“There are years that ask questions and years that answer” –Zora Neale Hurston
1.
The three years I’ve lived out of the closet have all been question years. I’ve marked them with my own rituals: around March first, my “official” gayversary, I reread The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which wasn’t my first gay book, but rather the first gay book I read after I started to believe I could be gay. March first is an approximation, of course, extrapolated after the fact. I didn’t start telling people until later, but coming out to myself has been the longest and hardest part of this process, and so it’s the milestone I mark. Making one’s own rituals carries a certain power, and mine have helped me take ownership of the person I’m becoming. The shadow side of that act of creation, though, lies in the recognition of the rituals I no longer own, either because I’ve left them behind, or they’ve left me.
2.
I haven’t gone to church regularly for many months now; I’ve lost count of how many. For me, this has meant a profound departure from my life as I lived it before. It took me a long time to admit that I hadn’t just stopped going because I wanted to sleep in, to acknowledge that I just didn’t want to. It took even longer to figure out why.
I thought I’d done my wrestling with church and was settled in for the long haul. Raised in a conservative version of Christianity, in the first half of my 20s I discovered feminism, chafed against my church’s lack of female leadership, burned myself out getting involved so that I could change things from the inside. I walked away when I couldn’t stay any longer, found a home in a more progressive version of Christianity. I thought I was settled there, until well after I’d come out. I thought that if I was going to reach a breaking point with organized Christianity, it would have happened already. It turns out that I didn’t know what a breaking point looked like.
3.
One of my breaking points looked like this: last March I found out that World Vision, a nondenominational Christian charity, had changed its hiring policy to allow for the employment of married gay people. Less than twenty-four hours later, they reversed the policy after thousands of conservative evangelicals pulled their donations.
I’d been participating in World Vision events since high school, and I’d sponsored two children since college. It hadn’t occurred to me that coming out would have any effect on that corner of my life. When the news about the controversy broke, I realized that on some level I’d assumed I could still be part of that community, and my sense of betrayal was no less devastating for the accompanying feeling that I should have known better.
It was spring break, and I was supposed to be studying for my PhD qualifying exam. I spent that day reading blog posts and comment threads and pacing my room. I remember thinking at one point, what did I do to these people to make them hate me so much? In the afternoon I forced myself to go out for coffee and tried to read about sixteenth-century Calvinism. Not much registered.
I haven’t dropped my World Vision sponsorships. That feels like the wrong decision a lot of the time, and I wonder what it says about my integrity, but I don’t know what else to do.
4.
I started reading ex-fundamentalist bloggers because I’m fascinated by some of the more extreme forms that Christianity takes in this country, but their words have proved more applicable to my situation than I might have thought. They’ve taught me that Christianity is about language and culture as much as doctrine and belief. It’s the language and culture that have tripped me up lately, kept me out of the pews on Sunday. Code-switching feels too painful right now, and I’ve worked too hard to come to a place where I can allow myself to take care of my own needs first.
I thought that staying within the world of progressive Christianity would solve all of my problems, but my priorities have shifted so radically that now they fail to align with those even of many progressive Christians. I understand, and can even sympathize with, the desire to build churches where conservative Christians can sit down at the table with progressive ones. I understand the impulse to look at the “big picture,” to mark out a space for areas of disagreement and label those “non-essential.” For me, though, the stakes are different, and I’m not willing to risk my mental and emotional health in order to sit at the same table with people who would make my personhood a subject of debate. I used to see beauty and possibility in the idea of adiaphora: now I see a church that I can’t trust to have my back.
I mark the day that I came out to myself because it took 26 years to even get to that point, because it’s taken most of the last three to convince myself that I can still have a normal life and be happy. It’s hard to tell yourself a new story when you’ve only ever been told the same one.
5.
“When I was straight…”
“You were never straight.”
My friend and I were sitting on his couch, drunk on rum. We’d almost finished the first semester of our second year of grad school, and I’d come over to celebrate. We’d watched Bridesmaids, then started a second movie we wouldn’t finish. I was still in that stage where thinking of myself as gay felt new and surreal: I’d be walking somewhere, or half-asleep, and I’d think I’m gay? How did that happen?
I don’t remember what I was telling him about when I was straight. I hadn’t meant to say it that way, but my tipsy, tired brain couldn’t handle the complexity of before and after, of what being out meant or didn’t mean about who I’d been.
I sat there, on a couch in a studio apartment in the Berkeley hills, and thought, I was never straight. It felt so good to hear those words, to hear someone I trusted validate the past I hadn’t known was mine to claim.
