Tag Archives: church

Protected by celibacy?

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As we’ve been blogging, from time to time people have approached us with questions like, “Why do you care about LGBT people in the Church? You’re celibate. You don’t have anything to worry about.” People assume that because we’re celibate, we’ve checked the proverbial box that ensures that we’re safe in all Christian environments. Not to put too fine a point on our response, but that assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Some people think that if we’re celibate, we’re not identifiable as members of the LGBT community. In truth, Lindsey’s never been able to pass as a cisgender, heterosexual person in terms of physical appearance. With a rather ambiguous build, short hair, and a penchant for khakis and button-down shirts, Lindsey fits many people’s stereotypes of what an LGBT person looks like. It doesn’t matter that Lindsey’s appearance has been mostly static since middle school. When Sarah is not with Lindsey, people generally assume Sarah–who has an unmistakably feminine appearance–is straight. However, we as a couple lose any privileges associated with passing as straight the instant Lindsey appears on the scene. To many people, that we show up as a pair and that and Lindsey is so visibly a member of the LGBT community are enough for them to make assumptions about our sexual ethics. Celibacy doesn’t even enter the picture.

Equally, our celibacy does not protect Sarah from facing backlash once people see us together. We’ve noticed in situation after situation how easily people’s comfort levels with Sarah change once they meet Lindsey and realize we’re together. One example of this came about when Lindsey was in the process of moving to Sarah’s city. During visits prior to the move, Lindsey attended services at Sarah’s parish with Sarah. Sarah had recently made that parish home, and was still relatively new there. While many people initially treated Sarah just like any other person, that began to change once they met Lindsey—and this was well before anyone had come to know us as a couple. Simply seeing us attend church together was enough to cause some to distance themselves from Sarah and hesitate to socialize with Lindsey at all.

Another issue is that a great many people have no understanding of what celibacy is and/or think “being gay” automatically means having sex. To these folks, the idea of celibacy as a way of life an LGBT person might adopt is foreign. The question they ask is not, “What is an appropriate sexual ethic for an LGBT person?” Instead, it’s, “Why isn’t this person willing to stop being gay?” When we are in the presence of people holding this perspective, our celibacy means nothing in conversation. If we try at all to discuss celibacy in response to someone’s assertion of, “The Church says you can’t be gay,” that gets us nowhere more often than not. Sometimes, the person will counter with, “Well, if you aren’t having sex, then you aren’t really gay,” followed by, “You could still get married to someone of the opposite sex if you wanted.” But generally, we don’t even get that much of a conversation going. The more typical response we hear is, “Huh?” with no further attempt at engaging us in discussion ever again. In these situations, our celibacy does nothing to protect us because the person isn’t comfortable talking about sexual ethics in the first place.

Additionally, people frequently associate celibacy with singleness. To these people, we cannot be celibate because we are in a relationship with one another. We find this assumption to be entirely problematic because it misrepresents celibacy. Celibacy as a way of life is deeply rooted in community. Monastic communities provide insight into how people have lived Christ-centered celibate lives for hundreds of years. Conversely, living alone in an apartment far from one’s family of origin is arguably one of the newest ways of life. Yet, an identifiably solitary life is the dominant image most people have of modern celibacy. Because many people associate celibacy with singleness, they cannot grasp the idea that we’re a celibate couple, let alone consider what that might mean for our lives as LGBT Christians. These people can only see us members of the LGBT community and make assumptions about our activity from there. We’re no strangers to the accusation that we have rejected a celibate way of life because we’re in a relationship.

We totally understand that celibacy is a queer calling. Many people just don’t get it. While at first glance it may seem that celibate LGBT people are protected by their celibacy, we (and other individuals in similar situations) often encounter a double helping of misconceptions about both celibacy and LGBT topics. We’re consistently read in social situations as “not heterosexual,” a reading which in and of itself invites a considerable amount of accusations.

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World Vision, Gay Marriage, and the Queer Calling of Serving the Poor

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World Vision, a leading international development charity known for its child sponsorship program, created a fire in the blogosphere by announcing (and then retracting) a decision that gay Christians in legal same-sex marriages would be eligible for employment at the charity. In the 72 hours of the news cycle thus far, we’ve seen a lot of opinions expressed: some writers praised World Vision’s initial move as a radical acceptance of gay marriage. Others decried the decision as caving to worldly pressures. Still, others began calling upon progressive Christians to support the charity financially as conservative Christians dropped their child sponsorship commitments. Yet another group encouraged conservative Christians to sponsor children with more theologically orthodox charities. Then, when the decision was reversed, people on both sides of the debate became disgruntled.

