Wendy VanderWal-Gritter

The concept of generous spaciousness, that attitudes towards LGBT people in the church can be a disputable matter, one in which people of good conscience can hold differing opinions and yet still be true to their conscience and faith, is appealing to me. But I'm still not sure if that can actually work in real life, or maybe that's just my own biases at work. I found much of this book to be pretty vague, often talking around different aspects of the issue but never quite confronting them head-on. But there were a few passages that I found interesting:

There is an irony in how Christians talk about and understand sexuality. Christians often lament the world’s reductionism of sex to genital interaction and raw physical pleasures, but then they typically reduce a gay person’s sexuality to just that.

To those outside the church, the battles over gay marriage in the church seem completely incompatible with the idea that Christianity is about serving the God of love. Their perception of the church using the Bible to exclude or deprive a group of people of love and family is a stench rather than a beautiful fragrance of Christ. One has to consider that when 91 percent of 16- to 29-year-olds perceive Christians to be antigay, our ability to reach this generation with the good news of the gospel is significantly hindered.

A common checklist for heterosexual privilege considers that on an ongoing basis as a straight person: [long list] Some people when reading this list may feel twinges of defensiveness. Perhaps many straight people have never really thought about the status, privilege, and reputation they enjoy simply because of being in the sexual majority.

I found that checklist to be particularly spot-on, and neatly sums up the way that many churches simply refuse to seriously engage in the discussion.

Published in 2014, some of the terminology in this book feels a bit dated, and its obviously missing some subsequent events, but I think the discussion has otherwise held up rather well (other than the lack of any information at all about transgender issues, which feels like a large omission). I think this book is a worthy entry to the ongoing conversation.

… (mer)