Thursday, October 20, 2011

Westboro Comes to Oxford

On Tuesday, October 25 the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) plans to visit Miami's campus in Oxford to picket. If you don't know much about WBC, you can find all you need to know from their website godhatesfags.com. Their coming to Oxford has been a developing story, which you can read more about from these links:
While it is always a discernment call to determine whether or not to give a group such as this any more media attention, I decided that it would be helpful to directly address their approach since they are coming to our back yard. So, on Sunday, October 23 in the services at OBF we will look at a biblical approach to homosexuality and the WBC. My goal is to help us think biblically about homosexuality and to engage our culture with the overwhelming grace of Jesus. Please pray that God would work in that way.

As you think about these issues, here are some helpful resources:

1 comments:

  1. Hello Jeremy,

    I'm an openly gay student at Miami University writing to express my concern about your stances on homosexuality. At the very outset, the language you use when speaking about homosexuality is incredibly alienating to members of the LGBTQA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, allied) community. You speak only of those "struggling" with same-sex attraction - you imply that anyone who is attracted to a member of the same sex is necessarily involved in a struggle with God, a struggle against sin, and this is quite simply untrue. I am gay, I have same-sex attractions, but I do not struggle with them. And furthermore, I have a personal relationship with God and I follow Jesus Christ. Unless you, too, are a member of the LGBTQA community, I do not believe that you are entitled to make assumptions about the nature of the "struggle" of maintaining a relationship with God as a gay or lesbian individual. These assumptions leap to the forefront of your message, whether or not this is your intention, and cause LGBTQA Christians to feel very alienated from you as a person, from your church as a body of Christ, and from the God about whom you preach. I suggest that you examine more closely the subtleties of your language on this issue.

    Furthermore, since you included some resources of your own, I would like to provide several additional resources that take a look at another Christian perspective on homosexuality:

    By John Shore:
    "Christians: When It Comes to Homosexuality, Man Up" @ http://johnshore.com/2010/03/13/christians-when-it-comes-to-homosexuality-man-up/

    "Christians and Gay Teen Suicides" @ http://johnshore.com/2011/09/23/christians-and-gay-teen-suicides-the-movie/

    By Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize winner):
    "All Are God's Children: On Including Gays and Lesbians in the Church and Society" @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/religion-homosexuality_b_874804.html

    You may profess that your congregation welcomes all people, including members of the LGBTQA community. However, I don’t believe you’re being very welcoming by inviting us to attend your church and then informing us that, unaware to us, we are in fact involved in a lifelong struggle with God, and the only way to win this struggle is to deny ourselves the ability to love our partners.

    The world is changing, and Christians all across the globe are beginning to understand that literal, fundamentalist interpretations of the Biblical passages that relate to homosexuality are inappropriate and contradict the true message of Christ and the very heart of the Bible – love. I pray that you will understand this one day soon, as well.

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