Tag Archives: LGBT Christian

The Bread of Fellowship at #GCNConf

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Practicing real hospitality in the midst of extreme differences can be hard. What does it mean to make another person feel truly welcome when their needs are seemingly at odds with yours? This question drives the ethos of the Gay Christian Network’s annual conference. How can we welcome all who want to be present, inviting each and every person to be challenged by God’s radical and unrelenting hospitality while simultaneously creating a safe space for all to feel loved and accepted? It is a high call. And as conference veterans, it’s a call we embrace as a part of our own call to hospitality.

One of the hardest places to practice real hospitality is the Communion table. Real hospitality requires that people consider the needs, desires, and convictions of others, taking special notice of irreconcilable matters of conscience. Various Christian traditions have developed diverse views of what happens during Communion, who can partake of Communion, and what Communion means. Moreover, each individual Christian is always encouraged to examine their conscience before taking Communion in order to decide how they want to respond when a particular opportunity to receive is available. There are so many reasons why a person would make a choice to abstain from receiving Communion. The choice to receive Communion can only be a free choice if the choice to abstain is also available.

Towards that end, the two of us have sought to create an option for GCN Conference attendees where people who come to the worship service that takes place during the closing session have the option to receive something other than blessed Eucharistic elements. This is the Bread of Fellowship. We started this tradition at GCN Conference 2013 in Phoenix, Arizona as a way to help conference attendees from closed-communion denominations, non-Christian attendees, and others who are not comfortable receiving Communion to feel more welcome. But this is not a tradition we made up on our own: we got the idea from the Eastern Christian practice of setting aside a basket of unconsecrated bread that can be shared by any or all in attendance at the liturgy. This unconsecrated bread is called antidoron. In Eastern Christian practice, the bread that is consecrated is cut from a larger loaf. The unconsecrated leftovers from this larger loaf become the antidoron, which is often linked to the Gospel stories where Christ feeds the multitude and the disciples fill baskets with what is remaining. We loved the idea of the Bread of Fellowship being something that could feed all, even when matters of conscience prevented people from receiving Communion.

At this year’s GCN Conference in Houston, the Bread of Fellowship was offered and blessed with the following prayer:

Living God, source of light,
hope of nations, friend of all,
builder of the city that is to come:
your love is made visible in Jesus Christ,
you bring home the lost, heal the broken,
and give dignity to the despised.
You gather us together, feeding and nourishing us.
In the face of Jesus Christ
we see your light shining out,
flooding lives with goodness and truth,
gathering into one a divided and broken humanity,
with people from every race and nation,
with the Church of all the ages.
Bless this bread, and unite us in fellowship.
Strengthen and preserve us in community with one another.
May all find welcome at this Table of Fellowship.

It is our prayer that God continues to bless everyone who has ever gathered at a Gay Christian Network and guides each and every person where they can hear the heartfelt words of, “You are welcome at this table of fellowship.”

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.

“If you’re gay and celibate, why tell others?”

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One of the most common questions we get on the blog and in person is, “Why do you tell everyone that you’re gay and celibate?” Usually, this question comes just before a number of assertions about why we shouldn’t share this information with others: “It’s nobody’s business. Nobody needs to know about your sex life or your sins. There’s no good reason to tell other people. It only causes confusion for them. Best to keep this information between you and your confessor.” Today, we will address this question along with some of the assumptions behind it.

First, it’s important to make clear that in contexts other than the blog, we don’t mention to many people that we are LGBTQ and celibate. And we have never brought this matter up within the context of parishes we’ve belonged to except at the level of priests and closest individual friendships. But that really doesn’t matter because most of the time, people take one look at Lindsey and identify us as an LGBTQ couple right away. As we’ve mentioned before, we were once members of a parish where the other parishioners had met Sarah for a few weeks first, and there was no problem until Lindsey started coming to church with Sarah. At that point, the gossip mill started and families were asking the parish priest if we were a couple. Neither of us had said or done anything to give the people of this parish any particular impression about our relationship to each other. There have also been instances when we have been involved in a parish and a member has asked us, “Are you sisters?” We answer honestly, “No.” Yet people infer from the brevity of our response that we are a couple. It seems there’s little we could do to avoid members of churches from figuring out that Lindsey and Sarah share life together as a pair.

