Open and Affirming (ONA) is an official designation of congregations and other settings within the United Church of Christ (UCC) denomination affirming the full inclusion of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons (LGBT) in that setting's life and ministry.
The Open and Affirming program is administered by the UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns, which supports congregations and other church settings as they consider adoption of an ONA covenant and maintains the official list of ONA settings. The Coalition encourages UCC congregations, campus ministries, seminaries, regional bodies and other communities to engage their members in serious study of sexual orientation and gender identity and to declare publicly their full welcome and inclusion of LGBT people. With more than 1,000 congregations, the UCC's ONA program is the largest of several LGBT-welcoming church movements in U.S. and Canadian churches.
Read more about Open And Affirming: History, Opposition
Famous quotes containing the words open and/or affirming:
“Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in the river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men ... ours began, by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant wiser; and all better, and happier together.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)