Holiday Emotions While Quarantined: A Queer Reconsideration of Intimacy and Ritual

Holiday emotions while quarantined a queer of intimacy and ritual.

Believe Out Loud Fridays is a new series of spiritual reflections—pieces that connect our identities and lived experiences with sacred texts and spiritual guidance. In this week’s reflection, Union Theological Seminary students and BOL interns Kimberley Gordy and Sulkiro Song draw on Scripture and ritual to embrace the moments of “wilderness” many of us experience…

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Church Beyond Walls

Shooting star streaks over evergreen treetops

Believe Out Loud Fridays is a new series of spiritual reflections—pieces that connect our identities and lived experiences with sacred texts and spiritual guidance. This week’s reflection focuses on finding communities of belonging and the meaning of church. Earlier this year, when shelter-at-home took effect, a debate arose about what constitutes a church. Both sides…

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Physical Movement Is A Form of Self-Love

A person is paddling a kayak on a lake.

Believe Out Loud Fridays is a new series of spiritual reflections – pieces that connect our identities and lived experiences with sacred texts and spiritual guidance. This week’s reflection focuses on physical exercise as a divinely aligned act of self-love. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him…

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Have Faith

Three crosses are silhouetted against a sunset.

Our outlook may seem dark at times and feelings of sorrow and regret may set in. It may look as if there is no light at the end of the tunnel, but know that the Lord is with you. There are no problems too big for God. Continue to have hope and keep faith. Last…

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Being alone with God: Reflections on The Soul of the Stranger

[Above: Joy Ladin reads at the Intersections office on March 10, 2020] On March 10, 2020, Believe Out Loud and Intersections hosted author and academic Joy Ladin in our New York office for a reading and discussion celebrating her book The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective. It was…

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Black and Brown Make Green

Back in 2010, I was teaching part-time for Operation Understanding, a leadership development program for Black and Jewish high school students in Philadelphia. We did lots of things together. But, the most intense part of that experience was during the summer. We spent the month of July traveling around the country on a bus. We…

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John Paulk Renounces Ex-Gay Therapy; Evangelicals Respond

A man with long blonde hair smiling for the camera.

This week, former ex-gay spokesperson John Paulk issued a public apology for his involvment in ex-gay ministries, stating that reparative therapy does not change sexual orientation and apologizing for the pain caused by his advocacy. Below is a response from the Evangelical Network regarding Paulk’s change of heart. To admit that you have made a…

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The Crisis At The Border Reveals The Real Sodomites

A close up of a fence with lights on it.

Recently there has been a “Border Crisis” in which over 52,000 unaccompanied minors having crossed the United States border since last October. This situation at the border has caused us to reexamine our Christian values as well as our definition for the word “sodomy.” Most Christians would assume they know the definition for the word,…

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The Nashville Statement Is Deadly Theology

Three people embracing near large stage cross

I am the daughter, granddaughter, niece and relative of more than ten evangelical Baptist and Methodist ministers in Alabama and Georgia. I am also an openly-gay married woman and the Alabama State Director for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest civil rights organization dedicated to achieving equality for LGBTQ  (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and…

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