#gushee — Public Fediverse posts

#Professor #david P. #Gushee
After #Evangelicalism
A Path to a #New #Christianity

Seven #commitments of a post-evangelical
#politics are proposed: a distinctive Christian
#identity, action based on #hope and not
#fear, #critical #distance from earthly
#powers, grounding in the broad #Christian #social #teaching #tradition, #global
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‘The Bible was not as black and white as I once thought’

To reconcile his son’s sexuality with his Christian views, Greg Sr. entered another arena that for evangelicals was as taboo as a gay bar:
He started reading books and listening to sermons from religious and LGBTQ+ scholars who challenged his views on homosexuality.

He came across a YouTube video of the man delivering a lecture at a New Zealand church.

His name was #David #Gushee, one of the leading Christian ethicists in the US.

Gushee had White evangelical Christian roots. He became a born-again Christian in high school and later a Baptist minister.

He, too, once believed that there could be no moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships.

A family crisis prompted the shift in his views.
Gushee learned that his younger sister, Katey, had been hospitalized with depression, including one stay after a suicide attempt.
She had struggled to accept her sexual identity as a lesbian before finally coming out.
Gushee started reexamining scriptures and the formation of the Bible.

He talked to other LGBTQ+ people who grew up in the church but left.

He heard horror stories about religious parents casting their kids onto the streets, where many fall prey to drug use and sexual predators.

Gushee took a stand. He urged for the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the church.

He rejected the “welcoming but not affirming” approach that many churches attempt to avoid demonizing LGBTQ+ people and alienating traditional conservatives.

“They ultimately fail to include LGBTQ+ people in the Christian community on equal terms with everyone else, while doing continued spiritual, psychological, familial, and ecclesial harm,” Gushee wrote in his book, “Changing Our Mind.”

By this time the McDonalds had moved to Georgia, where Gushee lived and taught at a university. Greg Sr. was so taken by Gushee’s book that he wrote a letter to him and invited him to lunch.

The two men met and became friends. “David’s book helped open my mind, not change my mind,” Greg Sr. says.

“I began to realize that the Bible was not as black and white as I once thought.”

Greg Sr.’s solution to his theological questions was to focus on another color in the Bible
— the red letters in the New Testament that are attributed to Jesus.

And he came to a conclusion:
A Christian parent can love their LGBTQ child not in spite of their faith, but because of it.

“There are things in the Bible that may or may not make sense,
but what you can be assured of is that Jesus says to love our neighbors as ourselves,
and that includes our children, straight or gay,” he said

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/03/us/conservative-christian-coming-out-gay-cec/index.html