Don’t be too big for your britches. Don’t get a big head. Don’t forget your place. God wants you to be humble. God wants you to give the glory to Him (again, in these situations, God is always Him).

We were told it in slogans “Joy means Jesus, Others, You.” Or the popular one of recent years, “I’m second.”

Self-denial was the best way to be a good Christian. Do whatever God wants you to do. Give up your own desires. If you’re good at something and love doing it it’s probably a test to see if you’re willing to give it up. So best just to give it up so God will get the glory.

So it was pretty complicated when I came out and there was this whole movement about being “proud” of your identity. Good Christians aren’t allowed to be proud.

And of course, that’s what the anti-gay folks will harp on: Look at these homosexuals being PROUD of their sin! They are flaunting their identity! They are proud to spit in the face of God!

But when the Bible talks about Pride the Bible is talking about people who lord their station over others. People who are oppressors and tyrants. People who think they speak for God. The Bible is talking about people who are cruel to others, who sow dissension, who don’t act in the best interest of the community.

It isn’t talking about people with a healthy self-definition. People who understand that God has made them special and good. People who understand that God has given them gifts to be used for the good of the community. When queer and trans folks talk about being proud we’re talking about our pleasure in being able to be who we are. We’re talking about being glad that we had the courage to come out. We’re talking about the joy of surviving a hostile world. And yes, we’re talking about being proud to claim our identities in the midst of a world that is constantly telling us we are less than.

But this isn’t the sinful pride of oppressors and tyrants (those crying about baking cakes and gay marriage notwithstanding). This isn’t the pride of speaking for God. This isn’t the pride of using your wealth to hold yourself up and pushing the poor toward deeper poverty.

What I came to realize is the opposite of pride isn’t humility, it’s shame.

What I was really being taught, over and over and over again, was to be ashamed. For taking up too much space, for daring to be a leader, for asking questions. For looking different, for loving who I loved, for using the gifts I had been given. The way we were taught about pride was as if to make its opposite humility. But we weren’t being taught to be humble, we were being taught to be humiliated.

These Christians didn’t just want queer and trans folks to not be proud (as in haughty and stuck up) they wanted us to be ashamed. Because ashamed people are easier to control. They are easier to keep in their place. They are easier to push to the side.

People who are ashamed hide. They sometimes engage in risky behavior. They sometimes hurt themselves. And the anti-gay folks would hold up that hiding as evidence of how sick and sinful being queer and trans is instead of realizing that these actions were symptoms of shame. They were symptoms of a disease that was being pushed on us by those very anti-gay people.

But people who have a healthy sense of self, who can stand in their own identity especially in the face of hatred, those people are dangerous. Those people fight to protect themselves and their communities. Those people feel that they are deserving of rights. Those people will unite and work to get those rights. You can see why this terrifies the oppressors. Because when people claim their space in the world, suddenly the oppressor feels their hold slipping a little bit. When queer and trans folks walk through the streets proclaiming their identity; that they and their bodies and their desires are good, the people who are afraid of that get a little more afraid because they see their power slipping. They see that queer and trans folks aren’t just going to go away. They aren’t going to hide anymore. They aren’t going to allow themselves to be sent to conversion camps or hide their relationships or not transition.

When people stand up and say “We will no longer be humiliated” this isn’t a sin. Itâ’s actually fulfilling what Jesus said his mission was: “That they will have abundant life.” When queer and trans people say that we are proud of who we are we are claiming that abundant life and living it to the full.

So go out there and be proud. Claim your identity. Live into the fullness of the gifts that God has given you. This isn’t a sin, it’s salvation.

Did you know you can support my work on Patreon?

Photo Credit: mikecogh Flickr via Compfight cc

The post The Sin of Pride appeared first on Queer Theology.

As you look at the faces and spokespeople of this movement they are either white, cisgender, straight allies or white, cisgender, gay men with the occasional lesbian in the mix. Amongst these folks there are some common themes:

• All believe (or say publicly that they believe) in celibacy in singleness and then monogamous gay marriage.
• All talk about arguing for inclusion based on the Bible; but not necessarily from the story of Jesus, more it’s about debating the “clobber passages”.
• They don’t challenge any other doctrinal tenets. In fact, they go out of their way to affirm evangelical theology.

All of this points to a heavy emphasis on respectability politics and these politics aren’t just being foisted on us from outside of the LG(BT) community but are coming from the people being held up as leaders of the movement.

If you begin to follow the conversations online you notice a couple of things: The gay and lesbian people who are held up as the ones to listen to are polite, soft-spoken, center the feelings of allies, and rarely (if ever) get angry. They focus on the “clobber passages” and don’t talk about liberation in broader terms. They are content to stay in their evangelical churches. They don’t unpack how other theology is harmful, not just to queer people but to straight and cis folks as well. Their entire conversation can be boiled down to “I’m just like you, only gay.”

We believe that by playing these games we are winning the hearts and minds of people. We believe that we are making them love us and trust us. We believe that we are breaking down barriers and creating inclusion. But we are still playing someone else’s game. We are still basing our self-worth on the rules laid out by a church that honestly wishes we would just go away.

We’re setting up a hierarchy that allows straight and cisgender people to hold up the “good gays” and silence the “bad gays.” And who are the bad gays? They are anyone who believes that liberation should be for all queer and trans people. They are the ones who get angry or raise their voices about injustice. They are the ones who say that it’s not okay for allies to speak over queer and trans people. They are the ones who say that there is more than one way to be queer or trans, that you don’t have to be celibate, that you can medically transition if that’s what’s right for you. The bad gays are the ones that tell you to read a book instead of going over the clobber passages for the 7000th time. They are the ones who read the Bible not as a list of do’s and don’ts but as a textbook of liberation.

