Meanwhile, adult parishioners are finding healing through the sexuality sermon series mentioned earlier. “At first I had this anxiety about ‘What are we getting into?’ ” a male parishioner confessed. “It was a similar anxiety to the kind I felt when I was part of evangelical communities where talking about sex meant having to lay out all the things I’d done wrong. There would be an altar call and you would say all your sins to the minister, and then in some cases get up onstage and tell everybody else everything you’d done wrong. Every week during this series at Highlands, I’ve thought, ‘This is going to be the week it happens. It’s going to be this week.’ And it hasn’t been! Instead, the series has made my sexuality feel less life-defining. There’s a certain amount of weight to it, but it was so big before, whereas now it’s just a part of who I am. And that gives me hope that the five-year-old me, and the thirteen-year-old me, might have some chance at healing.”
* * *
Though a growing number of evangelical churches are opening their doors to the LGBTQ+ community, only a few are teaching the values-based sexual ethic Highlands is (though it is more common in some other denominations). Another evangelical church teaching a values-based sexual ethic is LifeJourney in Indianapolis. Here, adults go through an interactive workshop similar to the one adolescents go through at Highlands—identifying and exploring religiously rooted personal values for sexual and other decision-making in a safe, spiritual space.
Rev. Jeff Miner, the head pastor of the church, went to college at Bob Jones University,VII one of the most conservative evangelical colleges in the country. “I began to put two and two together in college, and realized I was what people would call ‘homosexual,’ ” Jeff told me, leaning across the large desk in his office, his hands folded in front of him. “This was ’76 to ’80, before information on homosexuality was out there. I saw it as a problem that could be solved through prayer. And I felt I had to put my ministry on hold to give God time to fix it. But I didn’t want to tell people that was what was happening. So instead, I told them God had called me to change my major to pre-law,” he smiled, adjusting his glasses.
After he graduated from Bob Jones, Jeff attended Harvard Law. And, because “God still hadn’t answered my prayer that I wouldn’t be gay anymore,” went on to become a lawyer working out of Washington, DC. But just about every weekend, Jeff was buried in one of the city’s theological libraries where he continued to wrestle with the rift between the theology he loved and the lived experience he couldn’t refute.
“Actually,” he smiled, leaning back in his desk chair, “theologians and lawyers use very similar methods. In the law, every time a court addresses a subject area, you get a fuller and more thoughtful and well-rounded picture of how we as a culture are going to approach that issue. So when you’ve got ten decisions on a subject area, you have a much more well-developed understanding than when you’ve got one. The same thing happens with the Scriptures as they build over time.
“I began to study how Jesus dealt with ethical questions, which wasn’t something that I learned about growing up,” Jeff told me. “I looked at every instance where Jesus was asked to make an ethical decision and asked myself, ‘How is Jesus doing this?’ And then, ‘How can I apply Jesus’s approach to ethical decision-making to my own ethical decisions?’
“Jesus will often start with relating a spiritual question to Scripture,” he explained. “But he’s referring to it in order to go beyond it—to refine it, to enhance it, and sometimes, to put it aside and say, ‘We need to go in a new direction.’ And then in John 16:12, Jesus says near the end of his ministry: ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.’ That’s Jesus saying, even after he’s finished, there’s a whole lot more that the Spirit of God needs to teach us. So you can’t freeze this in time at any point. Even now, we have to remain open to the idea that God is still teaching us things we weren’t even ready to receive in Jesus’s time.”
Using Jesus’ approach for making ethical decisions, Jeff reached the conclusion that when it came to sexuality, this was one of those times that the church needed to go in a new direction.
Today, Jeff is ordained through the Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), a church of refuge for the LGBTQ+ community. In 1997, he moved back to Indiana, where he grew up, and took over a small MCC church of forty people. Many of the church’s congregants had been raised fundamentalist or evangelical and, under Jeff’s leadership—a man who was trained at one of the most conservative Christian colleges in the country and ordained in one of the most progressive denominations—LifeJourney truly became a “progressive evangelical” community. Jeff tells me that both of these two descriptors are equally important, and that he would never use one without the other.
Like the pastors at Highlands, Jeff is regularly approached by congregants—whose numbers have grown to 350—asking, “ ‘If it’s okay to be LGBTQ+, then what about the rest of our sexual ethics? What rules do we carry forward for sexuality from traditional Christianity and what do we reinvent?’ ” For the first eight years of his ministry, Jeff spent many a one-on-one counseling session walking congregants through Jesus’s approach to ethical decision-making so they could emulate it, as he himself had done. Finally, in 2005, Jeff developed an eight-week course so groups of congregants could learn the approach together.
