CHICAGO – Macky Alston has a love story to tell his 10-year-old daughter, Alice – and to the Presbyterian church.
Macky Wallace McPherson Alston III – who is a documentary filmmaker, the son and grandson of esteemed Presbyterian ministers and a gay man – left the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) after he came out and when he thought the church could not provide a narrative in which he could flourish. His father, for example, was mostly supportive but also concerned, told him “that I was likely to meet an unhappy fate and would certainly never be able to have a family of my own.”
Eleven years ago, Alston held a commitment ceremony with his husband, Nick Gottlieb. – his father helped celebrate the ceremony – and the couple, who have been together for more than two decades, now have two daughters. His dad stood up before Nassau Presbyterian Church, where he had served as pastor, “and proclaimed that gay is good in God’s eyes,” Alston said – a message that not all were ready to hear. His father had his own change-of-heart in part through seeing his son indeed thrive with a partner, and in part through the scholarship of other Presbyterians, including William Stacy Johnson of Princeton Theological Seminary, who wrote about the ways that Christian theology makes room for gay and lesbian relationships in faithful life.
Alston spoke Oct. 31 as the opening speaker at the2013 Covenant Network conference – organized around the theme “Marriage Matters.” He told his own family’s story, but said he felt he was carrying the mantle of all the church’s stories as well – so many journeys, from so many families.
He remembers being a middle school student in a town where “they were looking for the quarterback, not the boy soprano who could pull off a mean pirouette.” He remembers his skinny back being pressed against cold metal lockers day after day, and how in the basement of the church “we bared our souls, we restored our souls.”
For that, “thank you, Presbyterian church,” Alston said. “I do believe you saved my life.”
He remembers his years being outside the church – and the joy he felt on the day he and Gottlieb stood before family and friends at Judson Memorial Church in New York, professing their love with so many applauding. That marriage ceremony “was illegal in the eyes of this church and the state at that time . . . but totally, totally legitimate,” Alston said.
Alston does not just tell a personal story, however. He works at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York as director of Auburn Media. From that seat, he has seen people of faith lead the way in working for justice and how hearts and minds change when people of faith speak out loud about what they believe, challenging others to follow.
His research has found that straight Christians who have voted against gay marriage, but who struggle with the issue, listen when arguments are made on the basis of faith. “Use the Bible” to show God’s love – don’t assume the message has to be strictly secular, Alston said. Many Christians “want to be nice” to their gay neighbors and family members – and are receptive to hearing about how the Bible teaches “love God, love neighbor” and “we are all one.”
Successful campaigns for gay marriage in Maryland, Maine, Washington and Minnesota built on those themes, Alston said. Many Christians are in motion, “and they are headed our way,” he said. For those people, “you have to go right through religion. You can’t go around it.”
Alston also spoke of his hope that Presbyterians can make a difference in the “in-between spaces,” where justice issues and matters of faith collide.
One example: the Moral Mondays campaign in North Carolina, a state which is increasingly leaning to the right and which in 2012 passed an amendment to the state constitution forbidding marriages for same-gender couples. That defeat for progressives led to the Moral Mondays movement, in which protestors (including religious leaders) participate in civil disobedience every week to object to legislation championed by the Republican governor and legislature, on everything from education funding to access to health care to tax cuts for upper income groups.
That campaign is now spreading to other states, Alston said, and serves as an example for building coalitions that include people of faith but cross lines of race, class, region, religion and generations.
In North Carolina, the advocates of gay marriage lost, he said. “But this amazing thing is coming from this broken place.”
The Covenant Network conference will continue through Nov. 2. Speakers will include Amy Plantinga Pauw, a professor at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and William Stacy Johnson, from Princeton seminary. And there will be workshops on subjects such as the distinctions between civil and religious marriage; how to change minds in churches with a more conservative atmosphere; and Covenant Network’s strategy for the 2014 General Assembly.
