

And isn’t that a kind of hell? The most clever one you could imagine? One that doesn’t even feel cold, or hot, or lonely, or deprived? It doesn’t feel like any of the things we externalize hell to be.

Hell feels like self-satisfaction, like we’ve done enough. Like maybe there actually are disposable people. We can’t save everyone! Or can we?

Can we afford not to?

God goes to incredible lengths to remind us that in God’s eyes, we’re all equally children of God and therefore equally worthy of God’s love: Wonderfully, uniquely made fragments of none other than God, who presents you with the paradox that you are but one of billions of grains of sand in the universe, and that God created all of it for you.

It’s just another window into understanding God’s true anguish over a forgotten woman dying on a cold street.

God cannot love you or me unconditionally if God isn’t also with the freezing woman. God is there with her in our place, pointing the way to our salvation. In a faith that teaches that we are all brothers and sisters bound by Jesus Christ, for us not to want to be there too is the spiritual equivalent of avoiding our own sister’s deathbed. It’s a journey down a cold road.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, not for a moment longer. And we are by no means prisoners of our past. Because in the eyes of the God of love, each of us is also as innocent as the day we’re born. Each of us is only a moment away from redemption. The definition of repentance being simply to change direction.

This Christmas, can we not collectively admit that the direction in which we’re going isn’t working? That it’s actually destructive? Because it’s not only destroying human life, it’s also destroying us. When a person dies of accumulated collective neglect on a street in the richest nation in human history, our choice is either to feel it deeply or not at all.

I choose to feel it deeply, because the alternative is hell on earth.

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.

Pastor's Corner

Advent 2018 Theme: Getting Busy

The first Sunday of Advent 2018 is December 2nd. Here are the message, readings and sermons for the season.

Advent 2018 Message

As we look at God’s word, we need to understand how the Christ (as the word of God) comes to humankind now and how we can receive and carry the Christ’s presence today. This starts with our attitude… the guides for which can be found throughout scripture. I am calling this attitude “Getting Busy”: Awareness and watchfulness, getting prepared, doing the work, understanding the all-inclusive Gospel. The task then becomes to take a journey over the next four weeks to come into a full consciousness with God, who comes to us in Jesus the Christ, and in fact to be prepared to get busy doing the Gospel — using words if needed.

Advent 1 Readings: “Pay Attention”

Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

Advent 2 Readings: “The Mechanics of Being Prepared”

Malachi 3:1-4
Luke 3:1-6
Philippians 1:3-11

Advent 3 Readings: “What Should We Do?”

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18

Advent 4 Readings: “The First Shall Be Last”

Psalm 22:25-31
James 3:17-18
Luke 1:39-45
Luke 1:46-55

Advent 2018 Sermons

Remember: To turn on the volume for any video you play, just click on the speaker icon in the lower right corner of the frame. These videos are reposted from our Facebook page, where we post our weekly sermon videos. You can also listen to them on our podcast.

December 23, 2018

Sermon for December 23, 2018. From the Gospel reading: “I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing the song of my Savior God. God took one good look at me, and look what happened — I’m the most fortunate woman on earth!”

(Luke 1:46)

December 16, 2018

And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

Luke 3:10-14


December 9, 2018

So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

(Philippians 1:9-11)


December 2, 2018

Don’t brush this off: I’m not just saying this for some future generation, but for this one, too — these things will happen. Sky and earth will wear out; my words won’t wear out.

(Luke 21:33)

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.

Pastor's Corner

From Inclusivity to Inclusion

Six years ago I made what felt at the time like a strong statement about inclusivity. I railed against the splintered, inward-focused nature of the institutional Christian church, and about the irony of that fact given that the people in that ossified, bickering church profess to follow one of history’s most radically inclusive figures, Jesus Christ.

In that statement I was focused mostly on behaviors – by the things done and left undone by the average churchgoer, and also by the institutional church. I put the onus on each of us as individuals to own the nature of Christian inclusivity and to take proactive steps to ensure it.

But recent events have got me thinking that inclusivity – with all its trappings of open doors, welcoming congregations and affirming practices – still may not be enough.

Let me give you an example. At my church we practice an open communion. We believe the Lord’s Table constitutes an invitation that comes from none other than God, and that it’s not our job to come between the Table and anyone (and I truly mean anyone) who may feel that invitation.

But in the same church that doesn’t bat an eye when I say that during the communion prayer, I also have congregants who instinctively refer to God as Father and to God’s realm as a kingdom – and who no doubt would shift uncomfortably in their seats if I challenged them to pause and really imagine God as Mother rather than Father. Not that I’m saying their worldview is abnormal; most Christians have this construct embedded quite deeply in their spiritual formation.

So I don’t go there, at least not directly – partly because I see God as beyond gender. Like, way beyond. So beyond that it’s almost laughable to me that anyone would argue for a second about whether God is masculine or feminine. Because if there’s anything the bible literalist and the liberation theologian can agree on about God, it’s that the nature of God’s being is mind-blowingly beyond our maximum comprehension.

What that means for me is that I use God’s name as the pronoun for God. God does God’s work in our lives. No one but God can know Godself the way God does. That sort of thing. Once you get the hang of it, the alternative feels jarring.

And for some people it’s not just jarring, it’s a trigger. Consider, for instance, the person whose father sexually abused her. Even if you add the word “heavenly” in front of “father” in referring to God, that doesn’t take away the lightning-strike of reactions that happen within her every time she hears God referred to as paternal.