In class, Jeff leads the group through discussions around various sexual issues using this approach. “For example, if a key biblical value is populating the earth, how do we look at birth control now that the world is changing and there is overpopulation? What about sex before marriage now that we no longer live in a lawfully based patriarchal world?” Discussions always start with Scripture, modeling Jesus’s approach, but the group is also urged to consider reason, science, experience, tradition, and the individuals’ own intuition or sense of the Spirit.VIII
“I love the verse where Jesus says that a theologianIX is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old,” Jeff said.7 “There is this dynamic tension between progressive and conservative that I see in Jesus and that I would advocate is a balance we need to carry forward if we want to be authentic Jesus followers—blending the old with the new and living in that dynamic balance. Sometimes saying, ‘We’ve got to stick with this old because it’s so wise,’ and other times saying, ‘No, the Spirit of God has shown us something new, and we have the liberty to move a step forward.’ ”
Jeff estimates that over a quarter of his church has gone through the course, which they have been hosting every two years since 2005. “People are desperate for this kind of thing, something that creates a safe space in which you can really explore questions,” he said. “You can just feel the—relief isn’t the right word. You can feel the thank-God-there’s-a-space-where-we-can-have-these-conversations feeling. After people have taken the course, I see more confidence in people. For example, someone may say, ‘Maybe it’s normative in the LGBTQ+ community to be sexually intimate early in the dating process with someone, but if that’s not what I feel called to, I have confidence that I can say, “No I want to wait.”’ I see more thoughtfulness. I see more peace of mind.”
“Have you ever had people from outside the church join the class?” I asked.
Jeff began to laugh. “We’ve never dared to advertise outside the church!” he bellowed.
* * *
The leaders at Highlands and LifeJourney churches had to overcome the stumbling blocks that being raised in the purity movement themselves had placed in front of them before they were able to do their healing work on behalf of others. Today, they are dedicated to creating a smoother terrain for those under their religious care. At a time when most churches (evangelical and otherwise) struggle to own their complicity in sexual shaming—be it through the sin of commission or the sin of omission—Highlands and LifeJourney prove it is possible to disrupt the status
quo.
I am still a Christian, but I don’t go to church much anymore. Maybe if I lived in Denver or Indianapolis, I would. But I can’t bring myself to attend a church that teaches purity culture and other things that I know hurt people as deeply as they do, and when I attend progressive churches I sometimes find myself thinking I may as well be at home watching a TED Talk. It’s just not my kind of church. When I go to church, I want to throw my hands up in the air! I want to sing at the top of my lungs! I suppose in some ways I am still an evangelical after all.
And so, these days I mostly do “church” at home: Praying, meditating, journaling, reading, and sometimes throwing my hands up and singing praises or laments to God at the top of my lungs in the privacy of my apartment where only my neighbors—who can undoubtedly hear me through my thin New York City walls—are invited to join in. I know my teenage self, rulebook in hand, would have certainly been wary of my salvation. My faith looks very different than what I was taught it must. More private. More quiet (if you’re not my neighbor, that is). More my own.
The closest I’ve ever come to finding a church home as an adult wasn’t a church at all; it was a choir. We sang gospel music together. And at the end of every rehearsal, we stood in a circle and shared the most painful and beautiful things happening in our lives, and then, we prayed for one another. That was it. And it was everything. Enough to inspire us to visit one another in the hospital; to sing at one another’s weddings and funerals; to attend each other’s celebrations; to help one another move or paint our living rooms; and much more. There was no sermon; there were no teachings; but we had church.
* * *
I crossed Broadway and walked down Twenty-Ninth Street—past my favorite restaurant where they roast whole pigs, past the Pakistani place where they always give me extras when packing up my leftovers, past the basement mosque, the street salesmen whose incense you smell before you see him, the sari shop, and the cheap perfumery before turning the corner onto Fifth Avenue. As the front door of the mainline Protestant church where my gospel choir was performing that day came into view, I stopped in my tracks. A huge gay pride flag, larger than any I’ve ever seen, engulfed the grand entrance of the church with its bright welcome. I knew our choir was going to be singing on the steps of the church for the lesbian Pride parade that day, but somehow, seeing the church take such a public stand still shocked me.
Church volunteers held out trays with cups of water and the paraders stopped and listened to us sing. I’ll never forget the image of the paraders dancing and crying in one another’s arms as they looked up at us, or the image of the woman who mouthed “thank you,” her hand over her heart, tears pouring down her cheeks. I’ll never forget seeing them receive what I had needed growing up—the promise that God loved them, and that some in God’s community would stand by them and their sisters no matter what they had been told by others.
And then, I heard in the distance the dark, husky boos. The rumble of two angry men walking quickly while carrying huge signs that told those marching in the parade they were going to Hell. As they neared us, the men directed their boos and hisses at our choir. They booed our claim to be Christians. They booed our saying there was more than one conclusion Scripture could lead you to. They booed our insistence that God loved and accepted those marching in the parade that day just as they were.