The two of us here at A Queer Calling see another perspective on the events of the past three days, and we haven’t seen this discussed much yet: we believe that each Christian tradition has an obligation to define marriage and guide members of that specific tradition to Christ-honoring ways of life. All Christian traditions and organizations should recognize that people are people, create in God’s image and likeness. And lastly, service to the poor is its own kind of queer calling.

Christianity Today interviewed Richard Stearns, the director of World Vision, after the initial decision to allow hiring of staff members in legal same-sex marriages and reported:

Stearns said World Vision has never asked about sexual orientation when interviewing job candidates. Instead, the organization screens employees for their Christian faith, asking if they can affirm the Apostles’ Creed or World Vision’s Trinitarian statement of faith. Yet World Vision has long had a Christian conduct policy for employees that “holds a very high bar for all manner of conduct,” said Stearns. Regarding sexuality activity, World Vision has required abstinence for all single employees, and fidelity for all married employees.

Let’s be clear about something: World Vision is not a church, and it hires Christians from a wide range of traditions. We don’t know for sure the variety of denominations represented by World Vision’s staff members, but theoretically, there could be members of the United Church of Christ working alongside members of the Roman Catholic Church. When you insert multiple Christian traditions into the mix, it’s not terribly hard to see that there are many points of theological disagreement. These different traditions have come to varying conclusions about the acceptability of same-sex marriage, but also have markedly different views on virtually everything that could be used to define a Christian tradition: sacramental theology, worship practice, Christology, views on authority, church organization, salvation, you name it. World Vision has kept a practice of bridging these differences by asking job seekers to affirm the Apostles’ Creed or World Vision’s Trinitarian Statement of Faith and to agree to a Christian conduct policy.

In reversing their decision, Richard Stearns published an open letter in which he wrote the following:

We are writing to you our trusted partners and Christian leaders who have come to us in the spirit of Matthew 18 to express your concern in love and conviction. You share our desire to come together in the Body of Christ around our mission to serve the poorest of the poor. We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness.

In our board’s effort to unite around the church’s shared mission to serve the poor in the name of Christ, we failed to be consistent with World Vision U.S.’s commitment to the traditional understanding of Biblical marriage and our own Statement of Faith, which says, “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” And we also failed to seek enough counsel from our own Christian partners. As a result, we made a change to our conduct policy that was not consistent with our Statement of Faith and our commitment to the sanctity of marriage.

Such is the work of today’s American “orthodoxy.” Divisions in faith and practice can be myriad. Many American Christians shop around for various churches, visiting congregations attached to different Christian traditions and looking for the magical mix that spurs them to consider one particular local church “home.” For many Christians, especially those in evangelical traditions, diversity of belief and practice amongst different denominations and local congregations is viewed as acceptable when it comes to a wide range of issues. Yet, the instant questions of homosexuality and same-sex marriage enter the fray, the loosely organized conservative Evangelical Church appears to fight the good fight in the name of defending the faith, the authority of the Scriptures, the rightness of one particular biblical interpretation, and the cause of Christian unity. It’s no wonder that gay Christians feel frustrated, angry, and hurt when our lives (or people’s assumptions about our lives) become the deal-breaking factor many straight Christians consider when deciding to support (or cease supporting) charitable organizations.

Since World Vision made its initial decision (and even more since the reversal), people have been asking us our opinion on this whole messy situation. Some have assumed incorrectly  that because we are a celibate couple, we were glad to see World Vision’s retraction and apology. Not so. We tend to advocate for the freedom of Christian traditions to define marriage in accordance with their own theologies and guide people within those traditions to Christ-honoring lives. This doesn’t mean we agree with all possible Christian theologies of marriage and sexuality, but it does mean that we respect the autonomy of each church/denomination to make its own decisions on these matters. There are many Christians who, within the contexts of their own traditions, have reached different conclusions on sexual ethics than we have. We don’t see it as our job to impose our own theology of marriage and sexuality upon other people, and we don’t see such as the job of nondenominational Christian charities either. Again, World Vision employs people from many denominations, presumably some that affirm same-sex marriage, and is not a church. 

Now that World Vision has reversed its decision, we wonder how the organization might react to a job candidate who is not in a same-sex marriage, but a civil union or domestic partnership. Call us pessimists here, but we’re not too confident that the terminology used would make any difference. One could make an argument that these other types of arrangements are neither scriptural nor unscriptural–that they are legal relationships having nothing to do with how religious terms are defined. One could make a similar argument about “legal marriage” in contrast to “religious marriage.” But somehow we doubt that most of the donors who pulled their sponsorships of children would be any more amiable toward the idea of LGBT people in civil unions, domestic partnerships, or even as singles working for an organization like World Vision.

In the worldview of many Christians, it is totally acceptable to make a number of assumptions about a person’s sexual ethic, way of life, faithfulness, and so on if that person is LGBT. That a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (or any combination thereof) couple has acquired some form of legally recognized relationship says nothing about that couple’s sexual ethic or religious understanding of marriage. Since so many of the basic rights tied to caring for another person are granted only with a government-recognized marriage, it’s entirely possible that a couple in our own situation might find state-sanctioned marriage the only means of protecting each other legally. But regardless of a couple’s (or a single person’s) situation or convictions, it’s difficult for us to see how hiring a person for work that involves service to the poor necessarily implies endorsement of that person’s sexual ethic or theology of marriage. We’ve read a couple of arguments that World Vision’s retraction was a move to protect marriage/a Christian sexual ethic and not an attempt to keep LGBT people in general out of employment in Christian charitable organizations…but to us, that seems to be wishful thinking. How many of the donors that pulled support from World Vision still would have done so if the original announcement had been about acceptance of LGBT people rather than willingness to hire married LGBT people? We’ll never know the answer to this, but we remain highly skeptical of the claim that this controversy has only to do with gay marriage.

In our estimation, service to the poor is its own kind of a queer calling. With so many social messages that happiness, fulfillment, and a life well-lived come from acquiring many assets, opting out of the materialistic rat race is surely countercultural. Individuals who take on this work forgo many benefits assumed with employment in other positions, and usually people interested in faith-based international development jobs are willing to move every few years to advance different projects around the world. Often, workers–irrespective of sexual orientation, gender identity, and marital status–make radical commitments to serving others at the expense of their own comfort and wellbeing. There is a reason Christians of all sexual orientations and gender identities are committed to establishing a preferential option for the poor: the Gospel compels us to care for the least of these. World Vision has consistently displayed a commitment to enter communities that would most benefit from their services, including those significantly affected by AIDS. World Vision sees these people as people and fights for the chance to serve them. It seems a bit ironic that an organization so committed to seeing Christ in the global poor has offered such a mixed message on the inclusion of LGBT Christians in its work.

As we have read the developing story, we’ve been stricken by how easy it can be to overlook the lives of real people in favor of combatting an ideology one might perceive as threatening–and in most situations, that goes equally for liberals and conservatives. We’ve read a number of posts in the blogosphere that suggest the decision for faith-based charities to hire people in same-sex marriages would endanger a broader Christian theology of marriage. We’ve read others that claim World Vision’s reversal is unchristian because it shows compassion for the poor (at least in terms of wooing donors back) at the expense of the LGBT community. While we aren’t going to pick an argument with those who hold these positions, we will say that we find it troubling how often Christians fail to see people as creations beloved by God rather than “enemies” or “allies.” We are grieved for the thousands of children who lost sponsors as a result of reactions to World Vision’s original announcement, the unknown number of LGBT Christians denied the opportunity to serve Christ by serving the poor via World Vision or similar charities, and a worldwide Church that is in such desperate need of peace and healing.

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Adventures in Praying Together

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A reflection by Sarah

“The poor shall eat and be satisfied and the hungry shall be filled with good things. O Master Christ our God, bless the food and drink of these, thy servants, for you are holy always, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

That’s the blessing Lindsey says over every meal we share together. Since the first time Lindsey and I joined over Skype for dinner, I’ve known that I can count on hearing this prayer at least once a day. It has become a key element in our shared spiritual life, and during certain seasons it has been the only prayer we’ve consistently engaged in together.

Concerning spirituality, Lindsey and I have discovered that we take very different approaches. Our dissimilar preferences are likely rooted in the two distinctive contexts in which we came to faith. Sometimes, I find myself surprised that we both ended up in the Christian tradition we now share, traveling to it from pathways so unalike. I grew up in a Christian family and was exposed to a variety of Christian spiritualities from childhood through college. Though I lived in an area where the Freewill, United, and Southern Baptist denominations dominate the religious landscape, I knew early on that I felt God’s presence most profoundly in liturgical worship. I’ve always believed in God, but if I had to identify a specific “this is real and I accept it” moment in my faith journey, I’d say without hesitation that it was during a Eucharistic holy hour one autumn when I was 18. I knelt in silence before the tabernacle in a rural Kentucky Catholic church and felt Christ’s presence as I never had before. I was overcome with peace and relief from the anxiety I had been attempting to ward off earlier that day, and I knew without a doubt that I was kneeling before Christ himself.

