THE TRINITY: Former pastor Stuart Delony responds to the panic over research showing that only 16% of Christians believe in the Trinity. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/snarkyfaith/2025/04/why-the-trinity-doesnt-matter-if-we-dont-love/ He writes: “I don’t care. I’m not interested in theological gymnastics that try to explain how God is one essence and three persons without stepping into heresy. The Trinity, as doctrine, has been a church gatekeeping mechanism for centuries—but for me? It’s never been the thing that made faith feel real. What has? The way of Jesus. Not the “believe in Jesus” part. The walk like him part. You know, the inconvenient stuff: Confronting corrupt power. Standing with the outcast. Refusing to play religious games. Loving your enemy. Rejecting ego. Moving through the world with justice and humility. That’s the kind of “orthodoxy” I care about now. And if your belief in the Trinity doesn’t lead you to that kind of life? Then congrats—you’ve nailed the theology exam and missed the actual point. Arguing about doctrinal purity while people are being crushed by systems of violence, exclusion, and religious manipulation is just ecclesiastical masturbation. It’s for people who want to feel spiritually superior without getting their hands dirty in the real work of healing and justice”. (fb)

RESPECTING TRANS PEOPLE: Following the Supreme Court ruling that the term woman should be understood to mean genital biology at birth, Susannah Clark, a church member and a trans woman, explains the hostility trans people face: https://viamedia.news/2025/04/29/respecting-trans-people-part-1-a-pause-for-kindness/ “First there were deeply conservative and fundamentalist religious campaigners for whom transition itself was abhorrent; secondly there was a subsection of feminist activists who campaigned to exclude trans women from areas of life; thirdly there were right-wing populists who tried to play on the worst human instincts to identify scapegoats in order to increase support for their politics; fourthly there were more established political parties who started to fear the traction the far right was gaining, and have come to see trans people as politically expendable; and finally – doing huge damage to trans people and treating us like pariahs – there has been media portrayal of trans people as threatening perverts”. Susannah tells her own story, and concludes “In the end we can either accommodate each other’s differences with kindness, or we can go down the road of populism, hatred, othering, and the policing of tribal boundaries. It doesn’t have to be that way. Instead of meanness of spirit I think we need: generosity, kindness, responsibility, balance. We should help one another to be the whole and best of who we really are. To reduce the definition of a woman only to sex and genitalia is to ignore so much more of what makes a woman who she is. In a way it’s quite insulting. It’s not all about sex. I’m a human being who happens to understand myself as woman at the heart of my being. I’m a threat to no-one, and a gift to those who love me, and we don’t deserve to be excluded, far less to be vilified. All of us should care about each other, as we dare to open up, more and more, to the whole of who we are.” (fb)