“They’re our brothers and sisters. When we stop seeing people that way it’s so easy to start making laws or enacting policies that harm them.”

  • FrChazzz@lemm.eeEnglish
    17·
    11 days ago

    I’m an Episcopal priest, and I’m trying to imagine how I’d respond to this. The only time I’ve ever had to ask someone to leave was when a, say, mentally unbalanced man came into the church and screamed profanity at me in the middle of the service and told me that I needed the permission of the Korean consulate to preach (this was a white guy in a Navy sailor’s cap, in Hawai’i where I live—not sure what his deal with Korea was). He did this twice over a couple years and I have a person who works with unhoused veterans in my parish who’s told me that she’d been instructed not to interact with the guy because he was deemed too dangerous. So, asking him to leave was a safety issue. But no one tackled him.

    I’d like to think that I’d let this guy have his say. If he’s not cussing anyone out or getting violent, I’d probably let him talk and then invite him to hang out and talk some after the service. I sure as shit wouldn’t demand him to “respect my authoritah” or see him tackled to the ground. That is something I can’t wrap my head around.

    • Flax@feddit.ukEnglish
      11·
      11 days ago

      Didn’t think I’d ever find a priest on here.

      It sounds like it happened before the service anyway. So don’t really know what disruption he was causing, unless people thought it was a protest or something.

      • FrChazzz@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        10 days ago

        Been a priest almost 14 years. As for the change question, are you asking me about my own personal experience of doing the work of a priest, or how has the church at large changed during my time?

          • FrChazzz@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            21 hours ago

            Sorry for late-reply/paleo-posting this one. I’d say the biggest personal change I’ve experienced since my ordination is how “broad” a lot of my thinking has become as I’ve delved deeper into the traditions of the Church. Christianity is so much more (good) weird than we often allow it to be, to our detriment. And we don’t have to abandon the traditions in order to become “progressive.”

            I came from a Southern Baptist upbringing that was very homophobic. I began to question that alongside my shift into Anglican/Episcopal Christianity. My studies into the ancient aspects of the Church wound up making me far more open to various Queer identities than I would have imagined as a teenager. So that’s a big change.

            The other is that I’m absolutely convinced that Christianity is supposed to be about telling people that they no longer have to try and save themselves. God loves us as we are, a place in His kingdom is ready for us. We just wind up robbing ourselves of something liberating when we keep thinking that God has abandoned us and throwing each other under the bus. Jesus doesn’t save some at the expense of others. He saves all of us.