This commentary is by Rev. Ken White of Winooski. He has been an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ for 14 years, and is pastor at College Street Church in Burlington.
I am writing in response to your recent article, “Families sue Vermont DCF over LGBTQ+ foster care requirements,” from my perspective as a Christian pastor.
Growing up in a fundamentalist church smackdab in the middle of the Bible Belt, I remember there being some people in the church that people whispered about. You know — those people. No one was really quite sure what to do with them, or how to handle them. Of course we knew God loved them — God loves everyone — but they had also, based on the Bible (as we were taught it), chosen a sinful lifestyle.
After all, the Bible is very clear that divorce and remarriage is adultery, at least according to the Gospel of Mark (the Gospels of Matthew and Luke throw in a loophole), and the apostle Paul explicitly spoke against divorce without the loophole (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). In that world, those people were people who had been divorced. Obviously, even for those churches, their understanding of the Bible has changed… at least around divorce.
But before it changed, this view of Scripture did tremendous damage. Countless people — women, primarily — were told to stay in abusive relationships by Christian ministers and Christian marriage counselors, some of whom were state-funded. One would hope that we would have learned a tragic lesson.
But here we are still, with some Christians insisting not only that their particular interpretation of the Scripture is The One, but that the state is required to conform to it, even if doing so puts the well-being of children at risk. Just to be clear, deeply held religious convictions should be respected, but those deeply held convictions do not allow individual citizens to dictate terms to the state in a way that results in potential harm to other innocent citizens.
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If one’s Scriptural interpretation leads them to believe that people should stay with abusive partners, it would be unwise to make them marriage counselors. In the same way, it is unwise to place people in authority over children whose Scriptural interpretation leads them to believe that queerness — a beautiful aspect created by a loving God — is sinful.
As a pastor, it hurts my heart to see these ancient texts that have brought life to so many be used to bring unneeded suffering to innocent children who have seen more than any child should. Yet, while cloaked in the call for religious liberty, with this suit the ADF is repeating these same mistakes of the past.
To be perfectly blunt, I believe that any Christian that uses our texts in the tired ways of pseudo-literalism that have led to Christian support for racism, misogyny, fascism and homophobia is living a sinful lifestyle. I believe that Christians insisting that the state conform to their beliefs, so contrary to the humility of the One we seek to follow, is a moral error.
I also believe that grace is a central ethos in the Christian story, so while I hate the sins of the ADF in bringing this lawsuit, I will do my best to love the sinner.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Rev. Ken White: Christians insisting that the state conform to their beliefs is a moral error.