Posts Tagged ‘Jesus’
Adventist Pastor Forced To Resign Over Step-Daughter’s Wedding
Recently, Brett Hadley, a Bible teacher, pastor and drama coach at Highland View Academy, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Maryland, was forced to resign. The reason: he participated in the wedding of his step-daughter, who entered into a same-sex marriage. When the family planned this event as a family dinner, no one guessed it would result in…
Read MoreSharing Our Nativity Stories
We each have our own “nativity story.” Mine is that it was a difficult birth, a prolonged labor, my mother turned blue, my father told the doctor she needed oxygen, I was born feet first, my legs were crooked and doctors wanted to put braces on them, but my mother resisted, choosing another therapy: massaging…
Read MoreHoly Days In Barren Places
Each Thanksgiving and Christmas during college, I returned to the home of my childhood, the stable-turned-summer-cottage where my parents had begun their family together. My first chore on arriving would be to empty the Tupperware of refrigerated fuzz and discard the rolled oats webbed with meal moth larvae. Edible food was scarce in that house,…
Read MoreAdvent: The Practice of Active Waiting
When I was a child, the run-up to Christmas was much more churchy than it is today. Every year we started an Advent calendar on December 1 with a picture of the holy family, the shepherds, the kings on camels, the star with glitter glued to it. We opened the doors day by day, so…
Read MoreLove Makes A Family: Queering The Nativity
In 2009, I created my own gay and lesbian nativity scenes for the Christmas season. One had two Marys at the manger with the baby Jesus, and the other featured two Josephs with the Christ child. I put Mary with Mary and Joseph with Joseph—just like putting two brides or two grooms on top of…
Read MoreThe Dawn Of Advent: A Reflection On World AIDS Day
I make it a point to try to avoid focusing or writing too heavily on my status as an HIV positive individual, lest it comes to define me. There are two times throughout the year, however, where I make it a practice to reflect on the virus. One occurs around the early weeks of Epiphany,…
Read MoreSaints Bring Hope On World AIDS Day 25th Anniversary
World AIDS Day, which marks its 25th anniversary this year on Dec. 1, supports everyone affected by HIV. The day is dedicated to prevention and treatment, and honors those who died of AIDS—more than 25 million people worldwide. First held in 1988, World AIDS Day was the first global health day for any disease. …
Read MoreThere’s A Wideness In God’s Mercy
In corporate America, particularly Ernst and Young, there is a non-discrimination policy regarding LGBT employees that falls under the corporation slogan: Bring Your Whole Self To Work. It is an incredible supportive statement of the Corporate World towards LGBT people. Bring your complete, whole self to work, as well as your whole and healed self.…
Read MoreChanging Hearts: A Plea For Christian Dialogue
When I was in college, a friend asked how I as a Christian viewed her as a lesbian. I told her that I didn’t think of her any differently than I did of other non-Christians because I believed any life not based on the Lord Jesus Christ was sinful and destructive. Oof! At least I…
Read MoreSupporting ENDA: Because The Bible Tells Me So
The Bible is clear about God’s insistence on compassion and justice, so it makes sense that Bible-believing people of faith would support measures—like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)—that seek to end injustice in the workplace. In fact, the Bible has a great deal to say about economic justice and includes almost nothing about sexuality and gender…
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