In contrast to my experience, Lindsey grew up not going to church and first became part of a faith community by playing electric bass in a praise band. Lindsey made a personal commitment to Christ during Lindsey’s freshman year of high school at a youth event, and later became active in various evangelical ministries during college. Because Lindsey came to faith within a contemporary, evangelical context–a world which was almost totally foreign to me until college–there have been times when I’ve experienced difficulty understanding Lindsey’s spirituality. One example of this is that I’ve never been especially drawn to free-formed prayer. It doesn’t come naturally, and historically I’ve had some experiences with spiritually abusive free-formed prayer. Whether my intention is to praise God, to give thanks, to ask forgiveness, or to cry out for help, I’m more apt to search the traditional prayers of the Church for something appropriate than to begin with my own words. Typically, I’ve found greater comfort in the rosary or prayer rope devotion than in approaching God informally. Lindsey, on the other hand, can articulate any diversity of prayer intentions with eloquence, yet in a conversational manner. I remember once after we first met, I asked Lindsey to pray for me regarding a health issue, and a second later Lindsey was responding to that request on the fly with an evangelical-style free-formed prayer. It took me a moment to catch up with what was happening. I recall staring blankly at Lindsey afterward and asking, “How did you do that?”

As Lindsey and I have been developing a way of life together, we’ve had many conversations about how different our processes were for coming into our shared Christian tradition. Lindsey first felt compelled to explore this tradition after attending Liturgy and observing the centrality of the Gospel in worship, making connections between this and the emphasis evangelical Christianity places on spreading the Gospel and encountering Christ in a personal way. Having been part of a liturgical tradition previously, I was attracted initially to the level of reverence people within this tradition have for the Liturgy and sacraments, and the mystical (and in many ways, organic) approach to theological issues I had previously been exposed to in more legalistic terms. Lindsey and I enjoy praying together during Liturgy, and because of the differences in our backgrounds sharing the experience and talking about it afterward becomes even more fascinating. Often, we’ll spend the drive home on Sunday discussing our responses to and observations during worship that day, and frequently the conversation will lead me to further reflection on my own experience based on what I’ve learned from Lindsey’s.

We learn a great deal from observing each other’s personal devotional practices and experimenting with ways to draw connections between our individual spiritualities. Sometimes, I see a bit of Lindsey rubbing off on me. There are times when I can sense the Holy Spirit’s presence during one of Lindsey’s powerful free-formed prayers—sometimes so much that when I need Lindsey to pray for me I ask, “Could you channel your former evangelical self for a moment?” And while I’m sure I’ll always prefer Gregorian and Byzantine chant to contemporary Christian music, thanks to the influence of Lindsey’s former praise band experience I find myself asking Lindsey to turn the car radio to our local praise and worship station occasionally. At the same time, Lindsey has begun to take great joy in asking me historical questions about the Liturgy and occasionally praying one of my favorite litanies with me when I’m feeling the need to be surrounded by the entire communion of saints. Our personal quirks and their impact on each other make for a rather unique learning experience as we approach the question of how best to cultivate a shared spiritual life.

In some seasons, we’ve made a regular practice of praying parts of the Divine Office together. In others, we have gravitated more toward praying individually, but joining together in discussion of scripture and spiritual reading materials. Still in others, the only prayer rule we’ve been able to follow jointly is Lindsey’s blessing over our evening meal. Endeavoring to pray together consistently is a challenge, and I imagine it will be for the rest of our lives together. We’re still learning how to appreciate and honor each other’s spiritualities because we believe it important to respect the different ways we came to know God individually prior to meeting each other. We see all of this as yet another adventure, and are eager to see all the places it will lead us along our journey towards Christ.

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Unlocking the Feast within the Fast

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A reflection by Lindsey

I received a phone call recently from a dear friend. She thought of me because it’s Lent and she doesn’t know anyone who loves Lent more than I do. Every time a friend mentions the Lenten season, I can’t help but smile.

My love of Lent began almost immediately as I started exploring Christianity. I was attending a Lutheran church that had regular Wednesday night soup suppers before a Lenten service series. The theme of the first Lenten series I attended was “Can you drink of this cup?” During the first week we received a small clay cup, and we received items to put into our cup during subsequent weeks. My cup is still on the bookcase in “my” room at my parents’ house. I immediately associated Lent with more communal gatherings and a focused effort to grow closer to Christ.

