Pridetide: an ocean swell of grace

or, how I was loved into changing my mind

In her brilliant newsletter Quiet Part Loud, my friend Bethany Fox recently wrote:

Because it has become shorthand in our culture for what “kind of Christian” you are, I’m usually aware of whether or not a fellow Christian is LGBTQ+ affirming. But I rarely know details of the thought processes and experiences that led them there.

Her story inspired me to share how my own journey has led me to unabashed affirmation and celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community — particularly in the context of church. A Soulful Revolution is all about change as spiritual practice and social action, and my journey has entailed both. So let’s get into it!

I wrote a couple weeks ago about my experience of showing up at a public high school after being homeschooled through the sixth grade and attending a small charter school for junior high. The majority culture of this suburban social context was white, upper-middle class (with a lot of families that were living-in-mansions-level wealthy), and evangelical. Those who did not fit in the boxes prescribed by this dominant culture included students of color (especially a small cohort of Black students), students of lesser means (as the child of a single-income family commuting 45 minutes with my teacher father to school, this was true for me), and students of other religious traditions. Most of the friends I made were on the margins of the dominant culture (and since graduating, the majority of my close high school friends have come out as queer).

To give a sense of the religiosity of the community: the evangelical church my family attended for a decade of my early childhood gathered for several years in the gymnasium of my high school. Today it has more than 20,000 members, but nearly 20 years ago it was already well on its way to becoming one of the biggest megachurches in the Sacramento area. That church had conservative views on marriage, women in ministry, and more. And it was just one of many in that area that shaped the culture profoundly.

Suffice it to say, this was not a warm, welcoming environment for LGBTQIA+ students.

We had a Gay Straight Alliance on campus, a brave new endeavor of a few students a year older than me. I was encouraged by my Campus Life¹ leader to attend — not to proselytize (thank God) — but to get to know those students. I believe she saw what I could not yet see clearly — that being a member of a minority group demonized within conservative Christian culture on a campus suffuse with white, evangelical kids, was surely a very isolating experience.

I considered going to a GSA meeting. But I remember feeling nervous that I would stand out as different. I didn’t want to be seen as more different than I already felt. I desperately wanted to avoid more bullying — I got some flack as a teacher’s kid. To be honest: I wanted to fit in.

So I didn’t go.

My junior year, Proposition 8 was on the state ballot. Prop 8 was a ban on same-sex marriage passed by California voters in 2008, which was overturned in short order by the US Supreme Court. It seemed every student at my school had a strong opinion (maybe my read is skewed since I was a newspaper editor, and we student journalists had STRONG opinions. But I digress). Many students were strongly influenced by their churches’ views. Me, not so much. My church (a smaller, nevertheless megachurchy evangelical church) gave social issues a wide berth. There wasn’t a single sermon or community conversation addressing the debates that were consuming the California public. Instead, it was from public school peers that I first heard rhetoric like, “marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Now, my parents had raised me to have an open mind and to ask questions about most anything. (That’s what happens when you have a therapist mother and a journalist educator father). The only topic that seemed to make my parents nervous was sexuality. To be fair, as a parent myself now, thinking about how I’ll talk to my own kids about all sorts of topics already makes me a little nervous. But I know that I will, just as my parents have since told me with hindsight that they would have talked to me about my questions, had I asked.

That said, three crucial experiences made me believe as a teenager that I shouldn’t ask my parents questions about sexuality in general and LGBTQIA+ matters in specific:

1. My parents excused me from the single day of freshman health class in which the lesson was about sexuality, with promises to have “the talk” as a family. I don’t remember that talk ever transpiring, but I do remember the shame of feeling like the odd one out of the class conversation.

2. At 14, I overheard my dad covertly referencing an extended family member being gay. This effectively comprised my first encounter with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

3. A few years later, a good friend of mine came out to some of our mutual friends, but not to me. I felt disappointed and grieved. I realized that my friend did not feel safe to tell me about herself, because she associated me as a Christian with other students at our school who were saying hurtful things about the LGBTQIA+ community. I resolved to come to my own conclusions on the subject. One day, my dad asked to borrow my laptop. I handed it to him with tabs still open on my browser to the research I’d been doing about Christian perspectives on homosexuality (this was the word exclusively used in conservative Christian circles). Not long after, my mom came to my room to say, “Honey, your dad noticed some Web sites open on your computer, and wondered if you wanted to talk about anything.” I was furious. Did my dad think that I was gay? And if so, why wouldn’t he bring his questions to me himself? Did he think being gay was bad?

These experiences reiterated my sense that my questions were a liability. At the same time, my church was losing credibility with me thanks to its failure to say anything of substance amidst the culture wars raging around us.

