cw: suicide, spiritual abuse

Dear Pastor:

We have never met face-to-face, so give me the pleasure of introducing myself to you. For a decade of my youth, I sat in the pews of our church, donated what little I had as a child and adolescent, attended youth groups, weekend services, Bible studies, participated in youth leadership development programs and missions, served as a volunteer in the ministries, and most importantly, I listened to you intently as an LGBT Christian.

I write to you now, amidst a world that is born anew every day. I need not detail the current state of our society and its clear need for hope, reconciliation and peace. Here I will focus on my experience, and its example of contemporary American culture as a whole, in that I and many of my peers maintain a complicated relationship with institutional religion. The vast majority of those I went to school with and now work with are lapsed practitioners of faith, having been “raised Catholic,” or “baptized as a child,” but have left religious practice behind in favor of a communal, more equitable, and free vision of humanity that many churches just don’t provide today.

I have been in and out of churches since I departed my parents’ home and started on my own. With all this in mind, this letter is being delivered with great urgency and concern for those that have “thrown the baby out with the bathwater,” that is to say that despite not agreeing with many core beliefs (and practices) of the church, I believe that there is much to glean from practitioners and teachers of faith such as yourself, and better yet, we have much to learn from each other in community as part of a body of people gathered in the name of peace, reconciliation, forgiveness and hope. This letter will not present a dense theological treatise or ask of you anything more than I have asked of myself. It will instead be an account of my experience in your church, the effects of that experience, the profound similarities I have seen in the stories of my peers, and what you can do about it.

I have contemplated writing this letter to you for the better part of the decade it’s been since I left our church. Now, after some spiritual growth, guidance, and communion, this letter must be written and shared with you and faith leaders like you.

My primary topic to address will at first seem to be a single substance and only representative of my own experience, but as I will attempt to explain, this single substance of my life has taken place within the greater space around this substance (what one may call the “Church”), and has vast implications on the whole: in our spiritual practice, views on God, concept of self, our shared community as humanity, and how we treat the Earth. As you know from the spiritual texts, what is experienced in one part of the body of humanity is also experienced everywhere — for we are all One. We cannot isolate these issues. Please dispel any notions that the matter I present to you is isolated for it has profound impact on all of us.

This is the matter of human sexuality, and in particular, the effect of your position, the extension of you into your church as pastor, on the embodied experience of a gay member of your church: me. You must now know that when I call myself gay, I do so with the face of God smiling upon me. I see no reason and no value to engage in a debate over the legitimacy and wholeness of people like me, who have been left out of the church’s grand vision, and whose dignity and worth is as clear as the rising sun. This is much more an exaltation than it is an apologia. I will waste no time defending our worth as it was always inexorable.

For the vast majority of the time that I spent listening to you, I did not know this truth about myself, however, I heard the calls to acknowledge my diverse beauty and to bring more of God’s reflection out in me. To speak my truth. Our truth. This divine nature came to my soul in the heavens, when God created me, and many like me, in His reflection and bid His favor and mercy over me through Christ. Please make no mistake of where this understanding of my place in this Divine Body was sowed, that it was in the beginning when my first name as a child of God was uttered, not in the church, and particularly, not in your church and under your pastoral “care.” In fact, my original holy name, as a creation of He who fashioned the terrain of the universe and the stars of the firmament, was besmirched by your unwillingness to admire the beauty of His diverse image represented in me and many like me. I carried this distorted image of myself for far too long — and much of it originated within the walls of your church, and from your very mouth.

When it did officially occur to me that I was in fact made with an orientation toward the love and care of men, I was struck by a conflict of understanding. This understanding was a reflection of what you had taught me, and who I knew myself to be. You taught that Jesus died for the sins of humanity for all time, and because of that, if I had accepted Christ into my heart and said (and meant) the “Sinner’s Prayer,” I would be made anew in God and would be delivered into His kingdom even if I still felt that orientation toward the love and care of men. The important addendum to your concept of our deliverance, however, was that God intentioned men to live in carnal and loving union with women, as a relationship between a man and a woman in marriage, and that God does not bless relationships between those of the same sex, to say nothing of those who do not identify with these binary notions of sex & gender. This was furthered by the teaching that a continued life in the “homosexual lifestyle” was not ordained by God, and would thus lead to separation from Him. This was then enacted in your church practice by not allowing LGBT Christians to become members of the church, not fully embracing our identities as LGBT within the church, and not affirming the marriages of those beautiful LGBT couples. You posited that because we were saved by Jesus, we ought not to worry about whether we were gay or straight, because we were first Christian and thus saved, however that we would have to turn from our ways of sin to honor God according to “Biblical” teaching.

