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:
“This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world ... and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“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)