And this hierarchy isn’t doing any of us any good because it’s all about behavior, not about our intrinsic value. They’ll love you if you are celibate, but if you have sex you’re done.

Here’s the thing about respectability politics; they don’t work. They are based on a false notion that says if only you behave, if only you play by the rules, if only you are good enough, then the church will love and accept you. But it’s not true. Because even when you tell them you are celibate they still think you are having sex. And even when you quote the Bible at them they still distrust your reading of it. Even when you dress like them and talk like them and marry like them they are still waiting for you to mess up so they can discredit you.

And as you play into respectability politics you are not actually working for liberation. You are saying, “I’m not like those other queers. I’m one of the good ones.” And by saying that you allow straight and cisgender people to say it as well and suddenly the “bad queers” are pushed to the side, or worse, pushed out entirely.

When the people who hate us come for us (and they will) they won’t care that you are celibate. Or that you are married with a picket fence and 2.5 kids. They won’t care that you are white and dress nice and toe the line. They will look at you as if you are just like all of the other queer and trans people, the ones that you have said you aren’t like. They won’t see the differences between us. They will lump us all together. In that moment your respectability will not save you. They will still say that you don’t have a place in their churches, that you don’t deserve to have civil rights, that it would be better off if you would just go away.

Setting up this hierarchy allows people to control us. It also allows people to say who deserves respect and rights. You deserve rights if you toe the line and behave. You deserve respect if you are polite and don’t get angry and speak softly.

But is it really what you want that only the people who the majority think are deserving get rights and respect? Do you really want to be in a position where, at some point, the majority might turn on you and you have no recourse? Where do we draw the line?

You can live however you want. You can choose celibacy or singleness or marriage for yourself; that is not the issue here. But when you demand it from other people or when you set it up so that your choice is the one that is acceptable by the straight and cisgender people you are being harmful.

I want liberation for all queer and trans people. I want liberation and welcome in the church for the ones that are celibate and polite and want nothing more than to get married and I want it for the ones who are kinky and polyamorous and hook up. I want it for all of us because we are all worthy and beloved and good just as we are. We don’t have to fit into anyone’s boxes or to anyone’s lines we simply need to be true to ourselves and that must be good enough.

Liberation is about liberation for all of us, and if it’s not liberation for all of us it’s not liberation. When you narrow the rules so that only the “good” get in you’re not actually working for liberation. You’re working so that we can be defined by someone else’s rules and priorities and that’s not good enough.

We don’t need acceptance. We don’t need approval. We don’t need permission. We need liberation.

Photo Credit: aturkus Flickr via Compfight cc

The post LGBT Christian Respectability Politics Have Got To Go appeared first on Queer Theology.

I found something that did. It’s the same something that Fr. Shay found. And it became the basis for QueerTheology.com eight years ago.

But the paths to progress and healing aren’t linear and anyway, sometimes our faith needs inspiration from unexpected places, so before I get there, an aside.

When I was 18 and a freshman in college, I hit a breaking point. I didn’t have all the answers to how being gay might fit together with being Christian.

But I was damned near sure that I was going to have to reckon with it.

My friendship with Robbie shifted something in me. At the time, it was hella stressful. Homosexuality went from this thing I did sometimes — look at porn, linger too long in the bathing suit section of a catalog, think the wrong type of thought — to something that I was. Constantly. It was inescapable. Every cute boy, every moment with Robbie, every moment away from him: I was constantly aware that this wasn’t just an action, it was some part of me.

By the time I was starting college, I’d already stumbled upon what has become one of my favorite Bible verses: “Test everything, hold fast to that which is good;” 1 Thessalonians 5:21. (BTW if you want some daily doses of queer-positive spiritual inspiration, enter your info here to get daily affirmations emailed every weekday).

I also knew that God created me, and that I was very good. So I decided that was enough.

That God trusted me. Maybe even that God could be my wingman. But definitely that, no matter what, God would love me.

In the greatest commandment, Jesus shares that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Love of God, love of self, and love of others are all bound up together, I had to learn to love myself.

So, I stopped trying to figure it out.

I stopped researching the clobber passages. I stopped going to church. I mostly stopped reading my Bible, too. Unbeknownst to me, thousands of miles away, Shay was doing the same thing. He talks about that in A Guide to Recovering From Fundamentalism. We wouldn’t meet for another 5 years, but God was leading us down similar paths.

I started making gay friends. Then I started telling them that I was gay, then telling my best friends. Eventually, everyone knew and I was out.

Meeting all sorts of LGBTQ people, from all sorts of different backgrounds, in all different places on their journey was crucial for me. Different religions and no religions, some with wonderfully accepting parents, others who had been kicked, some who weren’t out yet, others who had been out for decades.

Friendships are sacred. We are social creatures. We need community.

I went to queer parties and met guys and had a bunch of one-night stands. I got crushes, tried dating, fell in love, and got my heart broken.

At the time, it sometimes felt a little messy. It took me a while to stumble through creating a sexual ethic. I bumped heads with my parents A LOT and had to learn the hard way to develop my own support systems and set healthy boundaries.

Eventually, I got involved with LGBTQ-activism, confronting discriminatory policies at Christian colleges. Then I plugged into activism in New York State, and eventually NYC. The work pushed me to become more intersectional in my thinking and organizing. A good friend, Tauret, told me to read The Color of Violence rather than explain to me why she opposed hate crimes legislation. The book, and the example she set by giving folks, even your friends, work to do, was a revelation for me.

