Dear Brothers in Christ and I guess Sisters:
I am pleased to announce the founding of the Association of Somewhat-Welcoming & Half-heartedly Affirming Baptists, ASWHAB. (The H is silent, much like our public witness.)
ASWHAB is kind of dedicated to being a voice for all of those Baptists who kind of support gay and lesbian people, and who have even kind of considered supporting bisexual, transgender, and queer people. We believe that marriage should be open to all people who are willing to pay exorbitant sanctuary fees and who have served on the proper committees, and who have at least volunteered to usher once or twice. We believe that God's table is open to everybody, but some people should at least have the sense to not flaunt it. As the prophet writes in the book of Shmezekiel, "Everyone who hungers, come to the Table of the Lord, for please do not flaunt it."
ASWHAB is concerned that in the public fights about the rights of LGBTQ people, we have too often missed out on the voice of those who can't really be bothered, or just don't care that much one way or the other. And, more importantly, the voice of those who find all of this kind of icky and just don't want to talk about it. We, here at the Association of Somewhat-Welcoming & Half-Heartedly Affirming Baptists, say, "those people should have a voice, we guess, before too long anyway. But maybe we should wait until after the church potluck and once the new budget is passed." Then, we usually forget about it.
So, please consider joining ASWHAB today. And as you absent-mindedly consider putting time to ponder this on your list of things to spend some time wondering about, please remember the words of that pretty good guy, Jesus, in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Shmark, "I have come to proclaim news to some people. To proclaim the year of God's adequacy, slightly increased sight for folks with some mild vision problems, and freedom from several notable inconveniences in your daily life!"
We hope you will support our somewhat-valuable work. You could donate today, if we had managed to get our Paypal stuff up and running, but there was a form to fill out, and Roger was supposed to take care of it, but he ended up having to take care of his grandkids, so what can you do? In the meantime, I suppose you could donate to AWAB, which seems close enough, right?
Yours in Certain Less-Inflammatory Parts of the Gospel,
Rev. April Foules
President of ASWHAB
ps- If you liked and/or were troubled by this letter, please consider donating to the Association of Welcoming & Affirming Baptists, which is a)real and b)doing much better work than ASWHAB.
