Volume 17, Issue 6

Misfits Among Misfits

Cover Stories

They’ll Know We Are Misfits by Our Love
By Rev. Candace Chellew
It’s only when we embrace and live into our misfits among misfits nature — like Jesus — that we are able to see through the hateful words and really see the humanity of those who seek to attack or condemn us.

Queen Esther Goes to A.A.
By Lori Heine
Nobody in the Church has been treated more shamefully than we have. Yet many of us — an ever-growing number — refuse to be driven out.

Why Does Jesus Eat with Homosexuals?
By Gary Simpson
Jesus fellowships with the outcast, because they need to hear more loudly and more repeatedly the assurance of God’s love, because they need to see God’s face more often and because they need the put their fingers in the wounds of Jesus’ hands more often to comprehend God’s love.

Be Perfect in Love
By Simyona Deanova
I sometimes feel like an outsider when I’m with Christians due to my trans identity, I sometimes feel like an outsider when I’m with LGBT people because I’m a devout Christian.

A Place for Us
By John H. Campbell
In my heart, I knew that God was with me, and that regardless of whether I really felt as if I “fit in” anywhere, there was a place and a purpose for me, yet I was faced with a sense of frustration that I was always going to be an outcast — even among others who felt outcast.

Features

Make Up Research and Pray Hard
By Dr. Robert N. Minor
The right-wing, especially the religious right-wing, knows that it’s on the run.

So God Condemns Same-Sex and Interracial Marriage? Really?
By Warren J. Blumenfeld
I believe that THE prime factor keeping oppression toward LGBT people locked firmly in place and enacted throughout our society — on the personal/interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels — is the negative judgments emanating from some conservative faith communities.

We Are Not Three-Fifths of a Human Being
By Rev. Paul M. Turner
This struggle for “Marriage Equality” is the final argument of whether or not gay people are fully human and on equal footing with the rest of this creation we call human. It is the 3/5 of a human being all over again debate all over again.

Evangelicals Change and Make Changes
By Martin E. Marty
Change is coming, as many Evangelicals and others “believe their own eyes” and recognize devoted gay couples standing at the communion table, participating in church leadership, and being responsible parents — their status legally reinforced or not — while “the heterosexual lifestyle” in many manifestations is trashing the institution of marriage.

Moral God and Immoral Nature: An Evening with Rabbi Kushner
By Frank Kajfes
Kushner believes that, though God created a magnificent world for humans, there are some parts of life God cannot control.

Mother’s Day, and A Lot Else, Ain’t What It Used to Be
By Dr. Robert N. Minor
As society continues to tame groups that threaten the system, including some LGBT movements, the historical reality is that the most radical groups and people are responsible for forcing causes upon us.

The Role of Capitalism in Creating Homophobia
By Rev. Dr. Jerry S. Maneker
The major scapegoats that serve to assuage the frustrations and consequent aggression of the exploited are Gay people!

From the Pulpit

Via Negativa: The Hunger Games / Hunger for Security
By Rev. Candace Chellew
Even though the commercials make it look so easy to be safe, there’s no security company in the world that can give us the kind of security we crave.

Via Negativa: The Hunger Games / Hunger for Fame
By Rev. Candace Chellew
If we are to strive for fame and recognition at all, then the prophets make it clear we are to strive for it not to just alleviate our own suffering — but to alleviate the suffering of the world.

Via Negativa: The Hunger Games / Hunger for Hope
By Rev. Candace Chellew
Hope is not fair, and often it’s an obstacle that keeps us from being right here right now.

Via Negativa: The Hunger Games / Hunger for Generosity
By Rev. Candace Chellew
Generosity seems to come naturally to those with very little, maybe because they’re not used to their wealth or good fortune sticking around very long.

Holy Humor

Realizing the Truth

God Creates Us All