It was in protest lines and squaring off with police and huddled together in rural basements and crammed into tiny closets of rooms in the NYC LGBT Center that I felt the presence of the Spirit more than I’d ever felt in a Bible study or evangelical worship service (and I thought I’d felt a whole lot of spirit before).

Eventually, I found my way to progressive Christian churches. Places that took their faith seriously but also made room for doubts. Places where Bible studies and AA meetings and beds for homeless folks were side by side.

But, as wonderful as those places were, there was still something missing. Even though progressive Christian churches often have LGBTQ members and sometimes even LGBTQ staff or pastors, I found myself hungry for more.

I didn’t want to be told how I could fit into this faith, I wanted to explore what new insight queerness had to offer this ancient faith.

At the time, the “LGBT Christian conversation” was almost exclusively focused on defending our right to exist and trying to explain the clobber passages. So I started making YouTube videos about them, but I had no interest in being on the defensive.

We’ve all heard the same arguments.

John Shelby Spong and others made the case decades ago. I wanted to find out what was already queer about those passages. What were we missing?

I started talking to Shay more and he was doing similar work. We started looking for even more queer connections. We kept sharing what we were figuring out.

At bible studies and small groups…

At the Philadelphia Transgender Wellness Conference.

When we discovered that there were no LGBTQ speakers (only a few featured artists) at the first-ever Wild Goose Festival, Fr. Shay and I went rogue and wore our Legalize Trans shirts the entire festival, drawing to us folks who had questions and were HUNGRY to go beyond the 101 conversations.

We saw over and over again that proactively proclaiming a queer gospel, rather than dryly, defensively trying to argue over ancient translations, is what liberates both LGBTQ people and soon-to-be straight, cisgender allies.

So we registered the QueerTheology.com and domain and hosted a Google Hangouts course on how to queer the Bible. 10 people signed up. So we did it again with another 10. And then again. And we kept asking “What else?” What else is missing? What needs to be said?

It’s why Shay was writing about deconstruction years before Rachel Held Evans popularized it. We were talking about purity culture with @ No Shame Movement all the way back in 2014. It’s why I was the first queer Christian to talk publicly about polyamory, even though it brought death threats.

(If you want us to talk at your church or school about one of these things, we’d love to! Let’s talk!)

When you lead with queerness, God reveals themself more and more. When you combine that with love and service, so much is possible.

I think a lot about my sixth-grade Sunday school teacher, Mr. McKinnon these days. He had such a passion for spreading the gospel as he understood it. He was the first person that made Christianity engaging for me. Unfortunately, it was at a church that has no place for LGBTQ people, or women in leadership. It has no place for anyone outside of their narrow definition of the right type of Christian, everyone else is damned by God to hell.

Those evangelical Sunday school teachers taught me that if you have a life-saving message, you can’t hide it away, you’ve got to share it.

I’ve seen how listening to queer people, how queering Christianity, how honoring the sacredness of queer friendship and family and bodies and sex is liberating and life-giving. It’s connected me to something-bigger-than-myself-which-I-guess-is-what-we-call-God.

So we keep sharing it. Because the queer gospel is good news.

If you’re ready to move past the point of wondering whether it’s okay to be LGBTQ and Christian and now you’re asking “how do might faith and my sexuality or gender enrich one another?” we put together a short series to lead you deeper and deeper into the queer Gospel.

You can sign up for that (for free) right here.

Divine revelations are already inside of you. We’ll help you tap into the whispers and yearnings of the Holy Spirit (she’s queer).

The post Brian’s Story P2 appeared first on Queer Theology.

The Lord’s power overcame me, and while I was in the Lord’s spirit, he led me out and set me down in the middle of a certain valley. It was full of bones.  He led me through them all around, and I saw that there were a great many of them on the valley floor, and they were very dry. He asked me, “Human one, can these bones live again?” I said, “Lord God, only you know.” He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, Dry bones, hear the Lord’s word!  The Lord God proclaims to these bones: I am about to put breath in you, and you will live again.  I will put sinews on you, place flesh on you, and cover you with skin. When I put breath in you, and you come to life, you will know that I am the Lord.” I prophesied just as I was commanded. There was a great noise as I was prophesying, then a great quaking, and the bones came together, bone by bone. When I looked, suddenly there were sinews on them. The flesh appeared, and then they were covered over with skin. But there was still no breath in them. He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, human one! Say to the breath, The Lord God proclaims: Come from the four winds, breath! Breathe into these dead bodies and let them live.” I prophesied just as he commanded me. When the breath entered them, they came to life and stood on their feet, an extraordinarily large company. He said to me, “Human one, these bones are the entire house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished. We are completely finished.’ So now, prophesy and say to them, The Lord God proclaims: I’m opening your graves! I will raise you up from your graves, my people, and I will bring you to Israel’s fertile land.  You will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you up from your graves, my people.  I will put my breath[a] in you, and you will live. I will plant you on your fertile land, and you will know that I am the Lord. I’ve spoken, and I will do it. This is what the Lord says.”

In the tradition in which I grew up, I was taught that there was a divide between the body and the soul. That the soul was what was important and that care for the body was second to care for the soul. I think that all of us struggle with this body and soul divide in one way or another, especially when it comes to dealing with society and bodies. Society loves to tell people how they have to be in the world, and it can lead to pain and confusion when what you experience doesn’t match up to what society is telling you. In some situations we’re continually told to deny our bodies and just focus on our souls because that’s what really matters. But then we turn to this passage in Ezekiel and we see that bodies mean something. 

