Episode 7. What does religion have to say about same-sex attraction and/or behavior? Relationsh!t and Singing Scientist sit down to discuss their experiences in church, the most commonly cited Bible verses about homosexuality, and the beauty of Romans 1. Photo by Michael Young Photography.
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The Holland Sentinel has generously published my op-ed on the anti-LGBTQ Nashville Statement and the precarious legal situation members of the LGBTQ face in Michigan. Please take a read and share.
FROM the Nashville Statement to Washington policy, it has been a difficult month for myself and other LGBTQ folks.
Here in Holland, I have been increasingly discouraged by the promotion, even by those I consider friends, of articles and other rhetoric that misconstrue our situation in this community. One such piece is an August 28 MY TAKE by Sharon Masten, which “assure[s]” us that “the majority of Christians” in this city are “compassionate for their LGBTQ neighbors.” Thus, she reasons, a city ordinance protecting our basic rights is unnecessary.
By this logic, the Michigan law protecting equal opportunity based on “religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status, or marital status” (MCL 37.2102) might also be deemed unnecessary—“the majority of” people are compassionate, after all. Yet any Bill of Rights is meant to protect minorities who cannot fend for themselves. It seems incredible that humanity’s Godlike compassion should be highlighted in this case, when Holland usually stresses its sinful nature instead.
As it turns out, the contention that LGBTQ folks undergo no discrimination in Holland is tragically false…
Read the full article HERE.
Check out my new LGBT series on YouTube rebuffing the anti-LGBT Nashville Statement.
The first video has so far received over 1.7k views. Join the discussion!
I thank Marcia Bloemers for her response in “Christians aren’t playing ‘victim’” (Sentinel, June 16). She was not alone in interpreting my words as a personal attack on Seaborn. That was not my intention. I quoted his words as one example, uttered in a public forum, as I might have quoted a book that has influenced the culture of our community.
My purpose was instead to establish two weak claims. The first is that Christians are not generally victims of LGBT people. Yet Seaborn has proclaimed at numerous churches that LGBT people have an “agenda” that will land Christians in jail. This rhetoric accomplishes nothing more than polarization, and inflames attendees already disposed toward hate speech and violence. It serves no one. Instead, regardless of moral opinions, Christians should be taught to advocate for the safety and dignity of victimized LGBT.
The second point is that Christians must not remain silent. LGBT outcry following Orlando is one begging you to hear our plight — a plight that began long before last weekend. Has your church condemned the massacre? Acknowledged the event as an LGBT hate crime? Told a demeaning joke about Saugatuck lately? Contributed to a West Michigan that makes life either miserable or pleasant for us? Some introspection would go a long way.
Bloemers and others also fail to grasp that we have been actively excluded from ministries. Certainly, all people get mistreated — but black people, same-sex couples holding hands, transgendered individuals and many others walk around with targets on their backs. The treatment is disproportionate. Ignorance of this reality is part of what it means to be privileged, and failure on the part of privileged individuals to advocate for the oppressed is a great crime of silence. Holding hands with a same-sex friend downtown might bring some awareness.
Finally, there is the complaint that my letter (“Christians can stop playing cultural victim,” Sentinel June 14) was divisive. Jesus’ own message was apparently so offensive that it put him on a cross, so I myself make no apologies for stating some difficult truths. I believe a conversation has started that holds potential for bringing change. If my letter may be considered a less egregious offense than the murder of 50 people last weekend, let us hope that pulpits across West Michigan shall address current events this coming Sunday by condemning violence, advocating for LGBT rights and considering how they might help to ensure our safety — not painting us as oppressors.
Chase W. Nelson
Holland
Originally published in The Holland Sentinel.
In the wake of the Orlando shooting, I am reminded of a sermon once if not often given by Dan Seaborn in which he proclaims that homosexuality is wrong, and further expresses the fear that he might very well be put in prison some day for having said so.
Saturday night’s events expose the utter nonsense these words represent as they issue forth from the lips of a white Protestant male in West Michigan. And while Seaborn’s public words invite a specific response, it is this community at large, and those like it, that have allowed anti-gay sentiments to fester, take root and grow ultimately into the kind of deeply entrenched hate witnessed by all of us who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. The indoctrination has finally been mistaken for conscience by its recipients.