Speaking of paternal, there’s another word that needs to come into this conversation, and that’s patriarchy. Because when we talk about the historical pronouns for God, we’re talking about so much more than a mere grammatical habit here. The accepted practice of referring to God in the masculine isn’t just the chance result of a binary coin toss two centuries ago; nor is it really the result of some foundational theological insight into the true nature of God.

Rather, our casting of God’s image in the mold of a benevolent space-daddy is a direct, centuries-old hangover from a different time when power was masculine and our relationship to God needed to be portrayed in terms of patriarchal dominance and submission so the church could enforce our obedience.

Yes, we’ve inherited a narrative about Jesus where God is referred to in the masculine. But we also know it’s part of a greater narrative that was subject to heavy editing – we just don’t always know the degree to which that editing was applied to which parts of the narrative. And even if Jesus did refer to God in the masculine, I submit for your consideration that the theological message from Jesus in this instance was more about us feeling God as a loving parent than seeing God strictly as a father figure. The parable of the prodigal proves that. Jesus was, after all, incredibly feminist for his time; it was just another aspect of his radical ministry.

Which makes for a fun conversation at a Saturday morning staff meeting, where I’m dealing the full spectrum of belief: From those on one end who grew up bathed in King James-flavored biblical literalism and patriarchy, all the way to someone on the other end who came our way via a detour through Unitarian Universalism and has been assumed on at least one occasion to be more Buddhist than Christian.

They all fit under the tent, but it means we’ve got some work to do if we’re going to go beyond being inclusive to practicing true inclusion:

  • Inclusivity says “come as you are”. Inclusion means we’re going to meet you where you are.
  • Inclusivity says “our doors are open”. Inclusion means our minds are too.
  • Inclusivity says “we welcome you”. Inclusion means we make you feel as if our house is your house – that in fact, it’s been yours all along.
  • Inclusivity says “we affirm you”. Inclusion means we recognize that we’re not here to save your soul, we’re here to protect it.

See the difference? Inclusivity has become a decoration, and it was a great first step. But it’s a dated notion. Inclusion, on the other hand, is an act, a series of actions, a constellation of activities, where we meet the stranger more than halfway across the table.

If it feels uncomfortable, that’s your human side talking. But when it becomes so ingrained in you that you can’t go back, I dare say you’re actually enjoying a direct relationship with God. Because to God these things are second nature. It’s how you draw the whole world to you. It’s how you live the example set forth by Jesus.

So what I’ve told my staff is, we’re all on our individual journeys. You can refer to God however you like in your private life – in your mind, in your prayers, in your living room. But in church, be inclusive. Be radically welcoming. Make inclusion a verb.

I’ve told them that if they need an example, they can listen to how my husband sings a hymn – or better yet, how he recites the Lord’s Prayer. In his version of it, God goes from being “Our Father” to “Our Creator”, and God’s kingdom becomes a realm. See how easy that is?

And in the process, our understanding of God grows. Our understanding of how God views the souls in our midst grows. And God is able to do God’s best work while we politely get out of our own way.

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.

Pastor's Corner

Dear Washington: Leave the Praying to Me

One of my pet peeves has always been the improper lane change — you know, that everyday driving move where you slide into the next lane without hitting your turn signal — which is a total moving violation and completely worthy of a traffic ticket. Or worse, hogging two lanes by making that sliding move (probably still not using your turn signal) nice and slow, almost as though you’re not fully committing to the new lane or abandoning the old one — perhaps while texting — which is another illegal move.

So I find it almost poetic that the admonishment to “stay in your lane” has entered today’s pithy social-media-powered vernacular as a way of signaling that someone is publicly engaging on a topic where they may not have credibility to speak. The corollary being that when you’re solidly “in your lane”, you’re speaking on something where you have enough credibility not to embarrass yourself.

Some examples of being out of one’s lane: When a white person, no matter how well-meaning, tries to sound off on the experiences of minorities in America. Or when a man, perhaps not so well-meaning, tries to make a pronouncement about women’s lives. Or when cisgender people vocalize their inability to understand how a person can spend every moment of their existence feeling as though their own body is alien to them.

In other words, the motive for the lane-change doesn’t matter; what matters is the credibility gap between the speaker and their chosen topic.

For me, that might look something like walking into Congress, taking the podium and pontificating about what laws our elected politicians should be passing. If I did that I’d be way out of my lane, and widely so — maybe even embarrassingly so. Which is why I’m not in Washington right now. Instead I’m in Georgia, having a day of study and prayer, getting ready for the day we’re about to have in our little church. Today, as with most days, I have plenty going on in my lane as a pastor to keep me more than busy.

Which is why I find it confusing and maybe even a little maddening when our nation’s leaders suddenly start swinging into my lane at critical moments when they seem to have plenty going on in their own lanes. Like when they suddenly believe their role is to act as prayer leaders, not political leaders. They did it again this week, in response to the slaying of 17 people in Parkland, Fla., at the hands of a teenager wielding an assault rifle he’d purchased under his own name.

When something like that happens, I expect to turn on my TV and see our political leaders standing at podiums in front of microphones and cameras, telling us what they’re going to do in their lane of policy and legislation to prevent another tragedy like this. I expect to hear a belief in our nation’s ability to protect its citizens from harm.

