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IWR Resources

A Time to Build Up

AVAILABLE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD!

All in God's Family: Creating Allies for Our LGBT Families

Giving you opportunities to gather with other members of your congregation to pray, to learn, to share, and to work together to transform your lives, your congregation, and your world into a loving place in which God's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families can thrive.

AVAILABLE NOW!

Click here

To Do Justice: A Study of Welcoming Congregations

In order to both highlight the vibrancy, faithfulness and power of the Welcoming Movement and to counter the 'false witness' of those who seek to quash this movement of hospitality and justice, the Institute for Welcoming Resources surveyed pastors and leaders of 1,200 Welcoming congregations to ask them about their work and witness.

AVAILABLE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD!

transACTION

A Transgender Curriculum For Churches and Religious Institutions

AVAILABLE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD!

Preview transACTION (pdf)
Click here to download transACTION (pdf)

Liturgical Resource

A Place in God's Heart...
A Place at Christ's Table

Worship Resources for the Welcoming Church Movement

Additional IWR resources

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Contact
Rev. Nicole Garcia
Faith Work Director

Faith in Action

Introducing a new curriculum from Room for All with engaging activities that can be presented virtually or in person, abundant opportunities for continued conversation, and roots in the history of the LGBTQ+ community, the Blessings for All Sunday School Curriculum gives your church community a new way to live your welcome together.

This resource is provided free to use, print and reference, compliments of Room for All’s team of contributors, credited on their webpage!

You can access the curriculum here:

https://roomforall.com/resources/group-study-guides/blessings-for-all-sunday-school-curriculum/

Gather with LGBTQ+ people of faith and allies from across the Church to hope in color and enjoy the colorful foliage at Christmount (Black Mountain NC) with the Disciples LGBTQ+ Alliance. By engaging the spiritual practices from the devotional journal Colors of Hope, you will be encouraged and equipped to embody your faith—and queer your spirituality. With an emphasis on connection over content, you are invited to join the book’s editor and authors to wonder, resist, embody, create, hope, stretch, and share.

For more information, go to the Disciples LGBTQ+ Alliance website: https://disciplesallianceq.org/retreat/

STATEMENT ON THE PASSING OF URVASHI VAID, ACTIVIST, AUTHOR, ATTORNEY AND PAST TASK FORCE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

(WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 14, 2022) Legendary attorney, LGBTQ activist, and author Urvashi Vaid, known for her extensive career as an advocate for LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, anti-war efforts, immigration justice and many other social causes, died today at age 63 in her home in New York City. She was the Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force from 1989 to 1992 and served prior to that as Media Director.

“We are devastated at the loss of one of the most influential progressive activists of our time,” said Kierra Johnson, current Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force. “Urvashi Vaid was a leader, a warrior and a force to be reckoned with,” continued Johnson, “She was also a beloved colleague, friend, partner and someone we all looked up to – a brilliant, outspoken and deeply committed activist who wanted full justice and equality for all people.”

“Her leadership, vision and writing helped shape not only the Task Force’s values and work but our entire queer movement and the larger progressive movement. We will strive every day to live up to her ideals and model the courage she demonstrated every day as an activist and a person. She will be deeply I missed. I miss her already.” concluded Johnson.

Multi-Faith Work

NEW DOCUMENTARY!

"In Our Fullness: Faith and Activism Across Difference"
presents conversations with activists about faith-based work for radical social change around issues including sexuality, gender, race, class, and age. The video includes powerful testimonies from activists representing Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Native spiritualities, presenting challenges and successes in faith-based progressive-left coalition building.

Produced by the Institute for Welcoming Resources, a Project of the National LGBTQ Task Force, in partnership with the Macalester College Chuck Green Civic Engagement Fellowship.

For more information: info@WelcomingResources.org

Additional Ecumenical & Multi-Faith Groups Convened by IWR

Resources from IWR Available

Swinging on the Garden Gate

Description: Swinging on the Garden Gate tells how one woman comes to know her bisexuality as an embodied manifestation of divinity. This personal romp through memory brings a distinctly queer feminist lens to Christian teachings about incarnation in the body of a good story.

