Amid heartfelt national concern for rescue, relief and recovery for thousands of Hurricane Harvey-impacted people in Texas, and as people in Charlottesville and across the land tenaciously continue efforts to dismantle the monuments of white supremacy and disrupt the machinery of systemic racism, a group of church folks, sequestered in Nashville, Tennessee, somehow found time to issue an edict against our LGBTQ sisters and brothers.
However, what those behind the Nashville Statement seem incapable of grasping is that they do not own a copyright on what makes for authentic Christianity. Therefore, I am glad today that there are significant and sizable numbers of Christians across this land who possess biblical and theological understandings that are directly and dramatically opposite of those that erupted from Nashville, and I am privileged to be among them.
Together, we categorically refuse to allow the bold and bright sun of our authentically Christian convictions of love and equality, and honor and acceptance of all people, including our LGBTQ sisters and brothers, to be eclipsed by the small moon of fear, bigotry and nullification. As a diverse array of people who are sparked by the grace of God and stitched together by the dual threads of our God-given dignity and worth, we will endeavor to live the words of faith and vision of the Peter Scholtes song many of us sang at church camp, “We will work with each other, we will work side-by-side, and we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride.”
As we do this, the nation and world will know we are Christians, not by our ability to isolate and humiliate, or dominate and denigrate, but by our love. Amen