But instead I hear a suddenly profound belief in prayer instead of policy, prayer instead of laws. And this confuses me. It confuses me because I expect to hear a call to prayer from an actual prayer leader — you know, like the intercessory prayer leader who just joined our church and is currently leading a Lenten study on the nature of prayer. What she’s doing makes perfect sense to me; she’s in her lane as a churchgoer and a prayer leader.

But as I saw one politician after another express the fervent need for prayer in the aftermath of the Parkland tragedy, I noticed something: The day after it happened, President Trump managed to speak for seven minutes about the tragedy, without mentioning guns. Not once. Bit of an oversight, right? Until it hit me that maybe he couldn’t see his way to addressing the role of an AR-15 assault rifle in the Parkland shooting because the National Rifle Association’s $30.3 million contribution to his election campaign was blocking his view.

And the president wasn’t alone: According to The Independent, the roster of politicians whose view was similarly blocked includes:

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (who received $3.3 million from the NRA and likes to pepper his Twitter feed with Bible verses), who tweeted in the moment:

Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner ($3.8 million from the NRA), who said:

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman ($3 million), who said:

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy ($2.8 million), who said:

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis ($4.4 million), who said:

Colorado Rep. Ken Buck ($800,544), who said:

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying politicians must be 100 percent secular or deny their own personal feelings in their response to tragedy. The correct response to tragedy is always sympathy and compassion — and if that includes a notation that the person speaking is holding the victims in their thoughts and prayers, that’s part of the natural human response.

But would you like to guess how many of the Twitter feeds of the politicians above have mentioned our national fetishization of guns in the days since the Parkland tragedy apparently compelled them to become self-anointed national prayer leaders via social media? Go look for yourself. (Spoiler alert: The number of those tweets currently shares the same shape as a goose egg.) Yet many of them have found plenty of time since their prayer-tweets to be vocal on an array of other issues they apparently found more pressing. Seriously, take a look for yourself; it speaks volumes.

And here’s why: The just-add-water cyber-call for prayer is a distraction tactic, and one they’ve all mastered: Hide behind Twitter, with one’s head digitally bowed in prayer. It buys time, because they know how the news cycle works. They know that if they can buy themselves 24 hours, the heat is effectively off at the end of it. So they do it with prayer-shaming. They say the equivalent of “Now’s not the time to talk about gun legislation; people are mourning.” But then the right time never seems to come.

And while the politicians may be smart enough not to overtly name this as the game, their fandom isn’t always; here’s a tweet from conservative Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren that makes it plain:

Alternatively, here’s a list of policy areas where our fearless leaders in Washington apparently didn’t need the help of prayer warriors. Instead, they stayed in their lane and acted:

  • Slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent
  • Repealing the individual mandate on Obamacare
  • Cutting 22 regulations in 2017 for every new one enacted
  • Enacting a ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries
  • Declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel
  • Withdrawing from the Paris climate accord
  • Pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
  • Rolling back some of President Obama’s Cuba policies
  • Moving to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules

I mean, when was the last time you heard a politician call for us to pray over Kim Jong Un’s nuclear saber rattling? Or over the problem of illegal immigration? (I’ll save you some time: Never.) Instead, the condemnation and the subsequent prescription for action come swiftly: We’ll unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea. We’ll build a wall between us and Mexico. No need to let a moment of prayer slow us down.

Or how about this: When was the last time you heard of someone calling to report a burglary in progress, or a house on fire, or a massive car accident, only to be told by the government we all pay taxes to: “We’re praying for you, and we ask that your neighbors do the same.”

But wait, why is a pastor appearing to get pretty darn political while admonishing politicians for over-invoking religion? Well in a nutshell, it’s because those very same politicians have forced us into the Upside Down: Because they’re using prayer as a shield, they’re forcing pastors like me to call foul. Once they stop throwing prayer-grenades at a constituency that is sincerely waiting for answers, we can go back to our regularly scheduled programming — and I for one can return to being a street pastor focused every day on what’s in my lane: Helping to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the sick and imprisoned. Because trust me, that’s really how I’d rather spend a day. I don’t need my turn signal to do that.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that day will ever come. And the way I think I know that is because the idea of pastors veering into the political is nothing new: My idol and inspiration for pursuing ministry, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was preaching five decades ago something called a “social gospel” — a venerated church tradition made necessary by the fact that the political powers-that-be of the time shirked their responsibility to avert the grinding oppression and stark brutality that were regularly visited upon the flock sitting in the pews.

Yet here we are, a half-century later, finding that our political leaders still fall well short, and people still suffer — and all too often, they still needlessly die.

And why is that? Because our political leadership, while professing to be beholden to God, are actually too beholden to the almighty dollar — in this case, millions of them — to do what is right. To stay in their lane and use the tools we elected them to use — policy and law — to make our lives better. And if not better, at least safer. And if not safer, at least not outright dangerous.

So yes, I’m out of my lane. It’s not where I’d like to be. But until our politicians realize that we elected them to enact laws and policies — not to be prayer leaders acting naive about their role in making tomorrow different from today, the answers will continue to “blow in the wind” — which is to say they’ll stay right in front of us, tantalizingly in plain sight, but also tragically just outside our collective grasp.

Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

But I can see what’s in the wind. As a sworn protector of souls, I’m issuing a pastoral admonishment, a clarion call to all the mealy-mouthed, disingenuous dollar-worshipping politicians who would cloak themselves in religion to distract us while they vacuum up cash from the protectors of those who heartily profit while the blood of innocents is spilled. Stop pretending you can’t see what we all see.