But moving on from that, we offer you some items to think about next time you find yourself wondering why any two people would share with others that they are a celibate LGBTQ couple. We are committed to being open about our story for the following reasons:

We share our story with others because the Christian life is lived in community. We aren’t meant to go through life sharing everything exclusively with a confessor. Fostering Christian community means being vulnerable with others. It means sharing difficult information with our brothers and sisters and being willing to listen when they share difficult information with us. Spirituality and pastoral sensitivity are not limited to times when one needs to confess sins to a priest. If we are to love one another as Jesus asks of us, we ought to be able to extend grace and kindness to other members of our faith communities no matter what their stories are. If a woman at coffee hour shares with you even half-jokingly that she’s struggling with gluttony, are you going to admonish her to keep that sort of sin in confession and out of the public eye? Probably not. So why insist that issues related to sexual morality cannot ever be shared publicly by an individual?

We share our story with others because community happens when we share about differences as well as similarities. Yes, our shared faith in Christ is what unites us. Yes, members of any Christian church hold to a set of common beliefs no matter how long or short that list may be. But learning about our differences and how those impact our daily lives in the world helps all of us to grow. A white woman does not have the same experience of life as a black man. A plumber does not have the same experience of life as a college professor. A deaf person does not have the same experience of life as a hearing person. A lesbian does not have the same experience of life as a straight woman. Difference matters whether we want it to or not. It is part of life incarnate, and it impacts how we understand every situation we face. Confusion is not always bad. Dissonance pushes us to reconsider ways of life that we did not understand previously.  It seems absurd to us that people in churches should be permitted to speak only of our similarities.

We share our story with others because saying, “I’m a celibate LGBTQ person” is not the same as saying, “I struggle with the sin of lust.” In conservative churches, there exists a hugely problematic misunderstanding about what it means to be LGBTQ and what it means to be celibate. People who describe themselves using LGBTQ language have many different understandings of that language. Contrary to popular belief, it is not reasonable to assume that people who use this language have engaged in any kind of sexual immorality. It is also not reasonable to assume that the added phrase, “…and I’m celibate” means, “I am engaged in a spiritual battle against my body that tells me I should be having gay sex.” Some celibate people experience sexual temptation in various degrees, and others do not. Insisting that a person frame the topics of sexual orientation and gender identity solely within the language of “struggle” is assigning a sin to that person when no sin (or temptation to sin) may be present.

We share our story with others because there is a common struggle that most celibate LGBTQ people face: profound loneliness and fear. We are not the only celibate LGBTQ people who exist. We are not the only celibate LGBTQ couple that exists. You probably have celibate LGBTQ people in your own parish whether you are aware of it or not. To be an LGBTQ Christian is to be hated and victimized by many people who call themselves Christians. Add celibacy into the mix, and in comes hate and victimization from some non-celibate members of the LGBTQ community. Being a celibate LGBTQ person is incredibly isolating, even if you are one half of a partnership. With great regularity, it involves feeling as though no one in your faith community understands your experience of life…and fearing that if they did find out more about your life they would hate you for your sexual orientation/gender identity, your celibacy, or both. Because our society has made an idol of marriage, being a celibate LGBTQ person can feel especially lonely when people ask questions such as, “Isn’t it time you settled down and found a husband?” Even seeing young families with children at church can bring up painful longing for what will never be. But as we have been blogging, so many people have come our way to say, “I didn’t think anyone else lived this way. It’s nice not to feel so alone anymore.” If we can help even one person just by saying, “Us too,” then sharing our story has been worth all the hardship it sometimes brings.

