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| Rev. Fr. Sean Major-Campbell performs a foot-washing at his service to commemorate Intl. Human Rights Day. Photo - Jamaicagleaner.com |
Since the 2011 passage of the Charter of Rights, the Jamaica Coalition for Healthy Society has continued its assault on the rights of LGBT Jamaicans, ritually coopting (or hijacking) successive International Human Rights Days to host public events to wail about the existential threat posed to religious freedoms by the “LGBT” agenda.
In commemoration of International Human Rights Day 2013, the JCHS released a documentary entitled Sex, Lies and Rights: a seduction of law, medicine and politics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvHD9edam0A. In summary, this documentary sought to promote the idea that human rights is a gift only to those who comply with “divine” dictates – which automatically excludes LGBT people who practice an “ungodly lifestyle”.
For International Human Rights Day in 2014, the Rev. Fr. Sean Major-Campbell (SMC), an Anglican priest, turned the tables on the JCHS by ritually washing the feet of members of Jamaica’s LGBTI community during a church service. In a later online conversation with Fr. Major-Campbell, he explained to me that the feet-washing ritual “simply affirms loving service to those whose feet are being washed”, particularly those who are marginalized in some way. Fr. Major-Campbell added that foot washing does not signify inclusion into the church or Christian community, noting that when Jesus performed this ritual there was no Christian community to speak of. However, within the context of IHRD, this ritual did at least two things: (a) announce that all persons are entitled to human rights, regardless of sexual orientation, social status or other marginalizing factors; and (b) challenge, if not undermine the dominant Christian narrative that human rights is a divine gift to a class of God-fearing beneficiaries from which LGBTI people are excluded.
SMC’s liturgical embrace of the LGBTI community was simultaneously greeted by acclaim and condemnation. From a media standpoint, it was a coup of monumental proportions. In 2014, the JCHS did host a public event – again aimed at appropriating International Human Rights Day to vilify the LGBTI community. However, this time around, they were completely upstaged by SMC’s foot washing, with barely any mention of the former event in the press.
Apart from stealing the thunder of the JCHS, SMC’s foot-washing coup has exposed a major fault line between traditional and progressive notions of humanity and human rights.
This is partly reflected in a letter to the Gleaner of December 13, 2014 http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20141213/letters/letters1.html by the Rev. Earl Thames. Mr. Thames complained that SMC had misinterpreted Jesus' words and actions. He contended that Jesus “ came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance”, and that the crucial phrase in this expression was "to repentance". Mr. Thames reasoned that Jesus never accepted nor condoned the sin of these sinners, but called them “to turn radically from their lifestyle, and to live according to His commandments”. Accordingly, for Mr. Thames, “The impression given by SMC is that he was justifying and condoning the lifestyle of the ladies as a 'right'”; and thus, SMC’s action was “the very opposite of that of Jesus”.
So in a nutshell, Mr. Thames’ theology is no repentance, no rights, while SMC’s theology holds that all are entitled to rights, without the prerequisite of repentance.
So both Mr. Thames and SMC appropriate human rights as part of their respective theologies. “Traditional” Christianity, it appears, appropriates human rights on exclusionary terms, while “progressive” Christianity appropriates human rights on inclusionary terms.
As a secular human rights advocate, I am certainly more supportive of SMC’s theology. I certainly salute him for his bold, courageous stand for the human rights of marginalized people, including LGBT folks. However, at the end of the day, I think that both theologies miss an important point: human rights have an entirely secular provenance, and have nothing to do with religion, least of all Christianity. Human rights have everything to do with a secular humanism, a philosophy that arose substantially in resistance to Christianity and its theologically justified abuses of human rights - in various forms, including murder, slavery, misogyny, and anti-democratic forms of government (e.g. divine right of kings).
SMC’s approach is predicated on what I’ve previously called a Jesus-is-Love theology (or JILISM), a theme I previously explored here: http://yardieskeptics.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-fundamentalism-of-jilists.html
In brief, JILISM promotes a warm, cozy Christianity, in which the central figure Jesus, is presented as the ultimate paragon of love, compassion, and forgiveness. In this conception of Christianity, there is no room for anti-humanist doctrines like original sin or substitutionary atonement, or divisive ideas like sinner and saved, or heaven and hell. And of course, despite the prescriptions of Leviticus and Romans, anti-gay precepts are nowhere to be found in this cuddly, inclusive view of Christianity. In essence, JILISM conscripts human rights to sanitize or neutralize Christianity’s scriptural and historical antipathy to humanity and to human rights.
No matter how you slice it – the essential ideology of Christianity is divisive, hierarchical, discriminatory, and unapologetically hostile to human rights. While the JILIST conception of human rights is more palatable, it is almost as indigestible, philosophically, as the repentance theory of human rights espoused by traditional Christians like Earl Thames.
Thames, it seems, doesn’t quite appreciate that his repentance theory of human rights cuts both ways. If I base my conception of human rights on anti-theism, I could just as easily argue that (a) religion is a lifestyle; and (b) that such a lifestyle is a “sin”, given the atrocities historically committed in the name of religion; and that (c) full enjoyment of human rights should be contingent on “repentance” of their religious “lifestyle”. Given the volitional nature of religious belief versus the involuntary nature of sexual orientation, it seems that I could make a stronger case for the religious to repent for their rights, than for LGBT to repent for theirs.
Ultimately, my thesis is a simple one. No variant of Christianity can legitimately claim philosophical kinship with human rights. However, to the extent that Christians, JILIST or otherwise, are willing to support and defend the human rights of all - they have my admiration and applause.
