Happy Pride, and God's Peace Be With You All: My Journey

 

I don’t expect this post to be super groundbreaking or mind-and-heart-transforming. Most of what I am going to write has been written by many others, and I will do some citing and directing to some of those sources as I go along. Then why write? In part, because the writings of others have helped me along my own journey of faith evolution as I have asked hard questions and wrestled with different ideas. Writers like Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessey, Jeff Chu, and Jen Hatmaker have “held lanterns” (as Jen says) for me, and I want to do my best to hold a lantern for others. I also write because it is exercise for my soul. Sometimes, the itch to write strikes and for days things bounce around in my head and heart until I get them on paper.

June is Pride month, which is a time of celebration for the LGBTQ+ community. For those of us who are not part of the LGBTQ+ community, it should be a time to offer support to our friends and siblings who are, and to stand in solidarity with them as they face a current season of intense oppression (book bans, attempted erasure from academic spaces, anti-trans legislation, anti-drag legislation, etc.). By stand in solidarity, I mean write letters to senators and representatives, show up to marches and rallies, give money to organizations and individuals who are fighting for the dignity and rights of LGBT+ persons, etc. In whatever arenas you exist in, be an advocate and a good neighbor. Where there is discrimination, extend opportunity. Where there is dehumanization, dignify. Where there is hate, sow love. Where there is exclusion, embrace.

Unfortunately, most of this oppression is being carried out by Christians. Sowing oppression and exclusion that reaps irreparable harm (the suicide rate for LGBTQ+ youth is 7x higher, and suicide is now one of the leading causes of death for our young people as a whole) is not following the way of Jesus, who explained to his disciples that they could judge teachers / teaching by the fruit they produce (Matthew 7:17-20). The way many churches and Christians teach about gender and sexuality and treat LGBTQ+ persons, and the way some Christians are legislating these teachings through our government, produces decidedly rotten fruit (suicide, homelessness, broken families, a mass exodus from the church, etc.).

My Journey

I attended college at Milligan University between 2006-2010. Milligan is a small, Christian liberal arts college in Tennessee. While they’ve recently taken a more public, and non-affirming, stance concerning the LGBTQ+ community, I remember a different environment when I attended. One side of that environment was “don’t ask, don’t tell.” LGBTQ+ students were on campus and likely would not have felt safe (or been safe!) publicly coming out. That is obviously not a good thing. However, there was a group of faculty and students on campus who initiated a conversation surrounding Christianity and the LGBTQ+ community, and this conversation was given space (many of these people, myself included, are now part of Milligan For All, a nonprofit organization made up of friends, alumni, and current Milligan community members that is affirming and working against discrimination and for the LGBTQ+ community on campus and beyond). I took classes from multiple faculty members who are openly affirming (bravo to Dr. Knowles and Dr. Allen and Dr. Beck), and I also attended a forum on campus where faculty spoke from multiple perspectives (some were affirming, others were not). At the forum, the university also invited some alumni, community members and students to participate. I sat in the audience eager to learn. I grew up in a family and faith community that taught that homosexuality was sinful and outside of God’s design for human sexuality and I was entirely unaware that there were different perspectives across the (very diverse) global Christian community.

Graduation day at Milligan, 2010

One of the things that later struck me about this conversation on Milligan’s campus was how respectful it was – I thought at that time this kind of approach was “normal” but my experience since then has shown this to be an exception. Or maybe between 2006-2010 evangelical Christians were not using doctrine concerning sexuality as a litmus test to see whether someone was “in” or “out”; but they are very much using it as a boundary in 2023. When I was a student at Milligan, the forum was a forum, not a debate, and no one was accused of being less of a Christian (“not taking the Bible seriously” / “caving into secular culture” etc.) because of their perspective. I understood that I was hearing from people who took their faith and the Bible very seriously and had put a lot of thought into their stances. I listened closely and quietly shifted my own perspective initially to “open” to new understandings.

