For my paradigm shift essay, I plan on writing about how millennial’s perspectives on church have changed. More specifically, for this blog post I will focus on the LGBTQ community, how it has changed within the church, and how churches have changed in order to welcome a group that has largely been excluded from god’s kingdom. To start, it is important to understand that Christian churches across America often use parts of the bible such as Leviticus to condemn homosexuality. The bible reads, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination,” (Chapter 18 verse 22) and “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them,” (Chapter 20 verse 13). Clearly, there is some proclaimed negativity towards those who are gay within the contents of the bible. However, it is up to a church and its people to decide whether this scripture is truly the word of God, and to what extent it should be followed. For all of history, there have been countless accounts of people taking particular parts of the bible and using it for their own purpose or needs. With that being said, each church can create their own ideology surrounding the word of God, as evidenced in the many different forms of church and religious practice.

Photo by Angela Jimenez

A pastor of a Lutheran church in Denver, Colorado, Nadia Bolz-Weber, has seen and experienced LGBTQ discrimination within churches all across the world. In response she has been working on a book which will be released in January of 2019, calling for a revolution in the church to longer treat LGBTQ community members with “harmful and antiquated ideas,” (Bolz-Weber). However, while movements like this are occurring all over the world, they are met with conservative ideologies in places like the evangelical church. In short, more conservative people use out-of-context bible passages to back their argument while the LGBTQ+ community use a Christ-like ideology to support them. Stagnation arises in the fact that both arguments are supposedly backed by God, however more liberal minded people would say an old bible passage does not necessarily represent what God would want. Without a progressive stance on social issues, people often leave the church. A historian at Messiah College claims that young people will leave the church if their denomination has a conservative view on something like gay marriage (Ladika). Along with this, abuse scandals within churches, most often catholic churches, frequently feature gay priests sexually abusing youth members of the church. Sexual abuse scandals, while slightly off topic, remain a large issue leading to the decrease in church participation for millennials.