#queer ministry

[blessedarethequeer]

much to my mother's continued confusion, not only do churches confusingly continue to offer me pulpits from which to preach, but they're increasingly excited to pay me for the opportunity as well lmao

[somescenecatholic]

AMAZING NEWS FOR ALL!!!

IM SO SO HAPPY YOU DONT UNDERSTAND!! AAAAA IM SO EXCITED IM EXPLODING AND AASHDBJDCNJDND THIS MEANS SM TO ME!!!!

AAAA there r sparkles and stars inside of me rn IM SO SO OVERJOYED THIS IS HISTORIC THIS IS A PART OF HISTORY!!!!! >w<

YAAAAAAAY YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA

but this isnt the end yet

[redbreastedbird]

Would Daisy want kids with Amina?

Two answers to this, both kind of the same, and then one more version that’s a bit different!

The first is no, purely because of when the stories are set. Daisy doesn’t know it’s possible to want that kind of life for herself as a lesbian - even the idea of remaining with someone romantically throughout her life is almost unthinkable because there were just no rights for queer women in the 1940s. Lesbianism wasn’t criminalised in the UK, but it was just a legal black hole. Queer women legally did not exist. (Sorry, a downer to start on).

The second is still no, but that’s more because of who Daisy is. Even imagining her in 2024 I can’t see her wanting biological kids, or being interested in pursuing formal adoption. I don’t think she’s very maternal - she’s got a lot going on with her life and she’s very contented, and kids just don’t come into that.

BUT, with all that said … I think that she will probably end up caring for children in her lifetime. She has examples of people who are not her parents who have parented her better than her biological parents ever could - Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy, the Chief Inspector, even Bertie in a way - and I think she’d naturally bring that energy to her relationships with younger generations. I can imagine her taking in a queer kid who needs help, or becoming the parental figure for her niece Tess - she will parent, in her own way, and she will have people who think of her as their mentor. She just won’t give birth to anyone!

[intrinsicallydisordered]

I asked my friend, who’s been a DRE and catechist for nearly 40 years, what her advice would be to me, who is just recently back in active ministry.

“Don’t expect that you will effect any real change.”

So, yeah, the state of the Church isn’t looking too hot rn…

I should say, she was fired for advocating for the child of queer parents to be baptized. The pastor refused. And when she refused to turn the child away, he fired her for “not fulfilling the job description.”

[cardboardboxfly]

I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I am so Normal about this book I-

Am definitely not normal about this book

[thegeekiary]

The Surprising Queer Representation in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"

Alan Ritchson as Anders Lassen in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Image via Trailer) When I decided to watch The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, I was not expecting it to have any kind of queer representation. A team of handsome men doing action stuff? Yes. But actual queer rep? Nopes. So, of course, I was surprised by how the movie handled Alan Ritchson portraying Anders…

[gaywebcorenostalgia]

“Coming soon is the great spanking of the Church, no Christian will be untouched.”

gays4jesus

[faithfromanewperspective]

how did you arrive at your progressive punk christianity outlook after being immersed in conservative christianity?