We share our story with other people because that is what transforms isolated individuals into a community. We are always happy to listen to other people’s stories. Whether a person is 2 years old, 100 years old, or any age in between, we value that person’s story. Building Christian community is hard work, and we do our part in sharing because we are committed to that process.

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.

The Hardest Question

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A reflection by Lindsey

We’ve been at this blog for a while, and a lot of people send us questions. I’m a person who freezes when faced with an uncomfortable question as much as I want to be a person who lives out a vocation categorized by radical hospitality and vulnerability. I believe that every person is invited into a vocation of manifesting God’s kingdom in the world. As an Orthodox Christian, I rejoice to be a part of a church where I can see people from seemingly every tribe, tongue, and nation coming together during weekly liturgies. I am amazed during services like Agape Vespers and Pentecost when people proclaim the Gospel in their native languages. I love how the Orthodox Church maintains that there is only one liturgy where sometimes I’ve seen four generations of people approaching the chalice together. There is something inspiring and amazing about watching an infant carried to the cup in the arms of his or her great-grandparent. In the Orthodox Church, I’ve seen arguably the clearest picture of what it means to be united into one faith. I love the Orthodox tradition, and I’ve come to rejoice in being a child of the Church. However, even standing in full appreciation of everything I’ve learned as an Orthodox Christian, one question that we get frequently as we blog stops me in my tracks.

How has your Christian tradition supported and encouraged you as you live out your vocation?

I’ve avoided answering this question for quite some time because, when I answer it honestly, the answer is “We haven’t received much support when it comes to living out our vocation.”

Like Sarah, I’m a convert to Orthodoxy. My journey to Orthodoxy started in 2007. By that point, I had already discerned that I am not called to biological parenting so I was eagerly exploring celibate ways of life. Additionally, I also knew that I was somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum regarding how I experienced my sexuality and gender identity. Somewhat ironically, my first serious invitation to explore the Orthodox tradition came from a person I met through the Gay Christian Network. I wasn’t a stranger to the challenges associated with being a LGBTQ Christian, and I investigated how the Orthodox tradition approached walking with LGBTQ folks. The resources were incredibly scant. One could argue that the most thorough discussion on the topic is the late Fr. Thomas Hopko’s book Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections. All along the way, I received assurance that the Orthodox Church approached these matters pastorally.

Pastorally can be a tricky word in the Orthodox tradition. In its ideal form, pastoral matters are worked out by talking with a priest you consider your spiritual father who knows you and your situation intimately well. Additionally, it is hard to experience pastoral care before one is received fully into the tradition because receiving pastoral care is connected to participating in the sacraments. In the Orthodox Church as found in the United States, it is common to discuss pastoral matters of spiritual direction in the context of sacramental confession. While the structure has definite perks, it also comes with a serious drawback that one’s priest is already thinking in terms of sin and repentance when approached with questions about vocation. One can’t assume that one’s local parish priest will be able to serve as a good confessor, even for rather routine discussions of sin and repentance. Many Orthodox Christians have shared with me about their challenges of finding a good confessor. It’s not terribly uncommon to drive an hour or more to meet with one’s confessor. Furthermore, a parish priest might not be the best person to talk with about the particulars of one’s vocation. Through a series of fits and starts, many priests started to recommend that I talk with monastics about how to live a celibate life.

I love meeting monastics. It can be amazing to witness the diversity of monastic life. I’ve had the privilege of meeting monastics living in three countries–the United States, the United Kingdom, and Romania. I’ve met monastics living in small communities of five to twelve monastics, in large communities of as many as 500 monastics, in sketes where two monastics live together, and living alone while attached to a parish. Over the years, my heart has done backflips of joy as I’ve seen yet another celibate way of living out faith. I’ve devoured works like Letters to a Beginner by Abbess Thaisia, Encounter by Metropolitian Anthony Bloom, and collected essays by Mother Maria of Paris. I have been inspired by monastics, living and reposed. I want to see celibate ways of life flourish as I believe the Church needs both married and celibate vocations to thrive.

