Rev. Lisa Anderson
Following the Club Q Shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which killed five children of God, injured at least eighteen, and left countless people across the country traumatized, Reverend Lisa Hall Anderson, the founding executive director of Room in the Inn-Memphis and pastor of Colonial Cumberland Presbyterian Church condemned hateful rhetoric and exclusion targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
Calling for repentance, Rev. Anderson wrote: “What we say matters, what we do matters. I am a Christian minister who believes that all are created by God in God’s image and are beloved by God. Because of the hatred and exclusion LGBTQ+ neighbors find places to feel safe, because of our tolerance for hate filled rhetoric in and out of the church even in those places they cannot be safe. Intolerance and exclusion is a sin and it is deadly.”
“Yet even now,” declares the Lord,
“Return to Me with all your heart,
And with fasting, weeping and mourning;
And rend your heart and not your garments.”
Now return to the Lord your God,
For God is gracious and compassionate,
Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness
And relenting of evil. Joel 2:12-13
