By Bob Allen
The Alliance of Baptists announced Oct. 8 receipt of a $104,400 grant to support a new initiative promoting LGBT inclusion and racial justice among Baptists.
The grant from the Arcus Foundation, a charity that supports organizations that promote LGBT equality around the world, will fund the new “Congregational Compassion and Human Difference” initiative. Alliance member Cody Sanders said it will begin with short-term projects setting a course for larger long-term goals.
The program includes the training of 12 to 15 Alliance members to serve as consultants to congregations entering into a “process of dialogue and discernment” about accepting members regardless of sexual orientation or identity and two conferences to equip clergy and laity to begin and sustain dialogue on the issue in their own congregations.
Another prong will involve church members in dialogue and advocacy for racial justice by framing those concerns among other “intersectional” markers of human difference, including race, class, gender and sexual orientation and identity.
The plan also calls for a publishable resource for congregations, developed by the Alliance’s Racial Justice & Multiculturalism Community and staff in consultation with Baptist scholars, activists, ministers and congregations.
“We are excited about the potential this generous grant affords to provide dedicated resources and energy to addressing the concerns of LGBTQ and racial justice that are at the heart of the Alliance’s life as a community of faith,” said Sanders, a Ph.D. candidate at Brite Divinity School who recently edited the second edition of Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, a groundbreaking church resource on LGBT issues first published in 2000.
An ordained Baptist minister and graduate of the McAfee School of Theology, Sanders is also author of Queer Lessons for Churches on the Straight and Narrow, published by Faithlab and winner of the National Bronze Medal for Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Non-Fiction in the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Awards.
Founded in 2000 by Jon Stryker, a billionaire stockholder and heir to the Stryker Corporation medical supply company, the foundation supports organizations around the world working to advance equality across the spectrum of sexual orientations and gender identities. It also focuses on conservation issues related to the world’s great apes. Past grant recipients include an institute founded by primatologist Jane Goodall.
The Alliance grant is one of several announced by the Arcus Foundation Sept. 23. Other recipients include Central Baptist Theological Seminary, which aims to engage immigrant pastoral leaders in LGBT theology through new courses and curricula, and the Kansas-based Reformation Project, formed by Matthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Christian, to challenge traditional interpretations of Bible verses labeling homosexuality as a sin.
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Transgender minister, Baptist theologian headline conference promoting LGBT acceptance