The challenge is finding support to live out a celibate vocation in an American context dedicated to defending marriage. I’d go so far to say that marriage is not the problem but that homophobia and concerns about keeping up appearances are. The dominant reaction I have experienced in trying to explore what celibacy looks like in my life has been cautioning about sin. I’ve been consistently discouraged from using LGBTQ language even in the context of private conversations with people I trust. I have been encouraged to avoid cultivating close relationships lest I cause scandal. In a word, these reactions are confusing. I’m not talking about skete monasticism in an effort to excuse sin. I’m not reading monastic writers because I want to avoid repentance. I am looking at models of living a celibate life because I know I am called to a celibate vocation. I will gladly sit down with anyone who wants to read through an Orthodox marriage service. I can explain why it’s absolutely beautiful while at the same time articulating why I know it does not describe a kind of life that I’m called to. Chances are excellent I’d feel the same way about reading an ordination service. I would imagine that the ordination service is an incredible articulation of what it means to be a priest which contains many pointers as to why I, personally, would make a terrible priest. Defending ordination and marriage does little to help me discern what God would have me to in order to live my life faithfully.

I would love to see serious conversation in the Orthodox tradition, and in other Christian traditions, about what celibate vocations can and do look like. I would love to have retreats and books dedicated to meaningful celibacy. I cannot begin to tell you what it would mean for me, personally, to be able to commit to my celibate vocation in the context of witnesses gathered in a parish community. At the same time, I sit at the uneasy intersection of knowing that time has not come yet. It is the time of the pastoral. I long for the day when recognizing that situations need to be treated pastorally comes with widespread awareness of the need for both humility and compassion.

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.

Show Me the Church

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A reflection by Sarah

This post is long overdue, and for more than one reason. Much has happened since Lindsey wrote our last post while sitting beside my hospital bed two months ago. I cannot begin to express my gratitude for all the support our readers have extended to Lindsey and me throughout my illness. You folks and our local friends have done so much to keep our hope alive at times when we’ve barely been hanging onto it.

To bring those who don’t know up to speed, after more than a year of being seriously ill with Ménière’s disease I underwent a vestibular neurectomy in July. This turned quickly into three separate surgeries after the initial procedure failed due to my neuroanatomy having some unusual features. I needed a second procedure to repair a leak after cerebrospinal fluid started gushing out of my nose and head, and a third procedure requiring a different entry point to my skull finally brought a successful result. It goes without saying that July was a stressful month for us. I spent three times as many days in ICU as what we had anticipated. These days I’m feeling much better, thank God. I wouldn’t wish what I went through this summer upon anyone, but my days in the hospital were transformative for Lindsey and me in ways we are still sorting out and probably will be for some time. I’ve been trying to find the right words to describe the experience for the past two months, but I can’t. I’m still thinking on it, and I’m sure I’ll be writing more on this in the future.

One thing I can say for certain is that I was reminded of how important it is to recognize within myself the image and likeness of God, and to see the same in others even though none of us ever live fully into being icons as we were created to be. If I’m going to make any attempt at living into this calling, I have to be authentically me regardless of where I am spiritually. I can’t hide behind fear of what others will think of me once they see how imperfect a Christian I am. That’s why today, it’s time for another “coming out” of sorts.

When Lindsey and I began writing here at AQC, we intended to make our writings as accessible as possible to readers across a variety of Christian traditions and theological viewpoints. That remains a goal of ours, but it’s time to be more authentic. Lindsey and I are members of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. We never had any illusions that our readers would fail to see this in our posts. We’re probably more aware than anyone of how painfully obvious it is and has been since the beginning of our writing project. By this point, we’ve received hundreds of requests from readers that we state the name of our tradition publicly. The time for that is long overdue, and I’m ashamed to admit how much of our hesitation to do so has come from fear of excommunication, of creating a difficult situation for our priest and parish, and of Orthodox internet trolls who are priests more often than not. Today, I’m throwing caution to the wind because someone has to have the courage to speak out. I feel that I’ve waited long enough for a priest or someone with authority to begin this conversation, and that doesn’t seem to be happening.

