Every once in a while I wonder if I’ve been too hard on the church that shaped my young Christian thinking and then I read an article that tells me maybe I wasn’t hard enough. You see, my parents, good Episcopalians that they were, wanted me to go to a hearing church and the closest one was Central Baptist, a Southern Baptist church.
The problem started with being told I asked too many questions and you would have thought I had opened the gates of Hell when I asked why Negroes couldn’t worship with us – this was the 1950s in Maryland. I mean, even Billy Graham had integrated revivals.
Then, lo and behold! The Southern Baptists have expelled a LGBTQ friendly church in North Carolina. Now there’s a real bastion of liberalism for you. A denomination that wants to suppress reports of sexual misconduct among its own clergy now accuse one of its churches of– recognizing that every human being stands equal before God
Prayer for the Day
Raised with beliefs characterizing people in strict categories
Of gender and race, male and female, gay and straight,
We wonder whether old teachings have done us well,
For we know the world is more complicated than categories.
Expand our vision, O God, so we see the world as you do,
In its infinite variety of colors, genders, and people.
In the name of the One who teaches us how to see,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
If I wait for someone else to validate my existence, it means I am shortchanging myself.
- Zanele Muholi, South African artist and activist
Love him and let him love you. Do you think that anything else under heaven really matters?
- James Baldwin, American novelist, from Giovanni’s Room (1924-1987)
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, neither any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God which in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul, Letter to the Romans 8: 38-39