Ezekiel is led to see all of these bones in a valley and he is told to prophesy to the bones, and to prophesy to the winds and by doing so he makes these bodies come back to life. This passage is written in the midst of Israel’s exile. They were taken away from their homes and their land and forced into captivity. They wondered if they would ever be able to find a way back. These bones become people had died away from their homes, alienated from all that they knew. They were cut off from their community, from life itself. But now they were experiencing resurrection, and not just a spiritual resurrection. When I read this passage I was really struck by the fact that this resurrection is bodily. It wasn’t just their souls being sent to heaven, or a spiritual return to the land, it was bodily. It was physical. And the reason this struck me is because that body and soul dualism has been so ingrained me. I have been continually taught that only the soul matters and so when I read that maybe bodies matter too I was taken aback.  It’s hard to overcome the ways we are taught to think about ourselves. This idea of exile; exile from our bodies is ingrained into us.

I think we all experience exile from our bodies. We feel alienated from our physicality for any number of reasons. And we live in a world that so devalues bodies that the murders of three gender variant people in the last couple of months have gone largely unreported by the mainstream. The stories of these people drive home the point that even now people are being left as dry bones in a society that pushes them into exile. Even now this disregard for bodies allows the murders of people we deem unimportant. It allows us to demonize others in the press. It allows us to demonize ourselves when we don’t measure up to society’s standards.

And it’s not just queer people; it’s all people that don’t measure up to what society sets as the ideal. And somehow we all seem to fall short of that ideal, by being not beautiful enough, not thin enough, not athletic enough. We are marginalized by thinking we are just not good enough. Or for some, maybe your body doesn’t work like you think it should, or like it once did.  And so we reject our bodies. We turn to intellectual pursuits or to the development of our inner life, and while these things are important, it’s important not to neglect our bodies either. What does it mean to live in a body that you feel alienated from? 

For me exile has taken the form of being a transgender person. I have experienced life in a body that does not match my soul. I have been perceived by society to be something that I am not. And so I felt and sometimes continue to feel that alienation in the core of who I am.  From constantly hearing people use the wrong pronouns for me, to looking in the mirror and seeing a form that does not reflect who I truly am.  It has been a long journey to be able to even have the words to explain this truth about myself. Growing up I was never taught that there were some people who didn’t feel that their gender was correct. I was taught that my only options were to deny myself and to try to fit into how society told me to be. People were constantly telling me how to live. So I ignored my body. I wore baggy clothes to hide my developing frame. During the times when I tried to dress in female clothing to make other people happy I just looked awkward and uncomfortable. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I started to really take ownership of my own body, but even that had its limits. I was still perceived as a female and still felt that the labels that were placed upon me didn’t fit. Coming to claim my transgender identity was hard. I was afraid of what people would think, I was afraid of losing my family. I was afraid of not being able to get ordained or being able to get a job. But finally it was the fear of losing myself that outweighed all of those other fears. The need to reclaim my body as my own and to live into my own truth. The need to be able to be seen as the man that I am. Those desires are what led to me finally coming out and embracing my transgender identity. 

My journey has led me into a bodily resurrection of sorts. I am working on reclaiming my body. As a way to return from exile into the promised land of being at home in my own skin, and reuniting body and soul together. I am reshaping my body into the male form that matches my mind. I am asking people to address me in the way that fits who I am. I am being firm in standing up for myself and asking people to see me; all of me, as a person, as a man. By doing this I begin to reclaim my body as my own.  But it’s definitely not an easy process. It takes time for the reshaping to complete. It took time for people to perceive me as I am. And it means dealing with people who will hate me simply for telling the truth about myself. It means dealing with well-meaning folks who refuse to get my pronouns right. It means facing the fact that I am sometimes in danger from people who can’t get past their own hate. 

Taking charge of my body in this way has led me to be in touch with it in a way that I never have been before. It’s helped me to take better care of myself, and to make sure that I am getting the medical care that I need. I care about my physical body for the first time in my life. It has also been teaching me how it is that we come to terms with bodies that aren’t the way we would like them to be.  

But it’s not an easy task and there are no easy answers. There isn’t a magic formula that allows you to feel at home in your body. It’s hard work. It means letting go of the expectations of society and not allowing anyone to define who you are. It means being willing to risk yourself with honesty.  It means accepting that you might never be completely the person you wish you were, but realizing that the person you are has merit and value. 

It means accepting your scars and learning to love them. Embracing all of who you are. Working to reunite your body with your soul, not denying either of them, but finding fullness and wholeness. 

I think queer bodies have a lot to teach all of us about how it is that we experience our bodies and live into who we are. But it’s not just about being a queer person; this resurrection is open to us all. It takes the form of knowing who you are at your core; taking the time to find out what it means for you to be at one with your body. It means not allowing other people to define your body and how you use it or what it should look like. We live in a world that wants to break our bodies, our spirits and our hope. Our traditions and our societies often leave us as dry bones in the valley.  But we are not lost. We are not left in exile. We have the wind that comes into us and makes us live. When we take the time to reclaim our own bodies, as holy and whole, we come back from exile. 

This is a process that never ends. We are continually reinventing and rediscovering ways to be at home in our bodies. But we must live into our bodies to know what it means to be whole people. And while we are on this journey we learn to challenge society and their standards in the hopes that we will lead others back from exile.

Our duty, once we have experienced this resurrection for ourselves is to be Ezekiel in our world. But we are still left with questions:

What about the people who aren’t raised? The people who can’t reconcile their bodies and their souls?  The people who are murdered because of who they are?  Who will bring these bodies back from exile? Who will prophesy to these bones and make them live?

The post Dry Bones appeared first on Queer Theology.

I’m wondering: what are your earliest memories of your queerness? Would you reply and let me know? Send a message or drop into our DMs.

For me, it started first with guys catching my attention in a way that I couldn’t quite identify.

Certain friends making more of an impression on me than others. I didn’t have any other idea of what it could be other than just “I want to be his friend.”