Once I was open, I began to search for more information. I was particularly interested in the perspective that could be called “full affirmation” (what I mean by this is that all people are created in the image of God, that all gender identities and sexual orientations should be celebrated as part of God’s diverse creation, and that all people and families should be fully included in church community, leadership, etc.). While I had a really good grasp of a range of other perspectives due to my upbringing in a particular faith community (nondenominational Christian), full affirmation was new to me. One of the first writers I found on the internet was Rachel Held Evans. She attended a Christian college in Tennessee just like me, but she was a few years ahead of me in thinking through hard questions in Christianity (her writings address far more than LGBTQ+ inclusion). I remember sitting in my dorm room at Milligan reading blog posts Rachel wrote and then following up on some of her sources (she pointed to Matthew Vines and David Gushee, among others).

I do not know an exact time when I switched to a fully affirming perspective, but it was sometime during college, and I felt safe to make that change. I do not remember fretting about it very much. With the new information I had learned, it was a reasonable step to change my perspective. By the time I began graduate studies in sociology at Louisiana State University, I wasn’t grappling any more with my own perspective. When I began teaching, I taught my classes and engaged with my students on campus from a fully affirming perspective. However, I was still attending non-affirming churches and working with non-affirming faith-based organizations, and I mostly ignored the tension that existed between the doctrines of these communities and my own, individual perspective and academic work. I regret the length of time it took me to really step into that tension, wrestle with it, and determine that I could not live and belong with integrity in a community that rejected and harmed LGBTQ+ persons.

LSU Football Fun with Friends, 2011

Further wrestling was triggered first by an experience when an LGBTQ+ friend wanted to participate in a ministry I was leading and I had to tell them they couldn’t participate officially (fill out a registration form) and be open about their identity. The form, I realized, asked applicants about sexual orientation. I want to say this directly here: my actions harmed my friend. By discouraging them from applying and not challenging the organization’s use of sexual orientation as a litmus test for acceptance, I became the “tip of the spear” enforcing a policy I didn’t personally agree with in order to maintain my own belonging in that space. I compromised and chose my own safety and standing in that community over my friend’s. Someone was hurt and, more than that, a potential connection to a faith community was severed. Those kinds of cuts cause trauma that takes a lifetime to process and heal from and that (unsurprisingly) has led many LGBTQ+ persons to decide that life outside of the Christian community is safer and healthier for them and their families. I am not surprised many LGBTQ+ persons distance themselves from Christians (from us). I carry the knowledge, and the deep regret, that I have held (and used) the knife that makes those cuts.

Community work, 2012

Later, the more youth I mentored and served, the more I had to wrestle. I was working with churches where some of the youth I loved would not be safe. Inviting them into these communities could expose them to harm. I remember riding in the car with one of the teens one afternoon and being startled when they asked a direct question: “Can someone be a Christian and be gay?” I told them I believed yes, and gave a brief explanation of why. They were shocked. “I thought you couldn’t be gay and believe in God,” they told me. I explained that there were different perspectives and not all Christians or religious people agree but reiterated why I had landed where I landed when I asked those questions in my own faith journey. The teen nodded and the conversation was finished for a time. Months later, they quietly came out to some family members, friends, and to me. I also overheard them tell someone they were Catholic when they had previously said they were atheist. I realized that our initial conversation had been a safety test of sorts. They knew I was religious and were concerned I would reject them if I knew them fully. It broke my heart, and it also motivated me to wrestle harder with the misalignment between my perspective and the perspective of the communities I had continued to shelter in for so long. I was NOT OK with the idea that any young person I serve would wonder whether or not I would be fully in their corner because of who they are. I needed to do something about this misalignment.

Coaching Soccer, 2019

While I felt comfortable at Milligan shifting my perspective, by 2019 and 2020 I was aware my belonging in the religious communities I was part of relied on my silence about any questions or disagreements concerning doctrine. I do not think it has always been this way, but belonging in many churches has become equated with agreeing and believing – not just agreeing and believing in the same things, but also agreeing and believing this is the only right way of understanding God’s word and will. Increasingly, silence was becoming untenable and swallowing questions and stifling my own perspective was like drinking poison. I was also struggling with being unable to fully manifest and contribute my gifts in those faith communities, because being a sociology professor and academic in a “liberal” discipline was seen by many as inherently in conflict with being a person of faith, and women’s leadership and teaching was also suspect.