Stay in your lane. Use the tools we reserved for you. Do the job you were sent to do. Protect the people who elected you.

I’m praying mightily for it to be so.

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.

Blog

Holy Week 2018 Pastoral Call to Fast and Pray

As we travel in our Lenten journey this year, our church once again encourages and will engage in an annual period of fasting and prayer from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. We started this practice 15 years ago, and for the past six years we have emphasized making this special time be about becoming more attuned than ever to the work God would have us do as individuals and as a church.

Throughout these last six years we have focused our prayers on our church and its direction — on how to better do the work God has laid out for us. We have had significant growth in outreach to the community and to God’s people. The miracle stories seem to happen at a dizzying pace. As we celebrate our 20th anniversary, we celebrate our past and present — and we prayerfully look to our future.

It is only with your support that we have become a church that is affirming, inclusive and progressive in our ministry, and it is only with your help and prayer that it can continue.

Now that this church is beginning its 21th year of ministry, the pastoral staff and I have been moved by God’s spirit to again call for this time of fasting and prayer. I hope that you will consider joining with Vicar Alyce, Rev. Vivian, Rev. LaTaña and me in this spiritual practice — and in particular, to join me in Candler Park, near picnic pavilion 2, on Holy Saturday, March 31st between 10am and 2:30pm, to pray together and also to pray for those who are joining us in person or in spirit.

Here are the details of our time of fasting and prayer:

  • Our fast begins on Good Friday at the conclusion of the 7pm service at the foot of the Cross on the lawn of First Christian Church of Decatur.
  • Our theme this year is “Prayer as a conversation with God”.
  • On Holy Saturday in Candler Park, I will lead us through a day of prayer. If you have a signed covenant with our church, I appeal to you especially to participate in this sacred and holy time of reflection and of seeking God’s direction for this fellowship. (If you have small children, don’t let that stop you from participating; let us know you intend to be there and we can discuss arrangements for child care.)

This year’s meditation: “How do I pray; how do I talk to God?” For example:

  • How does this translate for you in the life of Gentle Spirit Christian Church? What kinds of prayers have you experienced?
  • What can each of us do to support a dedicated prayer life through our vision and mission?
  • What do we need to do as individuals to continue to live in a dedicated prayer life?
  • What does a dedicated prayer life look like?

Easter is a special opportunity for us to set ourselves aside and focus on God, to allow God to speak to each of us individually and to all of us as a church. I hope you’ll join us in this spiritual practice beginning at 7pm on Good Friday and concluding with our Easter (Resurrection Sunday) Sunrise Service on April 1st at 7:25am in Candler Park, picnic Pavilion 2.

God bless,
Pastor Paul

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.

Pastor's Corner

If Only This Were Fake News, But It’s Not Even Alternative Facts

You’ve probably heard some variation of the joke about how different news media outlets would handle the news of the end of the world. I read some examples during a recent sermon; here are some favorites:

  • USA Today: We’re Dead.
  • The Wall Street Journal: Dow Jones Plummets As World Ends.
  • Sports Illustrated: Game Over.
  • Readers Digest: ‘Bye.
  • Ladies Home Journal: Lose 10 Pounds by Judgment Day!
  • The New York Post: The End.
  • The New York Times: Armageddon Likely Tomorrow; Third World Hit Hardest.

My congregation howled at all of them except the last one — mainly because it wasn’t on the list I read that day in church. I’m adding it here because I was reminded of it by a recent column by the Times’ own Nicholas Kristof, who is arguably a poster child for that organization’s unabashedly global point of view.

That column was an end-of-year piece where Kristof noted that his least-read columns had attracted only 3 percent of the audience of his best-read* ones. And what were those columns (and one video) about? “Overseas news”, as he calls it. Sample topics:

  • China’s inexcusable treatment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo during his dying days.
  • A 14-year-old Honduran refugee girl who had been forced into a relationship with a gang member at age 11.
  • An easy (as in, inexpensive and effective) treatment for clubfoot in Liberia.
  • The security threat posed by Ebola.

Conversely, with a couple of exceptions, Kristof’s best-read columns were generally about President Trump.

The contrast couldn’t be more obvious. The most powerful human being on the planet gets more than 30 times the attention of intelligent humans than do the most powerless, voiceless and oppressed who share our planet — or as Jesus referred to them, “the least of these”.

I say “intelligent humans” because it’s hard to argue that people who willfully consume (mostly) written news by one of the most serious columnists at the flagship American arbiter of stodgy eat-your-spinach mass journalism are exactly the dilettantes of the content-consumption economy.

I’m underscoring this because I can’t even imagine what it says about the rest of us. After all, a New York Times reader doesn’t exactly represent middle America. I don’t need to see a Times media kit to know that one of their headlines generally goes straight onto the radar of the 1 percent, the business and opinion leaders, the captains of industry, the political elite, the global elite, the oligarchs, the intellectuals, the universities, the heads of foundations, royalty, the independently wealthy, the charitable elite — and a great deal of the upper middle class. It’s a bankable, almost mathematical certainty.

So if the most educated / moneyed / powerful people on the planet can’t be bothered to even read about the powerless, the forgotten, the poor, the ignored (again, “the least of these”) — how could we even hope to find a single entity focused on them? Much less a powerful entity. One that spends every day with them. And whose reach extends into every corner of the globe.

