Why the Fundies will never accept us

First I should start by outing myself. I was a Pentecostal pastor’s wife for 22 years, in a group that was so extreme it makes the AOG look like a Sunday School picnic. I also want to make an important distinction between the Fundamentalist brands of Christianity (such as most Pentecostal, some Baptist, and Sydney diocese Anglicanism) and the very many groups of christians who do not base their faith and practice on a very literalist reading of the Bible (and some of these dwell within Fundamentalist groups and are trying to bring change from within). I’ve been mulling over the nature of our engagement with fundamentalist christianity lately, and I think my views on this are changing. This has arisen partly from the gay marriage debate, and the recent synod meeting of the Uniting Church that debated gay clergy in that denomination.

It all comes down to the age-old dilemma of how to bring about meaningful change – work patiently within the existing system or by constructive engagement with it, or adopt an actively confrontational stance. And also about the kind of change we want to see – in this case, do we want the christian churches to become less homophobic, or do we want to see them discredited so that they will exert less influence over the wider society when it comes to law and policy reforms to remove discrimination against gay and lesbian people? In the past I have advocated constructive engagement, but now I’m not so sure.

The fly in the ointment from my point of view is the essential incommensurability of their understanding of truth with our own. I have come to believe that they have no room to move on this. Fundamentalist christianity is by its very nature patriarchal – it cannot, it dare not, make any accommodation with feminism or homosexuality because its subjection of women and suppression of other sexualities is integral to its theology and its power structures. And quite apart from doctrinal or theological considerations, it is in the interests of these groups to demonise homosexuality as a convenient rallying point for mobilising people and resources, thus shoring up their power base, increasing their visibility, and maximising their influence. Can you think of anything else, except perhaps abortion, that Peter Jensen, George Pells and Andrew Evans (AOG) could agree on?

As a social researcher I find myself appalled at the tactics of some of those who speak on behalf of fundamentalist christianity, because it is impossible to have an honest debate with these people. The GLBTTIQ community can bring forward study after study with impeccable credentials, based on scientifically conducted research which has been peer reviewed, only to be met by reports of dodgy research done by dodgy special interest groups in the US which is completely scientifically invalid. The message that the public takes away from all of this is that it’s just a matter of opinion – you can find ‘experts’ to back up either point of view. Which of course is totally incorrect, but the media have made sure we have a citizenry now who are completely incapable of critically engaging with arguments and evidence. Certainly some christians honestly believe this stuff, but they wouldn’t have exerted much effort to ascertain its reliability – the problem with all ideologies, be they social, political or religious, is that you start with a belief, and then look for evidence to support it. (The queer community is also frequently guilty of this). If scientific discourse was able to sway them, we wouldn’t still be having debates about evolution, or see groups in the US trying to get around state sanctions by rechristening Creation Science (now there’s any oxymoron!) as ‘Intelligent Design’ and get it taught in schools.

Many people marvel at my evolution from Pentecostal pastor’s wife to lesbian feminist gender scholar. Of course, it didn’t happen overnight. If I had to identify the most crucial step in the process, I would say it came after reading several of Mary Daly’s books in the first couple of months of 1999, deciding that christianity was irremediably patriarchal, and evicting the christian god and all his dogmas from my heart and mind. A Back-From-Damascus-Road experience. What was crucial was not so much jettisoning the explicit beliefs of christianity, but rather the monotheistic view of truth, with all its rigidity and exclusivity, to make way for a more multi-facetted and perpetually evolving understanding of reality. And this is why I have come to the belief that dialoguing with the fundies is a doomed project. I think it’s ultimately futile to contest a few ‘false beliefs’ without addressing the total paradigm which undergirds them. I have come to see all the monotheisms as pernicious, because of their view of truth as revelatory, uni-dimensional, and not negotiable. God/Allah/YHWH cannot, by his unitary nature, change his mind, and so neither can his followers.

I also suspect that the danger in constructive engagement is somewhat similar to what the Democrats and Greens did in the first three terms of the Howard government. By constantly amending the Coalition’s legislation in the Senate, they prevented the Australian public from understanding how ideologically-driven, cynical and merciless the Coalition’s policies actually are, and people were lulled into a false sense of security. Now it has a majority in the Senate, the gloves are off – welfare-to-work, work choices, terror legislation, offshore processing of asylum seekers – the list goes on and on. But what I find most distressing is that the Howard government has managed to insinuate its neo-liberalist philosophy into the public’s mind-set over the last ten years, to the point where most people seem happy to accept its dishonesty, cynicism and gross materialism. It has actually changed the nature of Australian society, and we’ve allowed that to happen. Similarly, feminist theologians have criticised inclusive language versions of the Bible (“God the Mother and Father”, “for God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Child”, etc) for allowing the Bible to masquerade as a document that seems less androcentric and friendlier to women than in fact it is.

It seems to me now that if we cause groups like the Assemblies of God to tone down their rhetoric on homosexuality, we prevent the wider community from seeing their true colours. Every time one of their spokesmen makes an egregiously homophobic statement (such as lesbians should be burnt at the stake, for example) I think the Australian public start to realise how rigid, narrow and intolerant these groups are, and how far they are from the kind of ‘live and let live’ philosophy most Aussies are happy to embrace. I think our best hope for law and policy reform for the GLBTTIQ community is to accentuate the chasm between us and fundamentalist christianity, and make the general public aware of their homophobic, sexist and moralistic stance which is aimed just as much at the secular community as it is at us – even though these churches don’t talk publicly much anymore about wives obeying their husbands, fornication (premarital sex), adultery, and submission to church authority.

So for these reasons, I don’t believe I can any longer engage constructively with fundamentalist christianity without becoming complicit in their oppression of their own people and their pernicious influence on society as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to start preaching on street corners against them (my street-preaching days are over!) but neither can I grant them the credibility of engaging in a ‘dialogue’ which I know is actually entirely one way – they neither want to, nor are capable of, hearing anything which will really make them change their minds or their practice. This is purely a personal decision, and I still profoundly respect those people who are paying the price to attempt dialogue with fundamentalist christianity, if only for the sake of the tortured souls within those groups who are trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith.