Bearing Witness: A Few Stories

[brooksmoses]

A month or so ago, several of my friends set up a community called "Bearing Witness", "for liberal Christians to bear witness to the message of 'God is love'", and bear witness about our Christianity. Too much of discourse about Christianity in American culture (and politics) assumes that it is the Christianity of those who speak most loudly about one-true-wayisms, and so it was important to us to make our voices heard too. In particular, they chose today -- Pentecost Sunday, the Sunday in the Church's liturgical calendar celebrating the story of the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ's disciples and empowering them to speak for Him throughout the world -- as a day to post our stories of what Christianity is for us.

I'd like to point at this post by julesjones, and this post by zeborah.

Likewise, I've posted a small bit of my own. Links here for the LiveJournal version and here for the Dreamwidth version.

I find it difficult and a bit scary to speak up for my beliefs when it's not something I see as shared with a lot of my friends, particularly when, as now, it's also about trying to reclaim a word that many see only as associated with hatred and bigotry. But sometimes it's more important than it is difficult.

Comments

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing about what you care about.

A view from the other end of the country: My main Christian influences in NYC are the liberal Episcopalians at the churches where I sing. They do service in the community, and they preach love and acceptance for all, regardless of race, gender, sexual preference. They inspired me to start volunteering at a faith-based homeless shelter run jointly by a church and a synagogue.

[brooksmoses]

That's really good to hear! One of the things about the perception that Christianity (and particularly American Christianity) is all neoconservative is that it's not just non-Christians perceiving things that way; on a down day it's easy for me to start feeling that maybe my own beliefs are the ones on a rare fringe. I really am encouraged to hear that, somewhere else entirely in a quite different church, there are people who share these religious values too.

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Bishop Spong, who wrote a book called "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" (which argues, amongst other things, that Paul was probably gay) is an Episcopalian bishop. The ELCA has voted to ordain gays, and will probably start performing gay marriages. Hell, First Baptist right here in Seattle has been on the leading liberal end of things for ages.

Honest to God (heh) it's the bigots who are the minority.