Over a hundred men were shot on Saturday, with 50 dead; Seaborn and like-minded men of privilege have so far seen no jail time. The roles in this story are clear. For Christians to play the victim in a “culture war” that has us LGBT folks worried for our physical safety is not only preposterous, it is profoundly anti-Christian. Christians may be persecuted elsewhere, but not much in America, and certainly not in Holland.
That the culture increasingly expresses disagreement with some fundamentalist dogmas should not be interpreted as persecution; it should be interpreted as disagreement. The disproportionately hateful treatment and murder of minorities in America makes this difference clear to any objective observer.
Why say so? Because the blood is on the hands of any and all who fail to act — who do not stand up for “the least of these.” There are the parents whose child blurted “faggot” at me on Eighth Street some months ago; no correction was given. There are the churches who have failed to protect me or else actively excluded me because I am gay; no one cared to call afterward. There are the daily unfriendly stares and avoidance of men whose own masculinity is apparently so delicate that a measure of insult is required to ensure its safe preservation; I am sometimes sure to leave in a crowd to guarantee my safety.
These, friends, are the promulgators of hate, or else the bystanders at the trial of the innocent who say nothing. You have seen the fruits. But will you change the tree?
Chase W. Nelson
Holland
Originally published in The Holland Sentinel.
I am grateful today to have a brief remembrance of Austin Hughes published in Infection, Genetics and Evolution. It mentions his contributions to science, but most importantly includes words from his esteemed colleagues and friends, including Dan Graur, Wen-Hsiung Li, Tomoko Ohta, and others. It is my hope that it will help preserve his memory and spread awareness of all that his life and work have to offer. A review of his scientific work on the neutral theory, overdominant natural selection, and adaptive evolution is in press elsewhere. A free PDF of the remembrance can be downloaded at the citation below, and a sample of the contributions follow.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance Austin Hughes’ fundamental contributions to molecular evolutionary theory and practice. He was a prolific researcher whose work covered such disparate topics as coevolution, phylogenetics, repetitive DNA, and more recently the application of population genetics to clinical research. Austin had an incredibly sharp mind, an imitable scientific intuition, and an abundance of impatience for bad science, faulty logic, and demagoguery. Debunking unwarranted generalizations and “accepted” theories was one of his fortes. His writing was crystal clear; I wish he had written a manual of writing style for scientists. He was also fluent in the Welsh language (Cymraeg) and wrote both poetry and prose in this ancient tongue. His untimely death deprived me of a friend and colleague; science was deprived of a great biologist who knew living systems inside and out at all levels, from the molecular to ecological. I’ll miss you, Austin. Gorffwys mewn hedd.
—Dan Graur, University of Houston
I remember Austin fondly—an unusual individual to say the least. He held deep religious convictions and yet was a rigorous scientist. I would call Austin, talk to him about whatever subject, and he would come up with some form of analysis. He was a rare scientist who bridged both biology and computing; his passing is such a loss to the field. Not that his relationship with my lab members was always plain sailing. His intolerance of naïve graduate students was legendary! I would ask them, with a smile on my face, to talk to Austin about their ideas. Almost always, they would be back in my office, despondent and demoralized! But once they got to know Austin, their disposition would change. I never, ever, had a single issue with Austin. Always ready and excited to help with new analyses, and entertaining to talk to—really a wonderful colleague and friend.
—David I. Watkins, University of Miami
Austin Hughes was that rarest of rare birds in academia: a distinguished scientist with the soul of a humanist. At the foundation of his scientific labors was a philosophical and, indeed, theological conviction: the supreme importance of seeking and attaining truth. It was this that motivated and sustained his work. And because he was aware that this (only) rational motivation for scientific inquiry is not itself something that can be grasped by deploying scientific methods, he eschewed philosophical empiricism and scientific reductionism. He knew that non-scientific methods of inquiry are as necessary as scientific ones in the House of Intellect. For Austin, scientists and humanists were—are—not inhabitants of “two cultures,” much less “cultures in conflict”; they are, rather, friends and collaborators in the comprehensive project of truth seeking.
—Robert P. George, Princeton University
Nelson CW (2016) Remembering Austin L. Hughes. Infection, Genetics and Evolution 40:262-5.
I am very honored to have my short personal memoir on Dr. Austin L. Hughes published in revised form and sans poem at The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society. Check out the latest issue, which includes numerous thought-provoking pieces on such topics as the oil industry and environmental ethics.
