Walking the Bridgeless Canyon

Repairing the Breach Between the Church and the LGBT Community

By: Kathy Baldock

Narrated by: Kathy Baldock

In 2001, Kathy Baldock, a straight conservative evangelical Christian, met Netto Montoya, a lesbian Native American, on the local hiking trails near her home in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Their friendship challenged Baldocks cultural and religious beliefs about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

In Walking the Bridgeless Canyon: Repairing the Breach between the Church and the LGBT Community, Baldock uncovers the historical, cultural, medical, and political filters of discrimination through which the LGBT community is seen. With the foundation firmly established, she examines the most controversial filter of all: what the Bible says about same-sex behavior.

Ten years of research, as well as relationships with thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, led to answering important questions:

• How did history, culture, science, and politics intertwine to create social discrimination against the gay and transgender community?
• When and why did the conservative Christian community turn their focus on the gay and transgender community?
• Should Christian fellowship be extended to gay and transgender people? Should civil marriages, or even Christian marriages, be granted to them?
• What is happening within the LGBT Christian movement today?

Baldock carefully constructs a timeline as she untangles the details of various influences and influencers. Along the way, she shares fascinating stories and testimonies enriching the historical journey. Finally, for those who are wondering how they might enter into productive and respectful conversations about the intersection of faith and sexual orientation or gender identity, this book offers the resources and tools needed to make informed and wise, Christ-centered choices.

©2014 CanyonWalkerPress (P)2015 CanyonWalkerPress

Outstanding Presentation! Compelling Life Stories!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Highly recommend this book for every person Christian or not!

What other book might you compare Walking the Bridgeless Canyon to and why?

No other book like it!

Any additional comments?

Could not have been more blessed by the book's information and the author's outstanding presentation! Kathy Baldock's voice delivers compelling real life stories, including her own personal journey across the paradigm. Kathy includes a wealth of information that Christians everywhere need to come to terms in order to truly to live out Christ's command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.If you know an LGBT person, or struggle with your own traditional Christian beliefs about LGBT people, don't waste another minute, listen to this book. It could save the life of someone you love and maybe even your own.

If you’re looking for a primer this is it!

There are an increasing of books from folks in the evangelical world who have changed their minds on questions dealing with LGBT people. This book is by far one of the best. The author has assembled a history including the rise of sexual orientation categories in modern psychoanalytic theory, the beginnings of the religious right and its cooperation with conservative political movements, the origins of HIV/AIDS and the ways the disease has been interpreted in religious contexts, reparative therapy and the damage it causes, the phenomenon of mixed orientation marriages, and the history of LGBT Christian people that have held onto Christian faith even as many Christian communities have attempted to shun and push them away. Bringing all the threads together, Baldock paints a detailed picture of how we got here and offers an invitation to those who aren’t satisfied with the historic treatment of LGBT people and want a better way.

The Audible performance is good. Baldock reads her own work. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing her deliver her own words in her own speech patterns. There are a few points where the reading needed to be edited a bit to get rid of a false starts, and one place where I’m pretty sure the written pages she was reading from fell and scattered during the performance, but listeners will understand all the same. These minor quirks do not take away from the breadth of knowledge on offer or the author’s clear exposition.

not religious but still interesting

interesting book on theology and LGBTQ rights. well I'm not religious I still feel like I got something out of this.

Moved to tears

I was moved to tears often during this very insightful and intimate look at how the LGBTQ community has come to be vilified by large segments of our culture. It is staggering to discover the degree of misinformation and mistreatment directed toward the LGBTQ community often by well-respected people who uncritically accepted untested conclusions and ideas. As a Christian pastor I was part of a group that accepted and propagated such ideas. Many of my tears are tears of sorrow and repentance for the part I played that has brought such harm to the LGBTQ community at large and to individual LGBTQ people, not the least of which include my own two gay sons. If your heart is in conflict with your head or your faith as mine was for over two decades, this is the book that will help you get them aligned, allowing love for God and love for all His people to go forward hand in hand. I highly recommend this book.

I'll Probably Listen To It Ten More Times!❤️

An insightful walk through human sexuality over the centuries and how the concepts that influenced those writing the Bible, speaking for the Church, and those lobbying in the political arena have probably gotten it all wrong.