“We’ve needed a book like Heavy Burdens for a long time. Bridget Eileen Rivera shares the stories our churches urgently need to hear. She shows us exactly how Christians ourselves have wounded the LGBTQ children of our churches. This is a book that can begin to bind up some of those wounds and guide us, in humble love, to build churches in which the next generation of queer Christians can truly flourish. To use Rivera’s terms, this book will help Christian leaders stop ‘obsessing about the sins’ of gay people, and start ‘obsessing about the grace’ God is pouring out through their lives. And it will help LGBTQ people who have been harmed by Christians realize that they are not alone—not only because others have experienced what they’ve been through but because Jesus has always been by their side, always faithful, always cherishing them.”—Eve Tushnet, author of Gay and Catholic

“Rivera’s dauntless and nuanced voice fills a significant void in the Christian debate over sexual identity. Combining tender storytelling with a keen analytic eye, she deconstructs our current status quo to reveal both its fault lines and its mutability. This book challenged me to think more deeply about the logics that underlie my own convictions—and I have a hunch that, no matter where you fall along the spectrum of belief, these provocative pages will challenge you too.”—Gregory Coles, author of Single, Gay, Christian and No Longer Strangers
“This is an essential book, one I wish we’d had forty years ago, as I believe it would have greatly reduced much unnecessary spiritual and physical destruction. It eloquently and convincingly argues not that we hold any particular theological position on sexuality and gender but rather that we open our hearts to recognize both the humanity of queer people and our need for queer people. It opens doors not to threatening theological changes but to the church’s own history—doors many would rather keep shut because they reveal our hypocrisy and our shallow, nearsighted obsession with sex as well as our slavery to secular norms. Rivera is a clear thinker, a scholarly but accessible writer, and a gentle but firm guide who simultaneously educates, challenges, and cares for her readers. She invites us to imagine a world in which God’s LGBTQ+ children are given the space and the safety they need to ask questions, seek God’s will for their lives, and flourish, no matter where the Spirit and their consciences lead them. What a gift this book is to the body of Christ. I suspect—and I pray that my instincts are good here—that it will be a game changer for the church.”—Kristyn Komarnicki, director of Oriented to Love dialogue program, Christians for Social Action
“In spite of—or just as often because of—my position as a ‘conservative’ on marriage and sexuality, I have seen firsthand the ways the evangelical Christian movement has devastated the faith of many of its own LGBTQ members. Not everyone will agree with every argument in this account of that devastation (I don’t), but every Christian who reads this book will no longer be able to ignore the real harm that has been done in the name of the gospel—or to avoid grappling afresh with the repentance and justice-seeking that the gospel continues to ask of us all.”—Wesley Hill, associate professor of New Testament, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan; author of Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian
“Many if not most Christians think that the gospel is something that ‘those other people over there’ need to hear and respond to. In truth though, it’s people of Christian faith who are the ones in most desperate need of hearing the good news of Jesus Christ, and this is nowhere more so the case than in the church’s treatment of LGBTQ persons. Bridget Eileen Rivera’s Heavy Burdens is the gospel the church needs to hear. As such, I don’t just recommend that you read it; I dare you to. Personally, I thank God for her wit and winsomeness, and I pray that we all have the courage to heed the wisdom of her words.”—Kutter Callaway, associate professor of theology and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary
“For too long, what should have been a collective rush to compassion and care for the LGBTQ community instead became a screaming match over theological fine points. Heavy Burdens cuts through the noise so that we can truly see. This manifesto rings out in the key of love, the kind that lives in our actions and disrupts our narratives of judgment, fear, and oppression. Bridget Eileen Rivera is a prophet for the ages, calling us to the clear-eyed way of Jesus and igniting our shared imagination for the lightness of Christ, alive and at work in all of us.”—Shannan Martin, author of The Ministry of Ordinary Places and Falling Free