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Jun 26, 2018 14 tweets 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
1. It's #Pride, so let's talk about the God and the LGBTQ community.
2. In Genesis, we read that God created humanity in God's own image. Scripture is clear: Each of us carry within us the divine spark, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and God has pronounced this Creation "good."
3. From both science and folks' lived experience, we know that gender identity and sexual orientation are not incidental aspects of our being. They are not choices—they sit at the core of our humanity.
4. If we truly believe that God created us in the divine image, this unimpeachably means that the divine image encompasses the full range of gender and sexual expression. In the same way that God is not male or female, God is not queer or straight. God enfolds us all, together.
5. To call folks who identify or love differently "anathema to God" is to spit on that divine image. Any who use religion to smear the LGBTQ community are slandering what God created and pronounced "good." This is blasphemy of the highest order.
6. Moreover, it is a clear violation of Jesus' highest command: to love our neighbors as ourselves. Love does not attack someone on the basis of who they are.
7. Now, lots of fundamentalists will say their vile LGBTQ bigotry is an expression of love: That if you really love queer people you will convince them to deny a fundamental part of themselves to secure their salvation. This is terrible theology.
8. There is no clearer evidence of this than the thousands of young people who tragically kill themselves because they are told their love or personhood is sin: LGBTQ youth are 4x as likely to contemplate suicide compared to their heterosexual peers.
cnn.com/2017/12/19/hea…
9. Now, again, fundamentalists will say that this increased risk of suicide is due to a "sinful" sexual orientation or gender identity. This is wrong. Recent studies have drawn a clear link between teen suicide and bigoted theology.
10. A 2018 study found that, for heterosexual teens, strong religious belonging was a *protective factor* against suicide. LGBTQ youth with strong religious belonging, however, were 38% more likely to contemplate suicide than non-religious LGBTQ youth.
huffingtonpost.com/entry/queer-yo…
11. LGBTQ suicidal ideation is NOT a product of identity, it is a product of bigotry. You want to talk about what's anathema to God? Telling people they are sinful and impure to the point that they kill themselves is anathema to God.
12. This is also why fundamentalists cannot simply label this "disagreement" as something that others should tolerate in the name of religious freedom. We are not talking about "live and let live" here, we are talking about "live and let kill."
13. Clergy and faith communities must recognize that inclusive theology is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. And it's not enough to simply not demonize LGBTQ people.
14. To undo centuries of theological malpractice, we must loudly and assertively proclaim LGBTQ people as fundamentally holy, sacred and blessed—again and again—until we fully uproot any blasphemy that says otherwise.

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More from @UnionSeminary

Sep 18, 2018
1. Some people have asked why a Christian seminary would say that Christianity is not the only path to salvation. The short answer is that this in no way violates the Christian faith and, moreover, is integral to honoring and respecting our community.

Long answer below 👇
2. For too long, Christians have misread verses like John 14:6 as implying that God is found exclusively through the Christian faith, many going as far as to say that people of other faiths face eternal damnation.

This is an incredibly narrow reading of the text.
3. To box God neatly within the Christian tradition is to reveal a profoundly limited understanding of the divine. Who are we to say that God can't speak to humanity through a multitude of messengers?
Read 11 tweets
Sep 10, 2018
1. A word about biblical infallibility:

This weekend, we received much damnation from fundamentalists over our denial of scriptural inerrancy. It's understandable, because once you relinquish conviction that the Bible is *literally* God's word, faith becomes a messier affair.
2. It's easier to simply believe that the Bible is a plain record of the divine, that it clearly and concisely states what Christians should believe. In a world that feels so chaotic, biblical infallibility can provide distinct comfort.

But comfort and truth aren't synonymous.
3. The truth is that the biblical books were written by humans. They represent the fruits of people grappling with God, and what it means to be human, for centuries—in all the complexity those questions necessarily entail.
Read 14 tweets
Sep 5, 2018
Misguided sociological, psychological and political theories have long fostered biblical misinterpretation. We wish to address untruths this document proclaims: Any treatise that says social justice is incidental to the gospel badly misunderstands both.
statementonsocialjustice.com
I. Scripture

While divinely inspired, we deny the Bible is inerrant or infallible. It was written by men over centuries and thus reflects both God's truth and human sin & prejudice. We affirm that biblical scholarship and critical theory help us discern which messages are God's.
II. Imago Dei

We affirm that God created every person in God's own image. Accordingly, we deny that vitriol directed towards people because of how God made them (i.e. sexual orientation or gender identity) is in any way faithful, biblical or godly.
Read 15 tweets
Jul 24, 2018
1. Though much-analyzed, it's not discussed enough how parishioners' reservations about @realDonaldTrump hinge around personal behavior (adultery, affairs, language, etc.), not systemic sin.

This reveals a broader crisis within Christianity. washingtonpost.com/news/national/…
2. Jack Jones, for example, says it's difficult to support a president who had an affair with a porn star. Terry Drew admits reservations about how Trump "boasted about grabbing women's crotches." Suzette finds him "abrasive." Brett Green disliked his "shithole nations" remark.
3. Now, this is all deeply sinful behavior and the members of Luverne's First Baptist Church are right to feel it contradicts Christ's message. However, decades of theology framing sin as an interpersonal affair leaves them blind to this presidency's other sins.
Read 15 tweets
Jul 4, 2018
1. It's the #FourthofJuly, and there's perhaps no better time to discuss Christian nationalism. So, let's talk.
2. Though this sinful confluence is particularly pronounced today, the truth is that broad swathes of American Christianity have united worship of God and empire. While extreme patriotism is already idolotrous, many Christians take spiritual allegiance even further.
3. This is quite vivid in churches that proudly display the American flag in their sanctuary, flying high over Bibles and baptismal fonts. Some even recite the pledge of allegiance during worship, swearing fealty to country in a place that ought to be reserved for the divine.
Read 13 tweets
May 1, 2018
1. It is altogether fitting that a memorial to the thousands of lynched black Americans should open the same week as Rev. Dr. James H. Cone's death; no theologian did more to condemn these atrocities—to expose in their deaths Christ's own crucified body.
nytimes.com/2018/04/25/us/…
2. As Cone wrote in his 2011 masterpiece, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, "The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching.”
3. He didn't just name lynching as modern crucifixion, though. Cone also condemned the white joy that accompanied the Jim Crow-era killing of black people—and tied it to white Americans' appalling silence when faced with present state-sanctioned murder of their black siblings.
Read 6 tweets

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