Should the Religiously Abused Just Leave It Now?
It continues to be one of the major crises for religious believers today. What should we do with “these people” whom our denomination has marginalized for centuries? For some it’s LGBTQ people. The United Methodist Church, for example, continues to lose congregations for which anti-LGBTQ discrimination is as comfortable as sitting in the same pew every Sunday morning. For others, such as the Roman Catholic Church or the Southern Baptist Convention, it’s not only their affirmations of continued bigotry toward LGBTQ people but their refusal to allow women to be equal partners in the leadership of their well-ensconced patriarchies. The Southern Baptists just reaffirmed their historic male-dominated hierarchy. The Catholic Church is under pressure from its membership to do something about both . Some denominations, such as the Christian Reformed Church or conservative Lutheran groups such as the Missouri Synod, have just kept their anti-LGBTQ stands. A breakaway American right-wing gro