Just one day after the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of including sexual orientation as a protected category with respect to hate crimes, there comes this article from Newsweek, which tells me that, with persistent efforts, the sociopolitical tide will continue to change for the better. But what we know from our nation's history is that the more things change, the more (some things and some people) stay the same. So, for me, I'm cautiously optimistic.
Join me below the fold for a quick look at two American evangelical Christian ministers, Brent Childers and Christine Daniel, who in my mind, couldn't have taken different approaches to their religion (and their spiritual growth) during the zeitgeist of the past six years. Read where each will be spending this weekend.
In today's powerful Newsweek article Brent Childers begins by stating:
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans are a diverse, extraordinary, resilient, and passionate group of forgiving men and women. I wouldn't be standing beside them demanding full and equal treatment under the law and speaking out against the harm caused by religion-based bigotry at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 11 if I thought they were not created in God's image the same as myself, same as my family, as we all are—we are all God's children. And I know better than anyone, since six years ago I was one of those bigots.
What a nationally public bombshell statement for an evangelical Chirstian minister to make! Had a Unitarian minister made such a statement this week, it would have been met with yawns.
Behind every good man is a good woman, and Rev. Childers is no exception. He states:
My own mother challenged me in 2003 to look at my beliefs and the true intent behind the teachings I held in blind faith. "Do you think your views are Christ-like?"
From his self-examination—and a critical look at what it means to be a follower of Christ—Rev. Childers' spiritual journey led him from being a man who, by his own admission, was a fairly stereotypical evangelical Christian—one who routinely condemed homosexuals and homosexuality—to a man who, by God, traded in his hate for "love, compassion, and respect." Fast forward six years, to the present, and Rev. Childers will be marching in Washington, DC, with a (still) marginalized group of Americans in two days. I don't know about you kossacks, but going from telling your own son that "being gay is a ticket to hell" to marching with gays for full societal rights puts a lump in my throat. If there ever was a modern day miracle, Rev. Childers' spiritual development and progressive political action would qualify, I think.
Now meet Dr. Christine Daniel, an evangelical minister in the San Fernando Valley area of California.
Yesterday, Dr. Daniel, who is an ordained Pentecostal minister in California, was arrested and charged with wire and mail fraud (two counts each). What's being alleged? msnbc states:
...federal prosecutors said Daniel siphoned about $1.1 million from 55 families between 2001 and 2004. At least six patients ranging in age from 4 to 69 died within seven months after seeing Daniel.
More specifically, Dr. Daniel pimped her herbal treatments on the Trinity Broadcasting Network in 2002 where, she boasted that she had cured cancer 60% of the time. She also claimed her herbs could cure multiple sclerosis, hepatitis, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, and she is also purported to have used "a heat machine" to reduce the size of tumors. The msnbc story states that Dr. Daniel preyed on (and prayed with) terminally ill cancer patients, instructing them to stop their conventional cancer treatments and start ingesting her snake oils, in part by using her influence as an ordained minister.
The 55-year-old doctor-minister even is said to have preyed on the clergy. Again, from msnbc:
In late 2003, George McKinney, who founded St. Stephen's Cathedral Church of God in Christ in San Diego, agreed to have his wife, Jean, treated by Daniel. The couple moved into their son's home in Los Angeles, and Jean McKinney took an herbal mixture three to four times a day for her terminal colon cancer.
The McKinneys paid Daniel more than $100,000. Mrs. McKinney died in June 2004.
Unlike Rev. Childers, who I suspect will be living it up this weekend with a large group of people who are moving their lives and our country in a better direction, Dr. Daniel will be making new friends of her own in a southern California jail cell (if convicted, she could get up to 80 years in prison).
Do the two ministers' different paths serve as an allegory, a kind of methaphor of how things have changed (and not changed) in this country sociopolitically over the past six years? I think so; for me reflecting upon the two ministers' trajectories brings to mind the title of an old Dire Straits album: Love Over Gold.