Actually, there is just such an entity. And it’s thriving at a rate that any single private or public organization could envy. It rolls around this big blue marble we call home without regard for national borders, race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, ability, ethnicity, education, citizenship or socioeconomic status.

That entity, brothers and sisters, is the human immunodeficiency virus.

It’s straight out of science fiction, if you really think about it. And apparently it’s a narrative we just can’t get enough of — as long as it’s make-believe. We read books and watch movies all the time that are variations on a theme that could have been ripped from the HIV/AIDS headlines of the last 40 years. We can’t get enough apocalypse/pandemic/zombie fiction in our lives right now. But let a New York Times columnist write about actual human devastation and, well… yawn.

So here’s some current global nonfiction about the 36.7 million people that HIV/AIDS has wrapped itself around in my lifetime:

  • 2.1 million children (<15 years old) are living with HIV and were mostly infected by their HIV-positive mothers during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding.
  • It’s estimated that 1.8 million people became newly infected with HIV in 2016 — about 5,000 new infections per day. This includes 160,000 children. Most of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa, the most affected region, where there were an estimated 25.6 million people living with HIV in 2015 — and where about two-thirds of new HIV infections occurred in that same year.
  • Only 60 percent of people with HIV know their status.
  • 1 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2016.

Having said that, the picture in the United States is a bit different. From 2010 to 2014, the annual number of new HIV infections in the U.S. actually declined by 10 percent. And yes, gay and bisexual men still account for more than two-thirds of new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. — but here are some new HIV facts that might not be on your radar:

  • The majority of men who contracted HIV via homosexual contact are black or Hispanic/Latino. The next-largest group after gay/bisexual men are black heterosexual women.
  • Almost a quarter of newly diagnosed HIV-positive Americans is heterosexual.
  • Youth age 13-24 accounted for 22 percent of all new HIV diagnoses in the United States in 2015.
  • People 55 and older now account for 23 percent of HIV infections in the U.S.
  • At least 1 in 8, if not 1 in 7, Americans with HIV don’t know they have the virus.

Unfortunately, the picture in the South is decidedly bleaker:

  • The CDC estimates that the South, which is home to about a third of the U.S. population, is also home to 44 percent of all Americans living with an HIV diagnosis.
  • People in the South are three times as likely as other Americans to die of HIV — and of course, they’re less likely to know their HIV status.
  • African Americans represented more than half of new HIV diagnoses in the South in 2014 — more than a third of them heterosexual.

And you don’t have to have a Ph.D. to guess what the frontline professionals are naming as some contributing factors: Stigma, poverty, inaccessible healthcare. HIV may need a single living host in order to survive — but in order to really thrive, the virus needs an environment of fear, poverty and neglect.

What makes this even sadder is that, while there’s no known cure yet for HIV, the advances that have been made are so significant that living with HIV can be as non-threatening as living with any other chronic and manageable illness (diabetes is a good example) — so much so that there are HIV-positive people whose viral load is literally undetectable. Combine that with proper medical care, and a person with undetectable HIV is essentially incapable of transmitting the virus to another person.

Not only that, but allow me to add these two terms to your vocabulary:

  • Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP): As a way of reducing their own risk of contracting the virus, a person can take the same type of medicine that HIV-positive people take.
  • Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP): As a way of preventing HIV infection after a recent possible exposure to the virus, a person can take the same type of medicine that HIV-positive people take.

Sound too good to be true? It’s not. It’s science fact, not science fiction. It’s the world we live in today. Well actually, it’s the world that some of us live in today — the critical ingredients being a First World-worthy combination of education, empowerment and access to healthcare.

So in summary, the reason HIV is still with us isn’t because governments, science, medicine or nonprofits haven’t provided the tools. The tools are there. They exist. They work. They’re working. They’re just not everywhere they need to be. Not by a long shot.

That’s because HIV’s most powerful adversary on the planet still hasn’t been unleashed. And that adversary is the single individual. It’s us. It’s me. It’s you.

The recipe is this:

  • Know your HIV status. If you’re sexually active, get tested at least once a year. I promise it will change your life. This is the role of knowledge.
  • The next time you see something about HIV/AIDS, read it. I promise it will change your life. This is the role of education.
  • Pray for those affected by HIV/AIDS. I promise it will change your life. This is the role of prayer.

And while you’re praying for those affected by HIV/AIDS, be realistic about who you’re praying for: People of color, youth, the elderly, women, the under-educated, the mis-educated, closeted LGBT people, out LGBT people, the poor… and the people of the Two-Thirds World. And be realistic about why: Stigma, poverty, inaccessible healthcare.

If you do this, I promise that before you know it, the scope of your focus on your brothers and sisters around the world will go far beyond HIV — because HIV’s hegemony is just a symptom of what’s really going on. It’s just a symptom of what’s really broken about the world. It’s just a symptom of all the human woes we allow to persist in the face of the greatest expansion and accumulation of wealth in our collective history.

And who knows? Maybe your prayers will help change the progress of HIV/AIDS as well. Let’s meet here a year from now and compare notes. But if you’re the only one who is changed by this prayer, that’s good enough for me. That’s the job of prayer. That’s the role of God in your life.

God bless,
Pastor Paul

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.

