Volume 6, Issue 2

Blessing Our Persecutors

Cover Stories

The Sharp Edges of Blessings
By Candace Chellew
When it comes to blessing our persecutors, we need to readjust our ideas of what constitutes a blessing. The blessing we give to our enemies does not have to come in the form of comforting words or actions. Even if our words or actions are meant to give comfort, like literally giving food or water to our enemies, it won’t be perceived as kindness, because our enemies don’t believe we’re capable of bringing God’s blessings down. Instead, our words and actions will feel like hot coals being heaped upon their heads.

The Blessing That We Are
By Anne Savoie
God recognizes a power in us that we seldom see in ourselves — a power to bless or to curse. As tempting as it is sometimes to choose the curse, that is not what we are about and it is not what we follow Jesus for.

Fear Divides and Love Joins
By Clayton Gibson-Faith
Frequently in our struggle for full, unequivocal legal and ecclesiastical equality, we demonize and distance ourselves from those with whom we disagree. Like any abused creature, we growl and bark at, and occasionally bite, the one who hurt us in the past. We can even see how we directly `make’ our own enemies, giving them power and influence just by virtue of our defensive reaction to their anti-gay activities …

Loving Our Enemies, Within and Without
By Stephen Harte
Our enemies are those who prevent God’s realm of love and liberation being made real on earth. Those who hate, those who allow oppression to flourish, those who limit love, those who are me and those who are you. And God’s response to those of us who do this, those of us who sin, is to love us and to forgive us.

Blessing Those Who Curse Us
By Toña Morales-Calkins
So, we must bless those who curse us by doing good for them and praying for them. Sounds like a tough enough challenge for one lifetime to me. And this was only one of Jesus’ harder requirements. Because, you see, it is something our Lord requires of us. Were it not so, Jesus would have said something like, “Bless those who curse you whenever you feel like doing it, and I’ll understand that you’re only human if you choose not to.”

Hate and Grace in Kansas City
By Emmie Dee
Yes, we were being picketed by Fred Phelps and his followers. Kansas City isn’t too far down the road from Phelps’ headquarters in Topeka, Kansas. Our denominations were both fag churches, according to him, because we allowed gay and lesbian people as members. I felt sickened. They reminded me of Nazis. But how could I respond? What could I do that wouldn’t feed their self-righteous frenzy and appetite for conflict and publicity?

What Reward Have You?
By John H. Campbell
I am suggesting that liberal and conservative, heterosexual and LGBT, legalistic and non-legalistic Christians seek to find their common ground in Jesus as opposed to church and denominational doctrines and creeds. I believe that far too many Christians are more concerned with what they define as “true Christians” should not do and not concerned enough with defining what Christians should do to embody Christ’s teachings.

Blessing Ourselves By Blessing Our Persecutors
By Kara Speltz
The power of nonviolence to create REAL CHANGE is phenomenal. But only if I’m willing to allow that change to begin in myself. Am I willing to love someone who thinks and acts differently from me?

Bless Them Which Persecute You
By Rev. Chancellor C. Roberts, II
But now I’m going to say something you’re not going to want to hear: with very few exceptions, we Christians in North America and Europe haven’t the remotest idea of what it means to be persecuted. Further, as Christians who are not of heterosexual orientation, we are reviled because of our sexual orientation rather than because we are Christians — except for the disgust that some non-heterosexuals have toward Christianity and, indeed, toward religion in general.

Sharing Our Blessings
By Rev. Vera I.  Bourne
Many in the GLBT communities equate Christianity with pain, prejudice and persecution, and turn their backs on the source of all love and light, Jesus the Christ. For those of us whose experience with Jesus has been intimate and ongoing, the persecution we have known has caused us to rethink our faith. We have needed to strip away any archaic cliches and get to the bare bones of our interaction with Jesus, with his commandments, his promises and his infilling.

Blessing Our Persecutors
By Lucas Hawkins
We have tendencies that when we hear that somebody is on our case, we dwell on it for hours, or even days. But the attack is a test of whether we have the fruit of forgiveness.

Bless Them
By Roger Stratton
Blessing your persecutors is more for your good than for theirs. This doesn’t mean we are not to separate ourselves from distressing situations and people, but only when we pray for guidance and try to act from unconditional love do we know if there is anything we can do for our persecutor other than blessing them from afar. Some people are not ready to learn from us, but whether they learn or whether they do not, we have only one appropriate reaction. Love. Love conquers all.

