HANNAH ERVIN

My name is Hannah, I’m a queer person of faith currently discerning ordination in the United Methodist Church. I fell in love with the Wesleyan quadrilateral, which urges Methodists to consider tradition, reason, and experience alongside a deep respect and love for scripture. The UM communities I have been a part of are fiercely committed to creating justice and joy in their congregations and in the world.

But my heart is currently breaking for a church that I know and love. Recently, the institutional church voted to uphold and further restrict LGBTQ inclusion in the church, in all ministries, including ordination. The institutional church is leaving out a crucial part of the Church, it is distancing itself from its commitment to lived experience. Queer ministry, as a queer United Methodist, looks like working for justice and full inclusion of all people in a tradition that is working to leave out people like me, and committing to recognizing the sins of racism, colonialism, and white supremacy in our church. It is working to fulfill the faithful promise of my baptismal vow to accept the power that God gave me to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms the present themselves, especially within the church I call home. Queering faith means trusting in God when systems fail to assert the worth of all peoples. My faith in God keeps me going when institutions and denominations fall short.
I have taken a soft hands approach to my faith, I let everything I cannot control fall away, and what is left in my hands is my faith in God and my call to work for justice. My queer faith means bringing all of who I am to the table, knowing that the love and grace of God is our hope, and that everything else is sinking sand.

SHELBY JOHNSON

Queer ministry to me means witnessing the divinity of each person.  It means seeking liberation and justice for the whole humanity of an individual and community, especially those most Othered: people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, those with disabilities, women and non-binary folks, immigrants and refugees, people of lower socioeconomic class, the elderly, and particularly those impacted multiply by interlocking systems of oppression.  

My personal ministry right now is holding the stories of elderly LGBT people of color and making meaning of lifetimes of grief, joy, loss, anger, struggle, and hope, and in the power of these stories I find loving community and, in turn, God.  I am overcome by the radical love these folks have shared with me, and that love is shaping who I am becoming as a queer pastoral caregiver. My queer ministry is fierce love in action.

HASSAN XAVIER HENDERSON-LOTT

I was still very young and didn’t have the languages necessary to identify my perpetual sadness for what it was—depression. I wasn’t wholly convinced into believing that Jesus really loved the ‘me’ that I only pretended to like. I didn’t actually think much of what God might actually think of me if I actually told *him the truth about what I thought then as my own-personal-‘sin.’ I failed to realize that my prayers for deliverance were, in earnest, an attempt to escape the horrors of a kind of divine temptation; that is, to experience, on the body, the love of God, by the touch of another as beautiful as me. And it came to pass, after much ‘working with fear and trembling’ that I would eventually come into the knowing that my blackqueer life has always already been implicated in histories of those spaces called “Black Church.”

I could not then, in the way I do now, realize that in our living, Blackqueers have always transfigured seemingly repressive church space into sanctuary for our own soul salvation. Our contribution is tangible—not merely in song, but in administration, and preached Word(s) alike. Sadly, our blackness, our queerness is at once rendered alternatively seen and unseen often according to denominational or congregational say-so. Thus, the lives and stories of our beloved have gone, too long, undocumented. And still it remains true that their lives, the labors of Blackqueers, our struggle as means of survival in ministry continue to shape the contours of this social fabric known by some as “The Black Church.”

*I’ve since moved beyond an orientation to popular imaginings which insist on the divine as white-masculine-autocrat

ANNE BRINK

As I prepare to receive precepts in the Soto Zen tradition this upcoming fall, I take a vow to liberate all beings from suffering. More than liberation from suffering, however, is an invitation for all beings to flourish and have the permission to be their most authentic selves in this lifetime. As a queer person practicing Zen, I directly equate my experience of queerness in the body with the flourishing of an authentic self that is often unknown to me. While being honestly intimate with this self and its unfolding mystery is a difficult and ongoing practice, I hope it can serve as a mirror for other queer persons of faith, to give them the space, support, and permission to do the same.

REV. FRED DAVIE

The Psalmist says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Embrace it. Own it.  Live it.

JAMES ADMANS

I am a queer person of faith seeking ordination in the United Church of Christ. I send love and light to my UMC brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings who are feeling the effects of a recent decision to strengthen homophobic and transphobic restrictions on queer Methodist clergy and people.

