#david sindt

[a-queer-seminarian]

“is anybody else out there gay?”

today I learned about Rev. David Sindt, who graduated from McCormick Seminary in 1965 but was unable to get a position at any Presbyterian churches because he was openly gay. For instance, in 1973 the Chicago Presbytery, “after ten months of deliberation, refused to accept him to serve in a ministry to gay people at Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church because he was gay. Lincoln Park Church did ask him, however, to develop a ministry with the gay community -- but as an outside consultant.”

In 1974, Sindt organized the Presbyterians for Lesbian & Gay Concerns (PLGC). When the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1978 made the decision to deny ordination to “self-acknowledged, practicing homosexuals,” Sindt and the PLGC opposed it vocally. Sindt himself lamented the loss of his ordained status: “I moved from ordained minister to second-class member ineligible for any recognized leadership.”

In 1980, Sindt was allowed a voice at the General Assembly, speaking for the PLGC, but did not have a vote.

A favorite memory shared at his memorial service after he died of AIDS in 1986 was when at the 1974 General Assembly he held up a simple handmade sign that read, “Is anybody else out there gay?”

I cannot shake that image from my mind -- how small and alone he must have felt among the church leaders who had denied and rejected his leadership but who could not quell his voice -- the courage with which he challenged others to speak up and stand in solidarity. His PLGC organization sprouted up soon after; and, soon after his death, More Light Presbyterians was formed and Lincoln Park Church, the church that would not hire him, joined its ranks.

Sindt has a square on the AIDS Memorial Quilt that features irises (the image above is of someone sewing irises onto the panel), because after losing his ordained status he started up an iris business and even became an authority “in the iris world...and won many awards.” Even when he was cast out by the church, Sindt found and nurtured life wherever he could.

- Source for this post: Called Out: The Voices & Gifts of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Presbyterians (1995)

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

[image description: a photo of the cover of The Word Is Out by Chris Glaser; the cover is golden-yellow and includes a medieval image of David and Jonathan embracing each other and smiling at each other. end image description./]

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Here on Queerly Christian, i plan on posting a devotional piece every day from now on.

(Starting tomorrow, June 20! we’ll see how long this plan lasts haha)

many of the devotionals will come from this book The Word Is Out. Others will come from other texts i’ve read and enjoyed this past year or so. my hope is that folks will be able to use these little passages to find a little space for prayer and presence in their day or week.

i’ll be tagging each one as #devotional.

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At the seminary from which i just graduated, students put books down in one campus building’s basement when they want to give it away. a couple months back, i was going through those books to organize them because there were at least 100 down there all strewn about -- and found this book. i was excited to come across it; i always love finding older books by and about members of the LGBTQ+ community!

The Word Is Out: The Bible Reclaimed for Lesbians and Gay Men, by Chris Glaser, is a book of daily devotionals, one for each day of the year.

you can get this book really cheap if you’re interested in owning a copy yourself! also, the Spanish version is available in full completely free online! 

i wasn’t sure what to expect when i saw it was for the L and G without the B and T (let alone the rest of the acronym), but it’s a product of its time (first published in 1994) and there really are some lovely devotionals in here! many of them can resonate with various members of the LGBTQA+ community, not just lesbians and gay men. 

Glaser dedicated the book to his lover Mark, an HIV-positive gay man; given the horrors of the AIDS crisis, i understand Glaser’s special focus on this population. and every now and then one of the devotionals explicitly mentions the B and/or the T, and Glaser seems to be an ally to bisexuals and trans persons today. 

According to his online biography, he’s a member of my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church of the United States! he came out to his ordination committee in his first year of seminary, in 1974 -- that was a majorly gutsy move. after all, just a year before that, Rev. David Sindt was deemed unfit for a pastoral position because he’d come out as gay. Glaser and Sindt undoubtably knew each other, given that Sindt organized the Presbyterians for Lesbian & Gay Concerns (PLGC), a group that Glaser’s bio says he was part of (it’s now called More Light Presbyterians). Glaser also wrote Coming Out as Sacrament, which i haven’t finished yet but which i’ve found very valuable so far!

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i’m sharing the introduction to The Word Is Out below, as it gives Glaser’s reasons for creating the book and is a lovely passage in itself.

Introduction to The Word is Out:

“My lover has searched for God in several kinds of churches throughout his life. The condemnation he met with as a gay man discouraged and alienated him. The ‘in’ language of Christians made our faith unintelligible. The complex and ancient setting of the Bible did not render it user-friendly. Mark is HIV-positive and feels a great urgency in his inquiry into life’s meaning and purpose, the spiritual quest.

A lesbian woman I met many years ago shared this urgency. Her quest, which I’ve recounted in two previous books, still motivates me. She had no religious background, but she told me that in her lovemaking with her lover she had touched a spiritual realm never before known to her. She explained that she wanted to know more about God.

This stranger and my lover deserve a devotional book that helps God’s Word to them emerge from the closets of the Bible’s ancient stories and theological language. The ‘Word’ within the words of scripture is an intimate encounter with God. No writer, not even a biblical writer, has the power to ‘out’ the Word. The Spirit at work within us -- writer and reader -- introduces us to God. 

For Christians, Jesus Christ is the primary Word of God, the primary way we meet God. Through Christ, the Word comes out to embrace us. Just as our love is out, God’s love is out.

