If you’ve been following Good Faith Media over the past few weeks, then you know we’ve been covering the decision of Baylor University to return a grant they received to study LGBTQ+ people’s experiences in the church with the aim of doing less harm. In our own and others’ coverage of the controversy, an old, tired debate has come, once again, to the forefront of conversation in especially Baptist spaces: What is the right way to engage LGBTQ+ people as Christians?
Usually, this debate is reduced to a binary that’s fueled more by stereotypes and assumptions than by facts and reciprocal dialogue. The binary presented by most conservatives goes something like this: Conservative Christians don’t condone LGBTQ+ “lifestyles” because the Bible “clearly” says it’s a sin. Liberals who are LGBTQ+ or their allies have thrown the Bible out the window because it “hurts their feelings.”
On one end of this binary, you have the “real” Christians who still believe the Bible. On the other, you have liberals who have “lost their faith” by ignoring scripture and embracing “the sins of the world.”
Here’s the thing: I’m a queer pastor who has long loved the Bible. The Bible has saved my life time and time again. The Bible (particularly the life and ministry of Jesus Christ) deeply informs my spirituality and personal ethic.
Before recognizing my own queerness, my deep study of and prayer in the Bible led me to the full affirmation of LGBTQ+ people. In other words, I became affirming because of my study in scripture, not despite it. The recognition (and then acceptance) of my own queerness came later.
I also profoundly love my wife. She challenges me to be more patient and tender.
We regularly discuss scripture passages and theological concepts (We met in seminary, after all.), and we stretch one another to grow in ways neither of us expected before our wedding nearly eight years ago. I’m thankful beyond words for how our relationship has deepened both my faith and hers.
Simply put, our queerness has made us better followers of Jesus. Where is that perspective in this debate?
I ask because I know my experience and my wife’s experience are not anomalies. I see it in how the queer couples I know love each other.
I see it in how the single queer people in my congregation become more like Christ the more they accept how beautifully queer God made them. It’s like being present for Christ’s transfiguration in our present day.
This reality is one of the reasons the Faithful Pride Initiative at Good Faith Media launched a social media campaign throughout Pride Month. I asked Christians from across the LGBTQ+ community to film brief videos describing how their queerness has positively impacted their faith. Their answers were not only beautifully profound but also full of wisdom that applies to all people of faith, queer or not.
A Christian whose queerness improves the depth and quality of their faith doesn’t fit neatly into the binary that homophobic Christians insist on arguing within. As a result, they end up either insisting we actually don’t take the Bible seriously (even though we do) or simply ignoring our perspective altogether. In either case, their argument isn’t rooted in reality.
An argument that fails to acknowledge reality shouldn’t have the far-reaching influence it continues to wield. We—queer people—shouldn’t have to experience the all-too-real harm brought about by their logical fallacies.
Those frustrations are why I typically don’t engage in public conversations with folks who are committed to arguing within that binary. I simply don’t have the energy first to help them see the inaccuracy of that binary and then help them into a space rooted in reality before we can even begin to have a genuine, productive conversation. (Although I have immense respect for the queer Christians who do. It’s a special kind of calling.)
Frankly, I need that energy to minister to the folks in my congregation—queer or otherwise—as they continue to be impacted by all this homophobia.
I’m not sure the conversation will move forward in any effective way until there’s a shared understanding that God regularly shows up in the communities we’ve been told over and over again God would never bless. Like Peter in the book of Acts, I have been among the Gentiles and seen the Spirit of God at work in their lives.
Who among you believes you can stand in God’s way and deny them their rightful blessing?
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A bivocational pastor, writer and spiritual director based in Williamsburg, Virginia, she currently works as a Spiritual Director at Reclamation Theology. Cawthon-Freels is the author of Reclamation: A Queer Pastor’s Guide to Finding Spiritual Growth in the Passages Used to Harm Us (Nurturing Faith Books), and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