I have the privilege of being able to say that my sexuality and gender identity are things that I have always felt balanced with what God envisioned for me. In my experiences, the challenge lies when queer people’s humanity becomes up for debate. Queer people are valid, and this is not debatable.

ALYSSA KAPLAN

As the newly baptized is bathed in water and anointed in oil, the Pastor reminds that person that every single part of them is claimed and loved by God. Every part of their being is sent out into the world, called to love God and neighbor.

I spend a lot of time thinking about baptism, as a candidate for ministry and as a queer person of faith. I marvel at the liberating power of God’s grace, which calls each of us to live boldly, freely, and authentically in the world, as vessels of God’s creative and redemptive love. Coming out as a queer woman has empowered me to live my baptism more fully. My baptism empowers me to live my truth as a queer Christian more fully.

Our baptismal liturgy first calls us to renounce the forces of evil in our world. I renounce the powers of evil that infect the church with hateful anti-queer and anti-trans polity. I renounce the sinful lies that claim these policies are biblical, theologically sound, and even loving. I renounce the powers of fear and shame that for far too long kept me from loving my whole self and living boldly and authentically in the world and the church.  I renounce the powers of evil that kept me from fully living out my baptism. I renounce the powers of sin which tell any beloved child of God that they are not worthy, just as they are, of God’s unspeakable love for them.

Every day I remember my baptism. I rise to new life as the person God calls me to be—a faithfully queer, beloved Child of God.

SCOTT SPRUNGER

Being a queer person in ministry means having the courage to embody a love that is deeper and more profound than the limited imaginations of an oppressive and hateful world. Those of us who are queer or trans and Christian know what it’s like to be told by the church and by society at large that we are unacceptable, unnatural, and unloveable. But none of us survive without love. In fact, God’s love is more radical, more expansive, more transgressive, more inclusive—and yes, more Queer—than the church often realizes.

My  identity as a queer person cannot be separated from my identity as a minister. I belong to the Mennonite church which, as a matter of polity, does not ordain LGBTQ people. Sometimes it can feel like I’m throwing myself at a brick wall, expecting the wall to move. But I believe in a God who tears down walls with nothing but the sound of a trumpet—a God who makes a way in the wilderness and rivers in the dessert.  God is doing a new thing for the world in the lives of queer and trans people. It falls on the church to join the party or get out of the way.

As a queer minister, I’m passionate about sticking up for people who have been hurt or excluded by the church because I know what that feels like. I dream of a day when everyone—regardless of race, immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, age, or class—is treated like the child of God they are. Until then I’ll do my part to make that dream a reality. I hope you’ll join me!

KARMEN SMITH

Those of us “who are called by God” understand the power of this divine call. Our call is to ministry, not to be gatekeepers. Our call is “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freeing the oppressed, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19). That is the call we all share. And like the blind man in John 9 who was blind since birth for God’s glory, we —queer clergy persons are also born this way for the revealing of God’s work in us. We are a test in love that sadly some denominations fail.

To be called is a blessing and to be gay is a gift from God. Sometimes we will be rejected, as Christ was rejected. And in those times, I am encouraged by Psalms 118:22: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” I believe that rejection is just divine direction, and God directed my feet to Union Theological Seminary.

Union Theological Seminary validated my call, connected me with an affirming space and the tools to exercise the call, and empowered me to go out and become a cornerstone in my community. Union didn’t ask me “who sinned,” instead Union welcomed me, and together we rejoiced. Because as Paul responded to the Philippians, “What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way…and in that I rejoice.” (Philippians 18:1) So I encourage you, when you are rejected, to remember the call, utilize its power, and to continue to proclaim the good news of Christ, both in season and out of season. Go out and become the cornerstones in your communities. For in this way, God is glorified.

CHRISTINA ELLSBERG

Throughout my life, I practiced prayer in my daily communion with animal life. While refilling water buckets floating with hay, while scrubbing out tanks that housed breeding frogs or nickel-sized turtles, while feeding peanuts, one at a time, to my fat, curious rats, I knew my hands were praising God.

It felt like a cosmic joke when I felt the undeniable call to a Roman Catholic priesthood that would not accept me. I still long for the vows that would make my body a cloister and my soul a row of Dogwood trees shading the throne reserved for God—vows which are doubly unattainable to me as a gay woman. People tell me all the time it’s as easy as switching denominations. But I love my communion of Saints. I love my Pope. And I am never closer to God than when my hands are busy in the care and study of animals.

