by Mike Green:
Mike Green aka Yogi Mike works for a Fortune 500 company. His avocation is teaching yoga. He is the secretary for Gayoga. This review was originally published in White Crane Journal (Issue #49). It is reprinted with permission from www.whitecranejournal.com online.
Bruce Bawer has done his homework for those of us wanting a well researched understanding of how our Protestant churches’ beliefs evolved, and how that played into the fundamentalist Christian thinking in their non-stop war relentlessly waged against us and anyone in disagreement with them.
While his explanation of some biblical passages in the context of their time and place is very interesting, the expose on the history of this movement, and its subversion of the original Protestant take on Doctrine, Authority and Law is enlightening. If some of this material is tedious and of limited interest to many in the GLBT community, for those who want to understand ‘The Enemy’ better, the comparison of the two church styles existent today, namely the church of Law vs. the church of Love, while sounding simplistic, is an eloquent distillation of where most of our religious institutions fall. A great portion of the book is devoted to how this came about.
In Coming Out Spiritually author Christian de la Huerta quotes Toby Johnson, “If religion is one of the biggest problems the gay community faces, then we’d do well to encourage and support the transformation of religion.” For those on the front lines, this book can be of help.
Thus armed, we may do little to change the minds of the self-righteous Christian right, particularly those who don’t know us. However, this book may go a long way in helping those grappling with self doubts and recrimination (shadows et al) having endured the influence of such fanatics, we may be better equipped to love ourselves and move on as healthy examples of what can be possible when we realize our spiritual birthright as leaders and guides for the churches of Love!
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