LGBT. WWJD?
By: Dave Boice
Tags: Christianity, Agnostic, LGBTQ

One May day during my Peanut Butter Cheerios phase, I came across images of a Minneapolis church distributing Communion. This wouldn’t be a big deal, except there was a slight twist. The blessed bread to represent the body of Christ was colored in rainbow tie-dye to celebrate Minnesota legalizing same-sex marriage.

“BLASPHEMY!” I decried from my laptop, a volcano of PB Cheerios erupting from my lap as I self-appointed my shaking fist to substitute for the right hand of God. “How DARE these false prophets vandalize traditional religious sacrament to forgive sin of those who sin”, I thought (or something like that) from the moral high ground that was my love seat. I thought the world was going to hell in a Communion bread basket.

My persecution was justified by years of conservative Evangelical indoctrination towards the LGBT lifestyle. I was proud to be homophobic and professed this to my friends, both Christian and imaginary. During my Bible study days, I militarized my Bible by arming it with Post-It notes and camouflaging the pages with Sharpie highlights. Bible verses were read-off like Battleship coordinates, raining down Sodom and Gomorrah to morally obliterate the faults of those floating in sexual sin. Homosexuality was an easy target, as I would lock-and-load Scripture with heavy clips of Biblical ammunition to launch an all-out religious warpath on those who’s lifestyles would tread on the Word of God.

Long story short. I was a self-righteous dick.

Then I pulled a stuffed lion out of my pants during Bible study to be funny. No one laughed. I got a front-row seat to how cutthroat religious persecution can be in friendly fire.

My Christian “friends” stoned me with stares for my bad humor (you may agree as you read this blog). The group’s second-in-command called me the next day, probably making sure I didn’t have plans to sacrifice a lamb on someone’s coffee table for the following week’s study on Abraham. “I should really apologize” I voiced to him, which he replied, “I think it would be best to never bring it up again”.

Attendance nose-dived. Several unfriended me from Facebook (THE HUMANITY!). Some just stopped talking to me altogether. I was shunned to the point where I was expecting to be tossed 30 pieces of silver and exiled to 40 days and 40 nights of wilderness. ‘How can Christians treat me like this?’ I thought, unable to comprehend the hypocrisy of the group’s reaction to my blunder. I felt my faith was put into question. I stopped going.

Throughout my 20's, I mirrored the same judgmental stance on same-sex relationships. More and more of my friends came out of the closest as gay or lesbian, and I sensed the cultural consciousness changing. My millennial generation was growing up on history class lessons about the courageous actions of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King to confront racial injustice. I started to see a similar tone with sexual discrimination, and religious doctrine was the oppressive slave master. When I began to look at the iris in the eyes in front of me, I slowly started to adopt a realization they weren’t just choosing to live in sin. They were gay because they were gay, just as much as I get morning wood to dreams of Kate Upton.

So after 30 years, my year as a Wayfaring Stranger to visit 52 Churches in 52 Weeks has me taking a step back and taking a fresh look at such a social issue. I’m left asking the question:

‘LGBT. WWJD?’

Jay Bakker isn’t your typical pastor. His arms are sleeved with tattoos, his face a connect-the-dots of silver piercings scaffolded with black-rimmed glasses. A self-described Christian agnostic, Bakker has come out as a punk preacher who openly supports gay marriage. As a result, he has been called many radical things over the years by watchmen Christians: “apostate pastor”, “emerging false prophet”, “heretic”, the list goes on.

In the last few months, Bakker’s life experiences and social stance has attracted interviews with Larry King Live, CNN, and MSNBC, who preface him as “the son of former televangelists, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker”. His parents were a big deal back in the day, hosting a popular religious talk show and creating a Christian theme park. Eventually, his father was implicated in scandal and shipped to prison, leaving the Bakker empire to collapse in a hostile takeover. The media circus and corrupt betrayal of his religious community left Jay in a downward spiral during his teenage years that left him to question his faith.

After recovering from substance abuse, he emerged preaching grace.

Not many were as accepting.

For Week 20, I took a road trip through the urban wilderness of downtown Minneapolis to see Jay Bakker talk at Revolution Church inside a bar/restaurant/bowling alley that the locals call Bryant-Lake Bowl. It’s the same church that I cried “blasphemy” when I saw those images of Bakker breaking rainbow-colored Communion bread to celebrate same-sex marriage.

Restroom riddle.

Bryant-Lake Bowl is not a setting you’d expect to hear a sermon. The glass windows display times for Happy Hour and Cheap Date Night, with chalkboard drink specials above the bar for drinks called the Madhatter, Loon Rise, and Gramma’s Candy Dish. The bathrooms were populated with graffiti, the porcelain tiles providing thought-provoking questions like, “How many midgets does it take to !@#k a waitress?” The answer apparently is 12. No one bothered to answer the “Why?” step-down question.

An overhead sign pointed me towards the theater which could have been mistaken for an emergency exit. After passing a framed picture of a bowling ball complemented with a middle finger, I walked inside to see Jay Bakker sitting on a barstool sipping Starbucks. Just earlier in the week on his website, he posted pictures from his interview with Barbara Walters. Days later, here he was in front of 5 introverts, and a podcast that reaches a Facebook following of over 13,000.