Dear Dr. Bill Greer,
This letter is in response to the message you gave at the Emmanuel chapel this morning, September 9, 2021. In your message, you named LGBTQ students as being a “distraction” from the mission of Milligan University. This was, perhaps, a thinly veiled reference to the gay professor that you fired from your university last year, and how you doubled down on your Statement on Human Sexuality at the end of the Spring semester. You were right to say that you have received much “criticism” in the past year for this, and rightfully so. You sent out an email a few hours after your chapel message that said, in part, “We take seriously any time members of our community feel that their Milligan experience falls short of our goals and mission.” This is exactly what Milligan has done. It has fallen short of its mission and I would implore you to listen and take it seriously.
LGBTQ students are not “a distraction”. We are not the “hostile vocal minority” hellbent on derailing the good Christian mission of Milligan University. We are seminary students dedicating our lives to Christ. We are the students who sat quietly and respectfully in chapel service and listened as we were othered and labeled as “issues” meant to distract people from God. What you do not know is that queer people are not distractions from God, but the enduring image of God itself. Despite your attempt at exclusion, the kingdom of God is already among us. Moses and the Israelites were once the “vocal minority” who were “hostile” to Pharaoh and critical of authority. They were labeled much in the same way you label us. We are not attempting to destroy “Biblical values” or cause good and true Christians to “drift off mission” as you claimed. Like Moses, “Let my people go” is his, and our, charge.
Like the prophets, we speak truth to power because God has called us to do so. Jesus and his apostles were once the problematic but vocal minority who dared to stand up against oppression. We, much like Jesus and much like the prophets, are seen as a security threat. We rip the fabric of Biblical interpretation simply by existing. We will continue to challenge, continue to be vocal, continue to exist, no matter how demonized we are by the administration. We continue because God chooses sides, and he is on the side of the oppressed. I urge you to start listening to where suffering speaks, because that’s where you’ll find God.
Micah 4:4 “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken.”
Our Lady of Light 