The Pastoral is Political: The Political is Pastoral

At the Religious Institute, we work for systemic changes. We advocate for things like full LGBTQ equality, comprehensive sexuality education, universal access to contraceptive and abortion services, and sexuality education for ministers. We work to help people change their congregations, seminaries, denominations, communities, and one of our audacious goals is to change the conversation about religion and sexuality in the United States. We encourage people to speak out in the public arena from their faith about why they support sexual justice. This is important work. But it is not the only work.

We also assist people of faith, ministers, and others with questions of sexuality and religion. When we talk to people who want to know how to get the pastors on board with comprehensive sexuality education, or who want the church to just stop hurting LGBTQ people, we tell them that the way in is pastoral. The way to effect change on the micro level, one person at a time, is to invoke our common humanity. So we encourage people to say to the pastor, “You know there are young people in your congregation who are struggling with how to make good decisions about sexual activity.” And we encourage people to tell their stories to others in their congregation. “You know, I thought homosexuality was wrong too. Then my granddaughter told me she was a lesbian.”

I am a Christian.* Often, I feel the need to qualify that descriptor, and never more so than in this particular moment in time where others who claim that identity are using it to advocate for discrimination. Yet I claim that identity as mine. And this is what my faith teaches me: that we are called to be both pastors and prophets in this broken world. I take as my example a prophet who also knows that the way in to people’s hearts is pastoral.

Jesus didn’t just turn over tables in the Temple, he healed those considered untouchable. Jesus didn’t only call out the religious leaders on their hypocrisy, he invited a reviled tax collector home for dinner. As a prophet, he called out unjust systems and as pastor, he ministered to the victims of those systems.

This week, we Christians enter deeply into the mystery of our faith embodied in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We place ourselves in the story of our pastor/prophet as he makes his way toward death at the hands of the state, and even though we know that in the end the tomb is empty, we willingly enter the darkness of Good Friday with him. We do this because we need to situate all the deaths, resurrections, and new lives that we experience (collectively and individually) in the mystery of our faith: Christ is dying, Christ is rising, Christ is coming again. We do this because it’s how we ourselves become pastor/prophets.

*The Religious Institute is a multifaith organization.