Then, I started noticing more specific attractions: shirtless guys, guys in bathing suits, the underwear packages in department stores. 

When I realized that sort of thing might be “gay,” it was easy enough for me to brush off. If that’s gay, then gay is an action. And if gay is an action, I can just… not do that. 

That also meant every time I did a double-take when a cute guy walked by or or god-forbid searched out porn, I was DOING something wrong. I was actively sinning, or so I thought.

That’s why, the first time I realized I had feelings for a guy, it ruined me. 

Not just that he was catching my eye or that I had watched a certain type of porn or even that I had felt a strong connection to a TV character (helllllo Brink from Disney Channel), but FEELINGS.

I wanted to be close to him.

I wanted to hold him.

I wanted to be held by him.

I wanted him to see and understand me fully.

I wanted to see and understand him fully.

I wanted to support him and nurture him and build something special together with him.

And yes, I wanted to kiss him too.

And… I didn’t quite know what to do with that.

How could that be wrong?

And how could I stop caring about someone? I don’t think I can.

That sent me on a path to figure out “what the Bible said about homosexuality” and how this… whatever THIS was… might fit in (or not) with my Christian faith. 

I did what lots of LGBTQ Christians do—what you might have done—I researched those “clobber passages” or texts of terror. 

I made a short video series about that experience. About seeking to understand “what the Bible says” and about what I discovered. You can watch that below.

But ultimately what I found was unfulfilling.

There weren’t enough articles I could read about “those verses” to ever fully assuage my doubts. 

Thankfully, I found something else that did. And that something became the basis for QueerTheology.com eight years ago. 

I’ll share more about that soon. Make sure you’re subscribed to our emails to hear. You can do that below.

The post The first step in coming out LGBTQ as an Christian appeared first on Queer Theology.

It’s hardest when they are kind because then when they are not kind it cuts more deeply. When they ask about your life but then you see the tense jaw and the pursed lips as you answer. Even when you are telling about something that is incredibly important to you or that you are passionate about. You can see their tension if it goes against what they approve of. They might respond with a “that’s nice” but you know they don’t think it’s nice. The next time they ask about your life you are more careful. You tell the sanitized version. You leave some stuff out.

When they are kind you feel like you are the crazy one for being offended. When they are kind you feel like you aren’t doing enough to help them understand. When they are kind you bend over backward to educate them more, to do whatever they ask of you. You watch what clothes you wear when you come home, you shave every single morning (even though you would never do that at home), you don’t watch your favorite tv shows or listen to the music you like. You go home even though it’s uncomfortable because “that’s what you do for family.” You sit through services at their church because “This is what we do on Sundays.” You don’t protest, you just go and listen to harmful theology being spoken over you. It’s not that you are trying to avoid confrontation, you are trying to be the best person you can be and cause the least offense.

When they are kind it’s harder to say, “Your behavior hurt me.” Because they will say they didn’t mean for it to hurt you. They were just sharing their beliefs. You can believe whatever you want “but in this house”. They will tell you that you are being too sensitive.

Later on they will call you dishonest. They will say you left too much out, that you deceived them. They will say that you are the one who shut them out of your life. They won’t realize that they are the ones who set the boundaries on the acceptable conversation with their non-verbal gestures, with their snide comments back, with their clear disapproval. They will say that you hurt them. That they feel excluded. That they love you and want to be in your life. Maybe you will try again to let them in. You will get the same response. You will hurt even more.

Later on, they will say that you are the one who is causing the rift. You aren’t respecting their feelings/beliefs. You aren’t willing to compromise. Even though, for years, you were the only one to compromise. Even though you have spent so much of your life leaving parts of yourself outside the house when you come to visit. Even though you have endured wrong pronouns and rude comments about your gender or politics or line of work. Even though you have remained silent so that you won’t cause offense. Even though you have done all of that, the moment you say that you can’t do it anymore, you become the bad guy. You become the one who is ruining the family. You become the one who is making things harder on everyone.

But you are the one who is sitting alone on Thanksgiving because you simply cannot bear to go home and hear people call you by the wrong name or pronoun for one more holiday. You cannot bear to smile even though you want to be weeping. You cannot bear to keep so much of yourself hidden. But you are alone. As your other friends trek off to see their relatives and laugh and play board games you make yourself some turkey and crawl into bed to watch Netflix. You know you did the right thing but it still feels like you are being punished. It always feels like you are the one being punished.

And you wonder why you can’t ever seem to stop bleeding. Why, whenever you meet someone new, it’s their voice you hear in your head telling you you aren’t worthy of love. But it’s a subtle voice with kind tones.

This benevolent homophobia will kill you slowly and keep you coming back for more because, after all, they are so kind. They would never intentionally hurt you.

They love you, after all.

It’s hardest when they are kind.

If you’re struggling with an unaffirming family or church and need support figuring out how to make a plan to cope and have hard conversation, check out our SoulSafe workshop. It will walk you through everything you need to know and do to handle these situations.

The post When They Are Kind (They Kill You Slower) appeared first on Queer Theology.

Seminary was both trying and incredible. I was finally given the tools to understand my faith. I learned all of these things that had been kept from me in all of my evangelical schooling. I learned where certain doctrines came from and how there were a lot of different views on things I had always been taught were settled. Things like what salvation meant, what the death of Jesus meant, what sin was, and on and on. I learned about the history of various denominations which made what they believed make so much sense. I learned that nothing is formed in a vacuum; everything has a context.

Make no mistake, this was hard work. It was rigorous. It took effort and commitment. In some ways it would have been easier to not put in the work. To just walk away from Christianity. But there was something about this Jesus story that kept pulling me back in and made me want to find out if I could have a faith that was life-giving. 