In college, I attended an Evangelical Protestant church that didn’t make a big deal about the liturgical calendar. Nonetheless, the community believed that God did awesome things when we took time to fast and pray. We started taking a 40 day period before Easter to pray for God to pour His blessings out on us as individuals, on our friends, and on our church. The pastoral team prepared various guides to encourage us to read through a chosen set of Scriptures and to suggest different faith experiments related to prayer and fasting.

Since that time, I’ve become aware of an ancient fasting tradition during the Lenten season that still lives in Eastern rite churches (Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, and some Protestant groups seeking to discover the early Church). The tradition exhorts people to abstain from meat, dairy, eggs, fish with a backbone, wine, and olive oil during penitential seasons and twice a week outside penitential seasons. Like many fasting traditions, it suggests a certain discipline around eating with the expressed intention of helping a person grow spiritually. The ancient wisdom has 2 other teachers: prayer and almsgiving. To be clear: I don’t consider myself to be a good student of any of these teachers. Yet I find that approaching the Lenten season with joy unlocks the feast within the fast.

I’ve found myself gradually shifting towards the Eastern rite fasting disciplines because my local church communities try to keep the Eastern rite guidelines around food. It’s been important to do so gradually because I had to learn to cook first. During the ordinary times of the church year, I rely on easy-to-prepare staple foods that use roughly the same ingredients. Each fast paradoxically presents a new invitation to deepen my appreciation of food. The year I was most observant in the dietary rules was the year I decided to avoid eating out at restaurants during the Lenten period. Having to go to the grocery store regularly caused me to experiment with different combinations of new grains, various vegetables, and beans. Last year, I discovered that avocados have a similar texture to cheese in a lot of dishes. Who knew? Sarah’s higher protein needs have spurred me onward to exploring previously uncharted protein categories of lentils, shrimp, and crab. I haven’t arrived fully yet, but I do enjoy trying. In “fasting” for a season, I actually haven’t lost any foods that I love: I’ve grown in my love for diverse foods, eating a fuller array.

Taking on a certain discipline as a community has a way of bringing people together as a family. You will always have the person who think it’s impossible to eat any foods that follow the guidelines, the person scouring the labels to determine if a particular item has any “forbidden” ingredients, the family quietly inviting lost newcomers to come over for dinner, the person who reminds you that the guidelines emerged during a different place and time, people sick of eating peanut butter and/or lentils, and folks eagerly swapping recipes. Sometimes the same individual falls into multiple categories.

The communal nature of the fasting discipline creates a lot of space for conversations. Looking at my own experiences as a guide, the feast of the Lenten fast can be found in community. No matter what Christian tradition I’ve been a part of, people have made time to come together, pray, and eat during Lent. I find it amusing that churches have more meals together during “fasting” periods than they do in “ordinary” time. Care to pass the guacamole?

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Beyond Right and Wrong

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The question of LGBT people in the Church is often framed as a “culture war” issue with two definitive sides. On one side, “progressive” groups advocate for greater acceptance of gay marriage and allowing for sexually active LGBT people to serve at all levels of Church leadership. On the other side, “conservative” groups exhort LGBT people to grow in holiness by resisting all manner of sexual sin, bearing their sexual orientations (and gender dysphoria) as a cross, and struggling to conform to normative expectations of the cisgender, heterosexual majority. Both sides are quick to pronounce their side “right” and the other side “wrong.” Needless to say, we find that the “culture war” approach does little more than wound a lot of LGBT Christians (and their allies) in the crossfire.

Here at A Queer Calling, we have tried to advocate for a different approach that moves beyond right and wrong. We focus on how LGBT people likely have queer callings that need to be actively discerned in the light of Christ. For us, the dominant question is “Where do we see good fruit sprouting as God guides and directs individual LGBT Christians?” We recognize that LGBT people are people above all other descriptors. We believe that God, who is rich in mercy, always wants all people to grow in holiness but does not ask people to address each and every issue in their lives at the same time.

The culture wars have a profoundly negative effect when they dichotomize spiritual direction. Mention your LGB status to a person strongly aligned with the “progressive” camp and he or she just may offer to officiate your wedding. Oh, you’re transgender? No problem, let’s connect you with the nearest trans-friendly physician to help you get started with gender confirmation therapies. Breathe a word about your LGBT status amid “conservative” groups and you’ll likely be issued a celibacy mandate and be cautioned against identifying with your sin. We’d contend that none of these automatic responses adequately conveys the nuances found in authentic spiritual direction where spiritual directors help individuals grow towards Christ in ways that are appropriate for particular people’s unique circumstances.