You were never straight.
6.
The first six months of my coming out were euphoric, and then the anxiety set in. For a while I thought that I must be doing something wrong, because wasn’t it supposed to get better? I even wondered, in my lowest moments, if maybe I wasn’t gay after all, if I’d screwed up my life for no reason.
It took maybe another six months to dig down to the roots of what was bothering me, to see the half-submerged stories emerging from that place my conscious mind couldn’t reach easily, the place where I’d also once buried any knowledge that I might not be straight. “Internalized homophobia” sounds like an academic buzzword, but it’s real and crippling and learning to name it saved me. I tried to bring all of that stuff to the surface, the ugly feelings about what I was and the kind of life I could have. I let myself grieve for the person I’d been, the person who knew what her future was supposed to look like, who felt safe within the narrative she’d been given.
7.
Sometimes I think that walking away entirely would be easier, but that’s not where I am either. When people ask about me and church, I say “Jesus and I are taking some time, seeing other people,” or “it’s complicated.”
It’s been liberating to allow myself the possibility of leaving. I tell myself that it wouldn’t change the fact that churches hold some of my most treasured memories: conversations over candles and thuribles, in pews and sacristies, standing around altars laughing and eating leftover bread. The body of Christ, broken for you.
8.
“Gillian, the blood of Christ, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
I tipped the base of the chalice towards me and sipped, kneeling on familiar blue carpet. Christmas Eve, the second Christmas after I’d been out. The year before, I’d walked into church hyper-aware of what the people there didn’t know about me and my life, feeling the weight of their gazes, seeing what they expected to see.
Now, as I heard the pastor say my name, I had to blink back tears. I murmured “amen,” took my sip, crossed myself. I filed back into the pew with my family, sitting a little too close to each other in the Christmas-full sanctuary. I don’t remember if I bowed my head for a moment of silent prayer, the way you’re supposed to after receiving communion, or if I just took out my hymnal and kept singing.
What I do remember is that moment of connection, the intimacy of hearing myself named in a place where I wasn’t sure if I still belonged. I remember thinking, there’s something here that’s bigger than both of us.
9.
I still believe in that something, but I know that it exists outside of churches too. I’ve kept one foot planted in Christianity, but only in the out-of-the-way corners where I still feel safe. Those corners are mostly queer, because other queer Christians understand better than anyone what it’s like to carry both of those words and feel torn to pieces by what they might or might not mean together, to not know how to leave and not know how to stay. I said to a friend once, “I don’t want to feed the narrative that says you can’t be gay and Christian, even though I’m not sure that I can be, right now.”
I look at the word “Christian” in my OkCupid profile and I see all of the other words attached to it, and it feels wrong to leave it there but it would feel like a lie to erase it. I’d be pretending that I was never that girl who loved theological in-jokes and church supply catalogs and drew diagrams of the trinity on napkins, even if I’m no longer that girl. Christianity is my hometown: even if I do leave, it will always be the place I come from.
10.
I am still waiting for the years that answer, if they ever come. When I started to write these words, I wasn’t sure if I was ready for them, or ready to put them out into the world. But I thought about the village it took to get me to this point, and some of those people are strangers on the internet who shared their stories and made me feel less alone. So I write this in the hope that someone else out there needs it as much as I do.
Maybe there are no answer years, or maybe the answers are only ever temporary. I might go back to church, but not this year; I might go back next Sunday, or never. This year, as I attempt to draw a map of the wilderness, the blank space into which I’ve stepped, I ask, Is this temporary? Or is it just where I live now? The person I used to be might have held out eschatological hope, might have believed that the arc of my life would curve back towards home. I’m not sure if I believe that, or if I even want to.
There is definitely a place in the Christian community for you, if you decide you want to stay here. A friend’s church just had a booth at pride weekend. Their church is named for St. George, and they had a banner of St. George slaying the dragon where the flag on his lance was a rainbow flag.
I know that your intentions are good with this suggestion, but I think that part of the author’s point is that while there’s a lot of great stuff about progressive Christianity, it’s oftentimes difficult to make it your “home” when you come from a conservative religious background. Even when the doctrine’s more aligned with your belief, there’s still constant code switching – just, this time, you don’t want people to know that you come from THOSE kind of Christians, lest they think you’re some tragic, damaged creature; you grin and bear it when people make inaccurate and condescending remarks about the church you grew up in. (I’ve tried to go Episcopalian a few times and it’s never set for this reason.)
