Shawn Strout - 20 May 2009 11:33 PM

Hi Karen,

Originally, I’m from New Hampshire and consider myself to be a New Englander at heart.  At age 13, my folks moved down to Orlando, FL.  That was a very big cultural change for me.  I have to admit it took some getting used to.  Most of my family still lives down there.  However, I moved to Raleigh, NC for about a year and a half.  Then, in 2001, I moved to Washington, DC.  I lived in the city itself for 5 years.  Then, my partner and I moved to Arlington, VA for two years and are now in Annandale, VA since last fall.  We love the neighborhood we’re in.  Annandale is a very diverse community.  And our group of townhomes are extremely divorce.  We have asian families, asian-white families, black-white families, latino families and wonderful elderly woman from Finland.  Just tons of diversity and most everyone is very friendly.  We have two border collie puppies age 10 months and a kitten age 11 months.  The kitten is the alpha though…let me tell you!  His name is Topaz, but I’m nicknaming him “WMD” because he’s are own “weapon of mass destruction”!!

I’ll share more.  It’s getting a bit late tonight though. (italics added)

In Christ,
Shawn

I can tell you are sleepy—your spelling is suffering<g> (see italics above). I don’t know the DC area, but some of my ancestors are reputed to have come from around there. The South is very different from where I have lived most of my life. I think all told I’ve only spent a week, if that, below the Mason-Dixon line. My dad was in college ministry at Grambling Univ in north Louisiana right before he retired, and I visited my parents there once or twice, but I was no longer living with them by that time.

I find it hard to say how it feels to be a black person in a mostly white church except it feels normal, because all of my life I have been a black person in a mainly white environment, so I don’t really have much experience in a mainly black environment to compare to. When I was in grade school my dad was the rector of a black parish, but the people I was around the rest of the week, except my immediate family, were all white. Then when I was in 6th grade my dad got a different job, in campus ministry, so after that my church surroundings were mostly white too. When I really felt like an oddball was after I graduated from college. I was for quite some time literally the only regular attender in my parish between 20 and 30 years old.

Karen

After all, it would be quite possible to be a Fundamentalist and a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christian, wouldn’t it?

Yes, I always like to point out the liberal fundamentalists! 

In all seriousness, the term ‘fundamentalist’ does get used as an excuse to not engage with ideas.

As for evangelical, try the Evangelical Manifesto.

What I have found sad about much of the discussion of sexuality over the past few years is that it often appears to be reducing a person to his or her sexual orientation. Yes, I am a heterosexual male, but there is much more to who I am than that.

Well, Daniel, who is doing the reducing? If one’s statement is “I am a homosexual by nature and you are bound to accept this as a starting point,” that rather reduces the possible discussion.

Charles,
You may have noticed that I didn’t specify who was doing the reducing. Clearly in the scenario you describe the person could be seen as doing that. Howvever, there is a long and unattractive history of violence directed towards gay and lesbian persons by those who will not see beyond sexual orientation. Whiel I am not a historian, I suspect that there have been few eras in the past when a person’s sexuality had been seen as such a defining characteristic.