What Pastors in the Potomac Conference Are Saying About the Bible and LGBTQ+
Leaders of the Potomac Conference in the Columbia Union have recently taken a special interest in protecting members in their territory from heresy and divisiveness. In order to do this, they have taken the highly unusual action of attempting to ban a fully ordained Seventh-day Adventist minister, whom they deem heretical and divisive, from speaking in their conference territory.
While the attempt to keep heretical and divisive teachings away from its congregations is laudable, it might be wise for the Potomac Conference leadership to look a little closer to home.
LGBTQ Summit
Take, for example, the recent summit, "LGBTQ: Pastoral and Theological Perspectives held March 17-18, 2023, on the campus of Washington Adventist University (WAU) and the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Maryland.
While WAU is technically a Columbia Union institution, the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church, located on the WAU campus, is one of the largest and most influential churches within the Potomac Conference, and is under the jurisdiction of the Conference. The Takoma Park Seventh-day Adventist Church, located just 1.2 miles down the road from Sligo, is also a large church within the Potomac Conference.
The LGBTQ Summit held at WAU was sponsored not only by the University, but also by Sligo Church, which hosted a special Sabbath School, led out by former ADRA Director Charles Sandefur, featuring summit speakers Dilys Brooks, a chaplain at Loma Linda University, along with former Adventist pastors Alicia Johnston and Paul-Anthony Turner who both identify as "queer," the newest catch-all term for those identifying as LGBT+.
In the Sligo Pulpit
Speaking in the Sligo pulpit for the worship hour was the summit's keynote speaker, Dr. Sigve Tonstad, identified in the program as "Research Professor of Biblical Interpretation and Assistant professor of Medicine at Loma Linda University."
His sermon, titled "Didactic Sting Operation or Crafty Opponents: Romans 1:18-32 Reconsidered" was part 2 of a three-part lecture series given during the summit that methodically deconstructed and then reconstructed this passage in Romans, informing the congregation, including students, summit participants, and other attendees that the words found in Romans 1:18-32 are not really Paul's words at all, but are instead hyperbole, or the words of someone else, because Paul would not speak of others with such "disgust." Tonstad further stated, "We have to restore to these texts their tonality and context." He also said, "The same-sex reality described in Romans 1 is not quite like ours--it's sex between a superior and an inferior." Tonstad warned his listeners that Romans 1 "cannot be used in a prescriptive way. The text begins with idolatry." Going on, he insisted, "The way we have used these texts . . . has been badly and hurtfully."
The senior pastor of the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church, Alex Barrientos, was in full support of Tonstad's teachings. "The Seventh-day Adventist Church is honored to have a scholar of his [Tonstad's] caliber within its membership. Dr. Tonstad represents the highest level of scholarship in the church," Barrientos assured his congregation. "We live in an anti-intellectual time, and Christianity is part of that," he continued. "I would like to tell you that Sligo will not be anti-intellectual. It is in the church that thinking should be harnessed, cherished, desired and most able to capture the abilities of the world, because in it, God has created it. The Sligo church will not be afraid to learn."
Focus on Potomac Pastors
There is much more we could share with you from watching hours of this summit online, including similar statements made by other summit participants such as Olive Hemmings, chair of WAU's School of Religion; Dilys Brooks, chaplain at Loma Linda University; Jason Dietz, chaplain at WAU, Ralph Johnson, Vice-President for Student Life at WAU; Bogdan Scur, Religion Professor at WAU, as well as Dilys Brooks, Alicia Johnston, and Paul-Anthony Turner mentioned earlier. However, we have decided instead to focus mainly on what the Potomac Conference pastors have said, particularly Alex Barrientos, senior pastor of the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church, along with Pranitha Field, executive pastor of Sligo who was "ordained" by the Potomac Conference on December 13, 2014. We've also included a statement from Daniel Xisto, senior pastor, Takoma Park SDA Church, who often served as a moderator during the summit and is a strong advocate for LGBT+ people within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. We believe these statements speak for themselves.
Statements made by Alex Barrientos, senior pastor, Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church:
"Queer theology is creating an alternative power to address the powers that have suppressed humanity. . . .a good Adventist theology must speak more heavily about what it means to be human."
"It's not a 'lifestyle'; it's life. It's life and therefore . . it's just a matter of being able to incorporate everything about life in general."
"I think we should 'queer' more. . . theology is a good way of querying because it provokes us to go back to think about what the heck started all of this anyway? And do you know who was disgusted at the queer God? It was the very people who thought God could not be this. And it was the One who showed up in Jerusalem."
"When there is hostility pronounced by pastors and church groups about 'anti' anything in regard to personhood, you have to address it, because it is violence. The Bible becomes weaponized. Christ becomes masochistic . . . I'm a pastor at Sligo; we try to hit at different corners of the world that attempts to affirm humanity in different forms."
"Christian thinking is about self-preservation, right? And it also has this immortality effect to one's being, which is why Adventist theology fails often because it thinks far too much about heaven. . . most of that heavenly thinking has no Scriptural nuance to it. It is all based on a source of a dream. . . Here we are, 21st century, we are in a position of which the reality that we live in engages us between the text, church, and people who really want to have sex. . . Let's rethink about what we truly mean by 'human beings' and how God acts upon them."
"The Church as a whole, is illiterate about power. It doesn't know what it means when it speaks it. . . . And everything in regards to spiritual power is kind of this unknown friend or enemy that we have that revolves around this when we go to the text, when we treat people a certain way, which causes the tool like the Bible to become a weapon. It harms marriages, it harms relations in the church, and it harms how we describe the roles in the church. And we can only expect more of it."
"The Bible is not God. This is a true thing in the culture of Adventism, that God, in a sense, lives in the pages, and therefore that's why you're reading the Bible because you want to know who God is. God is not there. God is in the world."
"Pastors are formed to think they are supposed to be Bible readers alone! . . . the reality is that pastors have these lenses they switch with different types of people—they have to be "biblical" relationships, not just "regular" relationships! How to combat this phobia?"
"Preparation for the Second Coming is a parable. We put too much emphasis on that—the virgins, the lamps—it's a parable. I'm interested more if we have our life already in Christ—I think we're pretty good to go."
Statements made by Pranitha Fielder, executive pastor, Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church:
"Adventists are always asking 'What does the Bible say?' A lot of people are not affirming [of queer people] because there is a real guilt that they are going against the Bible—so we need to change that hermeneutic."
"They [those who don't accept queer people] are part of cultures that look down at LGBTQ people, and they think if they accept this community they are going against God. That thinking needs to change!"
"The sin that is disgusting to God, and in Isaiah 1 it refers to Sodom and Gomorrah, what is this sin that God finds so disgusting that He will not hear the prayers of His people? . . . It is oppression. That is the sin that God is so disgusted by. It is when His children are oppressing His other children."
From Daniel Xisto, senior pastor, Takoma Park Seventh-Day Adventist Church:
"Jesus said that all the law and prophets hang on love and love does not hang on the law and the prophets. So, . . . when we read Scripture and there's something that we see in the law and the prophets that cause us to be unloving, we know automatically that we're reading it wrong."
Observations
If the Potomac Conference leadership is interested in protecting its members from heretical and divisive teachings, may we suggest it need look no further than its own house.
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"The church is God's fortress, His city of refuge, which He holds in a revolted world. Any betrayal of the church is treachery to Him who has bought mankind with the blood of His only-begotten Son" (Acts of the Apostles, pp. 11, 12).
