Everyone Belongs Here: How Affirming and Non-Affirming Church Messages and Imagery Cause Different Feelings of Acceptance in LGBTQ+ Christians

Abstract

Most US churches are non-affirming toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning and more (LGBTQ+) communities, but a few have developed affirming theologies. We investigate the causal link between church messages and imagery on the expectation that queer Christians would feel accepted in a church. We designed two church websites with affirming and non-affirming theology. We hypothesized that queer Christians who examined an affirming church website would feel a greater sense of church acceptance than those who viewed a non-affirming church website. Queer Christians evidenced significantly greater expectations that they would be accepted when viewing the affirming church website than when viewing the non-affirming website. Exploratory analyses examined how these websites affected straight Christians. Straight Christians did not differ significantly between the two conditions but showed a trend toward greater feelings of acceptance by the affirming church. Therefore, when finding a church, symbols rooted in affirming theology welcome LGBTQ+ and straight Christians more than those rooted in non-affirming theology.