Review: Swinging on the Garden Gate works theologically because there is so much depth to Andrew's reflection on her life. She draws creatively, sometimes startlingly, from the language, symbols, and rituals of the Christian tradition. She risks offering definitions that come from her own experience of the sacred. ... Swinging on the Garden Gate is a memoir, but it is also a work of incarnational, feminist theology, a theology of hope and healing that sacralizes ordinary life in the body and in the world--where else? Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew demonstrates what she claims--that the writing of sacred story is a spiritual act in itself. By telling her story and her stories, she shows her readers how to accept the invitation she offers at the beginning of the book and at the end: "Lay your story down." - Mary Farrell Bednarowski

Swinging on the Garden Gate is available at: https://www.uuabookstore.org/Swinging-on-the-Garden-Gate-P19041.aspx

Stronger Together

Supporting LGBT Asylum Seekers in the United States

Download Stronger Together (pdf)

The Humanity of Transgender and Nonbinary People

Rev. Nicole Garcia, Faith Work Director at the National LGBTQ Task Force, has a new article published in the August 2022 edition of the Journal of Lutheran Ethics. The article is titled, The Humanity of Transgender and Nonbinary People. Rev. Nicole wrote,

In 2022, 300+ anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced into many state houses throughout the United States. The vast majority of these bills target transgender and nonbinary youth. I fear and anticipate a rise in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth. I implore all readers to educate themselves. I implore them to do more than send thoughts and prayers, for we need allies to help us both in our daily lives and at the ballot box. We all need to welcome those who do not look like us or have the same background as us into our congregations. We need to elect representatives who will pass laws to protect the entire LGBTIQ community. We need allyship in rejecting those who take aim for their own personal political purposes.

You may read the entire article at: https://learn.elca.org/jle/the-humanity-of-transgender-and-nonbinary-people/

Building an Inclusive Church

Building an Inclusive Church
Training and a Toolkit in English y en Español

A Welcoming Toolkit 3.0

Drawing upon thirty years of experience within a variety of Christian denominations, this Toolkit is a step-by-step guide to help facilitate a Welcoming Process in your local congregation. Biblically and theologically based, it uses tools of relational organizing, congregational assessment, conflict management and change theory.

AVAILABLE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD!

Trainings coming in 2022!

Hearts Unbound: Engaging Biblical texts of God’s Radical Love through Reader’s Theater

by David R. Weiss

The overwhelming message of the Bible, in story after story, is that of God’s radical love and welcome. Every time we think we know who’s in and who’s out, God does something to challenge those assumptions, to unbind our hearts and minds from old ways of understanding, and to draw the circle ever wider.

HEARTS UNBOUND invites you to explore ten of those inspiring stories of radical love and welcome. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and participatory, each session looks in-depth at the story, the historical context out of which it came, and some of the insights to be gained.

Designed to be used as a small-group Bible study, HEARTS UNBOUND uses the format of Reader’s Theater. But fear not… no costumes, sets, or refined acting chops needed! All you need are six to eight people around a table, reading the script, having fun, all the while learning a great deal in the process.

All ten sessions are available for free download below.

National LGBTQ Task Force, HRC y UNID@S presentan nueva guía bilingüe dirigida a familias e iglesias latinas para educar sobre la orientación sexual, la identidad de género y la Biblia

A La Familia: A Conversation About Our Families, the Bible, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

En un esfuerzo por promover el diálogo dentro de las familias e iglesias latinas sobre la orientación sexual, la identidad de género y la Biblia, el National LGBTQ Task Force, la Campaña de Derechos Humanos y UNID@S, presentaron hoy una nueva guía bilingüe, A La Familia, Una Conversación Sobre Nuestras Familias, la Biblia, la Orientación Sexual y la Identidad de Género en una conferencia de prensa durante la 82va convención nacional de la Liga de Ciudadanos Latinoamericanos Unidos (LULAC por sus siglas en inglés) en Cincinnati, Ohio.

"LULAC está en contra de todo tipo de discriminación. Me siento muy orgullosa de mi estado natal al aprobar los matrimonios entre personas del mismo sexo", dijo Ralina Cardona, directora estatal de Nueva York para LULAC. "Como americanos, tenemos que aceptar nuestras diferencias. Es lo que separa a este gran país. No todos somos de la misma cultura, color, orientación sexual o religión, pero todos somos americanos y en nuestra unidad está nuestra fuerza, pero en nuestras diferencias está nuestro poder".

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Más artículos sobre A La Familia en español

HRC, National LGBTQ Task Force and UNID@S release new bilingual guide on sexual orientation, gender identity and the Bible for Latino/a families and churches

In an effort to foster a dialogue with Latino/a families and churches on sexual orientation, gender identity and the Bible, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and UNID@S, unveiled today a new bilingual guide, A La Familia: A Conversation About Our Families, the Bible, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at a press conference during the League of United Latin American Citizens' 82nd National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people often face unique challenges in Latino/a families and churches. To help in the process of acceptance and inclusion, A La Familia is born out of a profound desire to faithfully integrate an excluded group of people back into the life of their churches and families. This guide is written for two primary audiences: heterosexual people honestly struggling with LGBT issues and the Bible, and those whose sexual orientation and gender identity have marginalized them within their family or church or even both.