It seemed so simple and straight forward to me as a child.
As I grew older, I continued to hear that story of creation, but it seemed that not everyone got the same message from it. I began to encounter Christians that told me they believed the creation literally happened in six days like the Bible says, but they seemed to overlook that part about every single human being made in God’s image. At least they didn’t treat everyone that way. While the Bible stories I was taught as a kid were about loving others, I discovered that other Christian traditions taught their kids that we should judge, hate, and reject certain people. My extended family, my friends at school, they told me that being gay is a sin, and if someone says they’re gay, and they refuse to “repent,” then they are going to hell. Although they claimed to “love the sinner, hate the sin,” the only part I saw in their behavior was hate. What I really heard them saying was “God hates gay people. There’s absolutely no place for gay people in the church.”
I spent a long time struggling with this. I read those scriptures, Leviticus, Romans, 1 Corinthians, that my friends used to condemn gay people. I didn’t know much about the Bible then. I didn’t know biblical history or context. I couldn’t read Greek or Hebrew. I didn’t have any other way of interpreting those verses. But it just didn’t make sense to me. How could God hate someone They created? How could the church turn away people who wanted to know God? How could the churches cause so much pain and trauma when we were supposed to be worshipping someone who taught love?
It was in high school that I first started questioning my own sexuality, wondering if I liked women as well as men. All the messages I was hearing about gay people and the Bible made it difficult for me to reconcile my sexuality with my faith. As a result, it wasn’t until I was in seminary, surrounded by a fully affirming community for the first time, that I was able to come out to myself. After studying the Bible and learning about new ways of interpreting those scriptures, I had finally accepted that the Bible didn’t say anything about homosexuality. The so-called clobber verses were about other cultural practices, and the people who wrote them didn’t even understand sexuality in the same way that we do today. And because my denomination had finally affirmed this as well, not only could I be a queer Christian, I could be a queer pastor.
It breaks my heart when I see how churches continue to treat the LGBTQ community. I am constantly encountering LGBTQ people who lost their faith because the church drove them out. I have heard countless stories of trauma at the hands of the church. And I believe it breaks God’s heart as well to see Their beloved children abused and driven away in Their name. God made all of us in Their image, straight, gay, bi, pan, trans, nonbinary, asexual, intersex, queer, and every other identity. No exceptions. Just as God created the beautiful diversity of race, They also created wide diversity of gender and sexuality. You will never look at the face of another human being and not see the image of God. To tell someone that they are not loved by God, to tell them that they have to reject part of who God made them to be, to drive them away from God with prejudice based on misinterpreted scripture, that is the real sin.
Late last year I began to feel God calling me to create a new kind of worshipping community, one that is radically affirming of all identities, one that is a place of healing for people who have been hurt by other churches. I had a vision in my head of a place where people who never felt comfortable or safe in a traditional church could come and sing and laugh and study and make art and eat and seek God together. This summer my life took an unexpected turn and my call at the church in Morrilton ended sooner than anyone expected. When that happened, I realized God was saying, it is time. Recently I began an online affirming Bible study and began taking the first steps to officially start a new worshipping community in the PC(USA). I’m not sure where I’m going yet, but I look forward to seeing where else God leads me in this new season of my call, and I invite you to join me as I celebrate the beginning of something new: Queer Church.