When time in spiritual direction becomes engulfed by questions of rightness and wrongness, little room is left for discussing, “What is God asking of me at this time in my life? At the present moment, what is God calling me to do or change so that I might draw closer to Him?” This can create a false sense that gay people need the strictest of guidance regarding sexual morality and straight people do not. In reality, virtually every Christian will grapple with questions of sexuality at one time or another. For bisexual Christians, this approach can oversimplify experiencing attraction to both sexes: “Just marry someone of the opposite sex, because heterosexual, married sex is right and gay sex is wrong.” Concerns related to sexual orientation may be conflated with uncertainty about gender identity, and vice versa. Focusing solely on which sexual activities are right and wrong can be painfully alienating to Christians with gender identity questions. Especially in conservative Christian circles, any kind of gender identity question can be viewed as a cause of forbidden same-sex sexual desire. Beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of gay sex do little to help, guide, or comfort a person who is coping with gender dysphoria.

Regularly, we have experienced pressure to make a public declaration either that “Gay sex is a sin” or that “Gay sex is not a sin.” It has been suggested more than once by readers that because we have chosen not to make such a statement, we are, at best, unable to make up our minds about our convictions, or at worst, secretive about them for some sinister purpose. Such theories about our motives leave us wondering why reaching a theologically correct belief about the rightness or wrongness of same-sex sexual activity has become the endpoint for discussion about LGBT issues in many Christian traditions. Often in Christian communities, one’s willingness to offer an apologetic for either a liberal or conservative sexual ethic becomes the litmus test for one’s faithfulness. We find that exceptionally problematic, so we ask: what might it look like to move beyond right and wrong, and into a space where the central concern is helping our brothers and sisters to grow in Christ-likeness? How might the discussion be different if we focused on vocations rather than mandates?

At times, we have caught a glimpse of what this kind of approach might look like. We have been blessed by spiritual directors who can see and affirm our willingness to do our best to live our entire lives fully informed by Christ and our Christian tradition. They understand that we are human and entirely fallible, and when we fall in any way they are ready to give us wise counsel that takes into account our desire to live as Christ calls us. Their recognizing that Christ-likeness is a goal for all Christians has leveled the proverbial playing field and helped us see that every person who seeks Christ needs help along the journey. We find ourselves growing in compassion towards people who would otherwise easily anger, frustrate, or disappoint us. Our spiritual directors have been able to see how Christ has used our relationship to help one another grow in holiness and trust that our primary spiritual struggles are not sexual. Both of us have had spiritual directors in the past who have constantly exhorted us to focus our entire spiritual energies on reigning in our sexual appetites, a focus that is not only inappropriate for our specific circumstances but is significantly alienating. Keeping Christ at the absolute center of spiritual direction creates a space for the Holy Spirit to exhort us to holy living while also giving us time to grow towards Christ. As one prayer from our tradition reminds us, we pray for the grace to “make a good beginning” because our earthly days barely make a dent when viewed against eternity.

We find it critical to speak about the need to offer all LGBT Christians authentic spiritual direction because the vast majority of LGBT Christians have exceptionally limited access to compassionate spiritual directors. While we are absolutely grateful to be able to receive authentic spiritual direction at this time, we are all too aware that our present situation is completely contingent on our current mash-up of local church community, spiritual directors, geography, and even the political climate within our Christian tradition. As evidenced by Maria McDowell’s reflection entitled “Fragile Repentances,” many LGBT Christians find themselves dependent on pastoral whim and on a few friends willing to vouch for their faithfulness. Our vocation to celibacy does not render us immune to the effects of poor spiritual direction. Many past spiritual directors have discounted our experience by stating singleness is the only appropriate form of celibacy for LGBT Christians. From our perspective, several other demographics (teenagers, divorced, widows, single, married) present in the Church do not have to worry as much as being judged by their spiritual directors as “good” or “bad” based on their behavioral track records.

One main function of a spiritual director is to be present as a human who can prayerfully carry the burdens of another person to God. We pray constantly that spiritual directors would realize the profoundly damaging effect that constant clangs of “RIGHT” and “WRONG” can have on a person. Beyond right and wrong, we find ourselves in a place where we can appreciate one another’s humanity, where all vocations are fragile, and where everyone must be nurtured with love.

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.