Anyway, it’s wonderful that there are churches that are open and welcoming to groups that have been hurt before. However, it can still be an uphill battle to find a spiritual home, even in theoretically progressive religious spaces.
“The person I used to be might have held out eschatological hope, might have believed that the arc of my life would curve back towards home. I’m not sure if I believe that, or if I even want to.”
Thank you for writing about that tension. While I don’t know the pain of coming out, and figuring out how being LGBT meshes with your faith background, for me, after growing up super conservative religiously, trying to let go of the narrative of “if you make the wrong decision, you’ll be the Bad Testimony,” during my maturing years, has been SO DIFFICULT. That sentence you wrote resonates strongly inside me.
Praying you have that peace as you move forward.
Thank you for this.
I came out when I was 19 and stopped going to church when I was 20. I have never been back (besides for weddings/funerals) and I doubt I ever will. I had good experiences in a fairly liberal church growing up and I’m not upset or resentful that I was raised Christian (despite what my mom thinks). I just can longer participate in an institution that, on any level, struggles with who I am as a person. Like you said, it’s not good for my mental and emotional well-being. I know that this is an extremist stance to take, and is not the right path for everyone, but it was the right decision for me.
I can’t speak for whether YOU can find a comfortable place in Christianity, but I have a couple queer friends who went so far as to go to divinity school, both will be ordained this summer, so, it’s possible.
But more than that, I absolutely believe in years that answer, even though I’ve found them to be more rare.
“For me, though, the stakes are different, and I’m not willing to risk my mental and emotional health in order to sit at the same table with people who would make my personhood a subject of debate. I used to see beauty and possibility in the idea of adiaphora: now I see a church that I can’t trust to have my back.”
This is why I have such a hard time with churches tolerating anti-GLBT rhetoric. They would literally prefer to have a version of scriptural purity than actual people. My denomination is having a big fight about it now and the fact that we even have to have the fight seriously pisses me off.
That said, thank you for sharing this. I hope you find peace wherever you end up, and that some day that church will have all our backs.
So much here to relate to, especially in regards to reconciling Christianity/coming out, but #5 hit me hard. I had a similar experience, on a road trip with a friend* of mine, when she stopped me mid-sentence to say “well, you’re not exactly straight”, at which point I think several walls started to crumble.
(*friend? ex? we’re still navigating a complicated relationship 4 years later)
I had a major falling-out with Christianity as I became more aware as a feminist in my late teens. For a while it kept me from going to any churches at all. Then I tried visiting Unitarian Universalists, and they were ok, but not quite where I belonged for whatever indefinable reason. I’m now a member of a Quaker meeting. That works well for me, because I like the minimalist form of worship. We have had same-sex marriages in our Meeting, even before our state legalized them. A Quaker marriage involves the whole membership signing the marriage certificate, so that’s an indication of pretty strong support, I think. For those preferring a church with more of the traditions and rituals associated with Christianity, I note that the (now retired) bishop of the Episcopalian Church in my state was openly gay at the time of his election. I found that very encouraging, but the fact that his election was contested in the national General Convention certainly indicates that there is a long way left to go. 🙁 I can appreciate that divisiveness like that could be painful at a deep personal level.
For me, being with people who care about the same “big questions” that I do on a regular basis is important, and my faith community is an important part of that. I hope you are able to find that kind of support somewhere, whether within a faith community or elsewhere.
I related to this so much (I’m trying really hard not to cry at work right now).
I’m not practicing right now, partly because I’m not sure how my being queer can fit with my denomination’s stance on LGBT issues, and partly because I’m not sure how I feel about institutionalized Christianity anymore. At the same time, I still feel super connected to the liturgy and I’d really like to come back to my faith one day. It’s hard.
Thank you for sharing this! As a straight person, I don’t want to presume that I can relate to your experience of coming out, but I have struggled with some of the same questions about Christianity.
I grew up in a very conservative Christianity (of the proudly patriarchal denomination) and remember worrying as a young teen about whether babies go to hell, and then as I grew older about whether God hated me for every imperfection. Deciding to go to college was a stressful time for someone in the ‘stay-at-home daughters’ movement, which said that college women were ‘like harlots’ and were rebellious and worldly. As someone who really wanted to please God, it was a worrying time that seemed fraught with eternal significance.
