Local PFLAG group praises NC Episcopal parish

The Winston-Salem, NC, chapter of PFLAG is offering “kudos” to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Winston-Salem for offering an in-depth LGBT-focused workshop series to its parishioners.

The group’s “kudos” was featured on the front page of their website, www.pflagwinstonsalem.org, where they also provided a link to the parish’s website section on the LGT workshop.

St. Paul’s, traditionally more of a moderate-to-conservative leaning congregation (from my experience), offered “Finally, Let’s Talk about It: Homosexuality and the Church,” from September 2006 through October 2006. According to the parish, the workshop had three goals, first to “create a forum in which real sharing might occur about a subject that tends to inspire much diatribe but very little dialog,” second to, “provide some introductory level teaching by clergy and other professionals on topics such as ‘The Bible and Homosexuality’ and ‘Homosexuality: A Psychologist’s View,’” and third to, “allow members of St. Paul’s who themselves are homosexual, or who have friends or family members who are homosexual, to offer publicly their stories of joy, pain, acceptance, hostility, faith, fear, laughter and tears within the Christian church.”

The parish offers transcripts of the workshop sessions on its site.

St. Paul’s claims that the workshops were not intended to change any person’s points of view on matters regarding homosexuality or faith, but rather to “do what our diocesan bishop, the Rt. Rev. Michael B. Curry, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ have consistently asked us to do; namely, ‘reconcile all people to God and each other.’”

The parish also added that the aim of the workshops were “to ’speak the truth in love,’ trusting that, with God’s help, our parish would be strong enough, mature enough and faithful enough to hear things that might be saddening, maddening, challenging, inspiring, confusing, troubling and sometimes even offensive.”

You can check out St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and the transcripts of their workshop sessions at: www.stpauls-ws.org/Ministries/ChristianEducation/Transcripts/Transcripts.htm

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