Methodists reach out to the gays

The Rev. Gil Caldwell is fond of quoting a character from the stage drama The Slave Narratives who said, "They use the Bible like a stick against us."

"They use the bible like a stick against us," Caldwell repeats during an interview in the chapel of Union United Methodist Church, an historically black South End church where he served as pastor from 1963 to 1968. The phrase would surface again during Caldwell’s remarks at a banquet in his honor later that night.

"And tragically some persons, in their misinterpretation of scripture, have done that with Africans as they enslaved them. They’ve done that with African Americans as they segregated us," says the 74-year-old retired minister and civil rights activist, who grew up in the segregated South. Though the Bible hasn’t changed, Caldwell observes that "some people are changing their interpretation of it and we need to acknowledge that." On the flip side, he adds, "for those who simply want to use the Bible as a stick or as a whip to control people, it’s one of the most tragic distortions of that Word."

Caldwell sees little distinction between the ways in which the Bible was used to justify the oppression of black people and the way in which it has been used against the LGBT community. And that’s why Union United’s decision to cosponsor the symposium "Living a New Vision: The Struggle Continues!" along with The Church Within A Church Movement, a progressive, pro-gay group of United Methodists, is significant, said Caldwell. "The church has a long history of involvement in the racial justice struggle," Caldwell says of Union United, "but for it to also see the justice for persons who are LGBT is, I think, so very encouraging. And within the African American community the sad thing -- even in Boston -- is there are black clergy and black churches who don’t seem to remember that the Bible was used like a stick against people of African descent, and in fact they are using the same kind of biblical [stick against LGBT people]."  Methodists reach out to the gays