Pride Interfaith Service

Last Sunday, August 12, I was one of several local religious leaders who spoke at the Pride Interfaith Service at the United Church of Christ in Moorhead. A few people have asked me to post what I said as part of my time to speak, so here it is:

Mother Theresa once said, "Loneliness and being unwanted are the worst form of poverty" --


Most of us here today are striving in our own faith communities to be places that eraticate the povery of loneliness and being unwanted. Unless we are places of full acceptance and radical love, we will become archaic. We will become empty of meaning and purpose in our faith communtiies. We will become useless. We who believe in a loving and fully accepting God have few choices: we must be imitators of that God in our love and our acceptance of all people, no matter who they are. We must embody that God in our own lives and in the lives of our communties. And only then, will this God of love and accpetance be present in our midst. And in that holy moment of relaization, loneliness and shunning and discrimination and hatred and anger will finally, once and for all, be banished from us.