Adam Britt’s Equality Ride Journey

Wow, today was a truly amazing, weird, great day.

We started off the day with a visit to Cornerstone. The school did not know about our visit, as we were just trying to visit a public chapel and be part of the conversation about us. All but 6 or 7 Riders entered chapel, after being told by a campus security guard that we were not welcome. We entered the chapel and took seats in groups of 5-10 and talked with students, waiting for the chapel to start. At about 9:10, with chapel already 10 minutes late, Tom Amy spoke to the people in chapel. After making an analogy that directly compared us to terrorist and the events of 9-11, he asked that all Soulforce members leave the chapel. We did not leave; we just wanted to attend chapel. After a conversation between Katie and Tom, the Riders eventually left, however we also had a group of about 15 students also leave with us, because they did not believe the school was handling this situation very well at all.

It was amazing to see that these students would be willing to put themselves on the line and walk out with us. I can only hope that their school does not take any sort of disciplinary action against them.

We stood around outside campus for a while and gathered more students who were not happy to see how things were handled. Eventually we saw everyone leave chapel and apparently that canceled chapel! It was such an amazing sight and it was amazing they would rather cancel chapel, then have a conversation about us, with us there. Liz, my host from today at Calvin said that she would go to tomorrow’s chapel and see what they say about us, I very much hope she can do that!

After Cornerstone, we headed back to the hotel for a nap and then headed off to Calvin, where we had a great day. Calvin is a weird stop, in that they did not have an anti-Queer policy, however Princeton Review rated them 4th worst school for Queer students, which is why we went. We had a lot of great conversations and the administration seemed very open to making the campus more inclusive and safer, which was great to hear, I hope that it is put into action.

We ate breakfast and then a wonderfully beautiful thing happened. The Knitting group that myself and a few professors put together turned out to be HUGE. We completely filled the coffee shop with about 30-40 people and it was amazing to see so much knitting and conversation happening! Knitting is such a great thing to bring people together and this became apparent.

The Human Rights Presentation that my group and myself did today turned out amazing. We ended up getting a standing ovation, which was a first.

After our presentation, we had more conversations and ate dinner with our hosts. I was part of the final panel discussion about how the ride was going and it was neat to be able to talk about the ride, from the point of view that it is almost over. I can’t believe it is almost over. These 50 days blew by so fast, I don’t even understand. Seeing the West Bus for the first time in 2 months is going to be a very weird experience.

Photos can be found here.

Love,

Adam

Wow, today was a truly amazing, weird, great day.

We started off the day with a visit to Cornerstone. The school did not know about our visit, as we were just trying to visit a public chapel and be part of the conversation about us. All but 6 or 7 Riders entered chapel, after being told by a campus security guard that we were not welcome. We entered the chapel and took seats in groups of 5-10 and talked with students, waiting for the chapel to start. At about 9:10, with chapel already 10 minutes late, Tom Amy spoke to the people in chapel. After making an analogy that directly compared us to terrorist and the events of 9-11, he asked that all Soulforce members leave the chapel. We did not leave; we just wanted to attend chapel. After a conversation between Katie and Tom, the Riders eventually left, however we also had a group of about 15 students also leave with us, because they did not believe the school was handling this situation very well at all.

It was amazing to see that these students would be willing to put themselves on the line and walk out with us. I can only hope that their school does not take any sort of disciplinary action against them.

We stood around outside campus for a while and gathered more students who were not happy to see how things were handled. Eventually we saw everyone leave chapel and apparently that canceled chapel! It was such an amazing sight and it was amazing they would rather cancel chapel, then have a conversation about us, with us there. Liz, my host from today at Calvin said that she would go to tomorrow’s chapel and see what they say about us, I very much hope she can do that!

After Cornerstone, we headed back to the hotel for a nap and then headed off to Calvin, where we had a great day. Calvin is a weird stop, in that they did not have an anti-Queer policy, however Princeton Review rated them 4th worst school for Queer students, which is why we went. We had a lot of great conversations and the administration seemed very open to making the campus more inclusive and safer, which was great to hear, I hope that it is put into action.

We ate breakfast and then a wonderfully beautiful thing happened. The Knitting group that myself and a few professors put together turned out to be HUGE. We completely filled the coffee shop with about 30-40 people and it was amazing to see so much knitting and conversation happening! Knitting is such a great thing to bring people together and this became apparent.

The Human Rights Presentation that my group and myself did today turned out amazing. We ended up getting a standing ovation, which was a first.

After our presentation, we had more conversations and ate dinner with our hosts. I was part of the final panel discussion about how the ride was going and it was neat to be able to talk about the ride, from the point of view that it is almost over. I can’t believe it is almost over. These 50 days blew by so fast, I don’t even understand. Seeing the West Bus for the first time in 2 months is going to be a very weird experience.

Photos can be found here.

Love,

Adam

Cornerstone was a very interesting stop with a lot of confusion. The president is Rex Rodgers, who is not known for having very many pleasant things to say about Queer folk. We entered the campus knowing this and I think we always had to keep that in the back of our minds.

