When I was coming out in the 1990s, the absolute best group for gay young adults that I attended was run by a Presbyterian minister out of his church. But there was also a very good weekly Catholic Mass in Boystown that was presented as specifically for gay outreach, and a well-supported-and-featured gay group at the Catholic college I attended (which I selected in part due to the Byzantine-style icon of Harvey Milk hanging in the student center.)
I'm not diminishing the trauma of those who have experienced religious trauma, of which I know there are many. But perhaps those people doing the worst of it aren't actually as Christian as they claim? You propose that Christianity is built on the notion that we're all born into sin, but that's just a fancy way of saying nobody's perfect, and is not actually all that hard of a sell when we're simply speaking on a practical level. Christianity is built on the notion that God loves us anyway. The churches that focus on the former rather than the latter are false flag operations, as far as I'm concerned.
Fair, and it is absolutely a good thing that some churches are being more accepting today of homosexuality. The problem is that they have to ignore what’s clearly in the Bible in order to do that, and if we’re expecting that to somehow universally catch on in Christianity, that would be a true miracle, pun intended (: I’m glad your experience was positive though, and I appreciate that you acknowledge that not everyone’s else’s has been. Those are the ones I’m interested in trying to help.
You think Catholics and Presbyterians were ignoring the Bible? No, they're just understanding it within historical context, and within an overall Spirit of love that the most influential Bible authors themselves say we should understand all things through. This is a very common approach outside Evangelical circles.
I don't expect anything to universally catch on, not so long as we have freedom of religion. But the idolatry of the written word that characterizes Evangelicalism is fading, I think. Christianity changes like everything else.
And I think it's important to remember the goal is to make all people more accepting of gays, not less accepting of good-hearted Christians. It's a miracle we're in the midst of even now.
When I was coming out in the 1990s, the absolute best group for gay young adults that I attended was run by a Presbyterian minister out of his church. But there was also a very good weekly Catholic Mass in Boystown that was presented as specifically for gay outreach, and a well-supported-and-featured gay group at the Catholic college I attended (which I selected in part due to the Byzantine-style icon of Harvey Milk hanging in the student center.)
I'm not diminishing the trauma of those who have experienced religious trauma, of which I know there are many. But perhaps those people doing the worst of it aren't actually as Christian as they claim? You propose that Christianity is built on the notion that we're all born into sin, but that's just a fancy way of saying nobody's perfect, and is not actually all that hard of a sell when we're simply speaking on a practical level. Christianity is built on the notion that God loves us anyway. The churches that focus on the former rather than the latter are false flag operations, as far as I'm concerned.
Fair, and it is absolutely a good thing that some churches are being more accepting today of homosexuality. The problem is that they have to ignore what’s clearly in the Bible in order to do that, and if we’re expecting that to somehow universally catch on in Christianity, that would be a true miracle, pun intended (: I’m glad your experience was positive though, and I appreciate that you acknowledge that not everyone’s else’s has been. Those are the ones I’m interested in trying to help.
You think Catholics and Presbyterians were ignoring the Bible? No, they're just understanding it within historical context, and within an overall Spirit of love that the most influential Bible authors themselves say we should understand all things through. This is a very common approach outside Evangelical circles.
I don't expect anything to universally catch on, not so long as we have freedom of religion. But the idolatry of the written word that characterizes Evangelicalism is fading, I think. Christianity changes like everything else.
And I think it's important to remember the goal is to make all people more accepting of gays, not less accepting of good-hearted Christians. It's a miracle we're in the midst of even now.