This caused me great consternation upon my final understanding that, despite quite literally years of spiritual effort, I could not “pray away the gay,” or otherwise deny myself this nature that I was given. This letter was set forth because of my respect and adoration for your position as a pastor of my former church and community leader, and for you personally, who I understood to have the gift of teaching (which I still maintain), as well as a greater understanding of God’s disposition toward me (which I no longer entertain). I walked with a heavy heart for years and the evangelical church did not help me in my time of greatest need. If God had delivered me from my sinful desires and made me new again, why was it that I continued to feel this way? Why did this darkness, unlike anything I’d ever experienced, descend over me like a torrent of terminal torture? Your teaching, and what I understand to be the official position of the church, drove a wedge between God and who He created me to be, causing a period of unparalleled loneliness. This manifested in depression, anxiety, thoughts and motivations for suicide, all brought on by the prospect of eternal damnation rooted from your words. Your exegesis flew into my young ears and sowed a seed of destruction and terror before I knew any better.

This view towards the lives of LGBT Christians, who inhabit this great Body in full dignity, deservedness, and worth, is unfortunately common in the “non-denominational” evangelical church, which you are aligned with, as well as some other factions of Christianity and even other religions. This topic is of extreme concern as we see LGBT people leaving the church, and faith as a whole, to protect themselves from this insidious notion of unworthiness, and the issue has impacts on the treatment of LGBT people by people of all faith backgrounds, as well as the LGBT person’s concept of self. I may not know the stories of the other LGBT Christians growing up beside me in the pews of the church, who silently and beautifully congregated around me, however, I have heard countless similar stories from people who grew up in churches like ours whose divine inheritance as children of God was ripped from their young hands.

How dare you deny us God? No church leader can breathe life into our lungs nor raise a single one of our bodies back from the dead — who are you to relegate us against our Father?

“Christian counseling” has subjected folks like me to hours of religious indoctrination and “reparative therapy” that horrendously teaches a literal reading of a select number of passages without respect for their historical or social context. It is grossly irresponsible, cruel and a violation of the wholeness and beauty of God’s creation to use this tremendous faith tradition against its very own living authors of today: those that speak for unconditional love, unabashed and bold proclamations of their uniqueness and stand strong in the faces of their oppressors to speak truth. Your teaching, and the official position of your church movement, has sowed terribly disastrous seeds of doubt into the worth of the LGBT community, as well as their own psyches, and has provided fuel to those who align against the divine diversity seen in humanity.

LGBT folks are killing themselves as a result of this position. I took your words to heart and entered one of the darkest periods of my life. As a young student, I walked from class to class and ruminated on ways of killing myself because I figured, since I can’t fix this, and God won’t heal me and I keep sinning in my mind, I may as well kill myself now and head to my personal and eternal lake of fire — because I’m headed there anyways. I viewed myself as vile and undeserving of God’s goodness because I could not change. I could not turn away from my “sin” — not even in my own mind. I gazed at the tall trees outside my dorm room and wondered how long it would take for someone to find my hanging corpse, and which tree branches might support the weight of my last struggle against gravity and that which I could never reverse. I pondered endlessly how long it would take my roommates to find me in our communal bathroom before I was able to fully bleed out in the bathtub. I brushed my teeth in our dorm mirror every morning and night, staring lifelessly at the bottles of toxic bathroom cleaners and wondered which would be able to seal my fate before a paramedic was able to intervene. Revisiting your own sermons online during that time, I hoped to find anything that might indicate that things would turn out alright for me and unfortunately, I found nothing.

I hated my sin so furiously that the only way I thought to effectively purge myself from it would be to accept this all and head toward eternal damnation sooner than later. I hated this life of self-deprecation. All the while, the evangelical church and pastors like you kept dishing out the same vapid doctrine of “hating the sin, but loving the sinner,” and otherwise non-affirming theology of LGBT Christians.

