June is Pride Month, and our two Theology on Tap discussions this month will focus on issues of Queer/Straight culture and what role the church and Christianity plays in both. You may be asking why we would be focusing on these issues when we are finding ourselves and our communities deep in the midst of protests and the hard work of confronting systemic racism. The answer lies in the both/and of racism and homophobia.
As a congregation, we have done some work around issues of race, particularly around mass incarceration and criminal justice. But Northminster is also a church that is predominately white, and our two Black congregants are under 18. As we engage in discussions of whiteness and its legacy at Northminster, we are doing so without having many “melanated voices” of varying age and experiences to engage with.
However, our congregation does have a several Queer persons of diverse generations. I pause to note that I use the term Queer not as a pejorative, which I know a lot of us grew up understanding it to be. In modern context, Queer is a form of collectively speaking of sexual, gender, and romantic orientations are not Straight/Cisgender/Monogamous. It is precisely because we have Queer persons on our pastoral staff, on our session, and in our worship each week that exploring issues of Queer and Straight culture can happen in dialogue within our community, which not only helps us to foster our growth, this same growth process can help us inform our conversations on whiteness and racial disparity.
It is also true that the Queer people in our midst may not want to be a part of this dialogue because they feel unsafe doing so or have because they believe we have not yet done enough work in this area to make these discussions fruitful for them. That is another way that these issue of race and sex overlap: often Black people don’t want to dialogue with white people about racism until they feel you have done the basic work of understanding race on your own. Our hope here is to encourage that internal work in both areas.
Theology on Tap continues to be a place of honest dialogue of theological issues in a pop culture context, which means our focus is on material and examples that are familiar to Gen X, Millennial’s, and Gen Z, HOWEVER, that does not mean older generations are not welcome or cannot participate in the dialogue. In fact, we hope you will. What it does mean is that some of the expectations you have about how these topics are discussed may be in ways that are unfamiliar or uncomfortable. Please remember that true growth usually happens when we are willing to be uncomfortable for a while.
Our June 10th discussion will be on Marriage Culture and our June 24th will be on what it means to be a “Safe Space” Community. So please pour a glass of your favorite beverage and join us on Zoom at 8pm on June 10 and 24! Zoom links will be in each week’s What’s Happening, which is posted to our web page, Facebook page, and our Twitter feed.