The Everyday Advocate: Living Out Your Calling to Social Justice
As Christians, we are called and anointed to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom to the oppressed. In The Everyday Advocate, Ross Murray helps Christians explore our individual callings to justice and start taking practical steps to live that out.
The Everyday Advocate is for the layperson who feels overwhelmed by the world’s troubles and helpless to address them. It is for the person who goes to church, hears the gospel, seeks to apply it to their lives, and yearns to be connected to, or create, a community that amplifies their voice and actions. It is also for pastors and faith leaders who want to help people think through their calling to advocacy and help connect them with the communities that can use their gifts and talents.
Murray builds on two questions: Where is God? And what are we called to do? Viewing every action and phenomenon as theological, he stakes out values and shows readers how to work toward those values. He also distinguishes between direct service and cultural change, discussing the balance between them and acknowledging both are needed.
Drawing on his own experience and exercising his pastoral spirit, Murray encourages readers to discern their own call to advocacy, learn to identify injustices that still reign, and respond faithfully by incorporating big and small actions into their everyday lives.
Made, Known, Loved: Developing LGBTQ-Inclusive Youth Ministry
Through the debates about the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life of the church, one overlooked community is LGBTQ youth. Made, Known, Loved: Developing LGBTQ-Inclusive Youth Ministry builds on experience and wisdom cultivated through The Naming Project, a ministry created at the intersection of youth, faith, and LGBTQ identity.
Formed at a time when the overlap of such categories was unthinkable, The Naming Project provides a place where youth of all sexual orientations and gender identities can be safe and affirmed in their identity and faith. Because of that foundational work, other pastors and youth ministers often reach out to leaders of The Naming Project with their questions about LBGTQ-inclusive youth ministry. Made, Known, Loved provides the guidance these leaders have been asking for.
The book first helps congregation leaders and parents examine the values of the congregation and youth group. It focuses on keeping young people, including LGBTQ youth, safe and helping them feel respected and see themselves as beloved children of God. The book also provides a how-to manual for LGBTQ-inclusive youth ministry, sharing the best procedures and practices from the fifteen-plus years of The Naming Project’s ministry, including its ongoing summer camp.
Made, Known, Loved shows congregations how to create a program that affirms LGBTQ youth in their faith and their identity, accepts and welcomes diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, and equips future leaders for the church and the LGBTQ community.
Queer books of faith
Queerfully & Wonderfully Made, Edited by Leigh Finke
A Guide for LGBTQ+ Christian Teens with insight and support from an amazing group of LGBTQ+ professionals and young adult queer Christians who’ve recently been exactly where you are. No matter your identity or where in your journey of self-discovery you find yourself, you got this.
Welcoming and Affirming, Edited by Leigh Finke
A Guide to Supporting and Working with LGBTQ+ Christian Youth with first-hand, personal testimonials from queer young adults who have experienced the joys and hardships of being queer and Christian. You’ll walk away with a lot of insight, prepared to love, affirm, and accept the LGBTQ+ teens in your community the way God does–exactly as they are. Welcoming and Affirming is a companion book to Queerfully and Wonderfully A Guide for LGBTQ+ Christian Teens.
All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson
From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.
Unprotected: A Memoir
Billy Porter
The story of a boy whose talent and courage opened doors for him, but only a crack. It is the story of a teenager discovering himself, learning his voice and his craft amid deep trauma. And it is the story of a young man whose unbreakable determination led him through countless hard times to where he is now; a proud icon who refuses to back down or hide.
Colors of Hope
Edited by Melissa Guthrie
A devotional using the original flag and its eight colors and themes—sexuality, life, healing, sunlight, nature, art and magic, harmony and serenity, and spirit—readers are invited to reflect, engage, and apply discoveries.
God’s Holy Darkness
Sharei Green and Beckah Selnick
Deconstruct anti-Blackness in Christian theology by celebrating instances in the story of God’s people when darkness, blackness, and night are beautiful, good, and holy.
My Guncle and Me, by Jonathan Merritt
This celebration of individuality and inclusivity reminds young readers that what makes them different is what makes them special.
Raising Kids Beyond the Binary, by Jamie Bruesehoff
Now more than ever, parents of faith need to be grounded in God’s call to love and affirm young people in who God created them to be and what they need to thrive.
Making Room, by Carl Siciliano
The founder of the nation’s largest housing program for homeless LGBTQ+ youth and his friendship with a nonbinary teenager and dozens of queer kids who inspired him to live a life of service and resistance.
The Backwater Sermons, Poems
Jay Hulme
Explores belief in the modern world and offers a perspective on queer faith that will appeal to Christians and young members of the LGBT+ community who are interested in faith but unsure of where to start.