So I put in the work and it was was healing. But it also wasn’t over. 

Then I came out as transgender my second year of seminary. I had wonderfully supportive friends and a faculty that was mostly on my side but didn’t always know what to do with me. I had to listen to professors make transphobic statements in class and deal with classmates who, even after I had been medically transitioned for a while still couldn’t get my pronouns right. And I had to be a walking explanation for what it meant to be trans. It was exhausting. I was still working pretty much full time, attending seminary, and trying to hold my now struggling marriage together. It was an incredibly difficult time and because my faith had shifted so much from the emotional to the intellectual I found that I had no real emotional support to get me through these changes.

See, what the evangelical church gets right is that our faith, our spirituality can’t just be about intellect. It has to be about our hearts being in relationship with something bigger than we are. I had to find a way to engage my heart again without dismissing my head in the process. 

My faith was intellectually strong, but I hadn’t figured out how to have an emotional connection to it anymore. It used to be that I read the Bible like a love letter and talked to God like a friend. Now I was reading the Bible like a textbook and viewing God as a distant deity. Something needed to change. Again.

It was during this time that I took my preaching and worship class coupled with an exegesis for the arts class. In less fancy language exegesis is about sussing out what the text is really about; reading into the cultural context and figuring out how to make it relevant. 

We were studying the book of John, reading the story of Thomas, and suddenly something shifted in me. I was engaged with the Bible again for the first time since my evangelical days. And instead of the text being used as a weapon against me; instead of having to use the Bible to defend my right to exist, I was instead seeing myself in the text and allowing the story to enter into my life. My head and my heart were once again engaged. And I realized that by transitioning I had come back from exile; the exile I had felt from my body, from the Bible, from God, from my heart.

I graduated from seminary and my wife and I divorced two weeks later. She couldn’t handle my transition and we needed to part ways. It was at the end of that summer that I moved to Minnesota and started a new phase of my life. 

When I was in college, and after, I had fallen in love with some Catholic theologians and activists: Daniel and Philip Berrigan and Dorothy Day. I also loved how connected the spiritual and the justice work was in Catholicism and also how physical it all was. Some folks make fun of all the standing, sitting, kneeling, but I love it! I appreciate that the worship is embodied. 

Of course I wrote off ever being a part of the Catholic church. I could no longer be a part of a religious tradition that didn’t ordain women or LGBT folks and I knew that they would never ordain a transgender man. Then one day on Twitter, of all places, someone reached out to me and asked me if I could help spread the word that the Old Catholic Church ordained transgender people. Now, I had never heard of the Old Catholic church, so I asked him to tell me more.

The Old Catholic Church is an independent, progressive Catholic church (not in communion with Rome) that ordains women, LGBTQ people, and people who are married/partnered/or divorced. 

The more I heard about it the more I knew that this was where I needed to be. I was ordained to the diaconate (a transitional training period) at the Transgender Health Conference in Philadelphia. Then, about 9 months later, I was ordained to the priesthood.  

From my upbringing as a fundamentalist, to my time as an exvangelical, to now my life has been a constant exploration of faith. I’ve learned how to stay curious. How to interrogate my beliefs. How to love learning. 

And now my main calling is to help others to do the same. To walk with others as they bring their full selves to the Bible and to God, often for the first time. It’s both sharing what I’ve learned, but also teaching the skills no one knew to teach me when I started this deconstruction process so many years ago. 

Our work at QueerTheology.com is centered in a belief that everyone can and should do theology, but that you have to put in the work to do it well. 

A life of healthy faith is possible for you, if you want it, but it requires work. No longer can we just listen to what other people say, we have to investigate for ourselves. But the great thing is we’re not alone on our journey. 

When I went through all of this, for so much of it I was on my own. Anxious at night. Pleading for answers. No one to talk to. Now I look around and there is a thriving community of people who are doing the work together. We are telling our stories, praying for each other, and learning a new way of being. It’s gorgeous and I’m so grateful to be a part of it. 

The post A Healthy, Life-giving Faith appeared first on Queer Theology.

As difficult as the summer was, I still felt called to ministry. I knew God wanted me to be working in the church. I declared a double major: Youth Ministry and Communications (with a theatre emphasis). I was going to learn how to reach people and make good art that would change things. 

In college I made new friends who made space for my changing identity and beliefs. I made art that I was really proud of for the first time, art that asked questions instead of simply providing all of the answers. But I also grappled with mental health stemming directly from my struggles with my sexuality and from my shifting faith. It was a challenge and I didn’t feel like there was anyone I could talk to. I tried on campus therapy but quit as soon as the counselor brought up the way I dressed. It didn’t feel like a safe space. 

I felt isolated and alone. I still wanted to please God. I wanted to serve. But I had no idea what that even looked like anymore. In every youth ministry class we would be told about how women couldn’t be youth pastors. When I talked to my advisor they told me to work with kids. I wasn’t sure if there was space for me in the church anymore. 

The summer before my junior year of college I fell into a job as an interim youth pastor at an American Baptist church and when I went back to college that fall I got a job as an intern at a United Methodist church. For the first time my call was being affirmed. I was being told that there was a place for me in leadership in the church. It was life changing. I began to see a world in which I could actually do the things I felt God calling me toward. 

I just wasn’t sure what to do about the gay thing. It was clear my prayers for deliverance weren’t working. No matter how I tried to ignore it, deny it, make it go away, my feelings for women were still there. I thought I could maybe at least be celibate; that that would be enough. But mostly I knew I had to keep it a secret. Problem was, it was getting harder and harder to do that. I felt like if people didn’t know this piece of me, this thing that I was struggling with, then they couldn’t actually know me. There was always a wall between us. So I started to come out, very slowly and very quietly at first, and always with the “but I’m going to be celibate forever” caveat. People took it okay, mostly because I hadn’t done anything. I was referred to some ex-gay ministries but thankfully I had the self-awareness to look at the link and then delete it. 