LGBT folks are being killed by their neighbors. The Christians in your pastoral “care” are using your words and your position as a faith leader as justification for their exclusion and hatred of LGBT folk. And even if you preach “hating the sin but loving the sinner,” anything but the full-fledged embrace of this community is adding fuel to a hateful fire that has been roaring in the hearts of humanity for far too long.

I desired to take my own life as a result of your teachings. You may wish to distance yourself from your responsibility by pointing to the presence of evil out of your control, but I know in the deepest place of my being where I know God, that if I were to never hear this teaching from you, this would not have taken place. I heard a message of disunity from you, and from the very lips that, at times, I heard God. From His altar. From my pastor, who I had listened to and followed and loved for the majority of my Christian life. Jesus tells us that we will “know them by their fruit” in Matthew Chapter 7. I ask you, Pastor: does this sound like good fruit to you?

If I were to hear you affirming God’s embrace of my full being, this would not have happened. You may not know just how reckless you were with your teachings and how far you casted aside a portion of your church but that is the reason that I send this to you now. Yes, you could have prevented this period of great tribulation for me and many like me, but you can still prevent this in the future for LGBT Christians gathered in His name. You can save lives.

I truly thank God for those faith teachers that have since affirmed my fullness as a gay man, reminded me of my wholeness, and ushered me into a new vision of the Church. I have found peace and love in my community and in God as I built separation away from these harmful ideas, but there are many still out there being led into deeper and darker crevices of the church — left out from the light that leaders reflect on the rest of the congregation.

Pastor, your words are powerful, and even though many are willing to write off the Christian church as an archaic and dying institution (for which they have my complete understanding and love), I still see power in these words and images of God and congregating in the name of peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. He has come to me in the darkest night of my soul and told me to keep breathing one more breath. And one more. And another. I now know that the full dignity of LGBT people is bestowed on them by God Himself and could never be taken away by teachers like you. I know with the fullness of my soul that even if LGBT folks have found safety, love, nurturing community, and belonging outside the walls of the Church, that God’s mercy, grace and loving acceptance of them, and the way they love, has walked with them into new environments regardless of their scars from poisonous doctrine. This is The Good News. This Divine Inheritance was imbued in their very first breath, and likely even before.

I have rightfully accepted my space in the kingdom of heaven as a Christian, and yes Pastor, as a gay person. You likely do not agree with the possibility of the acceptance of these two identities lived out, and my prayer is not for you to rely on my words or sentiments to transform you, for I know I am but a human. I make no claims of perfection or grand wisdom, and I hold no special power. But rest assured, I no longer toil over your words from nearly a decade (and longer) ago. I no longer desire your benediction nor your acceptance. I do not even care if you believe every word in this letter is an espousal of the evils from a lost world and the work of demons, because I know, as Maya Angelou has noted, “One person standing on the Word of God is a majority.” But I can no longer stay silent. Pastors like you must be brought out into the light. There are too many people in this community suffering at the hands of religious leaders who walk onto the altar of God and desecrate the creation before them in the pews. Every word that you speak against this community is a violation of the highest order, and you need to know how devastating the effects of this teaching have shown to be. You can no longer claim ignorance. Face the bodies. Face the people who have taken their lives in the name of your teachings. These teachings are not of God.

It is of grave importance that you understand that I do not write to you with hate in my heart but with great love for the LGBT community, and you, even though you speak against my family and spit poison in the eyes of God. I pray that you do not mistake my passion for my family as a marker of my dislike or ill-will toward you and your church. The gates of understanding do not pry open easily, so while I write with vigor, know that it is written in the name of love. I humbly pray for my lived experience, as I describe here, and this experience that I share with countless LGBT folks made in the image of God, to touch your heart. I ask that you read them carefully, pray on them, and reflect on your responsibility to mirror the wholeness of your flock, especially those on the margins. I hold space for you to right these wrongs and live together in harmony with the whole of Divine Creation.

This can be applied to many other marginalized groups within your church. LGBT folk are a magnificent but small refraction of the image of God, and the vast constellation of diverse light that erupts from His creation can be found in those that are often not actively welcomed into the body of Christ by church leaders: the exploited poor, women, immigrants, people of color, sex workers, and the parts of ourselves that we leave just before the threshold of the temple of God, that more often than not, tend to show up in those people we are not willing to open the Tent to. I ask you to reflect on the narrowness of your teaching, and consider as Jesus did, the great value that all people bring to this world and this Church. Your church has much to inherit from the lessons of those pushed aside. They have developed strength, resilience, resolve, and hope amidst conditions that push them farther and farther away from the church. They are valuable. We are valuable.

