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Open and Affirming This is a very insidious phrase. Open and Affirming is a tenet of the United Church of Christ (UCC). What it says is that GLBT behavior is tolerated by the church, treated as 'who you are' vs. 'what you do,' and is no longer looked at as a sin or even something that needs correction or forgiveness. UCC churches generally represent the Protestant Congregational churches that were once the largest denomination and the primary church of the founding fathers, early settlers and the residents of the original colonies. Lesbians and some gay men now infiltrate the UCC and it's a good bet that a female UCC minister is one, too. Many churches have voted to break away from the UCC because of the O&A policy. One UCC minister testified at a committee hearing at the State House in Boston, Mass. in 2003 and said, "I believe, after faithful research, that the 5-8 "gay" texts in the Bible speak about temple prostitution and rape, not faithful, covenanted, monogamous same sex relationships." The passages she was referring to are actually quite clear as to their meaning, so after "faithful research," she has apparently violated other text of the Bible that instructs us not to add or change what God has written. |
Possibly, if you look at their TV commercial that shows various people getting ejected
out of an imaginary church because they are a single mother or a homeless
person or person of color or a couple of mixed color,
and they slipped a gay couple into the mix, as if today's
churches are rejecting them along with the others. This is an obvious attempt to equate homosexuality with skin color or circumstance beyond our control and put them with a group of people that aren't even necessarily in some sinful lifestyle. The reality is that all churches accept all people. The difference is in how the church helps them recognize and deal with their sins. So a more accurate commercial might have shown the other people as the sinners we all are, welcoming them all to the church, then not expecting or helping any of them to work out of their sinful life style, in essence, 'Loving them to death'. Now that would be Open and Affirming! |