I graduated from college, started a full time job as a youth pastor back at the American Baptist church, and the deconstruction that started in college ramped up speed. The pastor at the church gave me all sorts of books to read, told me about Christian anarchism, introduced me to gay pastors in the denomination and pushed me to consider wider horizons. At the time we didn’t have any conversations about my sexuality, but it was obvious to him what I was struggling with. He tried to make space for me to be myself. 

During this time I started to try to figure out what I believed. Not what I had been taught, or had handed down to me, but what I actually, truly believed. I read a ton of books and talked to pastors and other leaders. I let go of some things I had grown up believing were pillars of the faith when I realized there wasn’t much proof for them (like the Rapture). I learned more about how to read Scripture so that I could figure out for myself what I believed about “the clobber passages”. During this time I held everything with a loose hand, willing to let it go if I needed to.

This was painful and scary. Growing up I was taught that right belief meant everything and now here I was questioning all of the things. Could I still call myself a Christian if I didn’t believe everything I had once been taught? Were there other, faithful ways to believe and to read the Bible? 

What if I was wrong? 

That was the question that kept me up at night. It’s the question that people threw at me when they wanted to challenge me on something. What if you’re wrong? Everything was about keeping me in my place and using fear to do it. Just keep believing so God won’t send you to Hell.

I started to think, “I’m not sure I want to believe in this kind of God.” I started to wonder, “Maybe a God who would punish me forever for being wrong isn’t a God who is worthy of worship.” 

I tried to stay open. To stay curious. To keep “turning the gem” (as Rob Bell says in “What About The Bible?”). I kept repeating to myself, God is big enough to handle my questions. And I realized that whatever would remain of my faith at the end of this deconstruction would be hard won. Would it be worth it? Only time would tell. 

After the pastor, my mentor, left the church, I remained for another year until, once again, keeping the secret of my sexuality became too much to bear. 

Through a friend, I met a woman and unexpectedly fell in love. All of my assertions about remaining celibate forever couldn’t stand up to these feelings and to my desperate desire to not be lonely anymore.

Things came to a head. I was still living at home, closeted. Still working at the church, closeted. And trying to date for the first time. It was untenable. I was outed at the church through my MySpace page, outed to my mom by a bumper sticker on my then-partner’s car, and all of the secrets I had so closely held came tumbling out. 

I started to lean in to my new identity. I gave myself a year off from church work as I tried to decide if God was still calling me. I took at job at TGI Friday’s. I took a break from many of my Christian friends. I mostly stopped going to church or reading the Bible. I rested. Sometimes the best thing we can do to heal from spiritual trauma is to let ourselves rest. Stop trying to make it make sense, stop trying to figure out what you believe. Just rest and trust God will meet you where you are. 

Yet, at the end of the year off, I still felt this pull toward something bigger than me. This pull toward Christianity, toward the church, but I knew it couldn’t look the same as it had. 

I got married to my partner in Canada (because it was legal there) and two weeks later I started seminary. 

Would I stay in ministry? Was there a way to be fully myself and still be in the church? At the end of the deconstruction, we finally have space for the reconstruction. That story is next. 

Where are you in your spiritual journey? Are you in the deconstruction? The reconstruction? Are you stuck somewhere in the in-between? Let us know, we’d love to see if we can help you get unstuck.

The post Exvangelical to… appeared first on Queer Theology.

In Eastern Pennsylvania, on a plot of land surrounded by thick trees, I spent my childhood playing baseball, building forts, and reading books. Our lives revolved around the conservative evangelical church my family had belonged to for years. We were there on Sundays and Wednesdays. I went to a summer Bible camp that was affiliated with our church, and when I hit junior high there were Fall and Winter retreats as well as summer mission trip opportunities. 

We talked about God, the Bible, and Christianity all the time. I got “saved” when I was four or five, praying to accept Jesus into my heart mostly because I was terrified of going to Hell and being separated from my family forever. 

I was afraid a lot as a kid. Afraid I wasn’t really saved. Afraid I wasn’t doing the right things. Afraid my family would be raptured and I would be left behind. Everything I learned at home and in church didn’t do much to alleviate my fear. I was taught God was love, but God also kind of had a temper. There was nothing you needed to do to earn salvation other than believe, but you also better live right or God might smite you. It was a confusing mix of messages that didn’t seem like contradictions because everyone believed them without asking questions.

When I hit seventh grade my mom decided to homeschool me and so my life become even more intertwined with my church. I considered my youth group my “class”. I didn’t have any friends who didn’t go to my church or weren’t in some way religious. 

It wasn’t all bad. Church gave me the first opportunities to try out performing; I sang in youth choirs and auditioned for church musicals. I graduated to singing solos and writing skits to perform. I fell in love with Contemporary Christian music and started writing songs. I rapped and wrote raps and learned how to dance (kind of. And not well.). 

I wanted to do the right things. I wanted to love God well. I wanted to be a good kid and tell other people about Jesus and learn the Bible and study and pray. But it felt like no matter how hard I tried, there was always something wrong with me. Which was strange because I wasn’t a rebellious kid. I wanted to please my parents. We mostly fought over my math homework, my hormonal attitude swings, and my clothing. I wanted to wear pants more often, but they still insisted on skirts and dresses for Sundays. 