The state of affairs in American Orthodoxy, especially since the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage, is troubling. It’s beyond troubling, and I would go so far as to call it scandalous.

When I converted to Orthodoxy, I thought I was signing on for a spiritually challenging journey in the ancient faith, where every person would be treated with care and respect because we are all made in God’s image. I thought I was joining a tradition that pushes each person to be asking always, “What is the cost of following Christ? Am I willing to pay that cost? How can I submit myself more fully to God so that I become increasingly willing to follow Christ wherever he leads?” I thought I was becoming part of a Church where I would find what I saw as lacking in my previous Christian tradition (Catholicism). I saw evidence of all these things during my period as an inquirer and catechumen, but soon after my conversion I began to notice that when rubber meets the road, Orthodox Christians are not treated as though we all have the same level of dignity.

I have found myself within a tradition where people are so obsessed with marriage that they cannot offer guidance to LGBTQ people beyond, “Don’t have sex. Don’t get married. We don’t perform gay marriages. Oh, and by the way, don’t use words like ‘gay’ because 99% of people who use that label are sexually active outside of marriage.” I receive these messages and start to wonder what planet their giver has been living on for the past two decades or more, because that last statement is blatantly false and the other statements are just plain unhelpful to someone making an honest effort at living fully into the Orthodox tradition. I grow weary of attempting to explain that many people see sexual orientation as something mysterious that involves significantly more than desiring sex. I grow weary of receiving generic answers to questions about sexual orientation, or answers that sound more like lines from a 1970s psychology text than legitimate spiritual direction. I grow weariest of hearing from LGBTQ Orthodox friends who are trying their very best to do what is asked of them only to be told that they are not fit for any vocation, ought to live as a hermit on the outskirts of a monastery to avoid interaction with either men or women, and should stop talking to the faithful who attend Divine Liturgy.

As Lindsey and I have stated before, the aftermath of Obergefell vs. Hodges has been particularly difficult for us. Had it not been for Lindsey’s ability to add me to employer-sponsored health insurance as a domestic partner, my health problems would be bankrupting us. This would be the case even if I had health insurance through an exchange, and it would certainly be the case for me as an individual if the two of us were doing life separately. Now that Lindsey no longer has this job and it is unclear whether other places of employment will offer domestic partner benefits, we face a new challenge. We’re terrified of the possibility that one of us might not be able to care for the other at a time when it’s needed most, and few people (liberal or conservative) seem to care very much about this issue. To be clear, neither of us is advocating for the Orthodox Church to change its teachings on marriage and sexuality. Neither of us wants to be married to the other. Even if we were Episcopalian (which is apparently the worst of insults according to many American Orthodox), we would never consider our relationship a marriage. Aside from describing it as an odd combination of skete monasticism and partners living life in service to others in the world, I’m not sure if any word in English is fitting for our arrangement.

Fortunately, we have two spiritual fathers who are willing to journey with us through figuring out what it means to live an unusual vocation. However, it’s troubling that almost every bit of support we receive from within our tradition is private. American Orthodox are so concerned with keeping up appearances and not rocking the boat that we end up forcing anyone with a seemingly unusual problem to stuff all the real human emotions that he or she experiences relative to said problem. “Don’t tell anyone besides your spiritual father. I know you’re doing your best to be faithful, but no one really needs to know that much about you. Your needs are too great. Bear your cross in silence.” These admonishments have been the story of my life since becoming Orthodox. Then when trying to explain that I don’t see my sexual orientation as a cross and I rarely experience sexual desire in the first place…well…I’ll not even go there. Material for another post. Anonymous friends of friends (some of whom are priests) who have encouraged Lindsey and me to get married civilly and either hide it or lie about it so the bishops will never have to think about how to handle our situation…yeah…that’s another blog post as well. If you’re reading this as an Orthodox person and don’t find any of it disconcerting, maybe it’s time to rethink some of your assumptions about people who are different from you.

