Coming Out, Coming to Faith, Coming to the Table

Left and right, gay and straight, they come from churches with blood-letting differences about the Bible and how to use it, about sexuality and how to express it, about the human heart and how to handle it. Asian and Caucasian, Progressive and Evangelical, like all participants in the project First Be Reconciled, these eight people have come to the table. Like the four-generation journey of the author's family, whose saga unfolds alongside their own, the trails they've walked towards wholeness and oneness and mapped by intolerance and prejudice. Their paths have forked but their veins are awash in the waters that carry them far from each other and the river that summons them back upstream. No table-pounding, no slogan-shouting, no Jesus-amnesia, eight people are telling stories. Coming out and coming to faith and coming of age, eight Americans are reconciling. In the wake of the murder of a cross-dressing teen, American bombs "bursting in air" over Afghani towns, eight Christians are using religion for love.