Level Ground Fest creates LGBT religious dialogue through art

I was inspired by attending this weekend's Level Ground Festival, which uses art to create space for dialogue on faith, gender and sexuality.

Most of the people organizing and attending the conference Feb. 24-27 in Pasadena, CA seemed to be millennials with evangelical roots. Their youthful energy and optimism gave me confidence that they are changing the church so that LGBT people will always be welcome.

I arrived at the Level Ground Festival with my life partner Audrey

I went to a reading by Deborah Jian Lee, author of “Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, and Queer Christians are Reclaiming Evangelicalism.” It is on my list of the Top 25 LGBTQ Christian books of 2015. She reported how evangelicalism is evolving due to diverse younger members, especially openly LGBT people, women in leadership, and more people of color.

The main example she discussed at the festival was Biola Queer Underground, a student group at a conservative Christian university in southern California. They took risks to open up dialogue on a campus where students could be expelled for “homosexual acts.”

Lee, an award-winning journalist who teaches at Cornell College, also told her own journey of growing up Chinese American in a non-religious home in a mostly white Chicago suburb. She found her “first true belonging at a Chinese immigrant church…. They taught me Jesus’ message was for everyone, no exceptions.” But anti-LGBT messages from various churches eventually turned her into a “refugee from evangelicalism” and led her to try to “make amends” for the damage done by Christian bigotry.

Kittredge Cherry and Deborah Jian Lee

Deborah and I first “met” on Facebook last year when I put her book on my list of the year’s Top 25 LGBTQ Christian books. We are both journalists who write about religion, love Jesus and are interested in Asia, so we had a lot in common. It was a joy to meet face to face.

"Rescuing Jesus" panel

Her reading was followed by discussion led by a diverse panel of experts, including journalist Christian Brown. He blogs on faith, sexuality and race at The Dispatch.

Kittredge Cherry and Christian Brown

Level Ground Executive Director Samantha Curley is another Facebook friend whom I got to meet in person for the first time at the festival. She co-founded Level Ground three years ago with Chelsea McInturff. I was impressed by the diversity and positive spirit of the conference through their leadership.

Executive Director Samantha Curley, right, with Kittredge Cherry and Audrey

Hundreds of people attended the festival in Pasadena, not far from to my home in Los Angeles.

This was the first time I attended an event sponsored by Level Ground. But it won’t be the last.

I love the Level Ground motto: “A safe space for dialogue through art.”


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Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Jesus wears rainbow shroud on new “Gays for God” magazine cover

A gay Jesus is wrapped in a rainbow-flag shroud on the cover of the new “Gays for God” issue of “Maisonneuve: A Quarterly of Arts, Opinion and Ideas.”

A sneak preview posted for the Fall 2012 issue of Maisonneuve states:

Was Jesus gay? That’s the implicit question posed by our cover, which depicts the Son of God wrapped in a rainbow shroud. The image, photographed by Kourosh Keshiri and designed by Anna Minzhulina, is arresting and provocative. But that raises another key question: why should it be controversial to portray Jesus as a gay man?

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UPDATE: Maissoneuve has posted the whole article with more images of Jesus with the rainbow shroud at this link:
“Gays for God” by Clancy Martin
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Based in Canada, the magazine will reach newsstands Sept. 17 with a “Gays for God” cover about the queer evangelical movement challenging the homophobia of the religious right.

Special thanks to Terrence Weldon of Queering the Church for alerting me to this striking image. He has already blogged about it in a wide-ranging post titled Gays for Jesus: Catholic and Evangelical.
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Related link:
Maissoneuve subscription page at Amazon.com
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This post is part of the Queer Christ series series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others. More queer Christ images are compiled in my book Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More.

Ted Haggard's gay Christian struggle

I saw Ted Haggard’s recent interview with Larry King about being an evangelical preacher who was outed for gay sex. As a lesbian Christian, it was heartbreaking to hear Haggard unable to say that God accepts gay people. However, the most memorable part was his callous disregard for the young church volunteer that he forced into a sexual encounter. There's a lot more to this story than just the gay Christian angle. What about abuse of power? Check out Queeremergent Blog for a new blog with an intriguing post on Haggard, including Andrew Sullivan's well reasoned take Haggard “trapped between who he is and his internalized belief that God cannot love him for who he is.” He connects Haggard to the need for same-sex marriage. Bravo! The disgraced preacher Haggard is in the news again because he is the subject of a new HBO documentary, “The Trials of Ted Haggard.”