Jamie Arpin-Ricci's Blog, page 2

The Problem with Gradualism: Rethinking the Pace of Social Change

Whether it is concerning the current movements growing to resist racism in America and around the world, or whether it relates to my own advocacy on behalf of LGBTQ+ people (especially in the Christian community), a common theme comes up in conversation: a reminder that people (namely those subject to oppression) need to be patient and understanding because change takes time and that, in the end, justice will prevail. This is a common call for those who advocate for gradualism.

In this context, ...

Losing Our Roots: LGBTQ+ Christian & Church Rejection

For many of us who are LGBTQ+ and Christian, there comes a time when we are forced to choose between who God created us to be and the communities that we called home for most of our lives. When this time came for me- when the church that had been my home for most of my life severed their ties with us- it was a crushing blow. It is bad enough to have one’s very personhood condemned as degenerate, but to be cut off from the deepest relationship of one’s life is like acid in the wound.

It would be ...

Faith, the Bible, and My Journey Towards full LGBTQ+ Affirmation

By the time we planted our church, Little Flowers Community, in 2009, the shift in my thinking around sexuality had already begun to get more pronounced. While I still generally held to the “traditional view” when pressed about it, I avoided that specific question a great deal. In truth, with planting a new church, my energy and focus were largely directed elsewhere.

In fact, even our church did not directly address the topic, with members who held “traditional views”, others holding an affirmin...

How Samaritan’s Purse is Contradicting Its Own Name (& Jesus)

As the global COVID19 pandemic continues to ramp up, New York City has quickly become a hot-spot for rapid transmission and increasingly death as a result. The need for critical and expedient aid has never been higher for the city, prompting many organizations to rise to the occasion to lend a much-needed hand in this time of crisis.

One such group is Samaritans Purse, an evangelical Christian humanitarian organization, headed by Franklin Graham, son of the late preacher Billy Graham....

How The So-Called “Traditional View” Forces Queer Christians Into Hiding

(Content Warning: The following article contains mention of suicide.)

While I still held the so-called traditional view on marriage and sexuality when I married my wife, my own deeply painful experiences as a bisexual man working in full-time Christian ministry tempered how I engaged the topic. Where others were focusing on the need to stand by Biblical absolutes with respect to this (and any) subject, my awareness of the harm being done to LGBTQ2S+ people by the church shifted my attention...

Why “Straight Presenting” Relationships Aren’t Always Better For Bisexual People

Like many people settling into their twenties, as life on my own slowly became the norm, I started considering the possibility of marriage. Being a good evangelical Christian- newly inducted into ministry as a full-time missionary for Youth With A Mission (YWAM) their general expectation was that marriage would be in my near future. Its no coincidence that YWAM often got dubbed Young Women After Men or Young Wolves After Maidens.

However, given my on-going struggle with same-sex attraction...

Causes For Queerness? How Trying To “Fix” Us Actually Breaks Us

By the time I was in my mid-twenties, established in my administrative job at the Christian organization, Youth With A Mission (YWAM), I had worked hard to build protective walls around my bisexuality (which I still thought of in terms of being only kind of gay). I had intentionally gained an unhealthy amount of weight to make myself unattractive to other men, carving out a space in the Christian world as someone battling the strongholds of my sin nature. As destructive as it was, it was the...

When Bodies Pay: The Cost of Fear & Shame

I was only eighteen years old when I decided to go into full-time Christian ministry. Having just completed my Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) on my eighteenth birthday, I was eligible to apply to be on full-time staff with the organization. I did not hesitate to do so, despite some of the negative experiences I had gone through relating to my sexuality. I had a deep sense of calling and believed this was the place I needed to be, so I was willing to take...

The False Choice Between Faith & Sexuality

Like so many other kids, leaving home for the first time offered the opportunity to reinvent myself. Granted, being only seventeen at the time, reinvent might seem like something of an overstatement. However, given that I had just come out as mostly gay (as I still had no working conception of bisexuality) in a non-affirming, rural Christian community, this was my chance to make a fresh start.

Leaving home for the first time, I headed off to attend a 5-month-long discipleship program with...

Naming the Damage of Microaggression

Despite holding a traditional view on sexuality while in high school- that sex was reserved for marriage between one man and one woman only- it became a matter of survival to frequently and public assert those beliefs whenever the topic came up in conversation. I learned very quickly that, if people were to know about my homosexuality, especially Christians, they needed to know immediately that I knew it was sinful and wrong. And so I made sure that they knew.

No matter how sincere my...