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Greetings from The Center for Lesbian
and Gay
Studies in Religion and Ministry!
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of your interest in the work of the Center.
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| LGBT Award to Archbishop Desmond Tutu |
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CLGS is thrilled to be among the host
committee members for a truly special evening
event in San Francisco. The International Gay
and Lesbian Human Rights Commission will
present its "Outspoken" award to Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, former Anglican Archbishop of
South Africa, on Tuesday, April 8 at Grace
Cathedral in San Francisco. Archbishop Tutu
is well known as a pioneering and courageous
religious leader who worked tirelessly for
racial justice and reconciliation in South
Africa. He has also been an outspoken
advocate for LGBT people both in the church
and for civil rights. He will be delivering a
major address on LGBT issues as part of this
event on April 8 - an historic moment for
LGBT people of faith! For more information on
this event or to purchase tickets, go to: http://www.iglhrc.org.
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| African American Clergy Convening |
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With generous financial support from the
Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, the African
American Roundtable at CLGS is pleased to
convene a special gathering of 30 African
American clergy from around the United States
to discuss strategies and action steps for
change and to improve the situation of LGBT
people of faith in historic Black
congregations. This convening will take place
in Baltimore, Maryland, April 23-24. Look for
further updates on the Roundtable's work and
reports from this convening here in this
e-newsletter and on the CLGS website.
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| "A Gay, Male, Christian, Sexual Ethic" |
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008 on the PSR Campus
How do you discern appropriately ethical
sexual behavior if you don't know what sex
means? The meaning of sex has changed
radically over the centuries and the
inaugural Boswell Lecture at CLGS will
consider what those changes mean today from
the perspective of a gay, Christian, biblical
scholar. Dale B. Martin, Woolsey Professor of
Religious Studies at Yale University, will
deliver the lecture on the evening of April
30, beginning with a reception at 5:30 pm in
the Bade museum on the PSR campus. The JOHN
E. BOSWELL LECTURESHIP was established in
2006 at CLGS to honor Boswell's pioneering
scholarship in LGBT religious studies and to
promote today's leading scholars and their
academic work for the full thriving of LGBT
people and communities. For more information
on the Boswell Lectureship, go to: http://www.clgs.org/8/boswell_fund.html.
For more information on the inaugural Boswell
lecture, go to: http://www.clgs.org/4/events.cfm?Display=Full&EventID=232.
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| OutFront in the Pacific Northwest |
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Portland, OR and Walla Walla, WA
The OutFront Program takes CLGS resources and
expertise to where they are needed most -
local faith communities, neighborhoods and
cities across the country. These weekend
conferences are designed to help progressive
people of faith and their allies become
voices of authority and agents of societal
change. Each of these weekend programs is
tailored to meet the specific needs of the
local community with which CLGS partners, and
the weekend draws on a variety of speakers
from around the country for the content of
the workshop modules. In each case, the
OutFront Project assists and supports
individuals and organizations in gaining
competence and confidence on topics ranging
from strategies for creating welcoming
congregations and marriage equality and civil
unions to the Bible and homosexuality. On the
first weekend in April OutFront returns to
Portland, Oregon, where the focus will be on
transgender communities and topics, featuring
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott as a keynote
speaker. Early in May OutFront goes to Walla
Walla, Washington. For more information on
the OutFront program, contact Bernard
Schlager at bschlager@clgs.org
or consult the CLGS website (http://clgs.org/3/3_9.html).
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| Creating LGBT-Affirming Asian Pacific Islander Ministries |
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A Training Retreat for API LGBTs and Supporters
[NRJ Banner]
The CLGS Racial/Ethnic Roundtable Project
together with the PANA Institute's Civil
Liberty and Faith Project will coordinate a
training retreat for LGBT Asian/Pacific
Islanders and supporters from Friday, May 30
through Sunday, June 1 at the Mercy Center in
Burlingame, California (near the San
Francisco airport). This retreat grew out of
the felt need to deepen community and
strengthen regional connections among those
doing LGBT related work in API faith
communities, to strategize and offer training
on issues ranging from the Bible to cultural
differences. Topics considered during this
retreat include: understanding Evangelicals;
how different API communities view
homosexuality; transgender issues; and
queering the Bible. For more information,
contact Rev. Elizabeth Leung (eleung@clgs.org).
