Defrocked United Methodist minister turned gay rights activist, Jimmy Creech, declared that “there is no legitimate way the Bible can be used to condemn same gender loving relationships” at Washington D.C.’s Foundry United Methodist Church on Sunday, September 25, 2011. Creech spoke at Foundry for their “Celebration of Inclusion,” which marked the church’s one year anniversary of recognizing same sex “marriage,” and its 16th year as a “Reconciling Congregation.”
Foundry is a famously liberal downtown congregation that Bill and Hillary Clinton attended during his presidency. The United Methodist Church officially disapproves of homosexual and other marital sexual behavior and prohibits same-sex unions.
Creech is regarded as a pioneer by religious gay rights advocates, as his ministerial credentials were removed by a United Methodist court in 1999 after he officiated at a second same-sex union ceremony in his Nebraska Conference. He is now a common speaker at liberal United Methodist events. Creech told Foundry’s congregation that sexuality “needs to be recognized, honored, and respected, regardless of what sexual orientation it is,” and that biblical views of marriage and sexuality are “oppressive” and “demeaning” to homosexual people. Instead of addressing what the Bible says about homosexuality though, Creech shared interactions he had with homosexuals that led him “to confront my stereotypes and explore why the church has this long history of condemning same gender loving people.”
As a young Methodist pastor in the 1980s, Creech recounted he first faced homosexuality in the church when one of his congregants, Adam, was struggling with his homosexuality. According to Creech, the church taught that homosexual people were deviant, dangerous, and evil, but he found that “Adam fit none of these stereotypes.” Ultimately Creech found that “who Adam was, and my beliefs about homosexuality were incompatible.” This interaction led Creech to conduct an “intentional study” of the Bible and church history to find the correct Christian response to homosexuality. Creech found his answer in supposed theological errors made centuries ago by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, whose writings significantly influenced Christian teachings. He explained that when Greek philosophy began to shaped the early church, it instituted a false dualism between the spiritual and material, which led Christians to esteem the spiritual and condemn the physical. Creech said this dualism caused St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, and the church to fear the physical realm and ‘condemn sexuality” as an “appetite that should be deprived and denied.” According to Creech, “sexuality was reduced to nothing more than an appetite that was only acceptable when procreation was involved,” clearly excluding acceptance of homosexuality. Creech said these teachings informed civil laws criminalizing homosexuality, and “made people live in fear of exposure.”
After the brief history lesson, Creech said that “we’ve lived for almost 2,000 years with these kinds of teachings shaping our own perception of ourselves and our relationships with one another.” He lamented this “error” made by all of society, then said that “for us, as people of faith, the most fundamental error is that it is contrary to the Bible.” Creech said that orthodox views on marriage and sexuality are not based on Biblical teachings, but on “fear” of sexuality. Further, he has “always believed that the emancipation of gay people is also going to emancipate non-gay people from fear of sexuality.” This fear, he said, is rooted in the false dualism between the physical and spiritual, and should not exist because “the world is one, we are an inseparable unity of spirit and body.” Creech said that “as part of the world we are part of the good creation,” and that God “created us to be who we are.”
Any expression of sexuality is good, Creech surmised, because it is “a part of God’s good creation, [and] it really is blasphemy to say that sexuality is wrong, bad, or sinful.” His activism is based on his belief that “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have not felt at home in churches.” Creech said that churches must condone homosexual practices to accept homosexual individuals because “if you affirm an individual, you affirm their relationships.” He explained that “we do not live as individuals, we live as relationships, and our relationships must be honored for us as individuals to be whole and healthy.”
Creech is the co-founder of Faith in America, a North Carolina based activist organization that believes “use of the term “traditional marriage” is without question morally unacceptable and equally sinful in the religious context.” Faith in America recently launched an aggressive billboard campaign in North Carolina protesting “religion-based bigotry,” which is part of Creech’s agenda to undermine scriptural authority and place “sexuality in a broader perspective” in the Church.
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