OK, I’m watching E.R. and Weaver has met her biological mother: a South Carolina “girl in trouble” who gave her up at birth and who later becomes born again. (She was adopted by missionaries.) They meet and begin to share stories of their lives. But the crisis is that crops up is Weaver sharing the news of her lesbianism.
Right before the commercial break, Mater quotes Romans 8. How will she take the news? Will she be judgmental? You may know the passage; I found my self reciting it along with the actress. It is a personal favorite, and you know the Universalists held it close.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
After the break: well, she is judgmental. Perhaps not forever. Perhaps not even to the end of the episode. (It is E.R. after all.)
But the point of the scene is that Weaver claims her faith — whether past or present is ambiguous — and laments her feelings of rejection by the people who raised and fostered her, and by proxy, the Church.
And she quotes, well, paraphrases really, the Romans 8 right back.