Homosexuality and Church Conflicts

This is one of the best resources I’ve seen for exploring this issue in groups. It’s called Bridges Across the Divide and it attempts to be just that: acknowledging in helpful ways the enormous amount of passion and emotion that surrounds it, for those from all ends of the spectrum here (they see four main positions on the issue), and dealing with the arguments in clear and respectful ways. http://www.bridges-across.org/index.htm Interestingly, I think most of the worship songs used in the average congregation come pretty close to latent homosexuality (at least for the male worshippers) anyway. I know I always felt a little uncomfortable asking this man I pictured as a first century Palestinian man to “touch me” every week. And before you think I’m trivializing this, let me just say that especially for teenagers who place these songs alongside those they hear on the radio, the sexuality of these songs is undeniable. For most, erotic love is the only love they are exposed to in popular culture, and it is therefore subsumed every time they or others utter the word. That’s something we need to tackle no matter what our beliefs. http://www.inspiral.org.au If this task of building a peaceful world is the most important task of our time, it is also the most difficult. It will, in fact, require far more discipline, more sacrifice, more planning, more thought, more co-operation and more heroism than war ever demanded.

–Thomas Merton

– Contributed by Simon Moyle