Really excited to come across your website – it was recommended by a random US guy who messaged me on facebook! I guess I’ll hear you speak live soon too, as me and my family are longstanding Spring Harvest attenders, and already booked into Minehead later this year.

My partner and I have written a book which was published last month. ‘Living it Out: a survival guide for lesbian, gay and bisexual Christians and their friends, families and churches’. Sorry for the blatant plug, but I thought it might interest you. As a lesbian couple, we were motivated wanting LGB people, their parents, kids and friends to find ways to hang on in their with God and church.

We wanted to get away from sterortypes of bigotted Christian homophobes and of promiscous ungodly gay people, and to share ways that people hold LGB issues and God together. We try to get away from dry and judgmental theological arguments, and to focus on lived experiences of faith. So, like you, on building bridges.

Anyway, looking forward to coming to your session at Spring Harvest and let us know if you’d like us to get you a review copy of the book.

I will be getting more into this in upcoming posts, but from what I experienced in the United Kingdom, the small size in numbers within the conservative church (speaking w/a broad brush) is trying very hard to figure out a way to just retain their beliefs as justified within culture. That seems to be one of the main focuses in the gay-conservative disconnect.

I think one of the main threats is that the gay community is indeed a minority; yet in many situations that minority is strongly influencing majority mindset. Especially from what I saw in the UK, this is a huge deal due to the small size of the conservative Christian community – I feel many of them believe their voice, cultural/religous hold, etc will become completely obsolete. I know this is all much more nuanced and involved than that, but I’ll start there.

The evangelical leadership is fighting tooth and nail to retain conservative doctrine and discipline. Sometimes they seem to be winning (Church of England), sometimes they seem to be losing (Church of Scotland). However, what this means is that it’s really hard for them to hear anything which might suggest they aren’t seeing things quite right – that would call into question all their work, that might hand over their church to ‘liberals and immorality’.

As a consequence, I see evangelicals convinced that they are utterly justified in their stance at the same time as being apparently unconcerned that a significant minority of the population (and those who empathize with them) are barred from the church by default.

This is an internal church conversation, I suppose, rather than one between the church and the GLBT community, but I think it lies behind the lack of constructive engagement with the GLBT community by the evangelical Church.

His work includes the interpretation of homosexuality that we are all familiar with. While I find what the material and program does to bring people together and in pursuit of God is fabulous; I find this part, specifically, separates and divides….