Lest any of our readers think I am suggesting that LGBTQ people are the only groups of Orthodox Christians who receive these sorts of damaging messages, I have to say that my experience in Orthodoxy has made me aware of all kinds of situations where people who don’t fit the box are dismissed as problems who aren’t the Church’s responsibility. It grieves my heart when an Orthodox friend with a severe disability tells me that his priest will not help him solve a problem because he’s supposedly mooching off the parish’s working members whose taxes pay for his disability check. It grieves me equally when a friend who was born and raised in the Orthodox faith is advised to ignore a mental health diagnosis and “suck it up” in order to avoid the passion of despondency. It adds to my own depression when I observe Orthodox Christians ranting about how stewardship of the earth is nothing more than liberalism akin to support for gay marriage.

Somehow, we in the American context have become okay with dismissing real world problems that don’t impact us personally, and by extension making it taboo to talk about those topics at all. I’ve known Orthodox priests who have told me that racism doesn’t exist when I’ve raised issues of concern for my friends who are black or Hispanic. I have been told by priests that there is nothing good about deafness, and I should not view my hearing loss as linked to any sort of positive cultural identity…so Russians can identify with Russian expressions of faith, Romanians can identify with Romanian expressions of faith, but apparently there’s no way a legitimate expression of faith could emerge from the Deaf community. I once knew a priest who refused to wear an FM system to help me hear on the grounds that it would give me an unfair advantage over everyone else who can’t hear what is being said in the altar.

What troubles me most is that I’ve never seen any purveyors of these messages being challenged to reconsider their beliefs. I’m constantly being asked to reconsider mine simply because I’m a celibate person who uses LGBTQ language. As a Church (at least in America), we allow certain heresies to slide because they aren’t as bad as others. We excuse a person who holds heretical views relative to care for God’s creation and care for the least of these, but we can’t even throw a bone to a person who serves unwillingly as the parish’s symbolic reminder that society at large accepts gay marriage.

I refuse to believe that Lindsey and I are the only two Orthodox Christians who see these problems as the Church’s failure to be Christ to others. Again for clarity, I wrote this post not to complain about a mean, man-made religion that can do nothing but oppress and abuse people. I wrote this because I would like to believe that all of us can do better. The way American Orthodox Christians have been behaving since the Supreme Court decision is but one example of how desire to serve as Tradition Keeper can harm our witness. I want to believe again in an Orthodox Church where every person is treated with the same care and regard we give our icons every Sunday. It was not my intention to join the church of the white, wealthy, able-bodied, educated, straight, cisgender republican, and I’m not any more interested in the church of the [insert appropriate adjectives here] democrat. I’m interested in being part of the Church with the whole messy bunch of us as we journey together toward theosis. Sometimes I ask myself, “Where did it go? I thought it was here somewhere.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking back to my first communion as a Catholic. I was so excited to encounter Christ in the Eucharist that I nearly ran up to the altar, and I probably would have if I hadn’t been slowed down by a nun. I wonder, where is the Christ I sprinted toward as a young Catholic? He’s certainly not the person whose message I see being preached in a number of American Orthodox parishes. We can do better. I can do better. I’m sure I’ve written at least one piece of accidental heresy at some point, so I’m no more above reproach than those with the attitudes I’m calling out today. Brothers and sisters, please show me the Church again and I’ll try to do the same for you again. Otherwise, I just don’t know how long I’ll last.

(I expect this post will get lots of comments, and at least some of those will be from people who are eager to tell me how wrong I am about everything I’ve said here and elsewhere on the blog. I’ll engage in honest intellectual dialogue with any reader who is seeking such whether he or she considers me a heretic or not. Here’s your reminder to read our comment policy. We will not allow our comments section to become just another vitriolic place on the Orthodox internet. If the only thing you feel inclined to tell me is that people like me are attempting to destroy the Church, it is probably better for your salvation and mine if you refrain from commenting.)

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.

