GC Newsletter: Thursday, April 24
After a campaign to oust reconcilers Marcia and Mark, the team of McFee and Miller showed why the General Conference commission chose them. The Spirit filled the arena through their liturgy and music. Then Bishop Huie preached the word on the Conference theme (“A Future With Hope”), giving us a unique image of marshmallow hope.
Reconciling Ministries has the sure confidence of a future reality of an inclusive United Methodist Church. Marshmallow hope melts. Reconcilers draw their hope from God's deep well of love and grace. Such hope conquers fear, challenges oppression, and builds a future known but not yet realized.
Sensitivity Training?
When diversity training excludes gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people, and people with disabilities, we wonder how sensitive it can be? With such an exhaustive list of examples, such an omission was disappointing and painful. Branches were broken off the One Family Tree.
Adding to our pain was watching our out, gay music leader sing these words,
All part of God's body
you are important
I need you to survive
I won't harm you with my words
Were those tears we saw? Hope that sings through tears withstands the fires of exclusion. No marshmallow hope here.
Omission harms, exclusion harms, silence harms.
Young People Driven Away
A new groundbreaking study by Barna Research found that young people 16 to 29 think modern-day Christianity is judgmental, hypocritical and anti-gay. What's more, they found, many Christians don't even want to call themselves "Christian" because of the baggage that accompanies the label.
The new book published by The Barna Group, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity, found that church attitudes about people in general and gays in particular are driving a negative image of the Christian faith among people ages 16-29.
David Kinnaman, Barna Group president and author of the book, said, "The anti-homosexual perception has now become sort of the Geiger counter of Christians' ability to love and work with people," they said.
The vast majority of non-Christians — 91% — said Christianity had an anti-gay image, followed by 87% who said it was judgmental and 85% who said it was hypocritical.
One of the biggest surprises for researchers was the extent to which respondents — one in four non-Christians — said that modern-day Christianity was no longer like Jesus.
"It started to become more clear to us that what they're experiencing related to Christianity is some of the very things that Jesus warned religious people about," he said. "Which is, avoiding removing the log from your own eye before trying to take the speck out of someone else's."
To have a future with hope, we must end the 36-year prohibitions forbidding full participation of GLBT people making outsiders and insiders! We must recognize we are One Family Tree and listen to our young people.
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