As a liberal Christian in the United Church of Christ (UCC), I want to apologize for all who have misused scripture, God and Christ's names to advance hatred, injustice, cruelty and oppression. Hatred has no place in the body of Christ or in any religious tradition. The God I worship and serve is a God of universal love, acceptance and inclusion who creates each one of us in the divine image. God does not create garbage and everybody no matter their faith tradition or lack thereof is a beautiful, blessed child of God. God accepts us exactly as we are. Religion at its best embodies God's unconditional and all encompassing love, compassion, acceptance and out of response to God's love and grace is involved in the work of justice, peace and reconciliation. Religion becomes fatal when it starts pronouncing absolute truth as dogma, when they contain God in a narrow box, when they arrogantly presume to know God's will and ways and misuses God's name for evil, injustice and hate. Scripture was never meant to be used as a weapon. Scripture points us into the mystery of God and is not meant to be worshiped. God is beyond all naming, knowing, and understanding. To limit the Almighty to one faith tradition or one scripture is to deny the totality of God's being and power. God is the loving creator, sustainer and savior of all peoples with no exception. Jesus taught us that the two greatest commandments that are the base of the teaching of the prophets is to love God with all being and love others as we love ourselves.
When we love others we love God, and by loving God we love the creation. Jesus confronted the Pharisees and others religious powers that be including turning over money changers in the Temple when he said, "My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples yet you turned it into a den of thieves" or when he said, "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell* as yourselves" (Matthew 23:15-17) By these examples it is showing that just because one is religious or a clergy does not necessarily mean that they are aligned with God's love, justice, and compassion. For too many of my fellow Christians they prefer to follow the religion made up about Jesus (creeds, doctrines) made up about Jesus many hundreds and thousands of years after he died rather than following the religion of Jesus (his teachings, example, and his deep and intimate encounter with God our Father whom Jesus called Abba/Daddy)