Title: Unrepentant, Self-Affirming, Practicing: Lesbian/Bisexual/Gay People within Organized Religion Author: Gary David Comstock Published by: Continuum, 1996 ISBN: 0-8264-0881-8 [hardcover, 326 pages]
Church politics typically require reorientation, abstinence, or discretion for homosexuality oriented people, especially for clergy and candidates for ordination. Such terms as "unrepentant," "self-affirming," and "practicing" have been written into the formal positions of some religious bodies to describe the kind of homosexually oriented person who is not accepted. To be accepted one must be self-reproaching, self-denying and celibate. One is not to declare frankly and openly love for or sexual intimacy with a person of one's own gender. These prescriptions have created a dilemma for many lesbian/bisexual/gay people who have been encouraged by the gay liberation and civil rights movements from the 1970s to the present to be more visible and assertive throughout society.Based on twenty-seven recent empirical studies of gay people in organized religion and another ten "religion-related" studies, Unrepentant, Self- Affirming, Practicing provides the most comprehensive examination to date of the place of gay people within religious communities.
Taken together, these studies cover every significant religious body and tradition in the United States, from Roman Catholic, Jewish and mainline Protestant denominations (including Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist groups) to Unitarian Universalist, Mennonite, Church of the Brethren, Religious Society of Friends, Church of Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, Islam, Native American Religion, denominations within the Black church, and various independent gay Christian organizations.
Unrepentant, Self-Affirming, Practicing privileges the experience of lesbian/bisexual/gay people in their churches, mosques, and synagogues, asking where they belong, what they do, how they feel, and what they think about their religious communities. In short, this book is interested not so much in the church's view of gay people but in gay people's view of the church.
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