There are two primary accusations brought against Christians today: hatred and hypocrisy. Over the past year, though, I’ve come to see the apparent hypocrisy and hatred (or bigotry, as many people put it) as occasional symptoms of a much deeper problem, a disease that is rotting out the heart of modern Christianity: codependency.
Last week, a reader sent me an email and wrote a blog post in response to my recent post, The Church Is a Whore, And I Am Her Gay Son. The person in question is named Andrew, and is connected with Courage – the official Roman Catholic ministry to gay people. You can read his full post here.
While I genuinely appreciate Andrew taking the time to reach out to me and respond to my post, I also thought that I would take some time unpacking his statements, because they bring up some ideas that I find particularly frustrating when it comes to the topic of gay people in the church.
Continue reading “Christians, Gay Celibacy, and Miscommunication”
“The church is a whore,” wrote Augustine, “But she is my mother.” Too often, I have heard this quote used to say, “yeah, the Church is messed up, but family’s family. I can’t leave, even if I wanted to.”
I’ve often wondered if the people who so willingly fling this quote around have any notion of what It’s like to have an abusive mother.
Continue reading “The Church is a Whore, and I Am Her Gay Son”
During my brutal battle with anxiety, depression, and being gay in the church, I struggled deeply with finding relatable, insightful words about how to survive depression. I found a lot of general, obvious advice: exercise more, find a good therapist, and get on meds being the top three. But when it came to real-life, personal advice from other strugglers, I found very little.
Continue reading “On Living With a Black Dog: Surviving Depression”
Stephen Bradford Long 