Matthew Vines came out as gay in 2010. In 2014, Convergent Books published his book, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. In four years, Vines rose from being a closeted teen in Wichita, Kansas, to a national spokesman for gay Evangelicals. Soon after, in 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges legalized gay marriage, allowing churches who wished to perform gay marriages do so with the backing of the state. From the start, Vines organized his ministry around proving the acceptability of gay marriage to evangelical Christians on evangelical Christian grounds. Vines’s participation in the struggle for marriage equality was young when the movement achieved its massive success, which had nothing to do with him.
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As I look up and down my street I see a handful of US flags. One flies from the home next door. One leans off the wall of a large Hispanic family across the street. There is another a few houses down, too. As much as flying a flag is a sign of some patriotism then not flying one isn’t a sign of much of anything. For some people who could but won’t fly the flag they also never put a candidate sign in the yard, for example. Then there is me. Several years ago when we bought our house, I noticed the former owner left a United States flag flying from the front porch. I left it up. During the Biden administration, when a heavy storm bent the pole and made it unusable, I bought another.
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The decades of occupation of Palestinian land by the Israeli government and the current genocide of Palestinians is something no one can ignore, especially people of faith. Our faith moves us to call out the injustices of our world, the killing of thousands of people, and governments that take advantage
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In June, we moved to San Diego, and I stepped away from being a pastor. I’ve still built connections with clergy, and a recent meeting with one pastor stuck out. We talked about following up, and he said, “Reach back out in January.” It was December 1. Caught off guard
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For 31 consecutive weeks, Israelis have taken to the streets, mostly in Tel Aviv, to protest the decision by the current right-wing government of Israel to initiate an overhaul of its judicial system. Israel’s “Unreasonableness Law” is a measure that removes the courts’ power to overturn decisions made by Israel’s
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