ooh!! good question. see I don’t really think what I was immersed in was particularly conservative—in circles I’ve been around we’ve always dissed Americans for being conservative (kinda mean I know) and my dad used to take me to climate change protests in the 2000s and I was always taught the 6 days of creation aren’t literal, the rapture isn’t real, women in stem etc. idk how it was anywhere else but the part of sydney I grew up in was just Like That, there was encouragement to give to the poor to actually end poverty and people actually did even though none of us really had heaps and I guess I wasn’t raised to be okay with entitlement but simply be kind to everyone? And I didn’t even know what conservative was until I was maybe 17 (I thought it was a style of fashion for ages and then I thought it meant conserving nature and history). It was always just Christians are meant to be genuinely kind and not have sex til you’re older and preferably married yknow?? and work hard, like the protestant work ethic was def a thing but somehow in a non ableist way as much as this is possible— I get real impatient with people bitching about stuff getting taken away from them, not realising how much they have when I probably have less and I’m usually giving away as much as I’m able and as much will put me in a state of perceived danger. It’s definitely a form of rebellion against them to see how little I can survive on which I’m working on. I also didn’t even know that so many Christians were transphobic like I thought it was only the extreme theobros. I also had a really lovely geography teacher in high school who was also a Christian and used her faith to drive environmental action, my biology teacher was a Christian and stood up for trans rights and I also had acccss to the internet to read up on clobber passages and hear peoples stories and it was always like ‘oh yeah some Christians believe different things based on how they read this stuff’ and I don’t think it was until I was old enough to actually vote and saw what propoganda was going around I really realised the power dynamic behind it, with the rise of the Australian Christian lobby which felt like it was straight out of the US. I fully thought voting was just liberals if you like fossil fuels, greens to save the environment, and labor if you’re a people pleaser and like fun little rhymes like ‘Kevin 07’ and attempting to be feminist but not really getting anything done. I actually met Martyn Iles once and was like ‘damn this guy is a fake Aussie this isn’t how we do Christianity’. I also got super burnt out by how hard and how biblically I tried to love my classmates on top of the Protestant work ethic about my schoolwork I never really cared about for myself, and was well versed in theology enough to be like HA! Grace means that we don’t have to do all that and can just do our sustainable best, still thinking my view was mainstream. I went to uni to study enviro sci at 17 and I thought my convictions to not drive unless Absolutely Necessary were driven by Christian ethics (which they were, how rigid I was with it was a pda response though). Then over the years realised very belatedly how people often didn’t validate my views and experiences and I’d expect they would (bc they were biblically rooted) and got quite hurt when they didn’t. Spent years in different volunteer ministries trying to put together the kind of community talked about in books like Philippians only to constantly be let down and feel isolated and that only driving me to work harder, despite knowing God’s grace meant I didn’t have to feeling like I couldn’t stop while my earthly needs for connection were unmet, saying yes to things I’d previously said no to because I got a sense of temporary community and belonging every time I joined a new serving team. Tried extra hard to make places inclusive and expected everyone else to be working as hard on it as I was and feel the desperation like I did and got super hurt when they didn’t, oh I guess I’ll have to do it all myself then.

I’ve always struggled with the concept of hell, tbh I heard about it way too young and never had a drop of self preservation instinct in my body only didn’t want to let God down by saying no. I’ve particularly always struggled with the whole urgency motivation like I’m trying, I’m doing the best I can, I listen to people and actually speaking the gospel into their lives in a way that hits home for them (bc I was thinking about how to do this in an empathetic and understanding and autonomy respecting way from a Very Young Age like I used to attempt to evangelise on moshi monsters to get an idea) and shit, I’m like 19 years old at this stage and I’m tired. If only I could just have one last hurrah to change places with someone so they can go to heaven instead of me? Id take it. and I basically worked myself to the point of being that suicidal and kept fucking going because God made me good at science so I can save the planet and end world hunger, and I had this conviction to contextualise (this is what we learned at afes btw) the gospel to really be real to queer folk and indigenous folk and other people of colour and marginalised people (it’s easy to see oppression with my background and my neurotype tbh) and maybe I could make myself suffer now bc God wasn’t gonna let me do that for eternity? anyway eventually left afes bc I was being so stretched and getting so isolated and the work I was doing there wasn’t achieving any of these things and I realised if I stayed I might end up dead and I wasn’t ready to go to heaven yet when my work wasn’t done. or at least so constantly dysregulated I wouldn’t be as able to be kind to others and show them the gospel.

