Earlier today, we reported that a Southern Baptist megachurch in Jacksonville, FL was requiring its members to sign a statement affirming a biblical sexual ethic in spite of the culture’s continuing devolution into sexual anarchy.
Last night, First Baptist Church Jacksonville held an open mic event allowing members and people outside of the church to come to the mic to ask questions and make comments on the church’s adoption of the statement. While many of the questions were honest questions about how the church would enforce its view without compromising its mission to evangelize the lost, there were a number of questions that were by nature hostile to the church.
One of those questions was presented by a self-described “queer” woman named Katie. “The decision to have your members sign any form of contract to attend turns your church into an organization, a club,” Katie told the pastor in front of the entire congregation. “This church is no longer a religious place of worship. Welcome to all. These sexuality oaths are drawing a clear line in the sand, showing us who you truly welcome, which is by no means all.”
“I was born and raised in the Baptist church, and as a queer person, that made life feel like a constant battle every day,” she continued. “If God loves me, why did she make me this way? Why is the pastor of my church, my Sunday school teacher, and even my own family telling me I’m going to hell for my choices, something I was raised and taught to believe was sinful?”
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“Choice is not actually a choice at all. Members of the LGBTQ plus community do not choose this way of life. In fact, it is your religion that is a choice. You’re not born Baptist. You chose it. In the words of Lady Gaga herself, we were all born this way, and God loves me just the way I am.”
“We choose to accept and love ourselves and not hide who we are. For decades, our queer community has felt ridicule, hate, bigotry, and discrimination for simply being who we are. Forcing your members to sign a contract, erasing our existence just adds to the mountains of resentment that LGBTQ plus people already have for the church at large. Is that what you want? To drive a larger wedge between God and queer people to sanitize the world of us or eliminate our existence? “
“This oath is disgusting and not what God would want, nor what Christianity is about” she added. “Our country streets are already running red with the blood of LGBTQ plus people as a direct result from discriminatory acts just for being who we are, living our life.”
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