Monthly Archives: November 2014

What I Wish I’d Known About Celibacy and Vocation As a Teenager, Part 2

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A reflection by Lindsey

Yesterday, Sarah wrote a surprise reflection about talking with teenagers about celibacy and vocation. I thought I’d follow suit with my own reflection on the same topic. Sarah and I grew up in radically different contexts, so I had different things I needed to learn about celibacy and vocation while growing up. Here are some of the things I wish I had learned about celibacy and vocation during my teenage years.

Not everyone marries. On the surface, it might be surprising to think that I needed to learn that not everyone marries. However, I grew up surrounded by couples. I knew marriages occasionally ended in divorce, but it seemed like every adult I knew had at least tried marriage. I can think of three adults I knew who weren’t married. I knew identically one nun, and I had two teachers who most deemed unable to attract a spouse. Growing up I thought every older single woman was a frumpy cat lady while every older single man was inept at dating. It was perfectly acceptable to mock older single people while regularly gossiping about why they were still single or how they were likely having a clandestine affair with each other.

Celibacy is a thing. To be honest, I can’t even remember hearing the word celibate as a teenager. I think I was 24 years old before I heard anyone talking about celibacy. I knew that some people failed to marry and were still single. Being single at 40 was a true tragedy. I learned to pity the two adults I knew who were unmarried, and I never once conceived of the idea that they might be actively loving and serving the world. It’s next to impossible to discern one’s vocation if one doesn’t even know about celibate lives.

One doesn’t need to “work for the church” in order to have a life-giving celibate vocation. When I started college, I became aware that some Christians decided to forgo marriage for the sake of God’s kingdom. People were actively encouraging me and my friends to become missionaries right after college. Many friends from college entered more formal kinds of ministry. I had this whacky idea that I’d somehow make it as a college professor who did college ministry on the side. My parents had instilled a profound sense of work-life balance in me. It made sense to me that I would divide my energies between being a professor and being a campus minister. I couldn’t imagine teaching and ministering to college students if I had a family to attend to. I saw every minister who worked as a “tentmaker” attempting to fund his or her own ministry efforts as bi-vocational. Other single people who were viewed highly by my college friends were people who did leave everything to become overseas missionaries. Celibacy made sense to me in the context of church-commissioned, full-time ministry. I would have liked to talk with people who had a broader view of vocation.

When discerning vocation, pay attention to which Scriptures speak to you… and which Scriptures don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like Scripture passages specifically discussing marriage spoke directly to my heart about how God wanted me to live my life. While I found the story of the Wedding at Cana intriguing, I also found it almost bewildering when my friends would start spouting off how badly they wanted to invite Jesus to their weddings. Was I a freak for wanting to understand more what Mary meant when she commanded the servants to do whatever Jesus told them to do? When I thought about the Scriptures that made me positively swoon in crazy hopes and dreams, why did I keep coming back to Luke 10? I would have loved to hear a spiritual director telling me that certain Scriptures had a way of depositing themselves into my heart for a reason and that it was okay for my set of most relatable Scriptures to be wholly distinct from those of other people in my Christian fellowship.

In many ways, I wish these lessons were more pervasive in the Church as a whole. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why celibate vocations are rarely discussed holistically in many Christian circles.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

What I Wish I’d Known About Celibacy and Vocation As a Teenager

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A reflection by Sarah

Of all conversations Lindsey and I engage in, some of the most interesting have been with people who are curious to know how we would talk with teenagers about celibate vocations. Parents and catechists in our own Christian tradition and others have reached out to ask us for input on discussing celibacy in church school and youth group contexts. A variety of other people have contacted us to express concern that because Lindsey and I are a celibate LGBT couple, we must be promoting a message that is toxic to teenagers, especially those who are or might be LGBT. On occasion we’ve been told, “I have to oppose what you’re doing at A Queer Calling because gay adults’ talking about celibacy leads LGBT youth to suicide.” Though I’ll admit upfront that I find this claim ridiculous, I can understand why readers are interested to know how Lindsey and I would talk about vocation with a group of teens if we had the opportunity for such a conversation. (By the way, up to this point such an opportunity has not arisen for us.) Sometimes readers also inform us that they are displeased with the way other celibate LGBT adults talk about celibacy with teenagers. My advice for dealing with this concern is that it’s best to address it with the person/people in question rather than holding us responsible for counsel offered by someone else.