around this time I’m also putting together a pretty comprehensive framework for how to actually solve global problems in a productive way, I’ve unpacked the pride in a lot of Christian mission projects and how they often were a feel good thing but not actually respectful or effective and I’d come up with literally hundreds of ideas for projects I could do to actually help, none of which I obviously had time for I think I was working up to 3 jobs while studying and serving in church and doing my hobbies that kept me kind of sane as well? which was discouraging to say the least, driving a kind of rageful resentment. Around that time I also discover PDA and my whole life makes sense, I start on my adhd meds which I had to jump through a million hoops to get and realise maybe I can finish uni.

a pda framework as I dive more into that and how to be actually neurodivergent affirming and actually recover from burnout long story short makes me realise how ableist much of our concept of sin and holiness really is and how much we need to destigmatise sin and stop using it as a way to intellectualise actual things happening in our brains and nervous systems and maybe we’d feel a lot less hopeless about it like it’s some big mystery if we actually did unpack the fear and threat responses and trauma behind it. Which we always say we will do but practically, church doenst give a space to do that bc you’re gonna be shamed. even for the people who are non affirming I’d be like, but isn’t it a logical step to someone who’s not yet been convicted to celibacy (if that’s something they think they should be) and realised this whole thing is unrealistic, not because the bible is wrong but because people think you can control your own brain by simply trying and trying again every time you fuck up as if that’s not gonna drive learned helplessness or actually traumatise you when you so desperately want to do better? Either that or drive you to be numb about it which I realised is what usually happens, there are certain sins people are blind to in every congregation and they’re actually intellectually unable to be convicted of that as sin because they’re stretched as far as they can go covering all other bases and being like ‘Christ covers that I didn’t Choose To Sin I’m trying not to even though it doesn’t really work’ like I’m a solutions person. if something isn’t working we’re gonna think of a new method and suddenly I understand how my brain works and those of so many others especially those who feel marginalised by the church!

and so long story short when I eventually had to quit what I was doing at church because someone cared enough to realise I hadn’t been doing well for years I was like I’m gonna follow this urge of the Spirit or simply my own head and desire for true connection I often found In exvangelical spaces and hear as many experiences as possible and use it to shape my worldview and get a bunch of hope from people who yes they’ve been marginalised but the gospel is real to them. that’s my only criteria I’m not gonna judge based on theology and I’m not ever gonna think my theological takes make anyone else wrong I’m just gonna be open to listen and shape them so there isn’t any cognitive dissonance and the grace found at the cross is real and practical and doenst have weird arbitrary limits, and I’m also gonna listen to those hurt by Christianity who some might judge as being hard hearted but I know how trauma works. and I’ve been doing that ever since, gradually getting there more and more and I think the best/funniest thing is even in more conservative spaces literally everyone I still talk to has been super encouraging of it and if we have any disagreements they’re pretty minor compared to the fact that we all believe the gospel is for everyone and we all wanna invest in social justice too (which makes me question how conservative those spaces ever were tbh). like there’s def parts of my story I won’t always tell but I feel like I come with a perspective people respect these days no matter where I am, and that’s nice in contrast to being that weird kid trying to do adult things being told either not to worry or that I don’t understand.

[watchnpray]

i got a response back from my letter about how inhospitable the church is to the homeless and they just said that they’re trying to strike a balance between being too welcoming and not welcoming enough. uh….

[junebugwriter]

I guess I never had much of a chance.

I just started watching Jessie Gender on Youtube's essay about masculinity and... it hit like a goddamn truck. So much of what she talks about in her past so closely mirrors my own, it's downright eerie. Down to the fact that I was an Eagle Scout. Although, to be fair, it sounds like she had a much better time in it than I did, considering I never really made many friends in my boy scout troop, and I never worked any of the camps.

But to the point... I really did echo a lot of her experience. I tried my hardest to be a man. To live up to the ideals of masculinity that society enforces. But I was never going to be anything close to that. I was always too fat, too sensitive, too emotional, and too unathletic to ever be anything close to Western Masculinity (tm).

I did try though. I was desperate to be seen as something close to approaching masculine, but it came out in such strange ways.

