A new website called Church Clarity launched today with the goal of encouraging churches to be clear about their policies about LGBTQ people. They don’t advocate for churches to be affirming of same-sex relationships or non-affirming; they simply want churches to be transparent about their policies. Here’s why this is so important.
In May of this year, I was invited by the InterVarsity chapter at UCLA to speak about what it’s like to be a gay Christian. The crowd was packed with LGBTQ students who came because they heard a lesbian Christian was going to talk about Jesus. Some came for the first time and some returned after spending some time away. They thought maybe this would be the night to come hear about Jesus.
Your beliefs don’t shift in an instant. We research and agonize, bouncing between hope and despair, until one day we hear ourselves say something a former version of ourselves would never have said. That’s how I came to support same-sex marriage in the church.
I first encountered the Protestant crisis of authority my senior year in college. When I realized Christianity contained Baptist and not the other way around, it occurred to me that maybe the tent was wider than I initially envisioned. The crisis was agitated when I realized evolution was a thing and that “biblical” actually meant “our understanding of the Bible.”