So I defer to that old Catholic maxim: “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.” I’ll never wear a collar, but I can wear barn boots. I’ll never break the eucharist, but I can scoop grain into a trough. While the institutional Church may reject the form of my love, the form of my body, and the forms of my prayer, I will live out my ministry by living fully into all three. And I will live out my ministry by continuing to share and rejoice in the diversity of small perfections that abound in all creation.

MIGUEL ESCOBAR

Working for the church as a Latinx gay man, I come face-to-face with hateful individuals and theologies that aim to circumscribe the lives of LGBTQ people. Through this, I’ve come to believe that the most important thing we can offer one another are our unvarnished stories about how we are – or aren’t- making it through. Yet this feels like such a radical and even dangerous act because so much of our safety has depended on keeping secrets. As the Methodist Church reaffirms its commitment to sidelining the lives of its LGBTQ members, I pray that people can find safe places where they can simply be who God made them to be, and that we start sharing stories of how we are making it through.

CAROLYN BRATNOBER

I am a queer, gender-nonconforming seminary librarian. I’m not in the ministry. But I consider myself an “ally” to people of faith. I believe ministry and study go hand in hand, and I see the work of ministry as liberatory—that is, I see the social dimensions of faith organizations as salvific from worldly injustice. That is why I am mystified and outraged by faiths that promote exclusionary theologies. Faith organizations should uplift those who are most in need of refuge, and transcend worldly boundaries with love and understanding. Yet lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer children and youth continue to be cast out of their houses of worship, and leadership roles are forbidden to them, undermining their dignity and full humanity.

Yet I see hope in the library, in study, and in teaching the curious who seek different perspectives from their own. I believe reading and writing can be acts of worship. Whole lifetimes can be devoted to faith seeking understanding. (Making one’s way through the beautiful studies, stories, and poetry by LGBTQ writers at my library alone would take ages!) I believe that centering the voices of the marginalized can be transformative; I believe that, in time, hatred in our culture can be transformed, strictures against LGBTQ persons can be eased. It will take time and work for my colleagues in seminary and religious leaders to undo millennia of hatred and fear. In my role as a seminary librarian, curator, and teacher, I seek to provide an avenue for those who do the work of theology, for seekers to explore and participate in the dynamic dialogue that forms the creation of knowledge and the furtherance of justice. This is my work as a queer person. It is an act of love.

ERIN HANCOCK 

Ministry, to me, is a fundamentally queer calling. We live in a society that is structured around violent systems of oppression – white supremacy, heterosexism, patriarchy, cisgenderism, and ableism, just to name a few – and we can not adequately care for one another without confronting these systems. My own queer identity forces me to confront these systems by challenging the expectations around gender and sexuality that are imposed on me daily. My calling to ministry forces me to confront these systems on behalf of those to whom I will be ministering, many of whom will be queer. Queerness, though, is about more than just sexual orientation or gender identity. Queerness is about refusing to conform to society’s narrow definition of what constitutes an acceptable relationship. Queerness is about resisting power structures that aim to control our bodies and what we do with them. Queerness, ultimately, is about choosing to love in ways that challenge the status quo.

The way I understand it, this is also the task of ministry. As people called to ministry, we must be willing to call out that which does not affirm the multitude of ways in which people choose to love one another and themselves. We must call out so that we – as a society – can come out… of the racist, heteronormative, cisnormative, patriarchal closet that is preventing us from being able to love one another well. Ministry must be queer, because in order to responsibly care for one another, we have to be willing to resist the structures of power that are harming us all, particularly queer people.

JESS MILLER

The tangle and winding path that is my hybridity — of self from spiritual identity to my gender and social identity — exists as I live and breathe, enmeshed, enfleshed. Within this complexity I exist as both oppressor and oppressed. I am insider and I am other. I am Christian and I am queer. I am calloused and raw. I am neither male nor female. I exist in between spaces, I am a twilight person seeking bridges and compassion within one’s self and between the self and others. Christianity and those who speak on its behalf have perpetuated harm and violence on the bodies, minds, and spirits of my queer spiritual siblings. Through experience and revelation and prayer and mourning and lament and joy I exist, and I desire to exist for Love, to provide a healing balm to the wounds particular representatives of the faith seem to keep opening up.