For those who don't know me in person, I grew up in the United Methodist Church, quite literally. My dad was a pastor all his life, and that's the only life I knew growing up. As such, we lived life "in a fishbowl," as we'd call it. That means we were supposed to be the Model Family. Above all reproach, under all scrutiny. If any of us stepped out of line, we were going to be reprimanded for it. Do you folks on here have any idea what that does to a kid? My parents loved me, to be sure, and I bear them little ill will. They did their best under the circumstances. But we were a religious family in Texas. There's very little non-conformity afforded to us. My mother, God bless her, she already bucked tradition. She wasn't exactly feminine, mostly. Sure, she wore dresses, wore makeup, even went square dancing with my dad. But she had little time for the trappings of femininity, and only wore them under obligation. She did not enjoy being a pastor's spouse, for the most part. She endured it, for my Dad's sake, but she made no secret that she wasn't going to pretend to be some Stepford Wife bizarro Tammy Faye Bakker. Not her.

So I grew up with my dad, a uniquely anxious person, stressed about how me and my brother were going to make it. My dad was a pretty old-school guy, but at heart he was a bleeding heart liberal, as much as one could be in Texas in the 80's and 90's in religious circles. There's not a single Democratic president he didn't vote for. He was Democrat til he dies. Yet... that could never be public knowledge. Not in the church. Not in Texas. So already, we became bearers of secrets. Mom isn't a pastor's wife. Dad isn't a Republican. And so we were taught to bear our own secrets.

I'm neurodivergent. I have ADHD. And I am almost entirely incapable of telling a lie. (Ask my partner, she knows!) But little secrets... that was a matter of survival. Little secrets, for the benefit of the Image. Everyone has them, I learned. But God help you if your secrets ever got out.

So I learned, and learned, and learned some more. I'd ask questions, and to their credit my parents answered most of them truthfully, if they could. But there were some things you do not question.

One of them was gender. But I did not know that word.

How could I?

Not in that environment. Not in the fishbowl. Not in Texas. Not in the church.

Girls did x, boys did y, and that's that. Girls were x, boys were y, and that's it. End of discussion. Black and white.

There were signs I did not conform. I loved the show Barney and Friends... until I overheard kids at school call it a show for girls and little babies. Not a show for boys.

Overnight I stopped watching.

I used to sleep with a blanket every night. I loved, adored that little blanket. I found solace in Linus from Peanuts, and his little blue blanket. But my father chafed at its ever-presence. He never said anything against it, but he didn't have to. I could tell. So my mother, God bless her, she stitched me and my brother some pillows with fun animal designs on them. They substituted for the blanket. Father approved, as they had things like tigers and killer whales on them, which were Boy Approved (tm) things to like.

But then there was the ladybug puppet. It was a cute little stuffed ladybug that fit on my hand, and it even had an extra leg so as to be anatomically accurate. I slept with that every night.

Until my mother told me that dad didn't want me to do it anymore. He was worried it was too "feminine." And she said it in a very sing-song voice, a teasing tone I grew all too familiar with.

So into the closet the puppet went. And me with it.

I became hyper-vigilant about what could be perceived as "feminine" from there on out. I watched what I did like a hawk, trying never to ever raise the annoyance or ire of my dad or my peers. But it was never enough. As anyone who has ever had to play that game of gender chess, there was never going to be any chance for someone who is a trans girl to ever be anything but, even if they didn't know that was what they were.

I didn't hear the word "transgender" until I was in grad school. By then, I had already felt a call to ministry. By then, I had long ago locked up all gender nonconformity in a closet back when I was in grade school. I had lost an entire childhood, teenhood, early young adulthood. And by then, I felt like they described what being trans was like, as if it was for someone else. Glad I didn't deal with that issue!

But I did. I simply did not allow myself to question things. Did not allow myself to break the box I was put in as a child. Because I was a white guy, going to be a pastor. I figured I would just be that all my life.

Life has changed about three times since then. I only allowed myself to ask myself the hard gender questions in October of last year. I was 35. I'm turning 36 this next month.

