Sometimes there are things worth risking your life for. It was Jesus who said if you want to save your life, you have to lose it.
It seems to me, then, that vulnerability and and self-disclosure are at the heart of what we understand about the nature of God. And the reason I believe gay and lesbian people are spiritual people is that we too have participated in vulnerability and self-disclosure, especially in the process of coming-out. When someone shares with you who they really, really are, it is a special offering. To do so when it risks rejection is a profound, holy gift.
I think there's a terrible price to be paid when your exterior life is not an honest reflection of your interior life.
I believe God is doing a new thing in the world. God is always moving us to include more people in the kingdom. God has taught us that about people of color, about women, and now I think God is teaching that about gay and lesbian folk. And I am humbled and privileged that I might be playing a very small part in that grand and wonderful plan of God's.
Faith is a dynamic and ever-changing process, not some fixed body of truth that exists outside our world and our understanding. God's truth may be fixed and unchanging, but our comprehension of that truth will always be partial and flawed at best.
We love to talk about justice. It's the doing of justice that's hard...I believe it is work we are called to do
I think people often come to the synagogue, mosque, the church looking for God, and what we give them is religion.
I will always speak out when someone says that a principle or a rule or a tradition trumps people.
My conservative brothers and sisters seem to argue that God revealed everything to us in scripture. Ever since, it has simply been our difficult but straightforward task to conform ourselves to God's will revealed there and to repent when we are unable or unwilling to do so. For me, there is something static and lifeless in such a view of God. Could it be that even the Bible is too small a box in which to enclose God?
Only God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. The Church has always been changing.
When you claim to have the truth, as opposed to the truth as you perceive it, then you move us toward a theocratic view of government.
It is at least a small comfort to me, as a gay rights and marriage equality advocate, to know that like any marriage, gay and lesbian couples are subject to the same complications and hardships that afflict marriages between heterosexual couples.
Left to our own devices and passions, we human beings have a hard time seeing beyond what is immediately in front of us.
One of the joys of being a Christian or being a person of faith is that you believe deep down that death isn't the worst thing, you know. Not living your life: that's the worst thing. And death is not, it's not all it's cracked up to be. It's not, it's not the end of the world.
I think my election is one of several indications that gay and lesbian folk are being brought more into the center of things. I'd like to think that my election signals my bringing of gay and lesbian folk into the center of the church.
Historically speaking, institutions are slow to change and usually resistant to any sudden moves - churches especially so.
The state's interest in marriage is stability. Generally speaking, polygamy does not work for stability. Inherent in the whole polygamous movement is a deep and abiding misogyny and denigration of women. So polygamy is objectionable on lots of grounds.
The bees learn where they live by landmarks. If they're moved within their home range, they get confused.
I've long been really intrigued with what is the ... proper role of faith and religion in public life.
I'll be at Lambeth telling my story
There are enormously gifted Episcopal priests around this church who are gay and lesbian, some of whom are partnered, who would make wonderful bishops and they're going to be nominated and they're going to be elected.
Stability is why society has an interest in marriage.