A dear atheist friend once turned to me in the middle of a Fernando Ortega concert to whisper, “that’s what holiness looks like.” Shocked by her response to this overtly Christian musician, I later asked what she meant. “I think holiness is when someone finds what they most love to do in this life. You can tell that this guy just lives to play the piano and sing about God. It feels like holiness when you watch it happen.”
The same can be said about the scientific work of University of South Carolina biologist Austin L. Hughes, my teacher, who died in October 2015 at the age of sixty-six…
Through the lyrics of Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne tells us that “Saturday night is the loneliest night of the week.” The original implication seems to be that the loneliness is a result of heartbreak and lost love, that we are passive victims in our plight. Yet it seems to me that we have ignored a cause of loneliness more strong and more difficult to change—and one which results not from an unfortunate circumstance such as rejection, but rather from a person’s own self-actualization. In this I am referring to driven people who, along with Avenue Q’s Princeton, “gotta find my purpose”: Christians who read The Purpose-Driven Life; musicians who must practice; scholars who must read. Such individuals—perhaps they’re all introverts—find hope and renewal in the practice of their discipline, not in the shooting of the breeze. They may fail miserably, as I do, in much of the magic they attempt; but they recognize that to be an artist requires, at the start, to be a bad one, and they heed the voice in their soul which bids them create.
I am, of course, describing what I feel to be my own predicament—and, moreover, with no intention of judgment whatsoever. Let others have their clubs, their dancing, and their drinks. I will have mine too on rare occasion. But more often, much more, my psyche drips with a palpable and urgent sense of purpose. It is true that I am lonely. But I’ve sat with a wine under the neon lights before; it holds nothing for me. My soul desires, in the words of G. K. Chesterton, “expansion, a world to stretch” myself in. Yet I find myself in a world where there seem to be no others who hope to do so, or at least none who wish to do so with me. Free time is for tele, free time is for couch, free time is for cookie—so screams the world around me.
In a passage which I cannot now find, Richard Miller tells us that every day is a training day for the serious singer. There is no doubt that I err on the side of workaholism, that some of the neurosis lies with me, and that I take this advice to the extreme; science, writing, exercise, ballet, and voice every single day leaves little time for much else. I do it because I believe it to be my calling, my contribution to the world. But surely I am not the one-hundredth percentile. Surely someone else considers their leisure time an opportunity, not for inaction but rather action. Every moment is an opportunity to per-fect the pirouette, to sing the high C, to sculpt one’s mind and abilities so that, at long last, one might have some chance of expressing their heart to the world as only a human being can—creatively, passionately, with excellence. In solitary confinement, I read the wisdom of times gone by and wonder about the existence of others who share this heart.
Anyone. Anyone.
Note: this memoir has now been published, sans poem, in a revised form at The New Atlantis.
Over tea in a New York November
seems an odd place to weep for a
straight Catholic man.
Your most honest of intellects
and most awkward of greetings—
a look up, a nod—
are needed now,
my guider and muse.
How could you bow?
I am unfit to tell
the brilliance you knew,
the clack of a 1 train your departing knell
a gesture too quick, the last words too few.
Dr. Austin L. Hughes.
—November 2, 2015
A dear atheist friend once turned to me in the middle of a Fernando Ortega concert to whisper, “that’s what holiness looks like.” Shocked by her response to this overtly Christian musician, I later asked what she meant. “I think holiness is when someone finds what they most love to do in this life. You can tell that this guy just lives to play the piano and sing about God. It feels like holiness when you watch it happen.”
The same can be said of Dr. Austin L. Hughes’s work in science. I have never met an intellectual more dedicated to an objective analysis of truth. Himself a devout Catholic and a relatively conservative man, he studied evolution with a tenacity and seriousness that surpassed that of anyone else in the field. Having studied philosophy at Georgetown and Harvard in the sixties and early seventies, he quickly grew disillusioned with the biases and agendas he encountered, and opted for a field less ideological and more humble. Although it may now stretch credulity to imagine the word ‘humble’ as an accurate descriptor of the biological discipline, it is apparently what he found in the field as he undertook his first studies in zoology. Gradually examining the behavior of several beetles, birds, and fish at Oxford, he then broke into molecular evolution as a post-doc under Masatoshi Nei at the University of Texas at Houston, where he met other evolutionary greats such as Wen-Hsiung Li. It was there too that he made one of his most influential contributions to science in 1988, producing a study comparing patterns of nonsynonymous (amino acid-altering) and synonymous (amino acid-conserving) polymorphism at the major histocompatibility (MHC) locus in order to detect a form of positive (Darwinian) natural selection. His other 300 scientific papers and 2 books were an act of worship—if not of God, at least of truth. One paper after another poured forth addressing gene duplication, natural selection, and phylogenetic relationships as he gradually documented the evolutionary history of a wide swathe of living things. It’s what he loved to do, and it earned him membership with the AAAS in 2010.