And over the last 4 years I have gone from being an ‘on-fire’ Christian who believed that God and the Bible were really pro-feminism and pro-justice if interpreted correctly, to being unsure about a lot of things. I remember standing at the (mandatory) worship services at my first college, and feeling profoundly alone as I started to wonder about religion. For a while I went to a Catholic church–the ritual was comfortingly distant from my non-denominational, evangelical background that for me had become intertwined with abuse and legalism.
But now I’ve stopped attending even there, and I don’t think the Bible can be interpreted literally as being pro-justice. I don’t think I can worship a God who allows or commands eternal torment for His enemies (variously interpreted as the non-elect, or anyone who’s heard of God but rejected him, or anyone including babies who hasn’t accepted him). I hate so much of conservative religious culture that condemns gay people and feminists and liberals.
I feel like a fraud when I talk to some Christian friends–when they’ll say something frankly religious, and I quietly go along and let them believe that I still believe as I used to.
Not sure how one is supposed to make a decision about this, either. It is not like one can point to an experience and say ‘that’s it, I believe now’ or reason one’s way through things.
Anyways, thank you again for this!
Ah, finally able to add on a bit to my initial comment above.
My issues with “going back” to the church are many-fold, and range from my growing feelings of general pantheism, my ongoing agnosticism, AND the whole queer thing.
But this speaks to the things I miss in the church, despite it all. The ritual, the connections. I love so much within traditional services.
I have friends who are very, very queer and also very, very Christian. I love that they’ve maintained their connection to the church in the face of anti-queer rhetoric and experiences they’ve had. At the same time, I feel…ok? about not being willing to stay, especially with the mix of ~*stuff*~ I have going on with faith/belief itself and the communities I was a part of.
The church and Christianity is definitely where I came from; but I don’t think it’s where I’m going, and that’s a hard thing to grapple with at times.
“I let myself grieve for the person I’d been, the person who knew what her future was supposed to look like, who felt safe within the narrative she’d been given.”
Beautiful writing, Gillian. You’re certainly not alone.
Thank you for this whole piece. I have never understood how certain people seem, all the time, about their faith–and I wonder if I seem that way–I hope I don’t, actually, but sometimes I let things pass that I’m uncomfortable with just because it’s easier.
“I haven’t dropped my World Vision sponsorships. That feels like the wrong decision a lot of the time, and I wonder what it says about my integrity, but I don’t know what else to do.”
I was sponsoring a young woman through Compassion when the World Vision thing happened, and since I was already not sure if sponsorships were a good way of giving or not, I decided that when my particular kid aged out of the program, I wouldn’t stop then. It didn’t feel right to stop sponsoring her, especially since she was almost out anyway. But, man, if she had been a lot younger, I don’t know what I would have decided.
“Sometimes I think that walking away entirely would be easier, but that’s not where I am either. When people ask about me and church, I say ‘Jesus and I are taking some time, seeing other people,’ or ‘it’s complicated.'”
I quite love this response.
My own coming out was within the context of liberal Christianity. I never experienced my sexuality as putting pressure on my relation with God or the church.
On the other hand, being in a congregation that had a policy on communion I couldn’t cope with, or having a parent (and pastor– I’m a preacher’s kid) I couldn’t cope with, or learning that a friend had been abused by a priest, or seeing people who claimed the same religion I did go off to Uganda and pass laws criminalizing queerness– those things, I fought with God over, and still do. How long?!
God sure handles my anger better than anyone else in my life does. :/
Thank you : ) It would probably be a long and (maybe) interesting story. Perhaps I will look into writing something about it! Perhaps under a different name!
Hey Gillian, A friend of mine sent me the link to your post and I’m so glad he did. Your story grieves my heart and also makes total sense. If it’s of interest to you, I’m a mid-30s female lead pastor starting a LGBT inclusive church in Berkeley called Haven, currently in the first year but growing steadily. My roots, like yours, are from the more conservative side of the church, and our format and practices honor that with contemporary worship and openness to the Holy Spirit. If you’re interested in learning more, you can check us out online at havenberkeley.org. Or if you just want to meet for coffee and vent sometime, I’d happily join you there.
What is an openly atheist church member and why would one exist?
I really liked this article, because it’s intimate and personal and very very candid. As I understand it, the author had what she perceived to be a deep connection with her religion – and she doesn’t explore its origins, but possibly that connection was something that she was raised with and just took for granted all her life.
Her awakening, her coming out to herself, her growing understanding of her own values, and how they come into conflict with those of the religion with which she used to identify must be so challenging and so disconcerting. To see the community of which she was a part for so long actively taking steps to isolate itself from people like her, and the growing understanding of the implications of those actions – it means that she is coming to terms with the idea that her religion is not, in actuality, what she had always thought it was.
