I was pleasantly surprised the other day when I ran across some articles of the mega-church Willow Creek welcoming LGBT community to church. My top picks are two articles from the Chicago Tribune : Gay Christians meet the Rev. Bill and Willow Creek Welcomes Gay Advocates and a blog post from Celebrating Diversity called Willow Creek Soulforce and Me.
One of my pet-peeves is how some Christians can treat other people. The last time I read the parable of the good Samaritan and countless other teachings of Jesus, we are supposed to treat everyone with love regardless! We’ve politicized things in society to such an extent that many good (for the most part) and faithful Christians can’t ask the question how to treat a person as Christ would; they automatically treat them the way they’ve been programmed. I live in the the Bible-belt and have heard countless preachers that are homophobic and spout hate. It is not enough for them to say, “hate the sin love the sinner” they actually give license to abuse. I’d love to say this doesn’t go on in the denomination to which I belong, but our General Conference recently met and we actually had people voting against a resolution to oppose homophobia. Let me get this right. It is good to fear homosexuals? Get real. The Christian response, outside of our relationship with God, is that there is nothing and I do mean NOTHING we should fear!
There is a strange truth of homosexuality in the Bible-belt, which I’ve experienced. In every congreagtion that I’ve served, there has been at least one homosexual who is a member of that church. About 75% of the congregations know who they are no matter how much they try to hide it. The interesting thing is that they are accepting of them;however, all other homosexuals (those they don’t know) are NOT accepted at all. This has always baffled the hell out of me. The hidden truth is that they say we accept the ones we know but not the ones we don’t. Go figure. Xenophbia grows and xenophilia withers.
The bottom line of hope for me is that churches are now starting to view their role to invite all people regardless and that is good news and a change of pace.
peace and biscuits,
Rev. Slick