Those who have written to Baylor University President Linda Livingstone to complain about a Turning Point USA event to be held on campus in April received emails March 25 touting “Civil Discourse Week” on campus this week. The published schedule…
Moderate ministers and churches: Want to kill Church in America? Just keep doing what you’re doing
There will either be Church to embrace our LGBTQ brothers and sisters As They Are – and to embrace them completely, unreservedly, joyfully – or they will find community elsewhere. It’s that simple.
Trans 101 for churches: ways to make a difference for transgender persons
In this moment of such visible and harmful aggression against transgender people, the church has an important role to play as a loving, welcoming, inclusive and engaged community.
Naked and ashamed: American Christianity’s purity culture and embodiment in the Church
Purity culture, alive and thriving in church youth groups, argues that Christians should shut down their sex drives and minimize the relationships to their bodies. Research shows the damage being done.
What our Wilshire congregation learned: Have ‘the conversation’ anyway
Congregations that open themselves to full participation by those in the LGBTQ community are likely to begin hearing the other side of the story they have missed for so long, and that story includes a lot of hidden pain.
What if white Christians had a more realistic image of Jesus, a dark-skinned, religious-minority refugee?
Our dominant, white Christian culture has white-washed Jesus. Instead of expanding our understanding of those who are different from us, we have replaced them and their stories with a light brown-haired, blue-eyed lie.
People first: The Supreme Court – and all of us – should protect our 1.5 million known transgender Americans
In the case of Aimee Stephens, Americans’ bathroom habits took center stage as some of the nation’s most “rational” legal minds departed from interpreting the law and spiraled down into irrationality.
A queer reconciliation: my journey from outcast to ordinand
Six years after performing my same-sex wedding, my dad was defrocked by the United Methodist Church. Testifying at the ecclesiastical trial was excruciating for me. Yet that experience – and the support our family received – also reignited my call to Christian ministry.
Religion Notes: One Baptist group urges end to Holy Land violence while another talks sex
An occasional compilation of events from around the religious world. To suggest items for inclusion, email assistant editor Jeff Brumley at [email protected].
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.
Illuminations: The healing space between ‘good’ and ‘bad’
While scrolling through the pages of the Illumination Project Committee report, my opinion pile began to grow: Good decision; bad decision. I like this; I don’t like that. This is progressive; that is regressive. But as I quieted my own internal committee and let myself become still, I felt the Spirit pressing a cool cloth to my fevered, dualistic mind. “God is at work and more will be revealed” is the word that came.
Engaging Compassionate Curiosity on Sexuality
In a recent visit to the Wake Forest Divinity School, Baptist minister and PhD candidate Cody Sanders shared reflections on his book, Queer Lessons for Churches on the Straight and Narrow, and the intersection of the church and human sexuality….