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By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of Read The Spirit magazine
The news flash this week from The Washington Post was striking: “This election made history for the diversity of candidates running. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people ran for office in all 50 states for the first time. The number of such candidates on the ballot also increased 18 percent from 2020, many of them galvanized by a wave of measures in Republican-led states attacking the community.”
At our Front Edge publishing house, we are encouraged by this news because we publish the most influential book helping Christian families to welcome their LGBTQ relatives, friends, coworkers and neighbors: Changing Our Mind. Here are two 2022 headlines about the impact of this book:
- The success of Dr. David Gushee’s ‘Changing Our Mind’ is measured in 25,000 lives inspired
- And: We’re celebrating Dr. David Gushee’s milestone of 300 reviews for ‘Changing Our Mind’
Dr. Gushee followed up that best-seller with his Introducing Christian Ethics, which steps back to provide a masterful overview of the entire field of Christian Ethics—including the foundational values that support such openness. Here’s a 2022 headline about that news:
Why are Dr. Gushee’s books so important to read and share with others?
Let Dr. Gushee’s readers answer that question on the basis of the 103 memorable quotes they have excerpted from his books and posted into the Goodreads quote board to share with others around the world, including:
- “It says something really terrible when the least safe place to deal with sexual orientation and identity issues is the Christian family and church.”
- “The sense that card-carrying American evangelicalism now requires acquiescence to attitudes and practices that negate core teachings of Jesus is fueling today’s massive exodus.”
- “Make your church a context where parents know that the right response to their teenagers is never to reject them as human beings, never to throw them out.”
And there are 100 more quotes that readers have chosen to post to the Goodreads memorable-quotes page honoring Dr. Gushee’s work.
What’s the evidence, this week, that our communities nationwide are more open to LGBTQ leaders?
Of course, not all of the LGBTQ candidates were winners in their races across the 50 states, but the research compiled by the non-profit Victory Fund is quite compelling, including:
- 416 LGBTQ people ran for state legislatures this year, the most in U.S. history.
- The proportion of LGBTQ candidates of color grew significantly in 2022, accounting for 38.2 percent of all LGBTQ candidates.
- Candidates who are not cisgender (including transgender, nonbinary and gender non-conforming candidates) ran in record-breaking numbers, representing 13.9 percent of all LGBTQ candidates compared to 7.9 percent in 2020.
Dr. Gushee saw this coming
Early in his work with these new books, Dr. Gushee posted a now very-well-known manifesto online, headlined: Ten Reasons Why I Changed My Mind on Full LGBTQ Inclusion
Reason No. 3 is: I took seriously the growing gap between cultural acceptance and progress for LGBTQ people vs. Christian intransigence—and concluded that the culture was closer to being right.
That’s exactly what is continuing to happen across America and showed up in record numbers in political races this month.
Have you already read Dr. Gushee’s book? Consider ordering a new copy of Changing Our Mind for a friend or family member.