Knowing that the heart of our soul is revealed through our actions, a revisiting of your position on LGBT folk in the church is not enough. I do not care how many silent meditations and decisions you make in your heart and your mind. I must also ask you to beg forgiveness from the LGBT folk in the community vocally, as unequivocally as you did before when you used your pulpit to further marginalize us. You weaponized the Word of God against the vulnerable in the most dangerous way and have led your own flock astray. I implore you to consider this request with the fullness of your abilities, as refusal or a contrived response of church doctrine will clearly demonstrate your willingness to cause separation between God and His precious LGBT children. To deny our wholeness is to spit in the face of God for we are a wondrous shadow of Him, made in His image, as reflected in the very first book of the Bible that you often deploy in your sermons. I need not remind you of what that very same book says about leading children astray.

Jesus speaks of your responsibility to go to your brother for forgiveness before you approach God in Matthew Chapter 5, Verses 23 and 24. I have already forgiven you. I also need you to know that the scars of my wounds are deep and still being mended by my Father. I still need to hear you say sorry, and ask for forgiveness. I need to hear you ask for my forgiveness, and for the forgiveness of all LGBT folks in your flock who have been left out of your tender care. I can hear their voices and their pain crying out to me from the ground. I love them and ask you, I implore you, for them, to humble yourself before God and fully embrace the diversity of your flock. Release this hold on non-affirming theology. The Biblical scholarship is there to affirm us. The history is there. The sociological evidence is there. The psychology is there. Your church is behind. It’s past time.

I write you with good faith both in the space that this comes from in me, and the place that I hope it touches in you. If it does not, however, reach you in the place where you commune with God, and offends you, I ask your understanding and grace for me and my family in the LGBT community. Lest you not take these words as weaponry towards you and your way of life, but see this as the long overdue plea from an ex-member of your church. I pray that I have not overstated my position, and also not sought to hide the extent of the pain inflicted by unjust church doctrine on those in the margins. While it has been long since I’ve sat in your pews, I have kept a close eye on your teachings with regard to this topic and sadly there has been little movement. This is indeed a matter of life and death, and it is urgent.

Your espousal of harmful eschatology has caused this community great hardship, and while I was able to find safe haven in a Christian church outside of the evangelical movement, some are still quietly suffering. Now. Today. To allow an LGBT Christian to sit in your pews, but disallow their membership into your church, refuse to ordain them, and deny them marriage is a betrayal of your responsibility as a shepherd. Welcome these folks wholeheartedly as any other person. It is your Christian duty.

Furthermore Pastor, ask those that you have cast aside and led astray for their forgiveness. This can heal those that are ready to hear it, but can also re-injure those whose wounds are still raw. Walk carefully and humbly into the sensitivity of this hallowed ground of human sexuality. As you have hopefully understood, your words stay with us and haunt us.

Finally, I acknowledge that you may read this, do your inner work by praying, meditating, and seeking the counsel of your church elders, and let us know that despite your best efforts, you cannot accept us as we are and as we love. If you reach this unfortunate and continually damaging conclusion, I ask that you make your non-affirming position of LGBT people as clear as the light of day. No more hiding behind the pulpit — no more using the Bible as your cover. We’ve seen the Biblical scholarship, as I imagine you have. Say it loud and proud, Pastor. Post it on your website. Tweet it. Include it in your sermons more than once every half-decade. Tell us that you won’t marry us, that we cannot be members of your church, that we cannot serve in leadership roles, that we cannot partake in the communion. What you do in the dark will no longer be tolerated. Bring this out into the Light. We need to know to stay away for the sake of our lives.

In this case, I remind you that what you do to us, the Body of Christ feels and the whole of humanity will ache, and I believe that God will weep. Even still, in the face of your refusal to gaze upon a bigger, more diverse Church represented through a full embrace of LGBT people and everyone cast aside, I will still welcome you into our Tent, for you know not what you do.

This essay was originally published on Medium.

Learn more about the author here.