Because we’ve been getting related queries more often in recent weeks, I’m reflecting on this topic today instead of posting one of our usual Saturday Symposium questions. For my part, I wish that teenage Sarah had known more adults who were willing to have no-holds-barred discussions of marriage, celibacy, and vocation with young people. I would have benefited immensely from this, and I see the absence of such conversation as a deficiency in my adolescent faith formation. In this post, I offer a list of things I wish someone would have told me about celibacy and vocation during my teen years. This list would be my starting point, should I ever be asked to give a talk to a church school or youth group.

Celibacy is not just for Catholic/Orthodox monastics and Catholic priests. There are lay people living in the world as celibates, and they are present in virtually every local community. Most of them have never had the opportunity to share their stories, and some would be delighted to talk with you about their lives. As you are coming into adulthood, you’ll develop a broader appreciation of what it means to be an adult in the Christian tradition if you engage in conversation with people living into different vocations. During middle school, high school, and college, challenge yourself to learn from the adults who are unmarried and unattached to monastic communities as well as those who are. As you do this, you will come to see that marriage is not the only way a person can participate fully in the life of the Church.

Celibacy is a vocation. Or depending upon how you look at it, we might also say that celibacy can be part of a vocation. Celibacy is not a punishment, mandate, or death sentence. It is a mature, adult way of life that enables people to manifest and participate in the Kingdom of God. This is also true of marriage. Just as there’s a lot more to marriage than having a spouse and welcoming children, there’s more to celibacy than sexual abstinence. If you are considering a celibate vocation, it is unhealthy and limiting to think of your purpose in life as “not having sex.” At fifteen, it’s tough to imagine what celibacy could possibly be if it’s not just about avoiding sex. That’s why it’s very important to get to know adults living celibate vocations. Exploring what it means to live a celibate vocation will enrich your understanding of the Christian tradition, even if once you reach adulthood you discern that God is calling you to marriage.

Celibacy can be a gift, but God sometimes calls people to do things for which they are not specially gifted or well equipped. Just like the vocation to marriage, a celibate vocation will involve joys as well as sorrows. You might have the gift of celibacy, or you might not. You may have a strong sense of this right now, or you may need to spend the next few years thinking about it. But you don’t have to figure that out right now, and it should not be the sole determining factor for answering the question, “How is God calling me to spend my life?” The key word in all of this is not gift — it’s calling. In the course of your lifetime, it’s likely that God will call you to at least one thing for which you do not feel prepared. That could be a career you never imagined yourself pursuing, missionary work in a faraway place that seems frightening, or friendship with a person who is struggling with a problem you have never experienced. If God calls you to parenthood, you may never sense that you are specially gifted as a mother or father. Jonah in the Old Testament was neither equipped nor eager when God commanded him to prophesy against Nineveh. Do not dismiss the possibility that the same can be true (and often is true) of those God calls to celibacy. I know a large number of celibate people in a variety of vocational contexts, and very few of them would say that their celibacy comes from a special gift. Some people may tell you that unless you know in your heart that God has given you the “gift of celibacy,” you should not consider pursuing a celibate vocation. These same people will probably never be able to give you a straight answer as to how you would know if you have this gift or not. Focusing on the gift of celibacy can be a distraction, especially if you grow up and do not sense giftedness toward any particular vocation. Think instead about “God’s calling to celibacy” and “God’s calling to marriage,” and find a compassionate spiritual director to help you ponder how God might be asking you to spend your life.

Celibacy and purity are not the same. Western Christianity, particularly in America, has come to emphasize purity so strongly that the practice of celibacy as lost its meaning in some traditions. While making morally sound decisions regarding sex is an important part of the Christian life, God knows that humans don’t do morality perfectly. If you have been or are currently sexually active, that does not make you unfit or ineligible for living a celibate vocation. If another person has sinned against you sexually, if you have been abused, assaulted, or raped, you are not at fault. You are not responsible for the sins others have committed against you. No matter what you have done and no matter what others have done to you, you are not a half-eaten candy bar, a wad of chewed gum, or a piece of tape that has lost its stickiness. Anyone who tells you such things is misleading you. Living fully into any vocation is a goal, not a lifelong state of perfection. Separate celibacy and purity in your mind right now. Committing a sin or being sinned against does not taint your body and soul for life. Living perfectly in accordance with conservative American purity standards from cradle to grave is not a requirement for answering God’s call to a celibate vocation.

Celibacy does not mean denying or repressing your sexuality, and God may be calling you to celibacy even if you find the idea of “having sex” appealing. Celibate people have sex drives just like married people. Most people who are called to celibacy do find the idea of sex appealing and often experience the desire for sex. While asexuality is real, the vast majority of celibates are not asexual. Celibacy is not a miserable state of getting through each day while trying every tip and trick possible to quiet unsatisfied sexual desire. If God is calling you to celibacy, the only way to live into that sustainably is to accept yourself as a sexual person (unless you are asexual, in which case accepting one’s asexuality would also be central to living celibacy sustainably). Where you are in life right now, it’s probably difficult to understand that it’s possible for a celibate person to integrate rather than excise his or her sexuality. This integration begins with honesty and open conversations. Depending upon your situation, it may also require learning to let go of shame.

Coming to understand and accept your sexual orientation might play into your vocational discernment process. Or it might not. For some people, discerning God’s call to marriage or to celibacy is primarily about the question, “To which type of vocation am I better suited?” For others, it’s about a deep sense of call that has been present from childhood onward. Still for others, the desire (or lack of desire) for a spouse and children is a starting point. There are probably as many possible motivators for considering celibacy and marriage as there are people discerning. Amongst many people across the sexual ethics ideological spectrum, the idea that sexual orientation could be a primary factor in vocational discernment is unpopular and sometimes met with hostility. You might be told by one person that if sexual orientation plays any role in your discernment process, you are engaging in self-loathing. You may hear from others that sexual orientation does not actually exist, and that people who “struggle with same-sex attraction” should work hard to prepare themselves for opposite-sex marriages. Avoid internalizing these messages and instead focus on asking God, “What are you calling me to do? How will I know what you are calling me to do?” Be open to the possibility that your sexual orientation could play a role in how you approach those questions. I’m not here to tell you that it necessarily should or must, but for some people it does and there’s nothing wrong with that.

In the spirit of our Saturday Symposium questions, I’m going to end this post by inviting our readers to reflect on the following: what do you wish an adult had told you about celibacy and vocation when you were a teenager? How would you use what you know now to help today’s tweens, teens, and young adults navigate difficult questions of sexuality and vocation? I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments.

Update: Lindsey wrote a brief companion piece to this one.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

From Hermitage to Celibate Village — The Ephrata Cloister

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Recently, we took a short Saturday trip to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to visit a historic site that Sarah has been wanting to see for years: the Ephrata Cloister. We think it’s likely that most of our readers are not familiar with this place, so it seems appropriate to include it in our Profiles of Celibates series. We’re including some photos from our visit within the post itself, but not all. You can see additional photos on our Facebook page.

Most of the time when Christians think of celibacy, Catholic priests and Catholic and Orthodox monastics come to mind first. Speaking comparatively, there aren’t many current or historic examples of Protestant celibacy. We decided to write about the Ephrata Cloister not only because it was a fascinating movement, but also because it was a Protestant movement. We’ve received many questions from Protestant readers about whether any celibate communities have arisen from within their traditions. As we continue this series, we plan to offer (insofar as it is possible) a balance of posts on Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians who have committed to celibacy either temporarily or perpetually.

During our visit to the Ephrata Cloister, we learned that the term “cloister” was foisted upon the community by outsiders who perceived the brothers and sisters as living like Catholic monastics. To the people who lived there, it was simply the town of Ephrata — named for Ephrath, the biblical site where the matriarch Rachel died during childbirth. Ephrata was founded by Conrad Beissel (1691-1768), a German Pietist who had originally intended to create a hermitage for himself rather than a village of vowed celibates. Beissel had been forced to leave Germany for his involvement with non-state-sanctioned religious groups. After immigrating to Pennsylvania but before experiencing a call to celibacy and solitude, he became a leader in the congregation of Conestoga Brethren. During this time, he attracted a number of followers due to his vibrant personality and unusual theological ideas (i.e. Saturday, not Sunday, is when the Sabbath should be observed). In 1732 as he resigned from leadership in the Brethren congregation and sought a quiet place to find unity with God, a number of his former followers desired to continue under his leadership and the village of Ephrata was born.

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The founders of Ephrata believed that the most complete union with God was a marriage of sorts. Giving one’s entire life over to God required abandoning any possibility of earthly marriage. To Beissel’s understanding, God’s wrath was his masculine aspect and God’s gentle mercy was his feminine aspect. Because both masculine and feminine could be found within God, men at Ephrata committed their lives in marriage to Sophia (Divine Wisdom) and women became brides of Christ. They adopted a rigorous rule of living that involved several hours of work, even more time in prayer, and one vegetarian or vegan meal per day. Brothers and sisters slept on wooden beds and awakened in the middle of the night to pray and watch for Christ’s coming. Sabbath worship took place in the community’s meetinghouse on Saturdays with the brothers and sisters physically separated while in the same room. Exceptions to the schedule were made for the community’s Love Feast which involved a grand banquet, reception of communion, and the washing of feet. Brothers and sisters donned white robes to hide the curves of their bodies and to symbolize their heavenly marriages.

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Approximately 80 celibate members resided at Ephrata, and eventually the village grew to include more than twice as many non-celibate members who lived in their own family farmhouses surrounding the core community of brothers and sisters. Families at Ephrata worked and worshipped alongside celibate members, often providing them with food and other necessary resources. Celibate members operated a German school for the local children. The dominant focus areas of work at Ephrata were music and writing. While manual labor played a role in the community’s daily life, members were trained to be singers, calligraphers, printers, and bookbinders. Ephrata left as its legacy an extensive collection of musical compositions, which a volunteer choir continues to sing for the public today.

When Beissel reposed in 1768 and Peter Miller assumed leadership, the celibate community at Ephrata began to decline rapidly. Beissel’s charismatic personality had been its driving force for years, and with less interested in celibacy amongst young men and women who had been educated by the brothers and sisters, Ephrata’s original vision for seeking unity with God in solitude lost its popularity. The last celibate member reposed in 1813, after which the village’s remaining residents became the German Seventh Day Baptist Church. The last non-celibate resident of the Ephrata Cloister — Marie Elizabeth Kachel Bucher — reposed in 2008.

Visiting the Ephrata Cloister gave us a window into a different kind of celibate life. We found it fascinating how Beissel used Genesis 1 to garner support for celibacy. In his theology, God intended to create humans with a perfect balance of male and female. Achieving this balance after the Fall required intense effort to discipline the body and the mind. Every dimension of the ascetical effort hinged upon integrating the masculine and the feminine. At Ephrata, it was essential to integrate one’s sexuality fully in order to balance masculine and feminine rather than attempt to repress all sexual desires. People interested in cultivating a celibate vocation might find some of Ephrata’s practices for honoring the masculine and feminine within as a helpful frame for integrating, rather than repressing, one’s sexuality. The daily disciplines of the Ephrata Cloister at its height were impressively demanding and reminded us of many other monastic communities we’ve visited. We have found ourselves musing about the connections between discipling the body and fully integrating one’s sexuality, and this topic might be helpful for others pursuing celibacy to consider.

We were intrigued by how the Ephrata Cloister blossomed as an artistic community. Several celibate members became skilled at writing Fraktur, preparing a number of texts such as this decorative wall hanging.

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Those who had taken on Ephrata’s monastic life saw their vocations blossoming into art. The depth of detail and care in Ephrata’s creative endeavors bears witness to one of many possibilities for how celibates can love and serve the world differently. We were amazed to learn that some Ephrata hymns consist of over 200 verses offered to God in witness to his work within the hearts of the community. Even 200 years after the last celibate member of the Ephrata community reposed, the artistic legacy of Ephrata continues. As we reflected on the art at Ephrata Cloister, we wondered what aspects of our own celibate vocation might have a broader impact. How might our commitments to vulnerability, hospitality, and a shared spiritual life bear fruit that reflects God’s glory?

We found our trip to Ephrata to be incredibly refreshing and have enjoyed talking about the visit together and with friends. We’re eager to continue the conversation with all of our readers in the comments.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

On Trojan Horses, Real and Imagined

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Discussions about LGBT people in Christianity are shifting rapidly. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by different approaches to open the conversation more generously such that it includes people with seemingly disparate approaches to the questions. At other times, we shake our heads in disbelief that a potentially valuable conversation gets shut down before it has even started.

Several days ago, we caught wind of a potentially interesting conversation when Sarah found an article written by Fr. Johannes Jacobse entitled, “Fr. Robert Arida: Why Don’t You Become Episcopalian?” Intrigued, Sarah clicked the link to find a critique of an essay authored by Fr. Robert Arida that was posted on the Orthodox Church of America’s Wonder blog. In his critique, Fr. Jacobse contrasted Orthodox culture with Episcopalian culture, concluding that Fr. Arida’s approach aligns so closely with Episcopalian culture that he should leave the Orthodox Church an become Episcopalian. Fr. Jacobse organized his critique around this claim:

Not long ago the Episcopalian Church faced the dilemma that Arida wants to introduce into the Orthodox Church: Should moral legitimacy be granted to homosexual pairings that was previously reserved only for heterosexual, monogamous marriage?

Since we found Fr. Jacobse’s critique first, we assumed that Fr. Arida must have written another article about homosexuality on par with his well-known and controversial 2011 essay. Our suspicions only increased after we came across Rod Dreher’s article at The American Conservative that refers to Fr. Arida’s most recent essay as an Orthodox Trojan horse. As a celibate LGBT Christian couple, we cannot help but feel trepidation when these issues are discussed so forcefully in any Christian tradition, so we braced ourselves for reading Fr. Arida’s original essay (eventually removed from Wonder blog, but now found here) and the original comments on the article (which have also been removed by Wonder blog editors). Sarah read the article aloud as Lindsey drove us home from work the day it was published. As the article drew to a close, both of us were baffled. We wondered, “That’s it? Where’s the controversy?” Reviewing the critiques further, we noticed that those reacting with greatest hostility to Fr. Arida’s essay zoomed in on the penultimate paragraph (our emphasis added):

If the never changing Gospel who is Jesus Christ is to have a credible presence and role in our culture then the Church can no longer ignore or condemn questions and issues that are presumed to contradict or challenge its living Tradition. Among the most controversial of these issues are those related to human sexuality, the configuration of the family, the beginning and ending of human life, the economy and the care and utilization of the environment including the care, dignity and quality of all human life. If the unchanging Gospel is to be offered to the culture then the Church, in and through the Holy Spirit will have to expand the understanding of itself and the world it is called to save. That there are Orthodox Christians who misuse the never changing Christ to promote a particular political agenda and ideology or as license to verbally and physically assault those they perceive as immoral along with those who would question the status quo of the Church impose on the Church a “new and alien spirit.”

Upon realizing that this paragraph was the source of controversy, we couldn’t help but speculate that many readers focused their critiques on the author and his past theological work rather than the content of the article. When issues such as human sexuality are broached within churches, most people (at least in our experience) generally assume that the ensuing discussion will fit snuggly within that particular Christian tradition’s theology. But in this case, the commenters seemed to assume that Fr. Arida’s essay was nothing more than a deliberate backdoor attempt to argue for change in the Orthodox Church’s teachings on marriage. At this point we want to make clear that our post today is not a defense of Fr. Arida, his recent essay, or his past work. We did not agree with everything in the essay posted to Wonder blog. Nonetheless, we were disheartened to see that this entire situation, which could have sparked an interesting and edifying discussion, became a missed opportunity. We were especially sad that many of the most unkind, uncharitable, and vitriolic comments left on the original article were from those charged with providing pastoral care to the faithful.

Fr. Arida, his personal opinions, and his level of theological orthodoxy are not the topic of our post today. This controversy from last week is but one example of how any conversation about LGBT Christian issues can quickly become a battle where all civility disappears. When we try to discuss why we find these conversations difficult, people in our Christian tradition are quick to encourage us to empathize with other members who see themselves as “refugees” from Christian traditions that have become more progressive over time. However, we notice that the same people are not nearly as quick to challenge those who assert that it’s impossible for LGBT people to be faithful Christians. We can appreciate that some folks had not always been so hostile to LGBT Christians and had perhaps made honest attempts at compassion in the past. We are willing to listen when they tell us that they had felt duped after being told, “No one is trying to force this denomination to change its teachings” and later finding out that this was not the case. Regardless of one’s theological views on same sex marriage, it seems understandable to us that a person would find it distressing to be told “x isn’t happening” and learn years later that x was indeed happening all along. For the record, neither of us has ever belonged to a denomination where this has occurred. We have no personal experience of this nature and don’t feel qualified to make judgments about what did or didn’t happen in Christian traditions other than our own. We try to be compassionate to everyone, even if that person’s past experience has introduced considerable paranoia every time someone in the Church raises topics of sexuality, marriage, and family.

When people have their ears perked for any and all code words that might be used to legitimize closed-door lobbying, they see a Trojan horse on every corner. But the problem is that while some Trojan horses are real, others are imagined. They are conjured up in the minds of people who are terrified that discussing LGBT issues in the Church will lead to a meltdown of all morality, initiating an unstoppable tailspin into relativism and heresy. No doubt, some people reading this post will consider our blog a Trojan horse. While that saddens us, it doesn’t surprise us. We’ve heard it all already. We’ve been contacted by people who are certain that we are lying in wait to slip gay marriage in through the backdoor of our Christian tradition. We’ve been told by people within our tradition that there is no way we could possibly be faithful Christians…and that if we were, we would shut up, keep our sexual orientations on the down-low, and play the “don’t ask, don’t tell” game to appease the neuroses of every tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist who thinks gay people are out to overtake the world. We’ve been accused of flirting and lying about our celibacy because caregiving is an important part of our relationship and sometimes it’s necessary for us to communicate in sign language on Sarah’s low hearing days.

We offer these examples not to play the victim card, but to bear witness to a very real problem that occurs when every discussion of LGBT issues is dismissed as a Trojan horse: Christian charity gets lost in a sea of “Safeguard the tradition!” demands. Words like “welcoming,” “pastoral,” and “merciful” are seen as code for “hidden agenda.” In working so diligently to protect the historic faith, both clergy and laity can lose sight of the real people who are caught in the crossfire and wounded by arrows from both sides. Pastoral care for faithful LGBT Christians risks being reduced to, “Don’t identify as gay, and don’t have gay sex. You’re welcome here, but only because everyone is a sinner.” Requests for listening and dialogue are often met with, “There’s no need. Struggle along with the rest of us to live according to God’s expectations. We treat all people the same.” While we genuinely wish that this were true, it isn’t. As long as every LGBT person in the Church is viewed as a symbol of the “gay agenda,” it will never be true that all who seek Christ are treated the same.

If the Church is going to minister effectively to people who do not fit into the heterosexual, cisgender majority, conversations about how to accomplish that need to take place. No amount of hierarchical statements reiterating existing teaching will be sufficient to fill the gaps in pastoral care that currently exist. There is a desperate need for practical guidance on what it means to love, support, and welcome LGBT Christians, and that guidance cannot end with pat answers. No doubt, the conversations that are necessary for accomplishing this will be difficult, emotional, and painful for all involved. But they are indeed necessary and will never happen if every attempt at discussing sexual orientation is written off as the scheme of a heretic who ought to leave the Church. Even conversations initiated by heretics have the potential to result in edification. An excellent historic example of this is the Church’s conversations with iconoclasts. Discussion of what constitutes a sacred image and why these are important to the Christian faith led to detailed explanations of Christ’s incarnation and instruction as to how we should commemorate people who have imaged Christ to us.

As LGBT Christians, we don’t think we’re proposing a new teaching when we say that we are created in the image and likeness of God. After all, every person is…and doesn’t the Church strive to assist everyone as he or she shows Christ to the world? We long to see the image of God in everyone, but that’s very difficult when people look at us and see nothing but a Trojan horse.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

An Interview with Eve Tushnet

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After reading and reviewing Eve Tushnet’s newly released book, Gay and Catholic, we were eager to learn more about the author’s perspectives on related topics beyond the scope of her recent work. She kindly agreed to let us interview her on the blog today. If you enjoyed the book or are thinking about reading it but haven’t had the opportunity yet, you’ll be interested in the thoughts she has to share this morning. A quick heads up before we get into our questions: this interview is longer than the majority of our regular posts.

Let’s begin…

AQC: Eve, we’re delighted to have you with us today. There have been a lot of books published about gay Christian issues in the past several years. Where would you situate your book relative to the others? From your perspective, what is your book’s unique contribution to discussions of LGBT issues in the Church?

ET: There are two big differences with my book: It doesn’t attempt a theological argument for the Catholic position on sexuality, and it focuses on the many vocations open to gay people. Most of the other books we have are either theology/exegesis, or personal memoir. I do memoir because I think our stories are important, but most of the book is almost a guide to vocational discernment. It’s an attempt to help people think through the question, “Okay, so let’s say that I buy the Catholic sexual ethic. What on earth can my future look like other than pointless loneliness? How can I give and receive love?”

I wrote it largely because I really wish that when I first became Christian somebody had told me to focus on what God was calling me to do with my life, and not on what I can’t do or why I can’t do it.

AQC: One item that stands out in your biography is that you are openly lesbian. We’ve noticed that people are constantly challenging us our use of LGBT, saying that using LGBT language needlessly inflames the conversation in the Church. Why have you chosen to use the words lesbian and gay? Does your use of the words lesbian and gay mean you identify with the LGBT community? Why or why not?

ET:  I have a lot of reasons for using “lesbian” and “gay” for myself. I do try in the book to remember that this is just one set of self-identifiers and there are lots of others, from “same-sex attracted” to “queer” to “I don’t really label myself,” all of which have their advantages and disadvantages when it comes to understanding oneself and being understood by others. But for me it was important to say “gay.”

Partly that’s because I am so grateful for my experiences in gay communities. I talk quite a bit in the book about how gay and lesbian communities were places where I learned to care for others and listen to others, to be less of a privileged jackass and less of an adolescent narcissist. Gay communities made me a better person and I want it to be clear that you can accept Catholic teaching and still have strongly positive associations with the term “gay.” Or to put it another way, I think the Church can relate to gay communities by seeking to baptize what’s best in them, learn from these communities and be changed by them while changing them, not just reject them totally.

The most important reason I wanted the cover to say “Gay,” though, is just that if you’re a scared Christian teenager that’s the word you’re eventually going to realize refers to you. There’s going to be a moment when you think, “Oh no–when people say ‘gay’ they mean me.” I think that’s almost always true for same-sex attracted kids in this culture regardless of how they end up identifying. And I really wanted kids in that position to have some evidence that there is a future for them in the Church.

Also it’s short. You can put it in a tabloid headline.

AQC: Sometimes Protestants dismiss celibacy as “the thing things Catholic priests do.” What are some of the most important things that you have learned about celibacy that are broadly applicable across the range of Christian traditions?

ET: To be honest, I don’t know how much I have learned about celibacy. I’m still right at the beginning of learning about it. I used to sort of assume that it was just a kind of guardrail or feature of the landscape, at best a tool which helps you live out your vocation rather than a calling in itself. So I’m not sure how much there is in the book about “what is celibacy”; it’s more about “what are forms of love open to celibate people.” I’m only now beginning to see what it might look like to experience a call to celibacy, to have celibacy as a color in one’s life rather than an absence of certain other colors. Your blog has helped a lot in that respect.

That said, I have learned from reading and speaking with celibate people in various forms of vowed religious life that celibacy requires integration of one’s sexuality. You get a lot of this in literature directed at priests and people in religious orders. You need to find some way of accepting and living out your sexuality. You can sacrifice sexual desire–sacrificing it can be a way of acknowledging it and honoring it. Desire becomes a costly gift you give to God. Or you can find ways to transform and sublimate desire into mystical prayer, service, friendship, etc. But just repressing it and hoping it goes away is a path to disaster.

AQC: What parts of the book were most enjoyable and/or challenging for you to write inasmuch as they enable you to live more fully into the celibate vocation?

ET: The two hardest things were writing the memoir part and reining in my constant, compulsive need to give advice. It’s an advice book! I need to own that fact. There is advice just crawling over every page. But I am so skeptical of our ability to give advice; so much advice is ego-driven projection, and so much of it, too, is heard in a very different way from the way it was meant. I’ve received some great advice in my life, and even taken some of it, so I do think fruitful advice-giving is possible. But rare.

The memoir was hard because I have the memory of a mayfly, and because I had to confront not only my drinking problem but the hypocrisy and compartmentalization which allowed me to drink addictively for over a decade while being a professed (and public!) Catholic.

The most rewarding things were getting to share the books I love with other people, and getting to quote insightful stuff said by my friends.

I see that none of that actually involves “living into the celibate vocation”! But see above re: my understanding of celibacy as a vocation is super-rudimentary.

AQC: Regarding same-sex attraction and same-sex friendships: you talk about how society gives LGBT individuals the opportunity for rather extensive experience in cultivating non-sexual friendships with people of their same-sex, even from early ages. Many people see this as a risk to chastity. What would you say to a person who views encouraging friendships between two individuals who experience same-sex attractions as too risky?

ET: My answer would depend on who the person is. If I’m talking to an actual same-sex attracted person, I’d ask some questions about their personal experience–are they afraid that painful patterns from their past will recur? are they trying to be obedient to advice they were given by someone else?–and, depending on their circumstances, encourage them to speak with someone they trust. I’d definitely encourage them not to be afraid of their sexuality. Being attracted to another guy or girl doesn’t make you toxic, and it doesn’t harm the person you’re attracted to. It doesn’t mean that you will inevitably damage yourself or the other person if you get to know them. That said, some people do have a really tough time being friends with someone to whom they are/were sexually attracted, so this is an area where you really have to know yourself and your patterns.

I guess my biggest advice (THERE IT IS AGAIN) to someone in that situation would be that they really need to be completely honest with themselves, with God, and with someone they trust. Denial of one’s own feelings, or demanding that another person play the role we’ve assigned them in our internal fantasy world, sets you up for misery.

I’d also try to see if they can get to know same-sex attracted people who have deep friendships with people of the same sex. Once you see that it can be done you might find it easier to intuit how it can be done. If the person asking me about this stuff is straight, I might go over some of the “what it’s like growing up gay” stuff from the book. We spend a lot of adolescent hours in single-sex environments, and we’re also a sexual minority so most of the people we fall for are basically never going to reciprocate our attractions, and that teaches many of us–not all–some important lessons about how to be friends with someone of the sex we’re typically attracted to.

Or I might just say, “Can you trust me that it happens?” Intimate same-sex friendship has been so fruitful in the lives of so many gay or same-sex attracted people I know. There’s so much personal testimony to the effect that same-sex friendship can be one of the most beautiful parts of our lives.

I would probably also talk about several aspects of what I’ve called the “sexualization” of gay people: We’re often treated as if we’re driven mad by lust for every person of the same sex that we like or spend time with; our friendships are viewed with intense suspicion even when we’re not actually attracted to our friends! Moreover, people assume that sexual temptation is the biggest temptation for us, when in fact loneliness or despair might be much more pressing problems. Being without intimate friendships is incredibly risky, if we’re talking about risks. The “safety first, don’t do anything which might possibly lead to sexual temptation!” model is unsafe, because it leaves gay people isolated, frightened to have friends.

AQC: People often accuse us of not defining celibacy as a way of life wholly distinct from marriage. Do you think it’s helpful to define both marriage and celibacy in terms so specific that every celibate vocation must be wholly distinct from marriage in its characteristics?

ET: I didn’t really define celibacy in the book. I do think it’s got to have “not planning to marry” as part of its makeup, but I really like how you two take that for granted and explore what might be other aspects of a celibate vocation, like hospitality. (Sorry, I’m not sure I have much interesting to say on this one!)

AQC: A reader asked: “Could you please ask Eve about celibate marriages where one partner has come out as gay or lesbian to the partner only, yet the couple remains together because of a child or children. Seems to me there should be some pastoral care for both partners in this instance because it can be very isolating for each side – sure, the couple has things in common and care about each other, even share kisses and affection, but, the lack of sexual intimacy has it’s struggles at times…”

ET: Oh, this is definitely a situation where both spouses need trustworthy spiritual guides. These situations are so specific to the individuals involved that I’m not sure I can say much more than, Find someone you trust and can confide in and be guided by. You need somebody who is spiritually grounded in prayer, obedient to the Church but without a rigid tendency to act as if his or her own personal opinion is the voice of God. Beyond that I’m hesitant to generalize.

AQC: Now that your book is out on shelves, what book or books do you think are still missing from the conversation? What are some of the books on LGBT people in the Church that you’d love to see a different author write?

ET: There are so many more books to be written! There’s a whole book to be done about celibacy in partnership. There should be a book directed more toward pastors, spiritual directors, counselors etc. There should be a book which engages more with lesbian history–I was pretty cavalier about sticking to history of men’s friendships, but there’s a lot of material about women’s same-sex devotion as well.

And I think there’s a whole book to be done about class issues for Christian celibates. Everything from, How do I cope with economic turmoil when I don’t have a spouse? (How can the parish truly act as a family for me?), to, How can celibate people shore up the families we love when times are hard?, to, Why is so much Gay Christian Stuff written from an overeducated, typically white-and-fairly-wealthy perspective, and what do people outside that narrow demographic have to say about their experience of gay/ssa/same-gender loving celibacy? I think that should be an anthology, so if you have thoughts on that stuff, get in touch with me.

That’s just for starters. There really is so much to explore here.

AQC: That’s a lot of food for thought! Thanks for sharing with us and our readers today. Readers, you can also check out Eve’s series of book extras at her blog.

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