Thread by @ThabitiAnyabwil

Do not think it is the gospel or Christian unity you defend if your “defense” lacks compassionate heart, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with others, forgiveness when you have a complaint, and love.

See Col. 2:12-14 and apply to the @TGC Women of Color event.

Some responses from critics claiming to love and defend the gospel fail to exhibit the gospel they claim to love. The integrity and gospel commitment of Christian sisters is being questioned outright simply because they wish to meet together at the invitation of @TGC.

Never mind the fact that any women who attend will do so after already plunking down their money and leaving their families *to demonstrate gospel unity by attending the conference itself.*

Never mind the fact that they will commit themselves to 2.5 days of conference programming and supposed unity. Just consider *one solitary hour together* to care for one another a threat to “gospel unity”.

Never mind the fact that many of these women spend their congregational lives in multi-ethnic and predominantly. White churches, giving up preferences and serving faithfully, for the sake of the unity of the Body and the beauty of the gospel.

Never mind the fact that they support the ministries of many of the men criticizing them, the education institutions we love, the parachurch and conference efforts we esteem, and the gospel causes we laid. Never mind that. Just harangue and harass them.

When they leave this conference and this one hour meeting, they will return to their homes and churches often more diverse than anything many of their critics ever engage. And they will be the bridge builders—not many of the critics.

And never mind the fact that they are the women of color still engaging with evangelicalism—not the members of the “quiet exodus” who have given up on you. Just verbally shoot them and accuse them of racism and otherwise make it harder for them to remain.

I learned the FBI informed @TGC of concern for disruption and safety. The FBI! So now, thanks to “Christian” online anger and furor over a one hour informal fellowship, your SISTERS in Christ have to think about their safety when they want to gather.

Meanwhile, in groups of various sizes from churches almost entirely or entirely white, women will gather for hundreds of meals and discussions that will be entirely white. You won’t complain. You won’t see it as a failure to pursue gospel unity. You won’t call it “segregation.”

If there’s going to be genuine unity in the body, it won’t come thru maintenance of informal segregation while decrying what you think is public segregation. It won’t come as some maintain all-white social orbits while criticizing ppl who spend bulk of their life in mixed grps.

The women interested to attend the Women of Color gathering need no justification beyond using Christian freedom to do so. Christ has set them free and they should not allow themselves to be enslaved again to the legalisms of others. Period.

That some Christian leaders have not championed but opposed this freedom—one solitary hour in the midst of 2.5 days—is a great travesty and a perverse recasting of the true forces and history of racial animus, segregation and disunity.

This group is not motivated by anything remotely resembling racial animus, racial superiority or racially-motivated power as in the actual practice of segregation in this country. Calling it such is a horrible slander against your supposed SISTERS in Christ.

In a day when there is so much to protest and oppose when it comes to race, racism, etc., it boggles the mind that some Christian leaders vociferously oppose this little meeting but remain tone deaf, silent and even complicit when real racism is present.

In the end, every woman who attends that meeting, already committed to the wider conference itself, demonstrates a stronger gospel coalition than those in the cheap seats heckling with no real bona fides in the Church’s reconciliation. Sisters, keep going!

END

*laud

UPDATE: The LEO heads up referenced "disruption" not "safety." The heads up and my tweet were not meant to discourage participation, simply create awareness. I'm told concern for disruption "apparently happens a good bit with anything controversial surrounding race or sexuality."