dsdrane
01-22-2007, 01:04 PM
Greetings from South Florida -- Delray Beach, to be exact.
I was very happy to discover Soulforce last year, and I've been recently following the Pastor Brad story up in Atlanta...so I thought it high time I said hello.
My family's approach to religion could be read as decidedly non-committal. My father was born Catholic, but raised Lutheran (Missouri Synod). My mother attended Baptist Sunday School, married my father in a Methodist church, had me baptized by a Presbyterian pastor, and later had us attend Sunday School for a few years at a Congregationalist church.
Add to these muddy waters the fact that I came of age and came out during what I would call the conservative religious backlash of the 1980s and you get a young adult for whom religion had little meaning, and what meaning it did have was scary.
Well, then life happened. And things changed. I changed; the world changed, etc. I always thought of myself as a spiritual person, but felt I had to respond that I was agnostic when it came to questions of religion. I truly didn't have knowledge nor innate faith. I do now, and it's the result of a confluence of a whole bunch of things over time.
I worship now at a nearby Episcopal church, where one of the priests is not only gay but also in a relationship. It was my first stop on what was to be a period of "church shopping" (after I learned I was not particularly welcome as an open, unapologetically gay person at my late father's Missouri Synod Lutheran church), and all I can say is that God put in the the right place my first time out of the gate.
I'll be forever grateful for the amazing community I've found...and I look forward to being officially (and finally) confirmed this March when the Bishop visits.
I'm grateful to have found this community as well, and I look forward to taking part. Best wishes and peace to all of you!
David
I was very happy to discover Soulforce last year, and I've been recently following the Pastor Brad story up in Atlanta...so I thought it high time I said hello.
My family's approach to religion could be read as decidedly non-committal. My father was born Catholic, but raised Lutheran (Missouri Synod). My mother attended Baptist Sunday School, married my father in a Methodist church, had me baptized by a Presbyterian pastor, and later had us attend Sunday School for a few years at a Congregationalist church.
Add to these muddy waters the fact that I came of age and came out during what I would call the conservative religious backlash of the 1980s and you get a young adult for whom religion had little meaning, and what meaning it did have was scary.
Well, then life happened. And things changed. I changed; the world changed, etc. I always thought of myself as a spiritual person, but felt I had to respond that I was agnostic when it came to questions of religion. I truly didn't have knowledge nor innate faith. I do now, and it's the result of a confluence of a whole bunch of things over time.
I worship now at a nearby Episcopal church, where one of the priests is not only gay but also in a relationship. It was my first stop on what was to be a period of "church shopping" (after I learned I was not particularly welcome as an open, unapologetically gay person at my late father's Missouri Synod Lutheran church), and all I can say is that God put in the the right place my first time out of the gate.
I'll be forever grateful for the amazing community I've found...and I look forward to being officially (and finally) confirmed this March when the Bishop visits.
I'm grateful to have found this community as well, and I look forward to taking part. Best wishes and peace to all of you!
David