Pastor's Corner

Where Christ Belongs

Rather than “putting Christ back in Christmas”, I’d settle for putting Christ back in Christians.

The above is a variation on a statement I saw on Facebook that really spoke to me — and apparently to more than a few of my Facebook friends, because my reposting of it went “viral” — at least as much as you could use that term to describe the reaction to something I’ve posted there.

This is in comparison to what I normally post on Facebook, which generally doesn’t raise eyebrows because it’s either “For The Day’s Journey”, my daily posting of a thought-provoking or at least inspirational quote from someone more eloquent (and renowned) than me, or “Welcome to the New Week”, my weekly Bible verse — or maybe just a rundown of the night’s dinner menu courtesy of my husband, who rules our kitchen and swears to me that it’s more than just where the coffee pot lives.

But back to that Paul-viral Facebook post. Had I struck a nerve? Had I tapped into a vein of social sentiment? Had I accessed the zeitgeist? I think so. I think a lot of people — not just my Facebook friends — are tired of the hypocrisy of “traditional”, conservative, “evangelical” Christianity.

I think people are tired of opening their Facebook feed to see what their friends are up to and instead slipping on the social media equivalent of a floor smeared with equine fecal matter in the form of such heartwarming fare as proclamations by none other than Roy Moore, Alabama’s self-proclaimed defender of the 10 Commandments, who pompously claims to have God’s ear when it comes to what is wrong with America — and who, despite losing his Senate race, still got 48 percent of the vote despite being generally a horse’s ass and specifically accused of (basically) pedophilia.

I think people are tired of seeing evidence all around them that their fellow man continues to act in such a short-sighted and self-absorbed fashion when confronted with situations where our instruction from God is actually, I believe, rather clear: Act justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God.

Here in Atlanta, just in time for Christmas, we’re ignoring that instruction as it concerns our homeless brothers and sisters. Here in Atlanta, we live in a city where the establishment fought shamelessly for the better part of a decade to shut down the city’s largest homeless shelter — which just happened to be situated on some seriously prime real estate.

Here in Atlanta, there was apparently no plan being made during that decade-long fight to account for how the 700-800 people the Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter was serving daily might survive with some semblance of human dignity.

Did I mention that every other shelter in town is already full?

But instead of focusing on how to get homeless people off the streets as winter approaches, your local government has determined that the best thing they can do for the homeless right now is to keep you from offering them food.

Yup.

There’s apparently a local ordinance that prohibits the distribution of food in an organized way to, basically, strangers. And your local law enforcement is now hellbent on enforcing it.

Here’s what it says, according to a pamphlet that’s been proffered to yours truly on the streets of Atlanta by well-meaning law enforcement personnel (prefaced by a mealy-mouthed preamble in said pamphlet):

We sincerely thank you for your interest in serving Atlanta’s people in need. As providers of services to these groups 24/7, year-round, we are committed to helping them in ways that lead to changed lives and lasting self-sufficiency.

In our experience, the best way to assist people in need is through places with sanitary kitchens, safe shelter, and services that help them address their problems and move forward in their lives. By contrast, feeding and donating to people on our streets is not a long-term solution.

… Public Safety’s goal is to increase police visibility and improve the quality of life within the City of Atlanta’s Government District. This will be accomplished through the Enforcement of City Ordinances and State laws and Partners for Home and Atlanta Continuum of Care to address the homelessness…

Did you know a Permit is required?

(Fulton County) Sec. 34-152. – Permit requirements

(a) Permit required. A valid permit issued by the board of health shall be required prior to operation of a food service establishment. Such permit shall be obtained in compliance with the rules and regulations of the State of Georgia governing food service, GA. Comp. R. & Regs. 290-5-14

(b) Rule 511-6-1-.08 Special Food Service Operations

Rather than feeding or donating to individuals on Atlanta’s streets, please consider directing your generosity to one of the great organizations working tirelessly to improve the lives of people in need in our communities

The arrogance continues with a list of 10 organizations that the pamphlet recommends should be the real focus of our energy, we who so inadequately seek to serve the homeless. And let me be clear: I am not disparaging the groups themselves — which are for the most part reputable, worthy and doing good in the community. Rather, I’m pointing up the city’s sleight of hand in making it seem that these 10 points of light are adequately filling the gap in homeless services left wide open by the closing of Peachtree-Pine.

But that isn’t even remotely true, and here’s why:

  • Most of these organizations close by 5pm. There are a couple that are open until 8:45pm and one that is 24 hours — but this last one serves homeless youth only.
  • There are no purely family shelters.
  • None of them provides ongoing meals.
  • These organizations are spread out all over the city… making it extremely difficult for their clientele to access the services they do provide.
  • Many organizations have a cutoff as to how many clients they can service at a time. People can find themselves waiting in long lines for hours or more and still not making the cut.
  • None of these organizations is willing to work with transgender folks.
  • Many of these organizations require a tuberculosis test before one can get housing or services.

So please tell me how, in all that is holy, are these people who are without resources or transportation, who are hungry, who can also be dealing with addiction or mental illness or disability — how are they supposed to access what the mealy-mouthed pamphlet blithely refers to as a continuum of care? How long should they wait? How far should they walk? And let’s be honest: Whose way should they stay out of?

And I’m so not done here. Because on top of all of this is the criminalization of homelessness. Here’s how it starts: In the state of Georgia, you cannot get a driver’s license or state ID without a birth certificate, Social Security card and two pieces of mail sent to your residence.

