Jus’ Pondering

Christian Drag Queens?

I’ve been reading Water From A Deep Well, by Gerald L. Sittser. Foreword by Eugene Peterson. Sittser tells the stories of the Christian movement from the first to fourth Century. For a decade plus, I’ve been asking how does the Christian movement of the 21^st Century impact our population, institutions and culture? There are indicators!

“The fledging Christian movement thrived in such an unstable environment. The church became like family to aliens and outsiders who flocked to the cities. The church welcomed people from a wide cross-section of society and taught a message that was easily understood. ‘The appeal of Christianity’ Peter Brown states, ‘still lay in its radical sense of community: it absorbed people because the individual could drop from a wide impersonal world into a miniature community, whose demands and relations were explicit.” (page 62)

“…‘look,’ they say ‘how they love each other.’” “See how ready they are to die for one another.”

During the first couple of centuries, historians say Jesus Followers would worship next to former prostitutes and every form of outcasts, outsiders and rejected. A radical community. A place to belong.

With these words, I pondered: Is the local church called to welcome drag queens? I know! My mind may have slipped a cog. Or two.

A former member of a major Contemporary Christian band is now appearing and recording as a drag queen and his/her latest song is #1 on the itunes Christian Music chart. So, I listened. I liked the track. It has a good sound. I can’t understand all the words, but some were about belonging. Is it prophetic or seductive to corrupt living?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiXscOjacIM

From the comments about the song:

“You sing for all of us who have felt abandoned and outside the ‘”circle’”

The loneliness and angst are vivid. When I ponder, I can’t discount the role of the Holy Spirit. I pondered if I would be more comfortable if the singer didn’t show up on Sunday morning in his stage costume. Maybe, not teaching Sunday School?

The story is now in Newsweek. Another performer states she is committed to bypassing or setting aside “Church Gatekeepers.”

The church historian Sittser makes it very clear that the early preachers/teachers declared boundaries and the expected behavior for members of the ekklesia. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians indicate that. God has intentionally set gatekeepers and declarations of how one becomes a member of the universal Body of Christ and expected behavior specs. Culture or society or social media have no legitimate voice. If grace is the provision and our only means of salvation being God’s grace and our trust in Jesus’ provision, can a person be a Christian Drag Queen?

Pondering. Is that singer my brother or sister in Christ? Will Jesus settle for the deconstructed faith drag queen as my crazy cousin?

Jus’ Pondering

© 2023 D. Dean Benton—Wonderer, Meanderer, Ponderer