"We Make God Really Stupid"
When I was 14 years old and living in Johannesburg, I attended the all-girls Anglican St Mary’s School in Waverley for just over a year. As their only Jew, I was welcomed with open arms–– though as a teenager unhappy to sit through her own religion’s services, I was not thrilled to attend church or classes on Christianity.
St. Mary’s had just built an outdoor amphitheater, named in honor of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. A month before the opening ceremony, our headmistress confirmed what had previously only been rumors whispered in the colonnaded hallways: the great man himself was going to cut the red ribbon.
I am not going to pretend that, at the age of fourteen, I knew much about Desmond Tutu, but from the way my teachers reacted, some proudly exclaiming his name, others barely saying it above a revered whisper, I knew that I wanted to be present when he came.
As fate would have it, Desmond Tutu was visiting our school on Yom Kippur. While Tutu spoke to my class, I was with my father in shul, where I continued my tradition of reading Ian McEwan’s Atonement during the long service, and for the past ten years, I have told the story of how I almost met Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.
Until now.
A few weekends ago, my father and I drove to Constantia to hear James Allison, an internationally known openly gay Catholic priest, in conversation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This time, fate was on my side.
Minutes before the talk is to begin, my father nudges me, saying under his breath, “There he is.” And there he was. Desmond Tutu walks in with a gait that can only be described as jaunty. A big smile on his face, wearing tan slacks and a loose printed silk shirt, he laughs his way into the room. There is a ripple effect as the crowd recognizes who has arrived. Tutu is almost a contradiction: a bubble of energy ready to burst that gives off immense waves of calm. While being led to his seat, he greets people along the way, shaking hands with them as if old friends; you get the sense that he is reaching out to you for his own pleasure as much as yours. My dad and I both stiffen when we realize he is headed our way. And as it happens, just before being ushered to his seat a few rows behind us, Tutu stops right in front of my father, and they shake hands, Tutu smiling broadly all the while, my father silent but beaming.
Tutu didn’t disappoint on stage either; entertaining and inspiring, it was refreshing to hear a religious public figure stand up for gay rights. Tutu emphasized that those who say they follow a literal translation of the bible are actually very selective in their choices: “People are always surprised to hear me say that there are many things in the bible that I disagree with fundamentally...The bible says many many things, like if your brother dies childless, you inherit his wife...No, thank you!” At this point, Tutu let out a loud laugh that shook his whole body. “We make God really stupid, when God is incredible.”
I have spoken to several openly gay and lesbian religious leaders while I have been in Cape Town. Their reasoning is consistent: one must read a religious text in the context of the time it was written. Beulah Durrheim, a lesbian pastor, explained to me that she considers herself a “follower of Christ”––who never spoke against homosexuality or put women in a lesser position than men. Repeatedly I have been told that humans were made in God’s image, which, as Tutu puts it, means that “God loves you for who you are, not for who you are not.”
I wish that the three American Evangelists who went to Uganda to preach against homosexuality could take these words to heart. I wish that anyone who chooses to believe in religion could have such courageous and moral leaders as I have met here, leaders who show how religion can accept everyone for who they are, and not for who they are not.