“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.ee
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      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.ee
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          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.