We got back to the school at 8:30 to find that a couple was there to meet us with doughnuts and coffee; it was very nice of them. We spent some time talking with students and then Matt and Stephen attempted to deliver a new cornerstone to Cornerstone, one that was inclusive of Queer people. We were not sure if they would be let on campus or not, as their were very few uniformed police people and they were all very far away, however the school did choose to arrest them. After the arrest, an administrator brought the cornerstone back in an attempt to give it back, however we said that he could keep it and told us that he would deliver it to the Student body, hopefully that will actually happen.

After more time of dialogue with students and forming a silent vigil, we left the school and went to a local Penara Bread Company and had lunch and talked with more students. From there, we went to a community dinner and Mary, a Calvin student I had been talking to, brought over a lot of Vegan food with the animal welfare group she is with and it was AMAZING. I am really excited about tomorrow to talk to her more and for our knitting group that I have put together. We are going to knit and talk about Gender, two of my favorite things!

As usual, photos can be found a here.

Love,

Adam

At Spring Arbor, in Michigan, a Transgender professor was fired for being Trans. Because of this and an enormous outcry from the school for us to visit, we made a visit to the school. The day was filled with many students who were open and affirming and many of them were Queer themselves and had to deal with the school. It was great to see them all get together and I think that our visit helped them become stronger as a group on campus and I hope that they are able to use that in talking to the school about it’s policies.

Tonight, we went to Calvin’s campus and meet our hosts for Tuesday and attend a Sunday worship service. My host is wonderful and the worship service was great. It was filled with lots of music and song and I think that was a good upper for us and what we were about to go do.

We just got back from a vigil outside Cornerstone University that was from 10-1 AM. It was a candle light vigil and after an hour or so a large group of students came over the hill and started to talk to us. It was a beautiful sight and I had so many great conversations and I can’t speak for the other Riders, but I was able to see a few people question where they stood on the issue and they started to listen to me and question what they thought about Queer folk and the bible. It was beautiful to see and I hope that I am able to see them later today as they have had time to digest it.

Photos from tonight and Spring Arbor can be found here.

Love,

Adam

Today was our day in the community in Ohio. We spent the beginning of the day at Antioch College, in the Coretta Scott King center. First, let me say something about this College. It might just be because I have spent the last 1.5 months in (relatively conservative) Christian Colleges, but this school was absolutely amazing, it felt like home, somehow. We stayed at the Coretta Scott King center for a while, talking to community members and Cedarville students. We then went to the bookstore and they had a section on Queer Studies and then we went into this amazing art building which had graffiti all through it and we went to a Transgender stencil exhibit, which was mind blowing. We went back and had some wonderful vegan pizza and then left the center to go back to the hotel to take a nap/get ready for the community dinner. We went to a Unitarian Universalist church and had more wonderful food and had more time to talk with community members. We also had a service for us and it was beautiful.

As usual, photos can be found here.

Love,

Adam.

Our day on campus of Cedarville was a very productive, welcoming day. I had good thoughts about the visit from the beginning, as both of my amazing hosts, Sarah and Jason both had contacted me a few days before the visit and I was able to see they were genuine people and very nice. The day began with us having breakfast with our hosts and having a short time to get to know each other, before we all got tours of the Student Center, which is the building where we spent the day. From there, we went into the Theater and talked a little about ourselves and spoke some about the ride (most people had Bob Jones Questions). Then we broke up into 4 different groups. One group went to a class on Human Sexuality, one to a class on Christian Worldview Integration (my class), one went to speak with faculty and the other went to a sociology class. My class, the Christian Worldview Integration class, was very interesting, as I honestly had no idea what to expect. We spent the first hour breaking the ice and talking about toothpaste. I had no idea that people were such big fans of foam, but apparently foam is something that many people look for in toothpaste. After that, we discussed morals written into law and had a few scenarios set up for us to see how we felt on the issue. Overall, it was very interesting; I just wish we could have stayed there longer. From there, we moved to Chucks and had lunch with a bunch of my host’s friends, which was really fun. Then we all headed down to the theater again and the Spiritual Violence group did their presentation. From what I was able to tell, it was well received by students. Because I have seen it to many times, it is hard for me to tell ho the presentation went, but others seemed to enjoy it. I left the theater for a few minutes and then went back to the theater for a panel discussion. Overall, I was very pleased with how this turned out. We had an especially short amount of time for questions at the end, however I think the few questions that were asked got the ball rolling for after the panel. We went to eat and we decided to go back to the second panel discussion, which I am glad we did. The actual panel was the same, however the questions after it were different and it was good to see both sets of questions, I think.

From there, I had to part from my wonderful and amazing hosts and all the Riders and faculty got together to talk about how the day went. Overall, we all agreed that the day was a very fruitful day. It was interesting, because one of the faculty made a comment about how he was worried that the friendship between the school and soulforce would not continue after and this was the first time that we had ever heard a school talk about our relationship afterwards, so it was great that he was talking about that.

We are now back in our hotel room and after conducting many scientific surveys, we are all absolutely exhausted. I don’t know what it was about this stop, but it seemed to have tired everyone out.

The Ride is almost over and I don’t really know what to do with that.

In a few minutes, photos will be here.

Love,

Adam Britt