Conference Description:
What results from theologies and ideologies that do not take into account people's lived experiences? Do we as a religious community continue forward without proper contextualization, without thinking through sacred text with the wholeness of community in mind? Do we as a religious community shatter ourselves, opting instead for brokenness because of fissures produced by the contradictions between rhetoric and practice?
Within many religious communities, discussions of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Two-Spirited (LGBTQ-TS) people leads to renunciation and disavowal of church members. This disowning, rejection and disinheriting interpreted is an act of violence on the LGBTQ-TS, who believe these acts contribute towards physical violence against the LGBTQ-TS community. What are the various forms that violence take? How will we as the Black Religious Community respond to notions of violence? More pointedly, how has condemnation of homosexuality within the Black Religious Community in Newark maltreated LGBTQ-TS people and suspended the forward movement, growth and development of the wider community? To be silent is to be complicit and to be complicit is to be violent.
Join the Newark Pride Alliance at its Creating Safe Spaces 2008 Conference, “Theologies that Kill, Theologies that Heal: Conversations on Human Sexuality and Spirituality,” as we discuss the topic of religion, spirituality and sexuality June 13, 2008.