Until now, learning how to discuss these Bible bullets with any confidence seemed overwhelming. But Bridget Eileen Rivera has done all the heavy lifting.
A threshold is a place of letting go of an old identity and waiting on a new identity to emerge. It is a liminal moment when the sacred is being born in us, a time of unravelling and slowly reknitting back together.
There are kids, teens, and adults at your church that are LGBTQ+. They’re wondering if there’s a place for them. And more will be coming. Or maybe they won’t. Not because they aren’t seeking Christ, community, and Biblical truth, but because they’re tired of being rejected. They're tired of looking for the exit.
LBGTQ youth from religious backgrounds are three times more likely to attempt suicide than their unchurched LGBTQ peers. This ought to be a wake up call for the church. This ought to be a siren.
I wish though I could go back to that young girl, sitting in that big arena with all its grandeur. I wish I could invite her to a quiet, less intense space, and tell her she may leave the church, but it will never mean she left the faith.
But the more I’ve consumed content by artists like Lil Nas X, the more I realize the church and some of the puritanical standards I parroted end up creating a special kind of hell on earth for those on the receiving end of that condemnation.
Logistical questions cannot be answered out of context. Instead, we need to address the mindset Christian leaders need to have when we are considering how our ministries can build a safe world for LGBTQ youth, and what implications that inclusion has for our congregations the wider world.
This ought to disturb us on a theological level alone. Why are we using language about a non-gendered or gender-expansive God that makes us view God in accordance with deeply ingrained notions of binary gender?