It is important that we take seriously the healing of inherited traumas from our families and traditions so that we do not perpetuate harm down our own ancestral lines.  I feel Christ’s love in this work, in the rooms of gathered queer folx forming new familial bonds, in the love of self that blossomed from soil previously watered with shame and hidden tears. I desire to see a world where queer people (and all those “othered” by the hegemonic, exclusivist, white, hetero-patriarchal, Christo-centric fetish) are no longer beaten down by defending their humanity and have the time, energy, and resources to flourish.

KAMRYN WOLF

ultimate reality is the clenching of deep abdominal muscles while bike riding up a hill, the feeling of flying down the other side one foot from the edge of an unfenced precipice. floating naked on top of rolling waves, thighs warmed by my piss as its rushes to greet the salty ocean. ultimate reality is the ritual reorientation away from the womb and towards other vessels of creation, administered through the fine tip prick of a needle. it’s also taking an appropriately solid shit.

ultimate beauty is the burning heat of flesh furiously grinding against flesh, rained on by pungent droplets of cum and sweat. the transcendental experience of losing self-consciousness while nose-deep in a forest of pubic hairs, while wet lips glide along wanting tongue, while vertebrae swell against soft winds of breath. ultimate beauty engulfs me when I am trusted to slap my lover across their sweet, accommodating cheeks, to pound at their mountainous, aching chest. the courage of confident reception. the humility of unselfish offering.

ultimate truth is the existence of all things in/between, neither this nor that, beyond, both/and. the complete acceptance that truth is always also not truth. elusive. ephemeral. the confused dance through negative and positive space. the impossible quest for wholeness while inhabiting a body that is missing parts, a city that is crumbling beneath its buildings, a planet that is dangling in a universe of unfathomable reach and grandeur. the painfully generative cycles of birth and death that each being survives in a single lifetime.

this is ministry. my queer ministry. ministry that speaks from and to and with our sense-able and response-able bodies, bodies that are neither mine nor yours but ours, porous and transitional and divine.

VICTORIA GILLON

If there is anything I have learned about queerness, it is that we cannot be solely defined by institutions and systems. That goes against the very nature of queerness itself. I think we need to talk about what it means to be queer spiritual leaders outside of institutions whose goal is to not see us as human and leave us devoid of abundance and pleasure. I call on my black and brown queer ancestors who lived their lives navigating the boundaries of their queerness in spectacular ways. I call on my ancestors with a fierce love for God, spirituality, and the people. I call my strength and imagination to dream of places our queerness is dignified, thriving, and celebrated. I invite you to keep dreaming and creating with me.

MARY BARBER

Coming out as gay was my first call.  It was not one big epiphany for me, but a long struggle, with periods of confusion, stumbling, and uncertainty.  When I finally came to a place of knowing and accepting myself as a gay person, it was a revelation. Coming out opened me to be able to receive other invitations from God — to marriage, to creating a family, and eventually to hearing a call to be a priest in the Episcopal Church.

I need to bring all my gifts, and all that I am, into my current and future ministry — queer person, wife, mother, physician. Vocation demands nothing less than full honesty and offering our whole selves. I am praying for the day that the Church will embrace the vocations of everyone called to serve, in the fullness of all our identities.

DR. SU YON PAK

As a Korean immigrant, I discovered at an early age the power of language beyond what is spoken or written. Not understanding a single word of English, I had to quickly learn the language of bodies—how bodies “spoke” in classrooms, streets and in the playground.

My faith, more specifically Presbyterian faith, both grounded in, and in dissonance with Confucian-Buddhist traditions, communes through the language of the body. There is always much more there than what I can articulate. My faith lives in the interstices of my body. In the tune of a familiar hymn, in the feverish desires, in the cool assurances of the heart, in the well-practiced bows of honor to the ancestors, and in the spirit-filled tears, my body was/is the container that held and nurtured my faith.

Being Queer is like that too. It is how I live out my life in my body with authenticity and truth, refusing the either/or binary—my erotic desires and my faith desires praying together in tongues with logic of its own. As we show up in the fullness of who we are, both Queer and faithful, we, together enact leitourgia (liturgy), public work of the faithful people. At family tables, in pulpits, in classrooms, in public and movement spaces, we show up, fully present to be seen and to be counted.

Won’t you join me in this sacred liturgy?

