When will churches accept queers?

FROM the Kairos 30th anniversary conference comes the call for churches to be part of the liberating practice of a plurality of struggles throughout the world, addressing among other the issues of patriarch, and human rights violations against LGBTI people.

It is ironic that 30 years after the “Challenge to the Church”, we should again be forced to confront the churches’ gender insensitivity and complicity with injustice towards LGBTI Christians, as in the case of the Methodist Church’s actions towards Rev Ecclesia de Lange.

Fired for marrying her partner and enjoying rights upheld by the constitution, hers is but one of many cases where LGBTI people have been discriminated against by churches supposedly committed to the gospel imperative of the creation of a just society.

As the Queer Christian Leaders Front we therefore call upon the churches to do three things:

Where they are in a dialogue process to commit to a moratorium on the dismissal of LGBTI leaders, both those ordained and un-ordained who have entered into or wish to enter into either a civil union or a marriage as upheld by the constitution and enacted in law.

To undertake to bring all dialogue processes to a resolution within a year (decades of studies, commissions and reports are simply too long).

Where churches do not dialogue, to at least embrace and accept their LGBTI members and stop excluding them.