I traveled much during the time I was selecting the verses for this book. As I sat on planes full of straight strangers and on a cruise ship full of gay and lesbian strangers, I became aware that I was trying to hide the fact that I was looking at a Bible! I feared both ‘friend’ and ‘foe.’ I feared someone who might look at my scripture reading approvingly, lest they be antigay. I feared someone who might look at my work disapprovingly, lest they be antireligion. This revealed to me how necessary it is for lesbian and gay Christians to reclaim the Bible from those who would use it either as a weapon or a target! 

In the meditations that follow, I approach the Bible more as a student than as a scholar. I seek within its stories spiritual truth rather than historical fact. Each day begins with a scripture, taken from the New Revise Standard Version of the Bible, unless otherwise noted, and modified to avoid exclusively male references to God. The more ambitious readers may choose to look up the context of the verse or verses, but that’s not necessary. A short reflection on the biblical text is followed by a short prayer or affirmation. Hopefully, what you read will open your own meditation and prayer. 

It says good things about the Bible that there were many more verses I wanted to use than could be selected for this book. The scriptures have been arranged by themes, one per month, at times coinciding with events of the lesbian and gay community. 

May this book serve as a personal invitation to you and to us all to reclaim the Bible as lesbians and gay men, as bisexuals and transgenders, and as people who love them. Little do we know what spiritual pleasures await us as we work through the Bible together.”

[santafeanmagazine]

Art preview

Unbridled

Through March 31

Manitou Galleries 123 Palace

manitougalleries.com

Above: David Frederick Riley, Black Jack, oil on canvas, 60 x 60”

This curated exhibition celebrates and explores the several-thousand-year-long relationship between human and horse. Manitou Galleries requested that participating artists place no parameters on their creative interpretations of the equine subject, and the result is an eclectic variety of works.      Horses are a specialty of guest artist Siri Hollander, who works with steel and recycled metal. The rest of the participating artists—all painters—have each dabbled in animal portraiture in some form, from boldly colored close-ups by Gail Gash Taylor to photorealistic black-and-white works by David Frederick Riley and loose, dreamy depictions by Amy Lay. Debra Sindt’s paintings capture animals in the wild, while Kim Wiggins most often includes them in his bright and busy depictions of the American West and its inhabitants. Douglas Aagard paints wide, bright landscapes while Jie Wei Zhou’s work tends to honor his cultural roots through Chinese subject matters. —Sarah Eddy

#santafean #santafeanmagazine #magazine #santafe #newmexico #art #events

[a-queer-seminarian]

Hey, i have some exciting news: i’ve been appointed to the board of directors for my denomination’s LGBTQA+ organization!

I’m headed to Nashville tomorrow for a short retreat where I’ll learn more about what my roles will be.

I’m nervous, but also excited. I see much potential in More Light Presbyterians’ future — not because it has an unblemished past (it doesn’t), but because the people currently at the helm have recognized the need to take greater action and to emphasize intersectionality.

Prayers or good vibes are deeply appreciated as I and the others all travel and meet one another! Meanwhile, some other thoughts / some More Light history are under the readmore.

More Light Presbyterians’ Mission Statement:

“Following the risen Christ, and seeking to make the Church a true community of hospitality, the mission of More Light Presbyterians is to work for the full participation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) people in the life, ministry and witness of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and in society.”

The informal beginning of the More Light movement was in 1974, when David Bailey Sindt, at a meeting of the Presbyterian General Assembly, held up a sign reading "Is anybody else out there gay?" (I’ve posted about this historical event before!)

Thus More Light Presbyterians has been around for decades, with the original priority being to get the PC(USA) to affirm the ordinations and marriages of gay (and later more specifically LGBTQA+) folk. That’s now been accomplished!! (See this post for one historical stop along the way)

However, there is clearly a lot of work yet to do. Not all PCUSA congregations are LGBTQA+ affirming; and those that are often struggle to live out their theoretical affirmations for a number of reasons (lack of resources, or education, etc.).

I’ve interacted with a lot of More Light congregations since joining the PC(USA) back in 2015, with mixed results: I have been burned by some More Light congregations, and nourished by others. My home congregation, where I still participate regularly and where my wife and I got married, is a More Light congregation. But when I was in seminary, a different More Light congregation scared me off from wanting to be a pastor through their actions — they admitted they didn’t want to take me on as an intern because of “the pronoun thing.” Then there are the number of More Light congregations I’ve dropped by for just a service or two, only to find no non-gendered bathrooms & greeters who misgendered me despite my pronoun pin.

The problem is that a lot of congregations became More Light a decade or more ago, before an emphasis on not only being “gay friendly” but fully LGBTQA+ welcoming had come about. I applied for this position in the hopes that I can help More Light mean true affirmation, sanctuary, celebration for all LGBTQA+ folks.

I want there to be more expected of any congregation that chooses to call themselves More Light, so that I can recommend any More Light church to LGBTQA+ friends without a qualm.

When I applied, I wasn’t sure whether this goal would be an uphill battle or not. After one Zoom meeting with the current More Light leadership, I’m very hopeful that it won’t be: the idea of requiring more from MLP members was brought up; and intersectionality and anti-racism were also emphasized.

So let’s see where things go. Wish us luck!