Homospirituality

How Can Someone Be a Christian and a Homosexual?
By David Mundy
By eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus is showing us how we are to live and love one another. It should be clear that the laws which were considered binding about who is socially acceptable were to be discarded if they served to punish or exclude a particular group. Women, children, foreigners and other marginalized groups are singled out for particular favor by Jesus; time and again we see him making a special effort to demonstrate how the weak and disadvantaged should be treated.

Crucifixion and Resurrection: The True Answer for Freedom and Justice
By Daniel Jay Grimminger, M.T.S.
Freedom and true release from oppression in the Church and in the world are at the end of the road. The question is how does the Church arrive there? How can gay and straight people come to love each other in a healthy atmosphere of ecclesiastical space, putting aside past incidents of hate?

Features

Stem Cells and the Heterosexual Agenda
By Darrell Grizzle
I can honestly respect the views of those, whether conservative or liberal, who oppose stem cell research because of their sincerely held religious or ethical beliefs on the origins of human life. The ones I cannot respect, however, are the ones for whom this issue is just one part of a much bigger agenda. For them, maintaining that agenda is far more important than their supposed “convictions” about protecting the smallest of human lives.

Daring To Be Spiritually Incorrect: An Interview with Spiritual Maturity Author Joseph Sharp
By Candace Chellew
Sharp’s book is a guide on how to wrestle with the angels, and though we may experience great pain, we’ll also experience great blessings. But, we must realize that when we give ourselves permission to wrestle with the angels and with our faith we have to step outside that realm of “spiritual correctness” and face the threats and insults from those who would seek to push us back in line.

Forget Jabez! Learn “The Prayer of Jesus”
By Rev. Chancellor Carlyle Roberts, II
The Prayer of Jesus will NOT become a cult success because it doesn’t promise what The Prayer of Jabez promises: that the Lord will reward us materially. Rather, The Prayer of Jesus calls us to sacrifice because the focus is on the Lord and allowing Him to do what He wants to do in our lives.

Letters to the Editor

Transpirituality

Take a Small Step To Share the Good News
By Rachel Miller
It is time to take another step towards integrating cross-dressers into mainstream Christianity. When I was seeking answers to my cross-dressing questions, one of my correspondents gave me exceptionally helpful advice that I continue to heed — take lots of small steps!

Poetry

Blessed Persecutors
By Brian Bennett

An Invitation
By Marguerite Curtis

From the Pulpit

Making Room in God’s Embrace
By Paige Wolfanger
God fishes with a net, because God wants everyone. And that means that God is going to get everyone, and God is not waiting until we are healed before we are allowed into God’s loving embrace. No, it is in that embrace where the healing happens. And we Christians, who have all been netted by God’s love, find ourselves in close quarters with a family we haven’t chosen. And God said, “This family won’t work unless you get along. Put your differences aside, and love each other just like I love you all.”

This Is Love
By Elisabeth Anne Kellogg
So my brothers and sisters, I must ask the question, “Who are the Sodomites?” It is the established, legalistic, loveless church that is walking in the ways of Sodom. And in that remarkable way that God makes “the last to be first and the first to be last,” we are called upon by God to pray for the salvation of the church lest we be found to be loveless and arrogant ourselves.

Bible Study and Inspiration

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman
By April O’Flaherty
The Samaritan woman was open to receiving the message that Jesus Christ was bringing to her, and He loved her as a child of the kingdom for that. Where the religious leaders and the so-called “cream” of Judean society thought someone like her was not worth the breath they drew, the very Son of God made a special trip just to offer her a place in His coming kingdom. He reached out to her and she reached back.

Giving Context to a Clobber Passage: An Exegesis of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10
By David Mundy
For millennia, sexism and homophobia have gone hand in hand, and the Pauline epistles have been unpopular in LGBT communities for the ways in which they appear to lend authority to oppressive and discriminatory treatment of women and sexual minorities. Yet a close analysis of relevant passages reveals a more nuanced position.

Speak No Evil: A Look at James 4:11-12
By Rev. Chancellor Carlyle Roberts, II
Our text makes it clear that we are not to speak evil of one another. To do so is not only to speak evil of a brother or sister in Christ, but to speak evil of the very commands of God as well. We are also not to judge — meaning to condemn — one another, because to do so is to judge or condemn the very commands of God.

Holy Humor

Hymns for All Walks of Life

The Origin of the Internet