Love Has Yet to Win

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A reflection by Sarah

I don’t like to write depressing entries for our blog. I’d much rather get back to writing meaningful reflections on living celibacy as a layperson in the world. But that’s not where my mind is right now, and I can’t force it to be there. I suppose one benefit to blogging is knowing that I never have to be isolated. No matter how often Lindsey is away at work, no matter how infrequently I can get out of the apartment to meet up with friends and get my freakishly high extrovert needs met, the blog is here and I’m not alone. Thank you all for reading and bearing with me today.

I’m feeling pretty weary this weekend. Maybe it’s because of my upcoming surgery. Maybe it’s because spending a lot of time at home in bed means more opportunity to see the ugliness of the internet in the aftermath of nationwide marriage equality. But I think mostly, it’s anger at Christianity. Anger is exhausting. Last week, Lindsey and I were sitting in our living room and discussing the processes by which each of us learned that it’s normal to experience anger at God. That got me thinking about how I’ve never come to terms with experiencing anger at the Church.

It feels safer to be angry at God than it does to be angry at the Church. If I pull out my prayer rope and begin praying each knot while feeling absolutely fed up with a particular lesson God seems to be teaching me, the result is not going to be an offended deity making my life more difficult just for spite. If I curl up in a ball on my bed and cry for hours from rage about a difficult life circumstance and yell in anger, “Why, God? Why?!” I’m not going to be shamed for my emotions. But with the Church, it’s a different matter. In the opinions of many people I know, being angry at the Church (whether you mean “Body of Christ” or “official teachings”), is not okay. Expressing anger at the Church often results in assertions that I don’t actually desire faithfulness, that I’m being a whiner and need to toughen up because “following Christ isn’t supposed to be easy,” or that my pain is caused by my own sin and my own lack of willingness to let the tradition teach and transform me. Christ will not dismiss or berate me regardless of where I am spiritually in a given season of life, but plenty of his followers will.

Over the past week, Lindsey and I have written our respective reflections on how we are feeling after Obergefell vs Hodges. We had little energy to comment on much more than our fears about losing access to domestic partner benefits, but there is so much more to be said, and not just about gay marriage. I’m going to state the obvious: the internet is a dark, cruel place where people created in the image of God treat other people created in the image of God as though they haven’t even the dignity of bacteria on the bottom of my shoe. No reasonable person ever expects to find utopia on the internet. Nevertheless, I always hope that the people who make up the Church will surprise me during intense news cycles; yes, I’m more than a little idealistic.

This weekend, I’m angry because the Body of Christ needs to be engaging in repentance and reconciliation after the ways we have treated people who are different from us. I’m angry because we have allowed issues of difference, whether ideological or otherwise, to divide us. Within the same week, I see one friend stating publicly, “Any church that lets queers in needs to have its whole congregation stoned to death,” and another friend proclaiming, “If you think for any reason that gay sex is a sin, you’re a hateful bigot!” Both are members of my Christian tradition. Both claim to love Christ and do their best to follow him in their daily lives. What have we come to when one member of the Church would have another stoned to death? When theological disagreement even after prayerful reflection and discernment means that the person who disagrees is hateful?

I’m angry because white Christian America has been sitting back, content to wave either a rainbow flag or a Confederate flag as black churches have burned to the ground and black Christians have been murdered while worshipping. White LGBTQ Christians previously engaged in meaningful discussions about racial reconciliation abandoned those conversations in favor or gloating over marriage equality. Some will not pick up that discussion topic again until there’s a lull in the LGBTQ news cycle. Folks who do not consider themselves allies to the black community but were still engaged in conversations about Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston have ceased participation in order to mourn because “the gays are destroying America.” How quickly we’ve forgotten about the nine human beings who lost their lives while attending church not even three weeks ago, or at least pushed their deaths to the back of our minds in favor of spouting off bad theology about sex. What happened in the United States on June 26, 2015? Why will future generations remember that date? Certainly not because of the Reverend Clementa Pinckney’s funeral. And I’m ashamed of myself as a white person for forgetting his first name and needing to Google it before adding it to this post.

