I'm a newbie named Amy, just lookin' for answers

[Amy Gower]

So I stumbled into this site while doing a search on the Bible and homosexuality, and so far I'm very happy with the kind of discussions that go on in this forum. The posts I have read seem honest and straightforward, and I appreciate that kind of intellectual intercourse.

I'm straight, married, have kids, grew up Lutheran but became very dissatisfied with religion as a teenager, and now, after about ten years away from any church, my family attends a Pentecostal church in the little Texas town we just moved to. I have nearly always had a firm belief in God, but my faith in religion is so-so at best. I think the "ban" on homosexuality and general prudishness is ignorant, the roles of women are, in many churches, undervalued or ignored, I'm skeptical of "speaking in tongues" (something new to me anyhow, coming from my highly conservative Lutheran upbringing), I want to know more about the formation of that Bible and the excluded books, and I want to understand better the nature of Jesus as well as the historical contexts in which the Bible was written. As a start anyway All in all, I am just really excited to dig into the discussions that are on this forum and hopefully be able to contribute in a meaningful way myself and learn some new points of view.