Yes, you read that correctly: Two pieces of mail to your residence. Good luck, homeless people!

Plus it doesn’t take longer than a couple of weeks for a newly homeless person to have lost whatever they might have been carrying all this documentation in to a beat cop who confiscated it, a fellow traveler who stole it — or simply to “the shuffle” of constantly being on the move and eventually losing track of almost anything.

The last time I went to renew my driver’s license, I had to mail $50 to New Jersey to get my birth certificate. How many homeless people can manage that?

Anyway, the next step in the criminalization of homelessness is that once you’ve pretty much lost the ability to prove who you are, you’re eventually going to find yourself arrested for loitering, trespassing, shoplifting, vagrancy, public urination, public intoxication, indecent exposure or any number of other petty crimes that happen along the way when you’re just trying to survive on the streets.

The result being that the city’s jails double as unofficial homeless shelters. So one of the badges that goes along with being homeless is the Unemployability badge, because you now have a criminal record thanks to your inability to find a place to live, stay out of the way, prove who you are or pay a bond or a fine.

And of course, the only thing the average homeless person is actually guilty of is generally addiction, mental health issues, or a disability of some kind. They end up on the streets because they can’t get the help they need.

Or they can’t find work that pays a living wage — a situation that’s happening in my own household, where my 62-year-old husband, a proud Army veteran who has worked in the computing field for the better part of four decades suddenly finds himself laid off and interviewing for a job at Wal-Mart that pays $9 an hour with no benefits. Which adds up to $360 a week, with no health insurance, before the Federal government takes their pound of flesh.

So let’s just say that when I contemplate what it must be like for someone to slide into homelessness, I can empathize from a very real place right now.

In conclusion, this Christmas, could we try to take seriously what our faith teaches?

Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor. (James 3:17-18)

But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love. And don’t take yourself too seriously — take God seriously. (Micah 6:8)

When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Humanity will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.
Then the King will say to those on his right, “Enter, you who are blessed by my God! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.” (Matthew 25:31-40)

To solve this challenge, we as a people of faith need to start practicing what we say we believe. We need to get to the root of what causes homelessness and do as scripture teaches us. These folks are not numbers or statistics… they are God’s children, and we will answer for what we do for and with these precious creations of God. So tonight, tomorrow morning and in the days ahead let us set aside the soundbite-friendly distractions of sideshows such as “putting Christ back in Christmas” and instead fight for something that has the potential for lasting impact.

Let’s put Christ back into what it means to be Christian.

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.

Pastor's Corner

When In Doubt, Err On The Side Of Love

On Thanksgiving Day 1977, my husband’s father died of a massive heart attack, leaving behind a wife and 12 children — six boys and six girls. The family was Episcopalian, attending St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Newport, Ky., where the Pabst family tithed and the children were baptized and married.

Because of the family’s size, Mr. Pabst had to work two jobs to keep food on the table, clothes on everyone’s backs and the mortgage current. Decades before Uber and Lyft made it cool to moonlight as a driver, Mr. Pabst drove a taxi on the weekends in the Cincinnati metro area to supplement the income from his day job. This of course meant long hours well into the night on Fridays and Saturdays, and even into the early morning hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Consequently, he missed a lot of Sunday church services.

When he died and Mrs. Pabst contacted the church to make plans for the funeral, she was told flatly that there would be no funeral at St. Paul’s for her husband because his lack of attendance caused him to not be an active member.

What the… ?

Isn’t it the church’s responsibility to provide for the surviving family a place to grieve, to be consoled and affirmed in the unconditional love of God? I thought so too. And sure, there are those who say that churches have rules and protocols, creeds and dogmas that demand to be followed — and not only are they correct, but they are naming the very reason why so many individual mainline churches are empty, closing or closed.

One person who’s not swayed by this trend is the Roman Catholic bishop of Springfield, Ill., Thomas Paprocki. Forty years after St. Paul’s snubbed the Pabst family in their hour of mourning and spiritual need, Bishop Paprocki has gone to extraordinary lengths to show God’s people that the church can be just as cruel today.

In set of guidelines titled “Same-Sex Marriage Policies Decree 6/12/2017”, released earlier this month, Bishop Paprocki went beyond the usual garden-variety dictate that people in same-gender marriages be denied communion and other outward signs of God’s love and grace to also say that they should be denied funeral rites, to wit:

Unless they have given some signs of repentance before their death, deceased persons who had lived openly in a same-sex marriage giving public scandal to the faithful are to be deprived of ecclesiastical funeral rites. In case of doubt, the proper pastor or parochial administrator is to consult the local ordinary [bishop], whose judgment is to be followed (cf. c. 1184).

Yup.

The document goes on to prescribe the usual waterproofing of the church, its blessed objects and its pastoral ministers against any association with same-gender marriage, all of which you can read about here. But for now let’s stick with the funeral question, since it has personal resonance for me.

Reading about the full impact of Bishop Paprocki’s guidelines, it’s hard for me to believe he’s a member of the same church that includes Pope Francis. And although I know he’d never do it, I wish I could recommend that the good bishop read Chuck McKnight’s blog on the topic of LGBTQ Christian acceptance.

In the meantime, the old-school hidebound, rule-bound church that puts God’s people second is forgetting that this whole Christian movement was never intended to be about institutions but about the children of God first and foremost. The mainline churches are forgetting that it’s not their job to define an individual’s relationship with God, or to determine the validity of that individual’s belief or faith.