Celebrating receiving my PhD in Sociology, 2016

In addition to grappling with the misalignment in my life between my views on gender and sexuality and the views of the churches I was part of, I was also digging deeper into numerous other questions surrounding female leadership, the Great Commission and local and global missions, burnout in religious ministry and work spaces, white supremacy, afterlife theology, and more. On the question of “slippery slopes” – which is the idea that asking hard questions and changing perspectives can lead one down a slippery slope and away from religious faith – I would say YES, I was sliding, but I would counter the idea that I was “losing” my faith. I chose to quit a missions job, left or was exiled from multiple church communities (when I let churches and ministry supporters know I was affirming, many withdrew support immediately), and pressed pause for a while on any kind of faith-based work and leadership. I continued my everyday presence in the lives of the youth I serve, but I no longer did that service under any organizational umbrella.

 A picture from early 2019. I am smiling, but looking back I was really struggling with burn out and depression, and I had lost a lot of weight due to this

Sliding? Yes. But I slid deeper into faith in a God who is bigger than the boxes I was trying fit myself, and God, into. In fact, during this time I was in weekly therapy and one of the best conversations I had with my counselor centered around how a lot of the internal strife I was experiencing (that poisoning) was connected to trying to contain myself in the ill-fitting boxes I felt everyone expected me to be in, and being terrified of what I would lose (people, relationships, respect, love, etc.) if I allowed myself to exist outside of those boxes. I couldn’t be fully myself as God created me to be as long as I continued in those boxes. It would take courage to leave them behind, and the losses were not preventable. But it was also possible that abundant life and health and wholeness for me existed outside of the boxes rather than inside of them.

Here, I really appreciate some of Rachel Held Evans’ words:

Yes, the slippery slope brought doubts. Yes, the slippery slope brought change. Yes, the slippery slope brought danger and risk and unknowns. I am indeed more exposed to the elements out here, and at times it is hard to find my footing.  

But when I decided I wanted to follow Jesus as myself, with both my head and heart intact, the slippery slope was the only place I could find him, the only place I could engage my faith honestly. 

So down I went. 

It was easier before, when the path was wide and straight. 

But, truth be told, I was faking it.  I was pretending that things that didn’t make sense made sense, that things that didn’t feel right felt right.  To others, I appeared confident and in control, but faith felt as far away as friend who has grown distant and cold.

Now, every day is a risk. 

Now, I have no choice but to cling to faith and hope and love for dear life. 

Now, I have to keep a very close eye on Jesus, as he leads me through deep valleys and precarious peaks.  

But the view is better, and, for the first time in a long time, I am fully engaged in my faith. 

I am alive. 

I am dependent.

I am following Jesus as me—heart and head intact.  

And they were right.  All it took was a question or two to bring me here.

In late 2019 and throughout 2020, I made a lot of difficult decisions and changes. I mostly did the work quietly, although it did require me to share my fully affirming stance directly with numerous people and engage in some difficult phone and face-to-face conversations. The pandemic was in full force. Lots of things seemed to be falling apart beyond the neat life of faith and ministry I had crafted over the past decade since graduating from college and moving to Louisiana. But, some things were also carrying on – I was still spending a lot of time serving the community and investing in youth and coaching soccer – and some things were just beginning. Alejandro and I started dating in March 2020 after a couple of years of friendship and got married on December 30, 2020.

Our wedding in 2020, photo credit to my friend, Jarod Mills

In 2021, after a year of using Sunday mornings to brunch and read our Bible at home together, Alejandro and I began attending St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge. It was close to where we were living, and I googled “affirming churches in Baton Rouge” and it popped up. When I checked their website, their “About Us” they had a “Welcome Statement” that read:

“St. Margaret's Episcopal Church is an inclusive Christian community. Our members and leaders strive through love, worship and service to welcome all people just as God created them. No matter where you are on your journey of faith, our welcome knows no boundaries of age, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability, or economic condition. We believe that God delights in the diversity of creation and so do we.”

