Louie Giglio's Self-Thrown Pity Party

Maybe we pastors should get out of the blessing-of-government-functions business for good.  After all, the state has no business telling us how to worship, and when we do try some version of state-sanctioned worship, it doesn't always end well (see also: the outcry over Rick Warren delivering the benediction at President Obama's first inaugural ceremony in 2009).

The thing is, I honestly didn't care that much about Warren's presence at the first inauguration.  I don't agree with everything he says, but the President, just like any one of us, has the right to seek spiritual leadership from whomever s/he wishes.  If we don't like it, we can support a different politician who more closely shares our religious preferences.

That being said, the way that Louie Giglio is behaving in the wake of the outcry over his overt homophobia from the 1990's is embarrassing to me as a pastor and as Christian.

The controversy stems from a sermon Giglio gave in the mid-1990s, from which CNN (among others) reports he offered some extreme views on homosexuality, including the "pray the gay away" notion that homosexuality is an affliction from which one can be cured.

Notably, in the midst of this controversy, Giglio has NOT, to my knowledge, renounced those views.  Instead, he withdrew from his role of delivering the benediction at President Obama's second inaugural ceremony (the same role Rick Warren had at the first inauguration).

Again, there's nothing wrong with that.  If Giglio feels his presence is inappropriate, withdrawing is probably the best course of action.

It's how he has gone about doing so that has left me shaking my head.

In a statement published in part by NBC, Giglio says in part, "Due to a message of mine tha thas surfaced from 15-20 years ago, it is likely that my participation and the prayer I would offer will be dwarfed by those seeking to make their agenda the focal point of the inauguration." (emphasis mine)

The fact that Giglio is playing into a terrible stereotype--the sinister specter of the "homosexual agenda"--means he most certainly has not repented of his earlier homophobia, and in all likelihood still holds on to some of those beliefs.

More inexplicably, though, I seriously have no idea where Giglio gets off acting like he is the victim in all of this by the gay and lesbian community.

For decades--longer than I have been alive--gays and lesbians have been unjustly demonized by many, many Christian churches.  In the cases of people like Matthew Shepard, they have paid for that demonization with their lives.  Meanwhile, Christianity continues to be the most popular religion in both the United States and the world, and unlike the queer community, the First Amendment explicitly protects us.  And yet, Giglio, rather than actually owning what he says and believes, has the chutzpah to suggest that he is being drowned out by a community who has been marginalized and oppressed by the church for ages.

And not that it's perhaps of any great concern, but it's stuff like this which makes my job--and the jobs of many other pastors--of healing what is already a terribly broken and sinful world harder.

But more importantly, it makes the lives of my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in Christ more painful.  And it shouldn't.

And for that, I have to think it makes God's mercy even more necessary than it already was, if that's even possible.

Give us grace, Lord.

Yours in Christ,

Eric