It didn’t help that at least once a year (often more than that) we would be treated to a sermon or talk where we heard in excruciating detail what the crucifixion was like and how it was all so that God could look at us because we were so horrible otherwise. As a people pleasing kid, this made me anxious. So I would rededicate my life to God. I would break the one secular cd I bought (one year it was Celine Dion. The horror!) And I would commit to being the best Christian I could.

When I was 16 Ellen came out on her tv show and my family and church boycotted the show. I remember being heartbroken because I loved Ellen. I loved that she wore pants and had short hair. I loved that she had good friends but wanted to stay single. I loved her because I saw myself in her. When she came out I was terrified that other people would see in me what I saw in her. I knew I needed to be careful.

But I couldn’t be anything other than I was. I continue to push to cut my hair shorter and shorter. I continued to push to be able to shop in the boys section. I didn’t have language around gender identity. The internet hadn’t reached our rural town, there were no tv shows about transgender people, I didn’t know being trans was something you could do. But I started to have suspicions that maybe I wasn’t straight. At least not entirely. I told myself that my feelings for my female friends were just normal friendship, that everyone wanted to cuddle with their friends. I didn’t want sex or even kissing, I just wanted to hold and be held. 

I don’t remember any anti-gay talks, not explicitly. I think it was just assumed that we all knew that no Christian would ever be gay and so why do we even need to talk about it? But I knew it wasn’t acceptable. I knew it could cost me everything. So I prayed. And I hid. And I ignored the feelings that kept welling up. Not just feelings for women, but my growing depression, my loneliness, my alienation. I pasted on my good Christian smile and talked about how much I loved God.

Then at night I would lay in bed feeling like I’d been punched in the heart. Feeling totally alone and wondering if God could ever love me enough. 

I didn’t know any other way to be Christian. I didn’t know any world outside of this very small bubble. I didn’t know if there was any hope for me. 

Things came to a head the summer after my senior year of high school. I went on an eight-week mission trip where I was expected to be extroverted 18 hours a day, be bold in my faith, and be equally friends with all 25+ people on my team. I was used to getting along well with adults, being liked by my youth leaders, being considered a good kid and helpful. On this trip, right from the start, the leaders saw something in me they wanted to eradicate. 

I was singled at at every turn, watched over and judged, and often pulled aside to be confronted about my “terrible” behavior: things like the way I dressed, spending too much time with the same people, and on and on. 

This summer eroded my confidence. I started to believe I couldn’t trust myself. I also started to ask questions about what all of this mission work was about and if we were really doing God any favors by parachuting into communities and strong arming children into praying a prayer they didn’t understand. 

But this summer was also the first time that I confided to anyone that I “struggled with homosexuality”. It was the first time I was able to let some of my defenses down. 

This summer would change everything, I just didn’t realize it at the time.

How did I go from being without hope to confident in my identity? That’s the story for next time. 

For now, I’d love to hear from you: What have been the turning points in your life and faith so far? What were the first cracks when you began to understand more about your identity and your spirituality? How did your experiences as a kid and teen shape your faith and life? 

The post From Fundamentalist To…. appeared first on Queer Theology.

I see well-intentioned folks offering halves of loaves everywhere today. I see other well-intentioned people defending or even applauding their offerings. Half a loaf is not enough.

An influential piece of writing was Tony & Peggy Campolo’s joint discussion on homosexuality. In it, Peggy takes the position that LGBT people are acceptable just as we are and that nothing about who we are or how we love is second rate. Tony takes that position that while (straight) Christians should love gay people, and while gay people should be allowed to go to church, and while, perhaps, gay people should even be given some sort of legal recognition of their relationships, “homosexual behavior” is sinful, gay relationships aren’t sanctioned by the church. That discussion was eye-opening for me. It mattered not one lick what Tony said. He might as well have said I was doomed to hell. What matters, the only thing that mattered, was that Peggy Campolo offered a clear and unequivocal call for inclusion. That is a full loaf. That is what saves lives.

We see more examples of half a loaf: When churches allow LGBT people to come and worship but do not give them leadership roles or impose restrictions on their ability to serve (only if you’re not in a relationship!). We see this when straight, white, Evangelicals appoint themselves spokespeople for LGBTQ-Christian reconciliation. Nevermind queer folks (and allies) have been doing this work for decades. Nevermind that his citations of gay people are problematic (they’re all self-loathing and closeted, drug-addicted, cheating on their spouse, and/or living with HIV/AIDS). This is half a loaf and half a loaf is not enough.

When I was young, and queer, and unsure of myself, and afraid to come out, half a loaf was not good enough. When I was nineteen and struggling to make a place for myself in the world as a newly out young man, half a loaf was not good enough. And today, half a loaf is not good enough. We do not need to settle for halves of loaves: there are people willing to share the whole loaf with us and we can make our own bread together. If we want to end bullying and save lives, we must offer a full loaf.

And so to my friends who want to love LGBTQ people without changing their beliefs that being queer and/or transgender is sinful, to my friends who are happy to welcome but not to affirm, to those who accept their queer friends in private but won’t say it aloud: you are offering half a loaf and half a loaf is not enough.

Well-intentioned talk of bridge-building and timing and incremental change is just that: well-intentioned talk. What queer people of all ages need is fruitful action. There is never a “right time” and it will never be comfortable so right now is the best time you have to say “Let us break this loaf of bread together!” Right now is the best time you have to say “I don’t have all the answers but I know that I need to start changing!” Right now is the best time you have to say “Ok, it’s my turn to listen to you!”

That is what love looks like. That is how to support bullied youth. That is how to make things better. So let’s get to it! What will you do today to make sure you’re offering a full loaf?

The post Saving Queer Lives: Half A Loaf is Not Enough appeared first on Queer Theology.