Statement of Commitment to LGBTQ+ Abuse Survivors
ACNAtoo seeks to walk alongside and advocate for people who have survived abuse in the ACNA or at the hands of ACNA leaders. In particular, we desire to be a safe haven for any survivors who have not found loving support inside the ACNA church community.
We also realize that sweeping statements of inclusivity are not necessarily reassuring to marginalized people. Simply aspiring to provide a safe space does not make you safe, as we know from most of us being survivors of abuse in the very contexts (church and home) where we should have been the most safe.
In particular, the fraught ACNA political landscape means that ACNAtoo’s public silence regarding sexual and gender expression and identity amounts to a false “neutrality” that could lead some abuse survivors to wonder whether it’s safe to reach out to us. So as we continue to meet and work with LGBTQ+ survivors, we feel compelled to publicly clarify ACNAtoo’s commitments to them.
Our team members hold a range of personal views on gender and sexuality, and we are a mix of sexual and gender minorities and people of primarily cisgender, heterosexual experience. Some in our group hold views that affirm same-sex marriage/partnerships and celebrate queer sexuality and a diversity of gender expressions and identities. Others in our group would fall within the range of theology held by those in communities sometimes called Side B, in which sexual minorities seek faithfulness within the Church’s traditions of celibacy and community while affirming marriage for one man and one woman. Some of us fall somewhere in between or are still discerning.
Whether or not your beliefs and experiences land within the spectrum of our team’s, if you are a survivor of abuse our commitment to you remains the same: to cultivate a space in which you will feel safe — and ultimately be safe — to reach out and share your story with us. To further clarify this commitment, we want to be clear that while the majority of our team members are Christians, and much of what we publish speaks to the relevant Christian context, we welcome equally survivors of any religious or spiritual affiliation, or no affiliation.
While our personal viewpoints are diverse, we all honor the dignity of people of minority sexual and gender experience and affirm that they belong in community with God and in the Church, if this is where they choose to be. We all reject the practice of reparative/conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ people and the theology underpinning it, including attempts to limit or police the self-expression of sexual minorities, such as the ACNA’s January 2021 Bishops’ Statement.
We also acknowledge that the Church has frequently perpetrated or enabled the abuse of queer image-bearers. LGBTQ+ people have been threatened, harassed, shamed, ostracized, fired, bullied, beaten, murdered, and subjected to exorcisms, shock therapy, and other inhumane acts — often by people who identify as Christian. Christians have also driven the culture wars that target and vilify LGBTQ+ people, enabling the spread of vitriol and hatred under a banner of theological purity. We denounce the ACNA’s refusal to oppose atrocities committed against LGBTQ+ people, as exemplified by ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach’s recent appeal to cultural relativism to avoid condemning Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act.
We believe that abuse advocacy in the Church demands naming and denouncing these cruelties, including lifting up the voices of all survivors who wish to speak to the harm done to them. Though we hold an assortment of personal views on gender and sexuality, we are united in our position of love and care for all survivors of abuse, with a particular tenderness for those facing social marginalization on top of abuse trauma.
If you are a sexual or gender minority and you reach out to us, here is what you can expect:
We will treat you with love and dignity.
We will honor your abuse story and hold it in confidence.
We will respect and use your pronouns of reference.
We will not engage in any type of proselytizing or judgment.
If you prefer, we will connect you with one of the fully affirming advocates on our team.
If you choose to publish your story with us, we will not pressure you to tell it in a specific way with regard to theology, religious affiliation, identity, politics, or preferred terminology, so long as it remains respectful of the personhood of those who may disagree.
Whatever your personal beliefs, we hope that our readers will see, name, and denounce abusive treatment in the stories we share by LGBTQ+ survivors.