I’m angry because able-bodied Christian America is clueless about how to be loving to people with disabilities. After the Supreme Court ruling, more than one article about disability and marriage was published. People with disabilities in America who receive SSI benefits risk losing resources if they marry. Some people with disabilities were married or living with a partner before becoming disabled and cannot qualify for help because of the spouse/partner’s income. These are real problems that the Church could be addressing, yet most of what I’ve seen from Christians on these issues is, “Just go with other programs that aren’t income-based” (never mind that you have to be out of work and likely broke anyway before qualifying) or, “Stop whining. It’s not the government’s job to take care of you. You could work if you really wanted and had more motivation.” How many members of the Body of Christ actually care about how broken our social programs for people with disabilities are?

Speaking of ableism, I’m angry about an entirely different issue I’ve been dealing with for several weeks. I’m angry about the nonsense that passes as d/Deaf and hard of hearing ministry or “deaf inclusive ministry” in Christian churches. I’m angry that hearing people at Christian publishing houses profit by selling ministry resources that co-opt American Sign Language and Deaf culture, throwing random ASL signs into spoken songs and calling that inclusion. I’m angry that when I try to educate on how wrong this is and why it is not actually welcoming to the Deaf community, hearing people engaged in ministry become defensive and argue with me about how hearing children in Sunday School need something to do with their hands and doing a few signs seems like a good idea. And I’m angry that on the few occasions when hearing people do listen to me about this, they’re almost always more willing to accept my perspective as a person with hearing loss who grew up hearing than they are to acknowledge arguments from my friends who have grown up in Deaf culture.

Perhaps more than anything else, I’m angry that there are Christians who are more concerned with policing identity than with building relationships. If you’re a straight, white, hearing person, it’s easy to judge a gay person, a black person, or a deaf person, “Your cultural identity isn’t important. It’s not who you are. Who you are is in your relationship with Christ.” We need to stop saying that all people are equal and should be treated with respect if we are going to pretend that some aspects of identity do not exist. If I tell one of my black friends, “Skin color doesn’t matter. Everyone is the same to me,” I have just erased a huge part of that person’s life experience. The same thing happens when Christians tell me, “You’re not really a lesbian. You just struggle with liking women, and we all struggle with sin,” or “Just accept your deafness as a limitation. There’s nothing positive about it. You’re going to be healed in the eschaton anyway.”

When we erase people’s experiences, we drive them away. It doesn’t matter if you think race isn’t important. It is in American society, and white people are the ones who have made it so. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand why a person would want to identify as gay. For many people, it’s an important term, and straight Christians ought to be willing to engage in conversation and consider why. It doesn’t matter if you believe that deafness and other disabilities will be eliminated in the hereafter. No one person knows more about the eschaton than any other person does, and it would behoove members of the Church to reflect more deeply on how social stigma has created what we consider to be “disability.” And let’s not forget that progressive, social justice-y Christians are also good at erasing the experiences of conservatives and traditionalists.

Cultural identities may or may not matter at all in the next life. As Christians, we are not called to ignore the here and now or excuse ourselves from treating others well and working for justice on the grounds that someday none of our differences will have meaning. When I look at the Church this week, I have seen it seething, oozing, and pulsing  with the emotional illnesses that make it hard for us to do life together. And it’s challenging because part of me wants to shove everything and everyone aside, screaming, “Eeeeeewww! Ick!” But then I’m left looking at the same festering assumptions and judgments within my own heart. There’s relief that comes when we look in the mirror at our human failings and own them. That’s what I’m experiencing now. I’m much less angry. But where do we go now as we journey towards reconciliation?

EDIT: Thanks to a reader for pointing out a typo where I had misgendered Reverend Clementa Pinckney. I assure you that it was an honest typing error and not my thinking that this person was a woman. I blame this one on vertigo. Apologies to all who read the first version!

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