A “coming out party” for straight secret supporters of LGBTQ people?

January 29, 2015

In his Stuff that Needs to Be Said blog, John Pavlovitz says he keeps hearing from straight Christians who have been questioning their churches’ negative attitudes and discriminatory political actions toward LGBTQ people, but they’ve hesitated to speak out about it within their faith communities. Some have indicated they have been waiting for “permission” and that his writings were providing that. He writes:

“Good, God-fearing, faithful heterosexual followers of Jesus, who’ve lived for decades feeling that something is terribly but unquestionably wrong with the havoc we’ve wreaked in the lives of gay people in the name of God, are moving ever so slowly, out of the shadows and into the bright light of open divergence from the violent, bullying faith story they’ve inherited and been complicit in.”

He’d like to see them moving out of the shadows faster.

Read Pavlovitz’s blog post: “Stand Up, Straight Christians, It’s Time for You to Come Out of the Closet.”

 

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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