Part of an occasional series celebrating Whosoever’s Silver Jubilee. (Author’s note: I use the term “queer” throughout this essay for consistency, even when it is anachronistic.) If I remember correctly, I saw a print edition of Whosoever at a newsstand near my college. I was excited
Gay. Straight. It does not matter. It doesn’t matter how we behave. It doesn’t matter how we’re wired. So said Christian music megastar Amy Grant in a recent interview. What matters, said Grant, is setting a welcome table and loving people as we have been,
Read the rest of the series When you hear the word “church,” what first comes to mind? For many of us queer folk, harmful memories may reemerge — memories of people who “loved” us but wouldn’t accept us, and of places where we were “welcomed”
Bishops incite anti-trans hate A friend of mine in Puerto Rico tipped me off the other day that the American territory’s Conference of Catholic Bishops was endorsing a massive street protest against local political efforts to make the island safer and more legally equitable for transgender
Here I sit in quiet stillness. For 30 minutes, there is no scrolling, swiping, messaging, emailing, chores, work, or needs of any form. For 30 minutes, I kneel before a makeshift altar composed of two candles and a vaguely anthropomorphic stone statue. For 30 minutes,
I have been watching the College of the Ozarks’ lawsuit against the Biden administration over protections afforded to LGBTQ+ persons and cannot in good conscience keep silent about this very personal matter. I am a queer, non-binary trans person who was born an hour away
Occasionally a seminal work appears that becomes a defining piece, a turning point, or a breakthrough in a particular area. Considering the religious LGBTQ+ conversion movement, the documentary “Pray Away,” released today on Netflix, could very well be that work. After mental health professional organizations
In Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence, Diana Butler Bass discusses six ways of approaching Jesus, six ways that Christians have spoken of Jesus, and most importantly, six ways Christians have experienced Jesus — or as she calls it, the
Two weeks before graduation in 2020, I was counting down the days until I would receive my diploma from Moody Bible Institute. Graduation was set to be virtual that year due to COVID-19, but that couldn’t overshadow my joy. My cap and gown were still
I had just finished my Master’s in Biblical Studies, and with an emphasis on Near Eastern archeology was on a summer tour working on archeological sites from Turkey to Lebanon to Egypt and from Jordan to Israel. I was so single-mindedly focused on the past