In other words, they’re forgetting that it’s their to job, as stated in the Bible and translated from Aramaic into plain English, to do this:

I give a new commandment to you: “Love one another; just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” (John 13:34)

They’re forgetting that nowhere in Jesus’ ministry did he indicate that it was okay to not give honor to those who had died and hope to those who remained.

McKnight puts it this way:

… The thing is, at the moment when I first made the switch to fully affirm my LGBTQ friends, I still wasn’t 100% certain about it. I still had lingering doubts. But I realized that I was causing much greater harm by withholding my affirmation than what I risked by becoming affirming.

I may only be a very simple pastor who is not famous, much less is the shepherd of a megachurch, nor is really even someone who commands a particularly large audience at any given time. But I do know that what the church needs to be teaching, promoting and acting on is pretty simple. It can be found in these seven scriptures that my church refers to as our Core Beliefs.

I would love to see Bishop Paprocki explain how these verses are about anything but love — and lots of it. How his misguided understanding of same-gender love doesn’t fit within that definition of love. And how he can write such spiritually violent “guidelines” in seeming ignorance of how that sense of overwhelming love commands us to treat one another.

Mr. Pabst got a Christian burial. Forty years later, same-gender-loving Christians are getting the Christian burials they desire and deserve. The institutional church, and people like Bishop Paprocki, aren’t stopping that — they’re only getting in the way. They’re rocks in a stream whose water is the love that goes right around them as though they’re not even there. And no matter how slowly those rocks smooth their rough edges, that glacial progress is a distant concern for the water that flows by unaffected.

Love won at Calvary. It wins today. Love will continue to win. It always has, and it always will.

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.

Pastor's Corner

After The Dust Settles, A Call To Re-Focus

Ladies and gentlemen, in the left corner of the ring — representing the liberal, progressive, “hate everything that is not liberal or progressive by their own definition” end of our current political spectrum — is Kathy Griffin, the self-styled “D-list” comedian figuratively holding the severed head of President Donald Trump. And in the right corner — representing the conservative, alt-right and “hate everything that is not alt-right or conservative by their own definition” end of the spectrum — is Ted Nugent, a one-hit-wonder rocker figuratively holding a gun to the head of former President Barack Obama.

What is left in the middle of the ring is all of us who were taught to treat people with dignity, respect and civility. Anyone who was brought up in the same Christian church as me was likely also taught to ask of themselves, “What does the Lord require of you?”

The answer being, “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8 MSG) We were also told repeatedly that the most important biblical teaching from the Gospels is from John 13:34-35 (MSG): “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

So what happened? Why is the noise coming from the extreme left and extreme right so loud, so overpowering? Why do we have to read and listen to justifications for the total idiocy coming from the extremes, and why is it not drowned out by the voices in the middle?

Can we not clearly see that Kathy Griffin and her ilk are way out of line when they appear to call for the death of the President of the United States?

Can we not clearly see that Ted Nugent and his ilk are way out of line when they appear to call for the death of the President of the United States?

Can we not clearly see that a political point of view does not require a lifestyle or geographic location?

Many of those from the extreme right on the political spectrum say that because I am proudly and openly gay, don’t own a gun and advocate for the homeless, I am somehow also a huge liberal who is advocating a communist takeover and ultimately will go to hell for being a fag who doesn’t preach biblical truth. They truly do not know what they are talking about and are painting with a wide brush.

Yes, I am open and proudly gay. I have had only one marriage that will celebrate its 35th anniversary on the 25th of this month — a milestone that I would like to see how many of my homophobic accusers have achieved.

I don’t own a gun, because I really fear I would use it, which doesn’t mean I don’t think those who want a gun shouldn’t get one. Although I do think one needs to show they have mental stability before ownership of such a weapon is allowed.

I advocate for the homeless because that is what Jesus said was the biggest concern to our God and therefore a key to eternal life.

“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Creator, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ “ (Matthew 25:34-40 NRSV)

Many of those from the extreme left on the political spectrum see those on the right as racist, misogynist homophobes who are advocating a theocracy, and who will not be happy until we on the left are all dead. This, my friends, is an equally ridiculous view point that is just as dangerous to our survival as a country as the aforementioned stupidity coming from the right.

We in the middle must take back the conversation. We must loudly call for justice and mercy. We must advocate in all that we do for non-violence and forgiveness and all that this means. The words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King need to be at the forefront of our minds: “Violence is not only impractical but immoral.” Our actions, our lives, our relationships need to reflect this not philosophically, but in the reality of our day-to-day lives.

We must take seriously the teaching from Jesus, “If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?” (John 20:23 MSG) We must understand that forgiveness is about our own lives and having a healthy personal outlook, rather than about the one we are forgiving.

If we are to survive as a world, then we in the middle had better wake up and find common ground with our sisters and brothers to the left or right of center before someone from one of the extremes does something that is not correctable and destroys any chance we have of continuing to claim, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all… are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

God bless,
Pastor Paul

Rev. Paul M. Turner

About Rev. Paul M. Turner

Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Rev. Paul M. Turner grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994. He is the editor of the Seeds of Hope blog whose posts from 1999-2005 are at http://whosoever.org/seeds/ -- and which now resides at http://gentlespirit.org/topics/blog/seeds-of-hope/.