"How can you be both gay and Christian?" How often living and thriving within the church, my chosen home, has seemed to depend on trying to provide other Christians with a satisfactory answer to that question. Instead of rejoicing in the commonality of faith and ministry that unites us, my spiritual energy has been drained in self-defeating efforts to justify my identity as a gay man as an acceptable -- let alone necessary and wonderful -- part of the Christian community.
It has been a deeply painful process. Claiming an identity as both gay and Christian raises questions about sexuality and spirituality that take us to the heart of what it means to be a faithful people of God. It forces us to ask soul-searching questions about how we understand the Bible and its role in the Christian life, what is and is not a natural part of God's created order, and how we interpret the traditional teachings of the church on sexuality.
It is also a sensitive process that already has polarized our churches and faith communities. For some, Christian and gay describe irreconcilable poles of a spectrum between holy and sinful, between what is acceptable to God and what is unacceptable and an abomination in God's sight. Homosexuality is seen as the epitome of spiritual afflictions that beset our times. Others accept the words of many lesbians and gay men that our homosexuality is less something we choose than discover about ourselves, attributing homosexuality to the fallenness of the world, but still within the realm of God's grace. Being homosexual is not sinful, we are told, but acting on it is.
But for many of us who are gay and Christian, our faith journeys have taught us that the spiritual affliction of our times is not homosexuality, but homophobia. We have learned that it is the fear and rejection of children and adults who discover themselves to be lesbian or gay that has caused so much pain and suffering; that it is this attitude and practice on the part of Christians and others that is an abomination in the eyes of God. And we have learned that our lesbian and gay sexual identities are gifts of God to be cherished and honored, and sin is whatever we and others do to hide and denigrate this gift.
It has not been easy for us to reach this understanding and affirmation; and I realize that for many sincere and faithful Christians, these claims may cause a near visceral reaction as they fly in the face of many long-held beliefs. I know that, for it is with those beliefs that I, too, began.
It has been a long and at times difficult faith journey to move from fear and self-loathing to accepting and embracing God's gift of my homosexuality. Yet, quite simply, I had no choice: God kept nudging me on. It was trust in God that gave me the courage to rethink the issues in an environment so very hostile to my very being. Yet it is into this faith journey of new reflection that we who are gay and Christian invite the larger Christian community to listen to and discern the movements of the Spirit in our lives.
SO LET ME BEGIN by telling my faith story. In a way it's a love story, about a boy who grew up in a large family where he learned to love and be loved. I learned to love many things: the nearby mountains, the smell of orange trees blossoming in the spring, and, above all, little children -- even as a child I loved children and dreamed of the day when I would have my own family with children.
As a boy I was often sick and spent many hours and nights on a respirator. Eventually, because of my illness, I had to leave my family to attend school in another state.
I soon became the expert babysitter at the school and began to care for children in many of the faculty families. I was happy for a while, but all was not well. I was learning that while people talked about loving other people, they only meant some other people. It seemed it was all right for boys to have girlfriends, and girls to have boyfriends, and even girls to have girlfriends, but boys were never to have boyfriends. It puzzled me that most of my friends were interested only in girls and I was not, but it didn't bother me too much. I found a girlfriend and figured that I would change to be like the other boys.
Soon it was time to go to college. There I became friends with a fellow, and we began to do many things together -- even spending summers together working in the mountains. Gradually I realized that I was in love with my friend, which frightened me very much, and I prayed that God would change me so that I could have girlfriends like the other fellows. I didn't know what I had done to be the way I was, but I knew it must have been very bad.
Then one day my friend came to me with exciting news: He was in love with a young woman who was a friend to both of us! I was very confused and sad, and I went to the woods I loved so and cried. Once more I tried to talk to God, but it didn't seem that God was listening. I had learned that if one believed, one was saved, and that grace was a gift of God given unconditionally. But I had also learned that boys who loved boys were never saved, but evil. I knew that who I was was so terrible that I could never tell anyone, and I began to walk in front of cars on the highway by the woods, hoping that they would take me away from my pain.
I went to the school counselor, who was also a friend from my church, but I was so ashamed I made up another story. Finally I decided I needed to leave, and so I went to Latin America where I again lived close to the land I loved with simple, warm people, and I was happy. The hurt was less there, and while I still prayed to be changed, I began to feel that maybe I was just meant never to have anyone to love. I was sad that I would never have the family I had always wanted.