CASSIE HARTNETT

Dear sixteen-year-old Cassie,

You asked your youth director today if maybe you should become a pastor. She believes in you, but you’re going to push the idea away until later in college. You have so many things you’re going to try first—you want to write bad poetry and be in weird plays and have excruciatingly painful crushes. Someday, one of those crushes will be on a girl. You won’t feel weird about it, and you’ll be so grateful for the sweetness of learning something new about how God made you. Later, you’re going to fall in love with a girl and get your heart smashed into a thousand pieces.

Here’s the thing about your wild, irrepressible, dramatic heart: God created it, and you, to love so hard that you want to change things. Your fierce, queer little heart is so stubborn, it won’t let you rest until you start speaking up, and start listening even more. There are people out there who don’t believe you should do what God called you to do because of who you love and how you wear red lipstick and cry a lot. Your family and church support you and you are so, so lucky to have them; you will listen to the stories of other queer people who have endured trauma in the name of the God you know is love and justice, and I urge you to hold them close. Be full of humility in the knowledge that so many have fought and continue to fight for your right to put on that collar, step into that pulpit, and claim your truth.

Ten years from now, you’re going to graduate seminary.
You’ll be a candidate for ordination in the ELCA.
You’re going to be broken, brave, queer, and loved.

Yours,
Twenty-six-year-old Cassie

KEVIN BENTLEY

One thing that you should know about me is that I am always in church. It has always been that way since I was little. I was raised in the church and it wasn’t as bad an experience as some might think. It was a silent one though. My pastor at my hometown church and congregation never said anything about LGBTQ issues. I thought that meant they were affirming, but silence is just as bad. I am grateful that I had that religious experience, though, because it brought me to a place like Riverside Church. The faith community that I fostered there and the love they have shown me has no words. Now, I know that when I have kids, they too will also have a church to be in all the time.

JESSICA TEZEN

Ministry to me means that I am an extension and reflection of God to others. How I live my life and how I reflect God by the way that I treat people can either help move people to want to know God or not want to know God. Personally, I want to help people move God out of the box they put the Divine in. People should experience a God that is moved by love and not by empire. People should expect to experience a God that encourages diversity and fights against the oppression of people, especially the people who identify as LGBTQ+.

For me identifying as a lesbian and a follower of Jesus means I get to go back to my LGBTQ+ community and tell them the people inside the church had it all wrong the first time. I get to be a living witness to my LGBTQ+ community that God does love us and that we are able to love God, love our partners and love how we identify. If we continue to believe that God has favorites then we are directly going against the Gospel of Jesus. It is not realistic to call ourselves believers of God and hate the very people God has created. Ministry to me is not queer or straight, ministry to me is to love God and love others which is what I have been called by God to do. Love will take us further and until all of humanity is able to understand this, we still have work to do.

KAREN MADRONE

As someone who grew up fundamentalist Baptist, I received the message over and over again, implicit and direct, that being a GLBTQ person meant not only being sinful but even worse no longer loved by God. The message was clear that GLBTQ people should be kicked out of the church and they should lose everything they love, including their relationship with God. When I realized that I am a lesbian and that I couldn’t change that any more than I could voluntarily stop breathing, I felt lost and confused for a long time. I couldn’t understand why I was this way and I prayed and cried to no longer be gay. I slowly came out and received horrible letters from family members telling me how sinful I am. As a result, I left everything that had anything to do with the church. I just couldn’t stay in such a painful place. In time, I even came to believe that it was true: that God stopped loving me.

But thankfully God wasn’t done with me. Through a deep need for community, I reached out to a church in my community that is GLBTQ accepting and loving. They loved me back into being all of who I am, even my spiritual side that I believed was taken away from me. They showed me that I have gifts to bring to the world and that the parts of me that were rejected can bring healing to others. God has not forgotten me. God never stopped loving me. I can now say that I am a lesbian repairing my relationship with the Divine who never left me, who was always there for me. With God’s help I am bringing ministry to this hurting world and spreading the message that God never stops loving us. No one is left out.

KESHIA PENDIGRAST

People of faith taught me that queer people were a perversion, that their private love was demonic, pornographic and at best, that they would never be sacred. As a child, every time I suspected my truth I would hold my breath with this deep dread- what if I was?

I was luckier than most to have come out surrounded by strong, supportive and deeply loving community of queer women.

Queer people have not simply fought for our own divine right to love and be, but we have fought for the very fabric of humanity: queer people like Bayard Rustin and Pauli Murray were central to the civil rights movement, where would we be without Audre Lorde, Alice Walker or even Billie Holiday?