I'm starting my life over again, a fourth time. But I'm actually looking forward to the future, for the first time in my entire life.

Because now it actually exists.

[redbreastedbird]

do all the characters know about daisys queerness?? and if so did they respond positively first hand or did it take some longer then others? i love daisys queer journey and i’m interested to know how she came out to her other friends, other then hazel!

This is such a super interesting question! I think the short answer is yes and no, and the longer answer is tied up in the historical differences between the 1930s and the 2020s.

Coming out as a concept has changed so much over the years, because what’s culturally acceptable and even safe to do is always changing. And even the understanding of what queerness is changes constantly - it’s hard to express how differently all of this stuff is seen today than how it was seen when I was Hazel and Daisy’s age. And I’m only in my 30s!

It wasn’t illegal for Daisy to be queer the way it was for Bertie, and as a white upper class person she could get away with a lot more than other queer people at the time. But still, she could not be out publicly without a huge level of danger, and so she’d have to be mega, mega careful about who knew. So I don’t think she’d ever do another clear announcement in the same way she did with Hazel (because Hazel is her person and sort of how she processes the world), but at the same time most of her friends get what’s going on. I suspect there were some vague guarded conversations that ended up with some form of ‘well, me too’ and then everyone moved on. I don’t think Kitty knows, because she’s not great at keeping secrets, and I don’t know if Beanie is able to acknowledge that she knows, but everyone else does.

By the time of Ministry, my feeling is that the group at large have thrown protective rings around each other to allow everyone to be themselves. The gang takes care of each other, without necessarily needing to define what they’re doing and why that care is needed. And you will see more about this in The Body in the Blitz!

[thatstudyblrontea]

'Did you hear that? That is us. That is our ancestry, our history, our story. We were never commoners, you see, we were members of the staff of the Royal Palace.' The moment passed in a heartbeat. But it did not matter. What mattered was that it existed. To be present in history, even as nothing more than a chuckle, was a universe away from being absent from it, from being written out of it altogether. A chuckle, after all, could become a foothold in the sheer wall of the future.

Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

[cardboardboxfly]

Silly little autism creature (me) is gonna go reread his favourite book series again

[blue-hi]

this isn't a red flag because i'm not a straight man but what if i started a podcast

[house-of-crows]

You all know that I'm not the type to fund raise. I dislike asking my follower base for help. But there is someone I know who is very dear to me, who is struggling. And it's worse than what's in the link. It is so far beyond what you think...

The person in question is living in a very violently anti-LGBT+ area as a BIPOC Queer person. A lot of what they're going through with their parent is due to biphobia specifically, as well as transphobia.

The apartment they are currently in has had a mold problem since late last summer, and management has only just NOW gotten to "fixing" it. On top of the surgery and other issues, they are now also facing health concerns due to an unlivable environment now made more stressful by their abusive parent and a judge who seems hellbent on upholding an eviction despite paying almost all of what they've owed in back rent. (They came within 50$ by the court date, and now management of the complex is escalating for the next month despite them getting back on track.)

They are so close to having a safe place to land, but getting there in their current vehicle is going to be no easy task due to needing at least one new tire to be able to make it to and from their job to continue getting out of this hole.

Please. Please, if you can, even if it's less than a dollar, please- Help me save them from this situation. Please, please help me save this beautiful soul who never deserved any of this.

[queer-as-used-by-tolkien]

I know this poll won't be a representative demographic, because Tumblr, but I want to see how many Christians ACTUALLY abuse LGBTQIA+ people. This abuse, including verbal, is NOT good, Christian behavior, and is in fact the polar opposite of how we're supposed to behave.

I personally do use pronouns and otherwise try to show God's love, and I would provide physical or monetary assistance if I could/had any money myself/knew LGBTQIA+ people locally. (I've asked if my church does ministry/outreach but they didn't have an LGBTQIA+ specific one.)