Christians, fearing gays; and gays, fearing Christians—what’s it all about?

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

De-escalating the Cycle of Fear
Kenetha J. Stanton  writes that she grew up as a Christian fundamentalist “to the core.” In this article for Whosoever, an online magazine for LGBT Christians, she says: “As I continue to sit in this space of witnessing the worldviews of each side, I see so much legitimate fear from everyone involved. Fundamentalists fear the destruction of their faith, which has no room to bend. LGBT Christians fear mistreatment, injustice, and condemnation for not living within the rigid molds that others have created for us. Those are all real fears, but those fears are causing us to be even greater threats to one another, which just escalates the cycle. The only route to softening those fears is through compassion for the fear that the other is experiencing.”  Learn more about Kenetha: Kenetha is a new member of EEWC-Christian Feminism Today and has many more words of wisdom and healing to share. Be sure to visit her website, A Kintsugi Life: Becoming strong at life’s broken places, where she talks about the Japanese art of Kintsugi, which “repairs broken pottery with seams of gold” in such a way that the pottery is made more beautiful than before it was broken.  Kenetha sees this art as a fitting metaphor for a way of “dealing with the broken places that life gives all of us.”

Letha Dawson Scanzoni is an independent scholar, writer, and editor, and is the author or coauthor of nine books. In 1978, she and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott wrote Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?, one of the earliest books urging evangelical Christians to rethink their views on homosexuality (updated edition, 1994, HarperOne). More recently, Letha coauthored (with social psychologist David G. Myers) What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage (HarperOne, 2005 and 2006). Another of Letha’s most well-known books is All We’re Meant to Be: Biblical Feminism for Today, coauthored with Nancy A. Hardesty (Word Books, 1974; revised edition, Abingdon, 1986; updated and expanded edition, Eerdmans, 1992). Letha served as editor of Christian Feminism Today in both its former print edition (EEWC Update) and its website for 19 years until her retirement in December 2013.

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