Documentary About LGBT Adventists Now Available to Individuals
by Monte Sahlin
By AT News Team, June 5, 2014
The documentary film Seventh Gay Adventists, after two years of showings at film festivals, churches and community theaters was released this week for individual purchase. It can be purchased or rented through iTunes.
Three young Adventists caught in the tensions between two worlds are followed in the film and interviewed so that they can tell their stories at a personal level. David, Marcos and Sherri each wrestle with how to reconcile their faith, identity and sexuality. The movie "simply tells stories rather than taking an advocacy stance," wrote Dr. William Johnsson, the retired editor of the Adventist Review, after he saw it. "It can, I believe, do much to make Adventists more compassionate," in line with one of the basic recommendations from the General Conference council on sexuality held earlier this year.
David loves Jesus and wants to go to heaven so much that he has spent five years in "ex-gay" therapy trying to change his sexual orientation. But he is falling in love with Colin. Can he ever find a way to integrate his Adventist beliefs and his sexuality?
Marcos was an Adventist pastor in Brazil until he was fired for being gay, but he still feels called to ministry. Sherri wants her children to grow up as Adventists with the beliefs she loves even though the denomination teaches that her long-time relationship with Jill is sinful. How does she explain that to the next generation?
"Whatever one's position regarding homosexuals and the church," states Dr. Roy Gane, a faculty member in the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, "this film is worth seeing because it candidly probes issues with real human faces and stories." It is "superb, a poignant and profound experience beyond any I've seen on the subject," wrote Chris Blake, well-known Adventist author and professor of English at Union College.
Brian McLaren, the widely read Evangelical author, has endorse the film although he is not an Adventist. It "isn't just a helpful movie, important for the way it can help congregations of any denomination deal graciously and truthfully with the issue of homosexuality. It's also a beautifully-filmed and artfully-conceived movie. It does what the best art does; it 'humanizes the other.'"
The film can be downloaded at this iTunes web site:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/seventh-gay-adventists/id870863177
"We've intentionally set the prices low to make it affordable for anyone who would benefit from these stories," Daneen Akers told Adventist Today. She produced the documentary with her husband. More information is available on Facebook at www.fb.com/sgamovie and at the Web site www.sgamovie.com, including how to order DVD copies.
Unfortunately, this film does not show the benefits of a celibate life by those who believe they are attracted by those of the same gender. It is one-sided in that it portrays the lives of those living in a situation which the Bible condemns.
McLaren is an Emerging Church enthusiast and I have no confidence in his views. I could make further comments about those who recommend this film but I forebear. It is defintely not one that promotes a Biblical lifestyle and that is sad.
Maranatha
Gender and lifestyle variance is all around us and how the church ministers to these people is a growing issue. So I ask you: Do you know the power of God in your own life and have a testimony of God's redeeming and transforming power so that one of the people portrayed in the film might find hope in your experience?
You offer only celibacy as a panacea when God works with us each individually and in a multitude of ways. He does not demand that we suddenly conform to His absolute ideal. Instead, He brings us step-by-step along our own paths toward His ideals for us. So, has it ever crossed your mind that you might have a thing or two to learn about how to minister God's love for fallen humans? Had God worked with me in the way you describe, I know without any doubt that I would not be a believer today. If you said to any of my friends in the gender variant community that they should be celibate, you would have been dismissed as just another gay-bashing religious bigot. You would have failed in any attempt to lead them to redemption. In the same way, had God at one time told me that He wanted me to be where He has me today, If would not have believed it. Such a wild dream would have been both too incredible to believe and too intimidating to be attractive. Instead, He looked past my sins and surround me with His incredible love and acceptance. His gave me no demands or directions, just invitations and enticements. More than that, he kept doing that until I was able to see His instructions as invitations to experience the adventure of working with Him. By doing that He grew me to where I am today and I continue to grow.
If your intent is to drive people away from God, keep prescribing what you see as the cure to their problem. If you want to redeem them, let God show you how to love them.
The Bible is our guide regardless of public opinion and the permissive culture. Love is not a viable excuse for living in sin. "Gender variant" is an obvious euphemism and acceptance of sinful lifestyles is not Biblical.
Repentance is Biblical for whatever sin we commit.
Maranatha
Apparently you have not experienced redemption. Views such as you are expressing are driving people away from God and illustrate why some of the people in the greatest need of redemption view Christians as filled bigots.
Why is it this subject can never be addressed without some calling others bigots? Where did the term "gender variant" come from? That's a new one to me.
There are many different descriptors used to describe homosexuals, transgenders, the intersexed, etc. either individually or to lump them into various groupings. I used the term "gender variant" as an all-inclusive description of everything between the binary (strictly male/female) ends of the gender spectrum.
No, I was not calling Truth Seeker a bigot, but merely pointing-out how attitudes such as he expresses are how Christians have invited the charge of being hate-filled bigots (though the word "hate" somehow got left out of the posting). By their energy in condemning sin more than proclaiming salvation, many Christians overlook the essential role of forgiveness in redemption and in their misdirected zeal have become blind to the severity of their own offensiveness. By attacking specific sins they are erecting a conceptual barrier that prevents those in greatest need of redemption from finding it. Worst of all, they are misrepresenting the loving character of Jesus, who gave His life so we could be redeemed.
"Apparently you have not experienced redemption."
Wow! Words fail.
The film itself is an attack on Christian morality and Adventism in particular. The title is rather disrespectful to the sacredness of the Holy Sabbath which is referred to in the words Seventh-day. Although using a great opportunity to play on words it sets out to mock God's Law and the Adventist Church. It seeks to force deviant sexual behaviours onto the Church by portraying such behaviour as normal and portrays it as a justifiable and a worthy cause by playing on the sympathy and emotions of viewers in making it look like homosexuals are victims of abuse.
Many men are militant misogynists.
Elaine what is a misogynist? Never heard of it before. It's not like you to use such unfamiliar verbage.