An extremely private person (we never once had dinner), Hughes’s priorities were clearly seen to be faith, family, and science. He had little time to bother with anything else, including such trivialities as pleasant greetings. When happening upon him on or off campus, at most a quick nod or grunt might issue forth as he continued on his way. We who circled around him, fueled in our orbits by the mental inspiration he gave—Bob Friedman, April South, Saravanan Rajabojan, and so many others—, learned not to confuse his brevity for anger or even disinterest. He simply had more important things to do: a paper, a class, a coffee with his wife. It was clear that his heart went deeper than a casual acquaintance might notice. Speaking of personal failings, perhaps with family or friends, he once mused that “Things might have turned out differently if I’d written a hundred less papers… ah well, it’s too late to change that now.” If his devotion to his family and church were any indication, the importance of love was a lesson he’d learned well. As was the importance of tolerance. Despite the fact that I am a relatively outspoken gay activist and Bernie Sanders supporter, both undoubtedly anathema to him, these things never once altered his respect for or treatment of me. We simply found shared holy ground in our mutual passion for good science, and happily toiled together, whatever differences we might have had.
Despite his awkwardness in social situations, he could be talkative and energetic, if not downright chipper, in lab meetings. No topic was exempt. After bringing everyone up to speed and setting direction for the week’s research, we’d often speak about politics, philosophy, and religion. Given his training in philosophy, his rich library of books in multiple languages, and his “good British education” in the humanities, his was an inexhaustibly vast knowledge. If one topic failed to stimulate, he’d find another. Once, while sitting behind him in a departmental biology lecture, I noticed him grow bored and retrieve a French philosopher from his bag, and he proceeded to read, in French, the majority of a chapter before the talk finished. When we lost him, we lost a mentor not only in science but in every subject imaginable. Despite the independence his personality demanded of others, a certain repose could always be taken in the fact that, should all else fail, one could simply ask Austin. Thus, for me, the weight of his loss was not due to emotional but rather intellectual intimacy. He’s the one person I knew would always have a better understanding than I, and so his existence gave my life a sense of intellectual security. I may never find it again.
Far from an exercise in egotism, his knowledge changed lives. For example, he advanced a clear vision for the roles of science and faith in the human experience, saving at least a handful of lives from suicidal hopelessness. This vision, informed by both his philosophical and scientific training, ultimately culminated in one of the greatest American essays ever written: “The Folly of Scientism.” Drawn from a book which the world may now never see, he uses the essay to show that science, far from being sufficient to address the broad range of questions once tasked to philosophy, is rather itself derivative of and dependent upon philosophy. Defining scientism loosely as the view that science is the only sure means of acquiring knowledge, he writes:
In contrast to reason, a defining characteristic of superstition is the stubborn insistence that something — a fetish, an amulet, a pack of Tarot cards — has powers which no evidence supports. From this perspective, scientism appears to have as much in common with superstition as it does with properly conducted scientific research. Scientism claims that science has already resolved questions that are inherently beyond its ability to answer.
No one was exempt from his devastating critiques—friends, scientists, religious leaders. Jerry Coyne twice had the splendid misfortune of addressing topics better understood by Hughes, and from a conflicting point of view, resulting in chains of blogs, columns, and book reviews (for example, see “Faith, Fact, and False Dichotomies“). However, erroneous claims only seemed to bother him when tied to some metaphysical agenda, such as Coyne’s atheism. Conflict on other matters, such as hostile reviews of his work overturning well-accepted bird phylogenies, prompted easy resignation: “Oh well, I tried.”
