{"id":67,"date":"2016-06-23T14:51:22","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T14:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/?page_id=67"},"modified":"2017-03-07T17:19:24","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T17:19:24","slug":"open-and-affirming","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/open-and-affirming\/","title":{"rendered":"Open and Affirming"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Open and Affirming &#8211; ONA<\/h2>\n<p>Our church welcomes everyone.\u00a0 We are one of a few &#8220;LGBTQ friendly&#8221; churches in Greensboro, and have been for over 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>Open and Affirming is a bit of church-speak from the days when it was controversial for churches to welcome LGBTQ community to worship.\u00a0 ONA, like the rainbow flags symbol, was code for, you are welcome here.\u00a0 We meant it then and we mean it today.<\/p>\n<p>Our denomination, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucc.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">United Church of Christ<\/a>, was the first denomination in the U.S. to embrace full participation by everyone, including people in the LGBTQ community.\u00a0 We were the first to ordain a gay man.\u00a0 We were the first to officially recognize and advocate for gay marriage.\u00a0\u00a0 In 2014 the UCC was the lead plaintiff in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nccourts.org\/News\/Documents\/Marriage\/Cogburn-Order.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">North Carolina case<\/a> that led to the 4th Circuit Court to strike down &#8220;Amendment One&#8221;, which sought to constitutionally ban gay and lesbian marriage in North Carolina.\u00a0 That case was one of number that stemmed from the U.S. Supreme Court&#8217;s decision in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/case-files\/cases\/obergefell-v-hodges\/\" target=\"_blank\">Obergefell v. Hodges<\/a> in 2014.<\/p>\n<h2><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Open and Affirming &#8211; ONA Our church welcomes everyone.\u00a0 We are one of a few &#8220;LGBTQ friendly&#8221; churches in Greensboro, and have been for over 20 years. Open and Affirming is a bit of church-speak from the days when it was controversial for churches to welcome LGBTQ community to worship.\u00a0 ONA, like the rainbow flags [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-67","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600,"href":"https:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/67\/revisions\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/congregationalucc.com\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}