Dear friends,
This Sunday we have the privilege of having Rev. Alba Onofrio as our guest preacher. Rev Alba isn’t a stranger to us – they and their partner visited and had a lunch with those who identify as women in our community two years ago.
Rev. Alba is a queer, feminist Christian pastor from the US and the Executive Director of Soulforce working to end religion-based violence and support marginalized people in healing from Spiritual Violence. Also known as Reverend Sex, their global education work aims to eradicate shame and fear around bodies and sex in order to reclaim pleasure and desire as potent centers of sacred knowledge, healing, and spiritual praxis.
In these times when folks seek to be respectable – it is important for us to shed the shackles of shame and be comfortable in our own skin. It is important to be clear what does respectability mean because some people read a lot into “respectability.”
Rev. Joseph Tiu San Jose of Open Table MCC wrote that respectability can mean “credibility, character, integrity, ethics.” This kind of respectability, i am all for. “But respectability at the cost of our queerness, queer liberation, and inclusion rooted in justice, I rather not be respected. I will stand my ground to discomfort the respectable and question their sense of respectability.”
So what a time to have Rev. Alba preach at FCC! See you this Sunday!
Shalom,
miak