And I knew I had found my home. At a retreat in February 2022, I was part of a group of St. Margaret’s members who spent time in prayer and discernment and cast a vision for a ministry for Latino and Hispanic community members, and the La Mesa ministry was born. I was confirmed as an Episcopal in May 2022. That summer, I was invited to teach a couple of Sunday school classes. Teaching was something I had taken a 2+ year break from as my faith evolved, and I tentatively stepped back in. In January 2023, after a year of planning, we started teaching English and Spanish classes and sharing meals together to exchange language and culture with our Latino and Hispanic neighbors. My time at St. Margaret’s has been filled with joy and healing. Resurrection. Life, health, and wholeness. There are people in the congregation who would interpret Scripture differently from me or who believe strongly in doctrines I might question. However, agreement and belief in specific doctrines is not used as a dividing line or test for belonging in this faith community. All are welcome at the table of Jesus and we do our best to love our neighbors (and each other) and to love God well, together. It is a love that is much bigger, wider, and deeper than any single doctrine we might (or might not) believe or agree on. Because of this, we are able to offer ourselves more freely to one another and to Kingdom work. There is no silencing or stifling and every single person is celebrated and affirmed.

A recent photo from a La Mesa ministry activity at St. Margaret's

Each week, our priest asks if there are any birthdays or anniversaries? People come forward and he offers a blessing over their marriages and birthdays. The first time I saw a gay couple came forward and receive this blessing, and tell the congregation how long they had been together, and how long they had been married (these two dates are important because many of the people in our congregation have been committed to their partners for far longer than our country and some churches have affirmed their commitments and allowed them to marry), I caught my breath and felt tears well up and heard the Spirit whisper, And God saw that it was good.

Some More Thoughts

Lingering after reading about my journey might be some questions about how I “justify” or support my positions. I don’t think I can possibly answer all those questions as thoroughly as some might want (or demand), but I can give a few answers about what I believe and why and point to some resources and Scripture.

I believe all people are created in God’s image and that diversity, including gender and sexual diversity, is part of God’s design and creation. Why? Because LGBTQ+ people have existed across all of human history and in all cultures (even in times and places that had very different language and understandings for these identities and orientations, there is historical evidence of their presence), and now we have the scientific evidence to support the understanding that sex and gender in humans is more complicated than an XX, XY binary.

I do not believe that being LGBTQ+ (or “acting” on these identities and orientations) is sinful or that it causes any kind of inherent separation from God. It should thus not lead to any separation from God’s family. Marriages and families should be celebrated and fully affirmed, and LGBTQ+ persons should be encouraged to contribute and lead in all areas of Christian community. This community is described as a “body” in Scripture (1 Corinthians 12:14-26), with the idea that all parts are of equal importance and necessity. This means that severing LGBTQ+ persons from the body not only harms those persons – it weakens and diminishes the entire body.

But what about parts of the Bible that appear to condemn homosexuality? First, the term “homosexuality” and the idea of loving, mutual, same-sex relationships did not exist when the Bible was written. The word homosexuality was added to translations of the Bible much later than most of us realize. Second, during the time periods when the Bible was written, people did not have the scientific knowledge we now have about the complexity of sex and gender. There has been a lot of good Biblical scholarship that shows that there are multiple possible interpretations for Bible verses that appear to condemn homosexuality – some of that scholarship is summarized well by Matthew Vines in this talk; and ultimately that ALL of us pick and choose which passages of the Bible from the Old and New Testaments to commit to following and which passages we deem as ancient “cultural norms” that do not necessarily need to carry over to our lives (e.g. head coverings and other clothing mandates, tattoos, food rules, punishments of various types of offenses, perspectives about divorce and remarriage, etc.). We may not use the language “pick and choose” but this is essentially what we have done from generation to generation as various church denominations and cultures have emerged. And not all churches and denominations agree on much beyond the importance of Jesus. Practices and traditions and doctrines vary widely. No one in 2023 follows the letter of the Biblical law as it is expressed in the Old and New Testaments because it would be impractical and likely impossible to do so. What are we left with? I think Jesus summarized it well when pressed for an answer to this question: “[Jesus] said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).

