To the editor:

As a frequent visitor to Lawrence, I had opportunity to read the Lawrence Journal-World article, “Shepherding the flock” (July 23). I found the article very upsetting and unfair to many fine Christians in Lawrence.

The author characterized anyone who is a Democrat, who is interested in preserving the environment, who is respectful of all God’s children and how they were created, as something less than Christian. Further, he categorized these fine folks as participating in a variety of offensive activities. The ministers interviewed insinuated that God-forsaken Lawrence was a great place to spread the word of God and take a stand for what is right for these poor lost souls of Douglas County.

In my association with church people in Lawrence, I find them to be caring, devout folks committed to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and folks who take the life Jesus lived as an example for their own life’s journey. Church people that I know believe that God’s grace applies to all people. In the case of homosexuality, sexual preference is first and foremost a matter of biology.

Injustice and disrespect for any person is sin. God invites us ALL, including homosexuals, into the kingdom of Grace and calls us to be devout, committed Christians, living in a partnership of love and fidelity and service in the Christian Church. Let us all pray that God will lift us above this “dividing wall of hostility.”

Helen Nachtigal,

North Newton