So I began to read voraciously, from theological tomes, to biblical studies, to memoirs from gay Christians. I was surprised by the mere existence of the latter — I’d learned by osmosis in the turbulent seas of the culture wars that “gay Christian” was a contradiction in terms. I was relieved and delighted to discover many faithful people who celebrated the breathtaking breadth of the gender and sexuality spectrums as expressions of God’s loving creativity. The more I studied and prayed for understanding, the more queer people I seemed to meet, including queer Christians. Or perhaps the inverse is more accurate: the more I sought understanding, the safer people seemed to feel in sharing their stories with me.

Amidst this reading and relationship building, my theology began to pivot in another vital way. Throughout childhood, despite my parents’ consistent affirmation that God is love, I had also been exposed by the culture around me to the god of fundamentalism. This god was punitive and exacting; a retributive patriarch. The god of fundamentalism demanded payment for sin (which was narrowly defined as individual moral failing, with sexual sin being a prominent offense, and homosexuality its epitome). Again, this is not what I was taught explicitly — it was certainly not the theology of my parents — and it was not what I would have articulated as a consciously held belief, but it was pervasively present in the waters of evangelical culture. This toxic theology had more effect on my way of thinking about the world and my fellow human beings than I had previously realized.

Wrestling with what I believed about queerness helped me get under the surface and notice the theologies that were churning in my soul, disrupting my own sense of security in God’s love for me. How could I say, “God loves everyone,” when I felt deep shame about being inadequate, unworthy, unlovable myself?

Meanwhile, the fiercely vulnerable love I experienced through my LGBTQIA+ friends — Christian and otherwise — harmonized with the love of Jesus I had known since childhood. The depth of discernment they had undergone to arrive at a place of knowing — and loving — themselves astonished and inspired me. Most of the older Christians I knew had not examined their faith or identity to the extent that my young friends had done. I came away from interactions with my queer friends in awe of their authenticity and integrity. I felt inspired to be my most authentic, integrous, and loving self.

I would spend my college years searching for a community whose members (and policies!) would embrace my friends with open hearts, the way I believed Christ already had.

I found that community in the Episcopal Church, specifically at All Saints Pasadena, a church which held its first same-sex blessing in 1992. I knew there would be no bait and switch for my queer friends in this community. After all, one of the priests was a proud gay woman, who had led the work in the Episcopal Church for LGBT folks to be fully included in the sacraments of ordination and marriage. She became a mentor to me, a mama bear who with fierce love saw me through the ordination process, advocating for and supporting me every step of the way.

Contrast that with my experience attending Fuller Seminary across the street, where queer students were fervently advocating for full inclusion, including to not have to hide their relationships, in the face of a community standards statement that forbids (yes, still) queer relationships. I was invited by classmates to attend dialogue sessions led by queer students, who shared their stories and advocated for policy change.²

This time, I showed up.

I saw how earnestly queer students worked to build bridges with folks in the institution, and how their attempts were minimized and rejected. I saw how folks suffer in an institution that does not fully accept and affirm them in who God has created them to be.

This was when I moved from quietly learning and observing for the sake of deciding where I stood, to using my voice and privilege to amplify the voices of my queer friends. They helped me climb out of the toxic cesspool of fear-based theologies that kept me from clearly seeing God as one who made us, loves us, and walks with us in all our beautiful, complex humanity.

I am not afraid of God. This is perhaps the most meaningful outcome of my longstanding relationships with members of the LGBTQIA+ community. I have gained a greater capacity to hold mystery and trust ambiguity. My first question is no longer “is this thing sinful?” but rather, “how does Love call me to act?” I made the decision to stand unequivocally with the LGBTQIA+ community, believing that, as the Gospel writer says, God is love.

This Pridetide (as my beloved Two-Spirit friend the Rev. Jerry Maynard³ lovingly refers to this season, with its focus on God’s joyful revelation of love embodied in beautiful variety), it feels particularly urgent and important to convey why, as a Christian, I hold — and seek to embody — this value of radical inclusivity. In the face of violence and threats of violence to God’s queerly beloved, I am here to say: You have been the face of God to me more times than I can count. Words cannot do justice to the depths of my gratitude. I love you and thank God for making you exactly as you are.

This is just a snapshot of my own multifaceted journey. I would love to hear yours! I welcome thoughtful reflections on your own journey. What questions have been sources of transformation for you? What relationships have changed you? I will not debate scripture or theology in the comments.

1. An evangelical parachurch ministry under the umbrella of Youth for Christ. Our chapter was inclusive of the students on the margins whom I’ve mentioned. It seemed like most of the kids who didn’t fit in the dominant culture were part of Campus Life.

2. These dialogues contributed to the creation of an amazing organization in Pasadena called Level Ground, which now exists as “a cooperatively-led organization committed to creating a cohesive, non-hierarchical community.”

3. Jerry and I are teaching a workshop on Gender Justice and Nonviolence and we would love to have you join us! https://paceebene.org/events/2023/6/27/gender-justice