Why: A Memoir
Randy Scoby
If you’ve ever wondered how someone can join a cult and go against their own community, this book documents the journey from abuse to brainwashing to betrayal, ultimately arriving at truth.
Love Big
Rozella Haydée White
Revolutionary relationships can heal the brokenness of our lives by crossing over the dividing lines of race, gender, religion, orientation, ability, identity, and class to provide relief and inspiration.
We Are Not Broken, by George M. Johnson
Four boys hold each other close through early brushes with racism, memorable experiences at the family barbershop, and first loves and losses.
Just Faith, by Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons
A rallying cry for a bold progressive Christianity that unapologetically fights for its values to impact the biggest political battles of our time so that progressive Christians will stop lowering their voices when they identify as Christians.
Outlove, by Julie Rodgers
Outlove is about love and losses, political and religious power-plays, and the cost to those who sought to stay in a faith community that wouldn’t accept them.
Stace: My Gay Christian Coming-of-Age Story
Stacey Chomiak
In this young-adult illustrated memoir, Stacey Chomiak tells the true story of her teenage and young-adult years: of heartbreak, family conflict, trying to become ex-gay, wrestling with her faith, and finding love.
How to Be an Anti-Racist
Ibram X. Kendi
An essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.
Transforming
Austen Hartke
An essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.
The Queens English: The Young Readers’ LGBTQIA+ Dictionary of Lingo and Colloquial Phrases by Chloe O. Davis
This young reader adaptation of The Queens’ English is a nonfiction illustrated reference guide to the LGBTQIA+ community’s contributions to the English language.
The Inclusive Bible, by Priests for Equality
New and non-sexist ways to express the same ancient truths.
The Queen James Bible, by Anonymous
A big, fabulous Bible.
Called Out: 100 Devotions for LGBTQ Christians
Emily C Heath
Fully affirming of all, sensitive to the diversity of the entire LGBTQ community, and backed by theological depth, these devotions will lift the reader up and empower them for the work of transforming the world.
Dialogs on Sexuality
published by Augsburg Fortress
A new small group series to explore sexuality and the church.
Theology and poetry
A. Christian
Explore the things we cannot quite grasp by utilizing poetry and short stories in a way that offers something to our souls, and our hearts, and our stubborn skulls.
Facing the Music, by Jennifer Knapp
Her story: of coming to Christ, of building a career, of admitting who she is, and of how her faith remained strong through it all.
Mychal Judge, by Francis Debernardo
A story of bravery and self-sacrifice displayed during the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001 by an openly gay priest.
Hidden Mercy, by Michael J. O’Loughlin
Set in the HIV and AIDS epidemic of the late twentieth century and the Catholic Church’s crackdown on gay and lesbian activists, untold stories of those who didn’t look away, who at great personal cost chose compassion.
The God Box
Alex Sanchez
How could I choose between my sexuality and my spirituality, two of the most important parts that made me whole? Young Adult Fiction
Trans-Gendered
Justin Sabia-Tanis
A transgender clergyperson seeks to explore the spiritual nature of transgendered persons, to listen to the stories of others like himself, and to give a positive voice to the community.
Transgendering Faith
Edited by Leanne McCall Tigert and Maren C. Tirabassi
A resource to help churches respond with love and care to transgender people in our society, both those within the Christian community and those who find themselves outside its doors.
Gifted By Otherness, by L. William Countryman and M.R. Ritley
Provides new hope for those who feel that it is impossible to be both gay or lesbian, as well as Christian.
Know My Name: A Gay Liberation Theology, by Richard Cleaver
Examine the struggles of gay men and lesbians in the church through the lens of liberation theology with a “gay” reading of scripture, that is also spiritually challenging to all readers.
Gay, Catholic, and American, Gregory Bourke
Struggles for acceptance as an out gay man living in the South during the 1980s and ’90s, and his unplanned transformation into a gay rights activist after dismissal as a troop leader from the Boy Scouts of America in 2012, and a plaintiffs which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.
To the Tune of a Welcoming God
David R. Weiss
A timely collection of essays and hymns eloquently calling for a Christian faith that extends an affirming welcome to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons.
Sanctuary
Heidi B. Neumark
Being Christian in the Wake of Trump, Sanctuary is an amplifier for the many voices crying out against policies and rhetoric that are cruel, dehumanizing, and dangerous.
Gay Like Me
Richie Jackson
In this poignant and urgent love letter to his son, Richie reflects on his experiences as a gay man in America and the progress and setbacks of the LGBTQ community over the last 50 years.
God and the Gay Christian, Matthew Vines
The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships.