Category Archives: Social Issues

Fighting Tradition

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Today we’re featuring the voice of our friend who wishes to use the name Tom Merrick. Tom grew up as a gay Christian in an Evangelical Protestant home. We’ve enjoyed getting to know Tom over the past several months. At the beginning of December, we were incredibly distressed to learn that Tom’s father had told Tom he’d no longer be welcome in his parents’ house. We wanted Tom to share his perspective about living as a celibate gay Christian, entering into a celibate partnership, and dealing with his family. As always when reading guest posts, please keep in mind that everyone’s story is different, and the experiences, perspectives, thoughts, and theological ideas presented by the author will not necessarily match completely with ours. For this guest post specifically, we would like to clarify that the word “tradition” can have different meanings depending upon the context. Tom uses the word “tradition” in reference to how fundamentalist evangelical Protestants have approached questions of faith and sexuality. 

A reflection by Tom Merrick

“Tradition, tradition!” goes the debut song of Fiddler on the Roof. Tradition tells us who we are and what God expects of us. It defines us. And sometimes it binds us.

Tradition, not Scripture, holds that one cannot be gay and be Christian. Tradition says being gay is a choice. It says gay people are unacceptable to God.

That is Tradition. And breaking with Tradition means breaking with God.

That lie I have battled against. And I lost that battle.

I lost when I came out to my parents and my father counseled me to get reparative therapy to become straight, refusing to think anything but that being gay is a choice. After a long, agonizing call where I tried to convince him otherwise, I cried. I screamed. I overturned tables and desks and chairs in tortured agony, despair, and rage. All because I could not fight Tradition.

I retreated into myself, feeling abandoned, betrayed, hopeless. I drank, figuring a hedonistic lifestyle condemning me to hell was all I could do. That was, after all, what Tradition said gay people did.

I wrote, attempting to hide my writing from my parents, who were unwilling to accept me. However, they discovered I was writing, and I spent another hopeless night trying to reason with my father. But Tradition said otherwise, and, again, I lost the battle.

I found hope in a small online community of gay Christians, who welcomed me in with open arms. I found acceptance and subsequently retreated further from the unaccepting parents I lived with.

And I found love for the first time. I fell in love with a fellow man, who loved me in return, and showed me more about Christ’s love than I could have ever understood. I learned to accept myself. To look at my reflection in the mirror without seeing myself as ugly or wounded. I found what it meant to support and be supported in rough times.

But such could not be endured by Tradition. So my father confronted me about this man I loved. And again, I lost the battle with Tradition.

Two weeks before Christmas, my father asked me to choose. Choose him and Tradition, or the man I loved. I broke with Tradition and he asked me to leave.

Tradition won that battle. The stupid Tradition found nowhere in the Bible that any not straight are hateful to God. The Tradition that says cast the unrepentant from your home to their life of rebelliousness.

And so Tradition won. I spent Christmas estranged from my family and living with the man I love. And I find myself trying to make sense of a world where Tradition reigns supreme and causes me to lose the family I love. I struggle to know how I should feel or what I should do. And I try to make ends meet in the real world of job searching, loan payments and car troubles, all in a new city and environment.

Tradition has won today. But maybe someday it will lose. And maybe someday Tradition will not ruin a family like it has mine. In the meantime, I will retreat, mourn my loss, and look forward to the day when Tradition no longer defines and binds peoples’ minds and hearts.

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.

Reflections on Transgender Day of Remembrance

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A reflection by Lindsey

Today is the International Transgender Day of Remembrance. It’s a sobering day for me. I have experienced increased hostility in various (thankfully, former) workplaces after people started suspecting that I’m somewhere on the LGBT spectrum due to my self-expression. I’ve witnessed friends being harassed for their gender identities and expressions. I’ve listened to a significant number of them tell stories of being harassed, and I’ve watched more than one video documenting physical violence of transgender people. Transgender Day of Remembrance reminds me that many transgender people have not lived to tell the tale.

I chose to write a reflection for the Transgender Day of Remembrance because I wanted to reflect more deeply on issues of gender expression and gender identity. One way I’ve found helpful to think about gender identity is that it’s a profoundly mysterious part of a person that bubbles to the surface in forms of gender expression. From my experience, we as a society have different conventions for how we collapse various forms of gender expression into two binary options of male and female. Gender is treated as a basic part of polite discourse. I’ve been thinking a lot about how transgender and genderqueer people often face violence unless they clearly fit into either male or female categories, or pass. In LGBTQ circles, passing frequently refers to one’s ability to be perceived as a gender-normative straight person. Passing concerns how other people perceive you. One’s ability to pass can be critically important if one longs for strangers to use the proper personal gender pronoun immediately. For many transgender people, being able to pass acceptably in the vast majority of social situations can be seen as essential to survival.

In a reflection I wrote several months ago on affirming kids in a gendered world, I claimed:

Kids have natural ways of expressing themselves. Freedom to explore different hobbies and personal sense of style can go a long way in helping kids become comfortable in their own skin. Will the world come screeching to a halt if a 4-year-old wants a buzz cut, a 10-year-old wants to learn how to solder electronics, a 7-year-old wants long flowing locks, a 6-year-old wears a suit and tie, a 3-year-old brings a doll everywhere, a 12-year-old begs to take babysitting classes, or an 8-year-old wears a dress?

However, even as I wrote this reflection, I was painfully aware that society has ways of disciplining kids who push the envelope of gender too far through nothing more than their existence. I can’t think of any usual social situations where a 4-year-old girl with a buzz cut would be accepted as a “real” girl or an 8-year-old boy wearing a fabulous floral dress would be accepted as a “real” boy. I’ve seen far too many parents bitterly embarrassed by, for example, their little girl’s appearance after the child had “discovered” scissors or her older brother had put a big wad of gum in her hair. I’ve also seen far too many examples of young boys’ being shamed and ostracized because they were seen in dresses. To be sure, some children might have parents willing to model bold resiliency skills; however this kind of parent is incredibly rare. Many parents would rather their gender-variant child learn to “fit in.”

With that pressure to fit in, transgender and genderqueer children can face some awful trade-offs between simply being themselves and avoiding undue negative attention. Some transgender and genderqueer children learn to pass even though a small part of them dies a little bit when they make an active choice to turn away from the gender expression that comes to them naturally and turn towards more socially acceptable gender scripts. Concerns about being accepted socially can lead some people to feel like they have no other option but to edit, and perhaps to try and censor, how their gender identity bubbles to the surface. When some transgender and genderqueer children think about how they would like to share themselves with the world, the ever-important social need to pass can cause them to reject their first, second, third, and perhaps even tenth most natural forms of self-expression.

I think we all have an inherent sense of what works for us on an individual level when it comes to self-expression. If I say, “Button-down shirt and khakis” many people experience a reaction of things like: “That’s definitely me.” or “That’s the antithesis of who I am.” or “I really can’t be bothered to have an opinion.” That sense of me or not me matters. But when it comes to various gender scripts in society, that sense of me or not me gets amplified one thousand fold. When society consistently genders a person wrongly, that person can feel completely invisible and insignificant.

Consider a person who tells a male cheerleader that “he’s picked a great way to meet a lot of, *wink* ladies.” What is the cheerleader to do when presented with such an obviously gendered script? Does the cheerleader chuckle nervously and awkwardly while ignoring the comment? Does this person look the questioner in the eye in order to give a knowing nod and a smirk? Or perhaps redirect the conversation towards developing broad skills of athleticism and teamwork? Does the cheerleader strongly defend his participation on the squad because four of his female friends begged him to join the team in order to qualify for co-ed competitions? Or open up and share about a passion for encouraging others to be enthusiastic supports of a team even when that team performs poorly? Likely, the original comment has nothing to do with the cheerleader’s motivation for joining the squad and has much more to do with asking a male cheerleader to assert his masculinity.

Asking a male-appearing person to assert his masculinity relies on various social scripts to determine whether one is safely the “right” gender. These tests have a range of socially acceptable answers. Being able to pass these tests successfully requires matching the message from one’s physical body to the words that come from one’s mouth with a socially acceptable answer. For transgender and genderqueer individuals, trying to fit into acceptable social scripts can lead to deep dissonance. Every test opens up a chasm between the answers they would love to be able to give and the answer that they feel compelled to give in order to fit in with social expectations. It can feel impossible to give any answer with any degree of integrity.

On each Transgender Day of Remembrance, I can’t help but remember those who fell into the chasm. Many tests of a man’s masculinity or a woman’s femininity pull upon a vast collection of gender stereotypes. It’s all too common for interrogators to rely on sexism and misogyny, asking questions with distinct tones and postures to pressure a person into answering rightly… or else. Transgender Day of Remembrance is an attempt to highlight how demanding another person assert his or her gender clearly and properly can quickly escalate to violence. What is more, fear of transphobic violence often compels the urgency with which some transgender and genderqueer people seek ways to pass. Some people may even be crushed spiritually by trying to pass. Constantly conforming to other people’s gendered expectations can leave transgender and genderqueer people feeling adrift and out of touch with themselves. It’s far too easy to fall into despair if one feels like one has betrayed oneself.

And so, on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, I remember that we still have a long way to go if we want to create spaces for kids to be themselves in an incredibly gendered world.

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 Open Letter to Cardinal Raymond Burke

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A reflection by Sarah

Dear Cardinal Burke,

You probably don’t remember me, but we met once a few years ago when I attended Mass regularly at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. I am a former Catholic who is now part of a different Christian tradition. I am also a partnered lesbian. Before I go any further, I want to make clear that my reasons for leaving Catholicism were in no way related to the Catholic Church’s teachings on same-sex relationships or any other aspect of human sexuality. My current Christian tradition also teaches a conservative sexual ethic, and I was aware of that upon entering. I am writing this today in response to your recent commentary on the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, specifically the talk given by the Pirolas of Australia who shared about experiences of inviting their gay son and his partner to family gatherings. But what you’re about to read is likely not what you might expect given the content of my first paragraph.

I’m not going to argue against the Catholic Church’s theological position that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” I received my theological training at a Catholic university, and am aware of the philosophy and theology that undergirds this statement. My personal feelings about its wording are irrelevant. Unlike many Catholics and non-catholics alike (including a large number of priests I’ve met), I do not mistakenly interpret this bit from the Catechism to mean that the Church believes I have a mental disorder or I am a lesser human being than my heterosexual brothers and sisters. I’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t be defending the teachings of the Catholic faith. As a bishop, this is your job and it would be unreasonable for any person to suggest otherwise. Lastly, I’m not going to complain about how any of your statements — recently or in years previous — have impacted me emotionally as an LGBT person. I don’t intend on giving the reactionary internet trolls yet another reason to dismiss LGBT Christians as crybabies who are only interested in a soft, watered-down version of the historic faith.

Now that I’ve laid out plainly what I’m not going to say, I’ll get directly to the point: I believe your response to the Pirola family fundamentally distorts the conversation about LGBT people in the Church. Anyone with authority to present Church teaching needs to do so clearly and also needs to be careful not to stereotype, caricature, or misrepresent. I don’t see either of these qualities in your response to the Pirolas’ talk. I’ve looked carefully at it over the past couple of days and have engaged in a number of conversations about the issues it raises. I have some questions that I hope you will consider answering.

First, I find it difficult to understand the meaning of your statement that gay relationships, and presumably some other kinds of relationships that you do not specify, are disordered. The Catholic Church makes very clear its teaching about homosexual activity, but I’m curious as to what renders a relationship as a whole disordered from your perspective. My partner and I are intentionally celibate and committed to continuing in celibacy for the rest of our lives together. I experience no sexual or romantic attraction toward Lindsey, though I love Lindsey more than any person in the world. But it’s also true that our relationship is a queer partnership. Having written a number of blog posts about our relationship, I’m well aware that this kind of arrangement is controversial and many people refuse to believe that couples like Lindsey and I exist, but there are many other couples like us. Would you consider our relationship an example of what you refer to as disordered? Furthermore, in the case of a sexually active same-sex relationship, would you assert that there is nothing good, holy, or Christlike about the way two partners interact with and attempt to guide each other through life? Does the presence of sexual activity and romantic attraction in a same-sex relationship automatically render the relationship disordered in its entirety? If sexual and romantic attraction are not present, does this matter at all? Couldn’t it also be argued that every human relationship is partly or at least occasionally disordered, except in rare situations where perfect love is always present? I would be grateful for some clarification on where the line is between a disordered relationship and an ordered relationship, and what makes a relationship so disordered that children should not be exposed to it.

Second, I’m wondering what qualifications you believe that families should impose upon their gay loved ones before permitting them to attend gatherings, especially where children are present. If it is inappropriate to invite one’s gay son and his partner (and family members in other kinds of disordered relationships) to Christmas dinner, what questions should a parent be asking in order to determine who can come? Should every potential attendee of a family function be required to inform the hosts in detail about his or her sex life? Or should it be assumed that if the hosts have any doubts or curiosities about a family member’s morality, sexual or otherwise, said person ought to be crossed off the invitation list without further inquiry? How qualified do you think parents are to determine whether or not their adult children’s souls are in a state of grace? Perhaps I’m wrong, and if so I’m open to being corrected, but to me it seems spiritually detrimental for a person to spend any amount of time speculating about another person’s sins. It also seems to me that your advice regarding parents with gay sons and daughters encourages this unhealthy spiritual practice. I sincerely hope I am reading you incorrectly on this point because it would trouble me greatly to think that a bishop is counseling his faithful to busy their minds with imaging what may or may not be happening in a loved one’s private life.

Third, I would like to know how far along the journey to overcoming a particular sin you believe a person ought to be before he or she is welcomed, not only at family gatherings but also as an active member of a parish. In addition to working toward repentance, what must he or she do? Spiritual fathers cannot break the seal of confession, so it would be impossible for members of the parish to verify without doubt that so-and-so is no longer living in sin. Should it be a requirement that the penitent be completely free from this sin before participating in parish life in any meaningful way? Must the penitent then focus on doing everything possible to prove his or her repentance to every person in the parish? What if doing so becomes more about pandering to the neuroses of the pious than attempting to follow Christ without compromise?

As a celibate gay person, I find that more often than not, people in my parish assume that I’m committing sin regardless of what I do or say. Some would be unsatisfied with anything less than a breakup of my partnership, a firm commitment that we never see one another again in any context other than church, and assurance that both of us will spend the rest of our lives in solitude so as not to risk impropriety with either women or men. There are LGBT members of my Christian tradition and yours who desire the fullness of the historic faith, but are terrified of causing an uproar on Sunday by simply being present. For the past two days, I’ve heard dozens of faithful Catholics asserting that this is as it should be, and drawing their arguments primarily from your statement. There are Christians — both Catholic and non-catholic — who have taken your words to mean that every LGBT person who darkens the doorstep of the church should be subject to an inquisition. As a bishop, you need to be aware of this.

I could continue with more questions, but this is already getting quite lengthy. I’m curious to know your thoughts on the sufferings of children exposed to gay relationships as compared to the sufferings of other family members who would be impacted if gay loved ones were uninvited from gatherings. I’d like to know how you reconcile the fact that in many non-western cultures, people are more affectionate with each other in general. This includes men being affectionate with men, women being affectionate with women, and married people being affectionate with folks other than their spouses. I’d also be interested in knowing exactly how you think the mere presence of a gay couple, sexually active or not, will communicate to children that gay sexual activity is morally good. Presumably, young children don’t know anything about sex, and there’s no reason to believe that a gay couple is any more likely than a straight couple to begin conversing with children about sex.

What I would be most interested in hearing from you is why you have chosen to respond to LGBT issues discussed at the Synod in a way that focuses exclusively on prohibitions against same-sex sexual activity. I’m reasonably confident that you will not understand this, but gay Christians do not define ourselves primarily by our sexual attractions or sexual decisions. When “intrinsically disordered inclinations” becomes “disordered relationships” the speaker distorts the conversation. Questions about whether people should be invited to their families’ Christmas dinner tables distort Christ’s welcome to everyone. If people are expected to answer questions about their sex lives before receiving any degree of welcome, then it’s only natural to assume that the Church is incapable of seeing people fundamentally as beings created in the image of God.

I understand that as a bishop of the Catholic Church, you have a weighty responsibility to present the Gospel in its fullness. A synod on difficult pastoral circumstances will naturally spark conversations where one bishop’s approach differs from another bishop’s approach. I hope that you feel encouraged by your brother bishops while discussing these complex realities. Finding the ideal language to use after such extensive conversations is hard, if not impossible. In a world where people are grappling constantly with new challenges while attempting to avoid misunderstanding, your clarification on these matters would be helpful to Catholics and non-catholics alike. I hope that you will consider responding to at least some of these questions because I am not alone in wondering what your answers would be.

You remain in my prayers, and I would appreciate also your prayers for me.

Sincerely,

Sarah

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.

Changing Course, or Changing Tone? Recent Shifts in Pastoral Responses to LGBT Christians

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The news cycle has a funny way of repeating itself. We first had the idea for a post on this topic several months ago when many Evangelical Christians were grappling with the implications of generous spaciousness and perhaps offering a “Third Way” when providing pastoral care for LGBT people. This morning we awoke to news regarding the midterm report from the Synod on Marriage and Family in the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Herald has called the document a “pastoral earthquake,” suggesting that there is a great deal of anxiety among the faithful about whether spiritual directors are changing course in one way or another.

On our blog, we focus many of our comments on these issues on LGBT people who are living celibacy or interested in exploring the possibilities of celibate vocations. Our experience is that we have discerned calls to celibacy. We also affirm the experiences of LGBT people who choose celibacy out of obedience to their Christian traditions.

When a person is trying to live a celibate vocation, often he or she cannot find any kind of meaningful support for this way of life. Many Christians present marriage as the de facto vocation for all people. Finding books that positively and practically discuss friendship, singleness, and celibacy can be impossible in most Christian bookstores. We’re aware that many LGBT Christians who are trying to live celibate vocations feel like they need to go it alone or figure out this vocation with a general sense of “spiritual” support attained by participating in the spiritual life of the Church. We can empathize with our friends who wonder if churches just starting to celebrate same-sex marriages will have any interest in continuing to support LGBT people who want to explore celibacy.

Celibate LGBT Christians have been through the wringer when it comes to finding spiritual directors. Some people counsel us (broadly, not the two of us specifically) to give up our celibate vocations, to stop denying ourselves sexual experiences, and to explore the possibility of sexually active same-sex relationships. Other people counsel us to give up all LGBT language and avoid any other actions that straight, cisgender Christians might consider scandalous. It’s difficult for us to find trustworthy spiritual directors. So many pastors default to using auto-scripts, especially around topics of sexuality and vocation. The search for a helpful, compassionate, and rigorous spiritual director often feels like a quest for a diamond in the rough.

It’s hard to think of other places outside the Church where the divide between “rigorous spiritual direction” and being an absolutely insensitive jerk is so thin. Speaking candidly, we know that there congregations we’d never visit because the pastor has made it abundantly clear that he is incapable of seeing anything good in an LGBT person. It’s amazing how many people assert that being LGBT is synonymous with having sex outside of marriage. As with many misunderstandings, it seems there’s a break-down in communication.

Relative to everything we’ve stated, people across gamut of Christian traditions — Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox — are anxious about how their pastors might change their approaches to LGBT issues in the near future and long-term. People wonder, will their pastors follow trends of affirming, celebrating, and even advocating for same-sex marriage? Will their pastors make it clear that every person should find his or her identity exclusively in Christ and that any identification with words like “gay” must be avoided at all costs? Will the pastors take approaches of refusing to engage in any of the controversies?

When spiritual directors shift course, or simply shift tone, it’s worth considering what approaches they are moving away from and what approaches they are moving toward. There’s a troubling tendency among conservative Christians to assert that any change is going to have its inevitable end in moral relativism and/or spiritual death. In reality, many Christians change tone on these issues because repentance is part and parcel of the Christian life. If pastors do not consistently wrestle with how they approach tough pastoral questions, then they are not doing their duty as pastors. Tough pastoral questions are considered tough because a pastor walks away wondering, “Did I really do the right thing there? What would I do if I encountered a similar situation in the future? How did I consider the unique circumstances of this situation?” We’re confident that any pastor reading this entry could reflect back on times where he or she truly wanted an opportunity for a do-over.

Our situation as a celibate LGBT Christian couple is certainly uncommon. We’ve been so grateful to meet pastors who can affirm our desires to grow into the fullness of faith in Christ. However, when we consider the moves for more space in some traditions, we can’t help but be afraid of reactionary impulses within our own Christian tradition. We wonder if we constantly push our priest to his very limits, especially as our pastoral care needs get more complicated with Sarah’s health problems. We do our best to talk to our parish priest, to pray with him and for him, and to consider his counsel carefully even if we end up pushing back on some of it. Additionally, we both seek direction from our individual confessors. Amid the screeching of the culture war, we can’t help but feel like we and our priests walk on a razor’s edge.

Recognizing that razor’s edge, we think that many people confuse changing course with changing tone. Churches can teach on Christian maturity, vocations, sexuality, and relationships without sounding like drill sergeants or dictators. Pastors have options to help people grow towards Christian maturity that do not involve threatening to shun them at every possible opportunity or treating them as though their very presence is a liability to the community. It’s possible to talk with LGBT people rather than simply talking at us. As we sit back and read the midterm report of the Synod for Marriage and the Family, we can’t help but hope that maybe as a result of these conversations among bishops, celibate LGBT Christians who are part of the Catholic tradition will have an easier time finding compassionate spiritual directors. We wonder what things might look like if everyone encountered a church community that is capable of seeing the gifts they bring rather than assuming they are only present to create controversy.

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