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| Revolutionary Reading |
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Their Own Receive Them Not, by Horace
Griffin
The fact that Horace Griffin's book is
rightly included in this occasional
e-newsletter feature called "revolutionary
reading" speaks volumes about this pioneering
work. African-American faith communities
have, of course, been at the forefront of
movements for justice and social change in
the United States. Working for LGBT inclusion
and justice is a startling exception to that
important history. What caused this apparent
resistance to LGBT issues among black
churches? In Their Own Receive Them Not:
African American Lesbians & Gays in Black
Churches, Griffin has given us the first
book-length treatment of lesbian and gay
Christians in African-American communities.
He not only offers some important insights
concerning the role of Scripture in
traditional black churches (in his analysis,
for example, of how black churches have
critiqued the Apostle Paul on slavery but not
on matters of sexuality and gender), he also
documents the contributions of gay and
lesbian African Americans to Christian
communities.
As in so many other communities, those who
harbor images of LGBT people seeking to be
"let in" to faith communities simply ignore
the fact that we are already in those
communities and have been for a long time.
Griffin provides an eloquent narrative of
that history in black churches and a clarion
call for not only acceptance of LGBT people
but an expansion of a genuine liberation
theology that embraces all. He does this from
his perspective as a pastoral theologian in a
way that makes this book not only
revolutionary and essential reading for
African-American Christians, but for all
faith communities in their work for a
biblically-based, justice-oriented approach
to Christian ministry.
This book also articulates well why CLGS has
been committed from its founding to bring its
energy to bear on the intersections of
race/ethnicity, sexuality/gender and
religion. These are not distinct and separate
issues but organically bound together, as the
work of our racial/ethnic roundtables bears
witness (Griffin has been an active
participant of the CLGS African American
Roundtable from its inception).
Communities of faith of all colors have much
to learn from this thoughtful and well
researched (and still very accessible!) book.
(And if you order it through the Amazon
portal on the CLGS website, the Center will
receive a portion of your purchase price!).
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The work of CLGS depends on the
generosity of
individual donors. You can make a gift in
honor or in memory of friends or family,
which we'll include
on the Center's website "Honor Roll"! Click
here
to Donate Today!
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Stop Religion-Based Violence Now |
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No matter the motive, violent hate-crimes are
never acceptable and always appalling. Still,
when such attacks appear fueled or supported
by religion, it feels to me like salt being
poured in an open wound. On March 20 (this
past Maundy Thursday on the Christian
calendar), a gay man in Port Harcourt,
Nigeria, was severely beaten and almost
killed because of his leadership role in
Changing Attitudes Nigeria (CAN), an
organization that seeks to work within the
Nigerian Anglican Church to change its
position concerning the acceptance and
treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender persons. (Pictured here are some
of the members of CAN.)
This unnamed man was attacked while attending
a memorial service for the sister of CAN's
leader who remains in exile because of
threats of violence made against him. The
physical attack in Port Harcourt was
accompanied by verbal abuse that was, in
part, religious in nature, suggesting that
Christians may well have been complicit in or
taken part in the attack. (Read
the CLGS
press release on this incident.)
We work hard every day at CLGS to provide
education and training on religion, sexuality
and gender to prevent such violence and to
create welcoming communities of faith for
LGBT people. Personally, I have been
committed to and passionate about that work
for years now. But in the wake of this latest
violence in Nigeria - as well as the February
murder of high school student Lawrence King
much closer to home, in Oxnard, California -
the urgency of our mission at CLGS appeared
in bold relief. We simply cannot take
anything for granted in this important work.
Those of us who live and work in relatively
safe communities can easily forget the
courage and risk involved in working for
organizations like CAN - or for that matter,
the risk of gender non-conformity in American
high schools. Those who do not identify as
LGBT might not even be aware of such
tremendous courage at all, not only outside
the U.S. but right here at home as well. I
certainly hope all people of faith are
appalled and disgusted by the role religion
too often plays in inciting attacks like
those in Nigeria and California and far too
many other places in nearly every country.
All children deserve to learn
in safe schools. All religious
leaders should and must speak out clearly and
passionately against violence. And surely
faith communities everywhere, regardless of
their perspectives on LGBT people, can agree
on this much: religiously motivated violence
must stop, now.
The work we do at CLGS in all these areas
absolutely depends on the generosity of our
donors - and I'm one of them. I not only work
at CLGS but I also give regular financial
contributions to the Center; this work is
just too important not to do so. Please
consider joining me by making a secure online
donation today and help us do the
real work of religion: not
violence, but peace; not fear and insecurity,
but safety, hospitality and justice.
The Rev. Jay E. Johnson, PhD
Senior Director, Academic Research & Resources
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