On Being Church in the New Millennium: The Challenge and Gift of Gay Believers

Abstract

Taking his childhood experiences in the American South as a starting point, Lindsey explores the scapegoating of marginalized groups. Vicious processes of social exclusion are resisted by those targeted as ‘demeaned outsiders’. However, their experience gives them a special knowledge of how structures of power function. Gay Christians are in a position to translate this knowledge into a call for radical transformation that is vital for the survival of the church. The gift gay believers offer is a vision of the church as it might become; an imagined community of the future rather than a memorial of the past.