Queer people have stood up to societal indignities for centuries, because the very act of coming out while acknowledging one’s own dignity illuminates an alternative way of being human.

While our times have certainly progressed, these past two years should tell us that communities of faith in particular are still obsessed with notions of painting queer love as the ultimate abomination, whilst distracting themselves and their congregations from the true hegemonic evils of our time.

I am an openly queer woman who invites and recruits people to journey through seminary—I can only hope that that means something to people who still feel called to serve God and/or humanity, even amidst deep rejection by their own faith communities

HANNAH GALLO

One of the most profound privileges in my life was being born a Unitarian Universalist because it meant for me, when I decided to pursue my call to ministry, my queerness was the furthest thing from my mind.  I was much more preoccupied with paying for seminary than figuring out how to navigate a church which didn’t accept my full self. And this is not to say I haven’t experienced homophobia and misogyny in my role as a queer minister, but the fact that my denomination’s public stance and theology is one that embraces, celebrates, and validates the love between me and my partner makes it easier to bear.  Whereas I might have to expend enormous energy loving on myself, celebrating my queer self, in order to better withstand the tides of queer-phobic oppression from my church, I can spend that energy on my congregants and on fighting for justice.

And that fight for justice? It’s to ensure that others have that sense of entitlement to the pulpit, that sense of joy at pursuing their call, that feeling that being queer is a blessing.  Because you know what–it is.

I don’t identify as having been “born gay”—I chose it.  And I wouldn’t change my choice. It was my holy and sacred choice to make about how best to live a life that fulfilled me.  To those of you who feel their relationship to God, to the Divine, to the Sacred, is jeopardized by being queer, I’m here to tell you it is not.  It is there to sustain you, to hold you, and to love you into being.

ERIC BROWN

In October 1968, near the end of his life, Thomas Merton concluded a talk to a gathering of monks in Calcutta: “My dear brothers, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.” Queer faith is a spiritual gift to be lifted-up and nourished. Queer ministry is inspired to action, to community, to inclusiveness, and to dignity and grace—and always, always toward boundless love.

ALLISON CONNELLY

I came out as a queer woman in February of 2017. I had just fallen in love, deeply and dramatically, with a woman I could no longer pretend was only a friend. Although I had never been in love with a woman before– at least, not consciously – I could not ignore the strength of my desires to kiss this woman, to hold her, and to care for her. And yet, two weeks after I started dating this woman, I almost broke up with her. Because while the experience of falling in love was ecstatic and beautiful, the experience of coming out – and the knowledge that I would have to come out again, and again, and again, for my entire life – was painful and overwhelming. As I came out I experienced rejection from many Christians who told me that my sexuality was not holy, was not welcomed in the church, and that its validity – my validity– was up for debate. I questioned my place in the church. I anticipated ecclesial rejection, theological condemnation, and, honestly, professional instability. Was being queer– and being out – and being in love – really worth it? 

My answer, after honest and valuable discernment with my community, was yes. Yes to love, yes to sexuality, yes to openness, yes to a constant, inconvenient, glittery, political celebration of my sexuality and the sexualities and genders of all created people. My partner and I are still together; we live in a tiny studio apartment in New York where I go to seminary and she works for radical nuns. I am an out queer woman with roots and shoots in the Catholic Church and the United Church of Christ, and one day I will be ordained, and I will stand proudly in front of Christian communities, proclaiming the deep, holy, and necessary sacredness of bodies like mine.

CARTER SNYDER-SAMUELSON

Coming out was a deeply spiritual process for me. It was a time of looking critically at myself and my relationships, and stripping away the categories and expectations that I had been socialized to fit into. When we clear away our own assumptions about who we can love, what we can wear, and what our roles are in society, what remains is the core of who God is calling us to be. I think this is the work of the church — to interrogate and dismantle the systems of power that constrain our relationships with God, each other, and ourselves, in order to live more fully into the radical, boundary-breaking love that Jesus shows us.

Our LGBTQIA+ ancestors have been doing this faithfully self-reflective work for generations, working in community to make more room at the table, so that more people can be heard and fed and claimed as family. To me, that’s what church should be: recognizing the divine Spirit alive in the people around us, and listening for the ways that that Spirit cuts through the noise of “us versus them” and connects us to something bigger than ourselves.