For many years, the conversation around the acceptance and inclusion of members of the LGBTQI community within spaces of worship has raised many eyebrows, opinions and questions. As the conversation continues, has there been any change and how can we move forward to reach a consensus?
Jay Judah Matlou, the head of programming at the Thani Dish Foundation which seeks to offer affirming and positive support to members of the LGBTQI community, says that some of the challenges in places of worship still include rejection and discrimination.
“One of the challenges members of the LGBTQI community go through is that there is still some rejection from the religious sector, and that rejection has disastrous effects. The after-effects of the internalised hate can be quite damaging.”
For Matlou, this rejection amounts to denying them religious and spiritual growth.
“I am not saying that all members of the LGBTQI community are or must be religious. But just like everybody else, I believe they should be afforded the opportunity to strengthen the spiritual or religious side of themselves should we desire to do so.”
“The law of the country says you are protected regardless of your race, gender and sexual orientation. The highest law of the country protects the rights of LGBTQI people. But when powerful structures and people abuse their positions to humiliate people based on their sexual orientation and their identity, it gives rise to many problems,” says Matlou.
For Reverend Gcebile Gina, a priest in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and a systematic theology lecturer at the College of the Transfiguration, the conversation around the acceptance of members of the LGBTQI community is misplaced and should not be happening within the church.
“In my view, the church shouldn’t even be talking about whether to accept people or not. The church should be accepting people the way they are. My view, of course, respects and acknowledges the fact that there are other views out there. I believe we are not made righteous before God by our own doings, we are made righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith,” she says.
“Even those who are against the acceptance of others are also not made righteous because they are deserving or because of their works but by faith and the merit of our Lord. If as a church we celebrate who God is, then God is the Creator. God has created the people that we are trying to push away by having a largely homophobic conversation.”
Despite the challenges currently faced by members of the LGBTQI community in places of worship, progress is being made and more people are beginning to accept, understand and love the LGBTQI community.
“At the Thami Dish Foundation, we are getting amazing requests from different kinds of churches who write to us and ask us to please come in, train them and give them information that will allow them to sensitise the pastors and members of the congregation,” says Matlou.
In engaging the topic positively and progressively, Reverend Gina believes compassion, understanding and a willingness to listen are highly necessary.
“We have already gone past where we should not have gone past. What should be happening now is a continued discussion. With time, we should try to reach a consensus. I think we should also be opening space to listen to the LGBTQI community itself because a conversation where you are talking about a particular community without involving them would be making them objects of a conversation that they are not even involved in.”
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