Thread by @eerdmansbooks

Regardless of your doctrinal and ethical convictions, #PrideMonth is a good time for listening to LGBTQ+ voices.

Here are some books to help you do that:
eerdword.com/pride-month-bo…

This weekend, we took down our post because the overwhelming vitriol was alarming, and we wanted to protect our authors. We stand by our EerdWord post, so we have tweeted the link again.

But we think we should also offer some explanation.

Some of the replies to our original tweet could be summarized as: “With this tweet, you have gone over to the dark side. Your company is now useless and we hope you go bankrupt and your employees become jobless.”

For those who thought that cursing and reviling would be an appropriately Christian response to an invitation to try to understand LGBTQ+ Christians, we offer no response.

Their self-revelation speaks for itself, and it grieves us.

For our conservative Christian readers and friends who may be disturbed by the slander of the revilers, we want to explain the misunderstandings they voiced.

The revilers say we have changed our position and begun to teach heresy. There are several problems with that accusation.

We do not think it is for us as a publisher to define doctrine for the church. We are not the pope, or an ecumenical council, or even a pastor.

Our role is to publish books, representing both settled and experimental positions, that serve the church in its ongoing deliberations.

We therefore routinely publish books that contradict each other on many contested doctrinal points. We publish conservative and liberal books; we publish Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant books.

We are not confused. We are a publisher that serves the ecumenical church.

With regard to Christian understandings of LGBTQ+ people, Eerdmans has been publishing books for quite a few years by authors who have come to an affirming conclusion on biblical and theological grounds. This is not new for us.

At the same time, Eerdmans has continued and will continue, to publish books by and for people who have not come to this conclusion.

Eerdmans does not publish books that deny the existence or ignore the voices of LGBTQ people, propagate false teaching about discredited/harmful “therapies,” or in general condemn/revile LGBTQ people. Too much of that has been done over time, and we want no part in continuing it.

We reject the tendency to promote division and discord by categorizing Christians into two camps, considering “us” to be right about everything and “them” to be wrong.

We decline to swear loyalty to one faction’s “us” and join their hostilities against all corresponding “thems.”

So, we reiterate our invitation, especially to our conservative friends, whom we value and respect: use #PrideMonth to read a book by LGBTQ+ Christians and their allies.

eerdword.com/pride-month-bo…

As always, our aim is not to tell you what to think. It is to provide books that we believe will promote informed and charitable thinking.