And still, she is not completely divorced from it. She says “it’s complicated”, or “Jesus & I are seeing other people”. She recognises that wherever she stands now has not invalidated the experiences and the memories that were forged in her youth.
It resonates with me, because I have had some similar discussions with myself. The religion is different, but it *is* religion nonetheless. And when we confront our internalised transphobia, or homophobia, or misogyny, or whatever it might be, and we realise that much of it was instilled in us by religion, it is a frightening revelation.
To look at yourself, to realise that you are more comfortable in your own skin than you have ever been before, that objectively you have become a better human being, who interacts with your fellow human beings in a healthier and more generous way than you used to – these are all things that make you love yourself more and more. And then the realisation that the *more* you love yourself, and the *better* a person you become, the *less* your religion will accept you… it is a violent wake-up call, and a pressing stimulus to question the foundations on which you always assumed religion was based.
The grey area is not a comfortable place in which to live, but in some ways it’s easier to dwell in that limbo and to avoid the confrontation. There is a finality in saying “Religion and I are never, ever, ever getting back together” – it means those doors are closed, that chapter ended. A concrete admission that the comfort and safety that religion once brought has been lost forever.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and your perspectives – I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to do so.
I really liked this article, because it's intimate and personal and very very candid. As I understand it, the author had what she perceived to be a deep connection with her religion – and she doesn't explore its origins, but possibly that connection was something that she was raised with and just took for granted all her life.
Her awakening, her coming out to herself, her growing understanding of her own values, and how they come into conflict with those of the religion with which she used to identify must be so challenging and so disconcerting. To see the community of which she was a part for so long actively taking steps to isolate itself from people like her, and the growing understanding of the implications of those actions – it means that she is coming to terms with the idea that her religion is not, in actuality, what she had always thought it was.
And still, she is not completely divorced from it. She says "it's complicated", or "Jesus & I are seeing other people". She recognises that wherever she stands now has not invalidated the experiences and the memories that were forged in her youth.
It resonates with me, because I have had some similar discussions with myself. The religion is different, but it *is* religion nonetheless. And when we confront our internalised transphobia, or homophobia, or misogyny, or whatever it might be, and we realise that much of it was instilled in us by religion, it is a frightening revelation.
To look at yourself, to realise that you are more comfortable in your own skin than you have ever been before, that objectively you have become a better human being, who interacts with your fellow human beings in a healthier and more generous way than you used to – these are all things that make you love yourself more and more. And then the realisation that the *more* you love yourself, and the *better* a person you become, the *less* your religion will accept you… it is a violent wake-up call, and a pressing stimulus to question the foundations on which you always assumed religion was based.
The grey area is not a comfortable place in which to live, but in some ways it's easier to dwell in that limbo and to avoid the confrontation. There is a finality in saying "Religion and I are never, ever, ever getting back together" – it means those doors are closed, that chapter ended. A concrete admission that the comfort and safety that religion once brought has been lost forever.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and your perspectives – I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to do so.
Too soon. By a millennium or so.
I am neither gay nor have I ever been a Christian (first 8 years of school at Catholic school, rather sucked by the last couple years, but luckily Catholic parent is/was liberal and not pushy) (so I'm trying to sit on my hands here), but all of you are inspiring to me. Love and support.
“Christianity is my hometown: even if I do leave, it will always be the place I come from.”
What a wonderful way to say exactly what I feel. Thank you.
I was still in that stage where thinking of myself as gay felt new and surreal: I’d be walking somewhere, or half-asleep, and I’d think I’m gay? How did that happen?
I came out to myself as bi a year ago, and am still not out of this stage. Thank you for making me feel less alone.
Thank you for this.
Oh, I am crying over this. I often feel like such a weirdo for grieving over my misfit-queer status in my church (I did leave Christianity, before coming out, but for entirely – I think at least – reasons). But I love my church anyway, even if I don’t believe what they believe and it’s terrible to see your family, your hometown as you put it, collectively rejecting you even when you know they do it out of misunderstanding. But it seems like this narrative is just not heard in LGBT circles, instead there is sarcasm and mocking of Christians (see:Kim Davis) which makes it impossible to deal with these things if Christianity was important to you with out looking like you are fraternizing with the enemy. But what you wrote is lovely and important and I hope your church family comes around and offers you support whatever you end up deciding about faith.