Recommended Reading: Equality Ride Blogs

I’d like to recommend the Soulforce Equality Ride Blog to those of you who enjoy keeping up on developments in the world of queer faith issues. Its an interesting mix of writing and video, documenting both the actions of the riders and their reflections on the actions. I just discovered it a few days ago, but I find it inspiring to read about these people’s experiences.

 

For those of you who don’t know about the Soulforce Equality Ride, here’s some of the official information:

 

The Equality Ride is two months of sustained activism inspired by the Freedom Rides of the civil rights era. It is a journey by bus to initiate discussion about faith and sexuality in communities where it is most controversial. An unfortunate number of Christian colleges and universities blatantly condemn certain aspects of human diversity. In fact, in many schools, identifying as or affirming a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender person is a violation of policy. Participants in the Equality Ride share a message of hope and healing with students suffering under such doctrinal prejudice. For seven weeks they travel to places to encourage compassionate inclusion and loving acceptance, values upon which Christianity is founded. Honest exchange around these topics, which belongs at academic institutions, creates a mutual learning experience that breeds genuine understanding. (keep reading about the Equality Rides…)

 

In general, I think the Equality Rides are a great example of queers of faith being proactively working for change. I have some reservations about how easily Soulforce seems to have co-opted an iconic aspect of the Civil Rights Movement. While queers are engaged in a civil rights movement of their own, I am worried by the ease with which the queer community appropriates aspects of the Black Civil Rights Movement without engaging the issues of how the queer and Black civil rights movements are similar and dissimilar.

 

I’m still working through my thoughts on this specific example - expect a post on in the next few weeks. But for now, read the blog and see if it inspires you, too!