Is it ok to change our perspective on long-held theological doctrines? Yes, and there is precedent for this in Scripture. It is particularly evident in the New Testament as the Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah grappled with how to incorporate Gentiles – people from non-Jewish backgrounds – into this new community. Scripture is clear about who was/wasn’t welcome, and even about how closely the Jews should/shouldn’t interact with people deemed to be on the outside of the Jewish community. God seems to know this will be an obstacle for people, even for leaders like Peter. God sends Peter some strange visions and then sends Peter to a Gentile household. Peter follows without fully understanding. That is, until the Holy Spirit falls on the members of that household and Peter witnesses God’s work in and through them. From Acts 10, “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean… the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.” Also in Acts, Philip meets an Ethiopian eunuch – an ethnic and sexual minority in that society – who is reading scripture. After a brief encounter, the eunuch expresses a desire to be baptized and Philip baptizes him immediately: “As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip^[i] baptized him.”

In my own life, numerous LGBTQ+ persons have been important friends, mentors, teachers, and pastors for me. I have seen God work in and through them, and that experience is affirmation enough for me, just like it was for Peter and other early Christians.

In the popular TV show Ted Lasso, Ted emphasizes the idea that we should be curious, not judgmental when confronted with difference. It is a powerful scene (seriously, click on the link to watch the clip!). 

Moving away from judgement is in Jesus’ teachings, but unfortunately contemporary Christians are known for being quick to judge and condemn. We are not known to be curious when confronted with different realities and experiences. Why? Some of the lack of curiosity is due to a fear of losing our belonging in our faith communities if we appear to question or disagree with certain doctrines. Some of it is also due to a fierce desire to maintain “certainty” and a fear of “losing” faith if we ask too many questions or delve too deeply into mysteries of life. Many of us are taught a particular interpretation of the Bible without being told it is an interpretation among many possible interpretations. Many denominations of Christianity rely on a doctrine of “Biblical inerrancy.” I was taught this doctrine growing up and did not realize until recently that it is a doctrine with relatively recent historical roots, not something that is clearly in the Bible itself or even held by most Christians across history. In fact, the Episcopal church has a very deep, and yet different, relationship with the Bible than the churches I was raised in that emphasized a literal interpretation of an inerrant Bible. Anglicans equally value Scripture, tradition, and reason and view them as a three-legged stool on which our lives of faith rest. We should always be balancing interpretations of Scripture with generations of church tradition and with our human capacity to think and feel. God has given us Scripture, tradition, and reason, and we should exercise all three. 

I do not understand the Bible to be “inerrant” or a “rule book” these days; nor do I think I necessarily have the only “right” interpretation if such a thing actually exists. I acknowledge the Bible is a complicated book that was created through an inspired partnership between God and people, and I believe the Bible provides an open-door through which we can interact with God. It isn’t the only way of interacting with God, but it remains an important avenue of connecting with God in my life. I also think it is important to separate the Bible from the Trinity (the complicated Christian doctrine that God is one but exists in three persons: God/parent, Jesus/Son, and Holy Spirit). That relationship is distorted in many Christian communities that look at John 1 where Jesus is mysteriously equated with God’s word –  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,^[d] full of grace and truth” (John 1:14) -  and then stretch that into an equation that says something like, “The Bible is ‘God’s Word’, and Jesus is God’s Word according to the Bible, so the Bible basically is Jesus and vice versa…”

Scripture says that perfect love casts out fear and that God is love (1 John 4:16-21). Jesus says he did not come to condemn. He directed his followers to love their neighbors and to love God and did not elaborate on complicated doctrines or boundary setting (who is in/out) in his teaching. He did call his disciples to be “doers” and not merely “hearers” (Matthew 7:24-29) but this doing is clearly around Sermon on the Mount teaching (which boils down to loving others and God well), not on religious community boundary setting. In fact, many of Jesus’ parables and his interactions challenged who first-century Jews included and excluded in their understanding of God’s promises and Kingdom. We should be wary of any teachings in the contemporary church that favor condemnation and exclusion and inspire fear and judgement.

Does being curious and open to changing perspectives challenge certainty? It certainly can. Does being less certain lead to less trust in God? In my experience, it is exactly the opposite. I am less certain about many things, but in the mystery, I trust God more, not less.

Happy Pride, and God’s Peace Be With You All.