I remember how small the men looked. In a sea of celebratory dancing and singing, how dark and shriveled they seemed. They looked up at us with disdain, and yet, I noticed, they also quickened their pace, as though afraid. As they moved past us, we sang louder. I smiled bigger, brighter. I tried to shine God’s love out from my body toward them. Smiling through the tears that were now streaming down my face, I made eye contact with one of the men, and he quickly looked away.
As I sang, I thought about how powerful it was to be standing on the steps of the church that day. I have had a very hard time going back to the church after so many years of disappointment and broken trust. But in that moment, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. If I had not been on the steps of the church, I would have been Linda Kay Klein—a straight ally who just so happened to have a rich spiritual life. My voice would have been important, but only one voice. But here, here on the steps of the church with my beloved community singing, my voice meant so much more. From here, my choir mates and I said we believed God had something different to say than those men with their hateful signs would have us all believe. And that is the message those standing before us crying needed to hear.
Remember the old nursery rhyme? The one that you would always do with your hands? Here is the church; here is the steeple; open the doors, and see all the people? I’ve come to believe that this is just how it is. The church is made up of us. Our hands. We are the church. We are the steeple. We are the doors and we are the people. No company, no institution, no pastor can tell us whether we’re in or out because it is us. You can choose the church or not—that’s up to you—but no one can choose for you. Because if you choose it, it already is you.
Today, when my apartment is still and I am alone, I sometimes sit in the center of a room. I cross my legs, close my eyes, take a moment, and then, I open my mouth and I sing. I start low, where I’ve come to know my true voice resides. And then, I let the music wander—searching the space around me, telling God the things that I am sometimes too distracted to uncover until the music helps me find them. It is a kind of meditation, a kind of prayer. I allow words or phrases to repeat—praying anger, sadness, joy, and longing into them until the words get worn out and lie down raggedly, panting on the hardwood floor, and I can move past them. And sometimes, when I am very lucky, I sing my way not only through questions but into answers. They show up in my mouth, coming right off my tongue, and I have no idea how they got there except to say that for one brief moment I could hear the voice of the divine in my own.
“Oh!” I exclaim. “Hi, God.”
* * *
I. The use of this ethos has since spread to several other churches.
II. OWL is abstinence-based, and is further based on the value that it is healthier for younger teens to wait to have sex, but it is not an abstinence-only educational model. OWL discusses many forms of contraception and disease-prevention, and aims to create safe, shame-free environments for all participants. It also actively incorporates the perspectives and experiences of those who may not see themselves in other sexuality curricula—such as people across the gender and sexuality spectrums, people with physical and mental challenges, and so on.
III. Studies have found that children start seeing online pornography as young as the age of six and that by the age of eighteen most kids have seen it.3
IV. There are OWL curricula available for groups of almost every age—from kindergarteners to adults—each of which focuses on topics that are developmentally appropriate for that age group. For instance, the seventh–ninth grade curricula that Highlands is using focuses on topics like body image, social media/Internet, bullying/bystander responsibilities, and consent education.
V. When researchers R. M. Ryan and J. P. Connell studied schoolchildren’s achievement behaviors, for instance, they found “the more students were externally regulated the less they showed interest, value, and effort toward achievement and the more they tended to disown responsibility for negative outcomes.” In contrast, more internally regulated motivations were “associated with more interest and enjoyment of school and with more positive coping styles, as well as with expending more effort.” The findings were essentially the same when studies were performed by other researchers in education and in other fields. In healthcare, for example, internalized motivations have been found to improve people’s likelihood to take their medications, maintain their weight loss, and attend treatment for addictions.4
VI. “Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavioral effects. Specifical
ly, over 40 percent of the programs delayed the initiation of sex, reduced the number of sexual partners, and increased condom or contraceptive use; almost 30 percent reduced the frequency of sex (including a return to abstinence); and more than 60 percent reduced unprotected sex.”
VII. Bob Jones is probably best-known by much of the non-evangelical world for its ban on interracial dating, which was not broken until 2000 when it became a topic of national conversation after George W. Bush campaigned at the school.
VIII. Here, Jeff is using a modified version of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.
IX. “He says ‘scribe’ but a ‘scribe’ means a ‘theologian,’ ” Jeff clarified.
A Message for Readers from the Interviewees
“What message,” I asked most of my interviewees, “do you have for readers who might be seeking healing?” Among their answers, three categories emerged.
1. Know you are not alone.
My message for readers is: You’re not alone. You’re not alone, and you’re not crazy. (Katie)
This journey has certainly been a lonely one in many ways, and just knowing that I’m not alone makes me feel 1,000 times better. (Holly)
2. Know yourself.
Learn who you are. Be okay to get on a bus, or get on a train, or get on a plane by yourself. Go somewhere new, take a deep breath, and find a place for yourself. (Piper)
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