The Nashville Statement is far more than “just words.”

Following the release of the Nashville Statement by the CBMW last month, I offered a few thoughts on the World’s Loudest Social Media Platform.

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I was certainly not the only one to condemn the toxic statement. Immediately after the statement was released, popular Christian author Rachel Held Evans (one of the few Christians I follow) posted an unapologetic denouncement.

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Many stepped forward to share their accounts of the abuse and pain they suffered as LGBTQIA in the Christian church.  And I expounded on how statements such as this one directly lead to homelessness and death among children and teenagers.

It was a busy week.

But in the noise and the chaos of Christians and non-Christians choosing their sides and unfurling their banners, one of my tweets caught a little more attention than I am accustomed to getting.

Within an day, this tweet had been seen by almost 100,000 people. And many of them, as you can imagine, had real issues with it. Many claimed that LGBT people had declared war on Christianity first, and the church was simply “fighting back.” Others wanted to remind me and everyone else that other religions were “worse.” A few tried to shame me for caring about “words” when people in Houston were drowning.

The general consensus was this: these are just harmless words, and a confirmation of what the church has believed for millenia. I should get over it.

Okay. There is much to be said about the impact and fallout of the Nashville Statement, but let’s start with what has been said already.

Let’s talk about how the Bible has been “clear” about human rights violantions and atrocities in the past.

Let’s talk about how “conversion therapy” – a creation, in its modern form, of American Christianity – kills children.

Let’s talk about how Evangelicalism, which no longer represents Christ, is destroying the faith of millions and forcing division.

Let’s talk about how complicity comes from silence.

Let’s talk about how the signers of the Nashville Statement care more about attacking same-sex couples’ inability to organically procreate than they do about showing love to infertile heterosexual couples. 

Let’s talk about the straight line from “harmless” words to violence.

Let’s talk about how this statement, and Evangelicalism in general, are prompting people to abandon their churches in droves.

Let’s talk about how the compeltely detatched-from-reality “persecution complex” of American Christianty is causing real harm to Christians and non-Christians alike.

I’ll be back in the future to discuss this topic further.