Transgender identity is about who a person is. It’s not about who they love or what actions they take that might be sinful in the sense that we all sin. It is about their fundamental being as humans created by God in God’s image – an image that God has declared to be good.
A memo from 1968 to today’s Christian parents: Teach your children well
One of the greatest blind spots of white privilege is the ability not to talk with your children about critical issues of the day, to “protect” them from reality. Black parents, Hispanic parents, poor parents, immigrant parents don’t have this privilege.
A tattoo that says, ‘Your story is not over’
The struggle is to welcome life as it is now, which is certainly different than you thought it would be or should be. The struggle is to see injury and illness and despair as a semicolon and not a period.
What is the Spirit saying about female and LGBTQ clergy?
Perhaps it’s time to connect the dots and try to puzzle out what God’s Spirit is painting among us.
What the church could learn from ABC
It is possible — even essential — to take a stand against things that are morally wrong without taking sides between Republicans and Democrats. We are currently hamstrung by the myth that to work against things like racism and sexism and mistreatment of refugees is to take sides on politics. There are some things to which there are not two sides.
Remembering Ed McAteer and the Jerusalem Embassy
Donald Trump would not be president today, the Moral Majority would not have existed, and the U.S. Embassy would not be in Jerusalem today without the seeds planted by McAteer from the 1970s through the 1990s.
When it comes to funding public education, don’t eat your seed corn
Too many states in our union, and even our nation itself, have cut funding for public education to the point of instability. This is neither wise nor fiscally conservative. It is, instead, selfish. There is a difference between fiscal conservativism and selfishness, by the way.
For clergy, it’s unsettling to realize sometimes the helper needs help
To come to the realization that I, a pastor who regularly helps other people in times of crisis, could not help myself — that was a revelation. I am so accustomed to being the helper that I didn’t know how to be the one needing help.
10 things we’re learning about the LGBTQ debate in the church
Our congregation went through 18 months of intense study, prayer and dialogue about LGBTQ inclusion, and we have the scars to show for it. And we would have had scars regardless of which way the decision went. But we are better for choosing the good over the easy.