Christian Author Jen Hatmaker: 'It is High Time Christians Opened Wide Their Arms...to the LGBT Community' Popular Christian author and speaker Jen Hatmaker said that Christians should embrace the LGBT community.
ChristianToday.com reports that Hatmaker, author of 7 and For the Love had previously held more conservative views regarding the LGBT community.
In 2014, Hatmaker wrote that she believed "God's original creation is how we were crafted to thrive: in marriage, in family, and in community, which has borne out for millennia in Scripture, interpretation, practice, and society (within and without church)."
However, she recently made waves when she wrote in a Facebook post that “It is high time Christians opened wide their arms, wide their churches, wide their tables wide their homes to the LGBT community.”
"So whatever the cost and loss, this is where I am: gay teens? Gay adults? Mamas and daddies of precious gaybees? Friends and beloved neighbors of very dear LGBT folks? Here are my arms open wide. So wide that every last one of you can jump inside. You are so dear, so beloved, so precious and important. You matter so desperately and your life is worthy and beautiful,” she continued.
Hatmaker told those in the LGBT community that there “is nothing 'wrong with you,' or in any case nothing more right or wrong than any of us, which is to say we are all hopelessly screwed up but Jesus still loves us beyond all reason and lives to make us all new, restored, whole."
Hatmaker’s post received 35,000 likes and nearly 7,000 shares, but there were also many who disagreed with her, saying that being lesbian, gay, or transgender was not a lifestyle Christians should condone.
http://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/christian-author-jen-hatmaker-it-is-high-time-christian-opened-wide-their-arms-to-the-lgbt-community.html LifeWay Stops Selling Jen Hatmaker Books Due to Her LGBT Support LifeWay Christian Stores will no longer carry Christian author Jen Hatmaker’s books, according to Christianity Today.
In a statement, the Christian business says it will be discontinuing Hatmaker’s books due to her stance on LGBT issues.
“In the past, LifeWay Christian Resources published several resources with Jen Hatmaker. In a recent interview, she voiced significant changes in her theology of human sexuality and the meaning and definition of marriage—changes which contradict LifeWay’s doctrinal guidelines,” read the statement.
Hatmaker declined to comment on LifeWay’s decision.
Hatmaker drew attention and criticism when she posted back in April about how the church needs to embrace members of the LGBT community.
“It is high time Christians opened wide their arms, wide their churches, wide their tables wide their homes to the LGBT community,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
In a recent interview, she went on to expound on her support of LGBT people.
“From a civil rights and civil liberties side and from just a human being side, any two adults have the right to choose who they want to love. And they should be afforded the same legal protections as any of us. I would never wish anything less for my gay friends,” she said.
“Not only are these our neighbors and friends, but they are brothers and sisters in Christ. They are adopted into the same family as the rest of us, and the church hasn’t treated the LGBT community like family. We have to do better,” she continued.
Hatmaker’s latest book, For the Love, is a New York Times bestseller.
http://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/lifeway-stops-selling-jen-hatmaker-books-due-to-her-lgbt-support.html