When it came to outlandish claims about evolution, Hughes was at his best. It is a widespread falsehood that he rejected the methods he’d invented to detect natural selection. What he did do was clarify the appropriate scope of their usage in an article somewhat provocatively titled “Looking for Darwin in all the wrong places: the misguided quest for positive selection at the nucleotide sequence level.” In a time when evolution by natural selection was granted almost unlimited magical powers, he advocated Motoo Kimura (leading architect of the neutral theory of molecular evolution) as a figure more important that Darwin. Having stated so in one of his magnificent papers on Kimura’s theory, a reviewer objected (“whoa!”). It did not appear in the final publication. A 2011 review in Heredity went further, proposing a mechanism (plasticity-relaxation-mutation, or PRM) that explains a great deal of adaptive evolution without recourse to natural selection at all. Why question selection? In a podcast with the journal, he answers simply that “there really isn’t all that much evidence that it actually happens to the extent to which it would be needed to explain all of the adaptive traits of organisms.” Simple enough.
Hughes’s greatest fault was arguably his lack of patience with slower thinkers. Over his nearly forty years in biology, he took on only a handful of students, and graduated only five Ph.D.’s. Surely his impersonal tendencies had something to do with this. Neither was he exempt from his own frustration. Once, trying to work out a question I’d asked about population genetics, he placed down the pen with some force and, visibly exasperated, exclaimed: “I’m just too stupid.” This constant dissatisfaction with his own lack of understanding may be what drove his prowess as an intellectual and scientist.
It will be difficult to proceed without his surprising outbursts (“Biologists are morons!”, a fist slamming the table), or especially without the stern look on his face which would subsequently dissolve as he’d chuckle, realizing his own excess of passion. Hoping to write papers like his, I made an unexpected move from New York to South Carolina in 2011 and will be ever changed as a result—for good. Would that we could all strive to pursue our goals with a fraction of his diligence, and to form our opinions with an ounce of his objectivity. His guidance will be sorely missed, but will live on in his writings and in those whose lives he touched.
Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy. – Proverbs 31:8-9
After visiting our very own Benedict College on Sept. 12 with activist Dr. Cornel West, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders ventured into territory less likely to welcome his liberal message on Sept. 14: Liberty University of Lynchburg, Virginia. Home to the late Jerry Falwell, Liberty is well known for its conservative policies and ideals. Despite some deep disagreements, Sanders was received respectfully and even used Biblical arguments to sway his listeners, prompting the question: Where should Christians stand on Bernie Sanders’ ideas?
Sanders is a self-described “democratic socialist.” I do not intend to address those who conflate socialism with communism. But for those who understand the difference between the two, I believe I have something to say. Sanders’s main biblical argument when addressing the Liberty crowd had to do with the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12, “do to others as you would have them do to you”), and how this can best be applied to our society — namely, some socialistic policies like free health care. In response to this suggestion, Christian writer Chris Queen emphatically proclaims in a piece for PJ Media that “The God of the Bible Is NOT a Socialist.”
C. S. Lewis disagrees. In Mere Christianity, one of the most popular works on the Christian faith, he addresses this issue head-on.
“The New Testament,” Lewis writes, perhaps “gives us more than we can take” in describing what a fully Christian society would be like. It would be “Leftist,” and “We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic”; it would also forbid (as did the ancient Greeks and Jews) the sin of “usury” — what we now know as charging interest. Lewis’ words read like a Sanders stump speech, and the strength of Lewis’ convictions on the matter must have been particularly strong, given that he first uttered them via a World War II radio broadcast to the Allies.
It is difficult not to reach the same conclusion, as have Pope Francis and many others. Moreover, while Jesus speaks not at all to the issues of gay marriage or abortion, wealth inequality is something about which he has a great deal to say. His message is “good news for the poor” but a bitter pill for the rich: “it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Jesus was in fact the most liberal figure of his time — so much so that he angered the wealthy religious leaders to the point of his own execution. Shouldn’t we likewise expect that a moral economic policy would be a challenge to the few Americans who have so much, while providing for the many who have so little?
In the words of one Liberty University alum and former Bush campaigner who identifies himself only as “Jim”: “The day we decided to follow Christ, we accidentally became liberals.” Yet this point has been missed by the majority of professing Christians. I implore those who take the spiritual life seriously to examine Jesus’s own teachings on these matters, rather than those of the Republican Party. If they do not, I fear they may find themselves in the position of the late Thomas Linacre who, upon reading the gospels late in life for the first time, sat dumbfounded: “Either this is not the gospel, or we are not Christians.”
Chase W. Nelson
Columbia
SOUND OFF originally published in The Free Times. See Bill Foltz’s response HERE.
