Taking the Bible seriously, but not literally There’s nothing quite like the topic of homosexuality to quickly spark a fiery storm of scriptural proof-texting. Both sides marshal all their scriptural evidence. The conservatives whip out their six “clobber” passages and bang them with a hysterical
It is Thursday night, early May. Ismail Noshy is getting ready for his monthly meeting with his gay Arab friends. “The first Thursday of every month,” says Noshy, a 23-year-old Arab Christian, “we meet and talk about being gays and Arab.” Most of his friends,
“God Bless America!” I stared at the big block letters etched into the layers of grime, usually reserved for the mundane “wash me” message, on the back of a tractor-trailer I was following on the highway. Someone believed in those words so deeply that they
My husband and I spent June 7-11, 2002 with Soulforce studying the nonviolent teachings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi. One of our teachers was Arun Gandhi, the fifth grandson of Mohandas Gandhi. We were choosing to spend our own 35th wedding anniversary preparing to
On Tuesday, June 11, 2002, in St. Louis, the immovable object of ignorance at the Southern Baptist Convention met the irresistible force of truth in Soulforce. Both Soulforce and Southern Baptists turned a corner in St. Louis. Soulforce moved into a new level of non-violent
How many times have we heard that homosexuality is a sin because of “what the Bible says?” The implication is that their objection to homosexuality is simply the result of a face-value reading of the Bible. The implication is that prejudice had nothing to do
I can’t believe he’s dead! The news came drifting down the street like whispers in the wind. Then slowly, but surely, it built up into a shriek of discordant notes, painful in its intensity. Only a few days ago I paused to hear him speak.
Over time, repeated payments of blackmail lose the sense of their actual cost – a sum often in excess of actual money. Although the analogy is not perfect, it is useful in the case of the homosexual man or woman who stays loyal to Roman
I just returned to work, after taking two and a half weeks off, to discover that the movie, “Ali,” is now available for rent or purchase. We are celebrating this man as a national hero. I was alive when he went through the trials which
God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surge.