I am happy to host this guest post by Keisha E. McKenzie, one of my team members, who serves as researcher and analyst. Keisha challenges my own assumptions and is a valued thought partner as we look at LGBTQ issues, environmental justice, race, faith, and much more.
Review by Keisha E. McKenzie
This week, the Religious Institute has launched a new guide, Bisexuality: Making the Invisible Visible in Faith Communities. Aiming at religious leaders in Christian, Hebrew, and Muslim spaces, but focused more on Christian texts and Reform Jewish statements, coauthors Marie Alford-Harkey and Rev. Debra W. Haffner developed the text from multifaith discussions of bisexuality, and are publishing it now to “help congregations understand bisexuality and to encourage faith communities to ‘make the invisible visible.’”
The Religious Institute is a US-based interfaith organization that promotes “sexually healthy” congregations, religious professionals, and conversations by conducting workshops, publishing guides, and presenting on faith and sexuality around the country. Alford-Harkey and Haffner have each spent decades working with Episcopalians, Unitarians, and other people of faith to make religious groups more welcoming for sexual and gender minorities. (It was not clear to me from the text how the authors themselves identify.) I learned about their work through Seventh-day Adventist Kinship International and the National Religious Leadership Roundtable, which is a program of the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce. Read the full review...