And so the years passed, and sometimes it hurt very much and sometimes not so much. My friend married the young woman, and I was the best man; then they moved away, and I went to the mountains to live. Once more it began to hurt too much, and so I decided that I must find a way to change or I could not go on living. After three months I got up enough courage to visit the village pastor, someone I admired very much. I looked at the pastor and said, "What I want to know is if you believe in healing for homosexuals."
There. I had said it. Someone knew. I had never felt so naked, so exposed, so vulnerable. Or so honest. I felt a huge weight lifted from me -- the horrible truth was no longer bottled up, stewing inside me. The pastor looked at me without even batting an eye and calmly said, "That depends on whether there is a brokenness."
I was stunned. I had finally experienced the grace I had heard about for so long. I understood the metanoia, the turnaround. Suddenly those oft-repeated words became real to me, central to my being: "Nothing can separate me from the love of God."
The years have passed. I have learned more about receiving grace, about being a receptacle of grace to others. There are still many that don't believe God's grace is meant for men who love men, and sometimes I find myself feeling that way too. But when I feel like that, unable even to talk to those who love me best, I remember my story and the stories of others. Sometimes I'm still sad, but I'm hopeful too. And I hope that my story might help others, as their stories have helped me.
IT IS IN LEARNING to trust the experience of God in our lesbian and gay lives that we are set free. It was only as I learned to trust this experience that I could begin to see that the brokenness in my life came not from my homosexuality, but from the deep homophobia of my church and society that I had so thoroughly internalized as to make it seem natural.
This brokenness called homophobia that seeps into every aspect of our lives has also made it difficult and painful for lesbian and gay people to stay in the church. Many simply choose to leave, experiencing the church and Christianity as a masochistic exercise that kills the Spirit.
And yet the ways of the Spirit are mysterious. Despite the homophobia, some of us have stayed. It has not been easy, and at times the cost has been great: Most churches continue to refuse to recognize our calls to ministry, to denigrate and deny the sacred value of our relationships, to do everything possible to prevent developing a healthy gay or lesbian self-esteem -- and then blame us when we experience brokenness in our lives.
Yet those of us who have stayed have learned in a deep way what it means to follow Jesus in the way of the cross. We have experienced the irony of being persecuted by those claiming to follow the path of radical love. We have learned the difference between cheap and costly grace, and to understand grace as the experience of God in our lives so that we are no longer ruled by fear. We acknowledge that accepting and affirming our sexuality as a gift of God brings the risk of losing that which is most precious to us: our families and faith communities.
In this process we are learning to read the Bible with gay and lesbian eyes. We are rediscovering that good theology is like good ministry: It begins with real people, not abstract debate. This was the powerful example of Jesus. Far from avoiding or ignoring biblical teaching, Jesus understood profoundly that scripture becomes the Word of God -- a word of life, not death -- when it is rooted in compassion in the lives of the people. On an issue as difficult and polarizing as homosexuality, we must do as Jesus did: immerse ourselves in the lives and testimonies of the people most affected and ground our biblical and theological reflection there.
Out of this experience we have learned that our churches must redefine their priorities on this issue. The focus must shift from debating the naturalness and acceptability of gay and lesbian people to confronting and combating homophobia and heterosexism.
The debates about whether our sexuality results primarily from nature or is socially shaped and defined are complex and hotly contested, but there is nothing theoretical or abstract about the daily reality of persecution and violence that gay people experience. And there is nothing abstract about the role the churches have played historically in justifying and perpetuating anti-gay bias. The key question for the churches today is not, "How can one be both gay and Christian?" but, "On what basis does the church continue to perpetuate violence and injustice against lesbians and gay men, denying the reality of the experience of God's love in our lives?"
Reconciliation in the churches across sexualities will not be easy, but it is vitally important. It may be as difficult for gay and lesbian Christians as for non-gay, for reconciliation requires openness and vulnerability on both sides. Unfortunately, most gay people have little experience or reason to trust non-gay Christians: we have been too battered and beaten, psychologically and physically, by non-gay Christians quoting the Bible, theology, and tradition at us -- and not in order to open dialogue, but to silence us.
When we do find Christians who are opposed to anti-gay prejudice and support minimum measures of dignity for lesbians and gay men, only rarely do these Christians go on to cherish us as a wonderful, integral part of the body of Christ. What we long for is the mysterious work of the Spirit moving through the lives of our non-gay sisters and brothers, opening all of us to the gift of transformation that awaits the healing of the Christian community.
Reconciliation goes to the heart of the gospel, the feast of the reign of God. And it is to that feast that we are all invited.
Dan Spencer was working on a doctorate in social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City when this article appeared.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!