On October 29th, Hamline’s Intervarsity Christian Fellowship will host a traveling apologeticist Rick Mattson for a “Tough Questions Night”. To be clear, I fully respect and support their right to select and host Mr. Mattson on campus. However, I also feel I have a responsibility as a board member of Hamline’s queer student organization and as a queer Christian, to initiate an open dialogue with our wider community as to why I believe Mr. Mattson’s rhetoric and presence are extremely harmful to LGBTQ+ students at Hamline. Intervarsity, the group which is hosting is Mr. Mattson and of which Mr. Mattson is a staff member, is an evangelical Christian student movement that within the last decade, has enacted a purge of any members of their organization that deviate from an extremely regressive interpretation of “biblical sexuality”. Their approach to outreach is welcoming, meant to cater to young people, and deemphasizes many of their actual views so that one could easily mistake the true character of their organization. For example, Mattson has spoken of a so called “Middle Way” when it comes to LGBTQ issues in the church, and talks about his willingness to attend gay marriages or use a transgender person’s preferred pronouns. This could make one think that he is affirming of queer people within the church or at the very least seeking a dialogue with queer Christians. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Mattson quite openly admits that he employs this strategy in order to prevent people from being “scared away” by the core rhetoric of Intervarsity’s teachings on sexuality so that he can lull them into accepting these ideas as part of a larger framework of “biblical truth”. This is especially dangerous when one considers how Mattson actually describes these teachings. On a podcast earlier this year, Mattson analogizes transness and homosexuality with being born with a propensity towards alcoholism. This is the exact same kind of rhetoric that is used to justify “conversion therapy”, the psychological and physical torture of queer youth that still persists in this country. Whether or not Mattson himself is a proponent of this practice, he has no problem speaking of queer people in a way that legitimizes it. Furthermore, in a series of blog posts entitled “Speaking of LGBT+” he says the following: “The pull from secular culture on students to affirm gay and lesbian sexual relationships and “gay marriage” is titanic […] I challenged students all week on whether they would be disciples of secular culture or disciples of Jesus.” Here, Mattson dismisses the complex history of sexuality and gender within the church going back to antiquity and the existence of Queer Christians such as myself as a recent product of secular culture.
This is quite ironic considering Mattson promotes Intelligent Design in another one of his blog posts an idea that was strongly influenced by American culture and is merely a couple decades old. I am deeply disappointed that a student group would choose to platform a speaker whose work perpetuates harm and violence against an already marginalized part of the student population. I encourage the Hamline community to engage critically with Mr. Mattson and his work and to also lend an ear to the perspectives of queer students, especially queer Christians on these issues. Mr. Mattson has the benefit of a multi-billion dollar network of evangelical Christian lobbying groups standing behind his views. I have only my faith in a radically loving and just God.
