Stay, Go, or Find Another Way

Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast. I'm Brian G. Murphy. And I'm Father Shannon T. L. Kearns. We're the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and your hosts. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how. Tune in each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We're glad you're here. Hello, hello, hello. We are so glad to be here with you for another episode of the Queer Theology podcast. If you are listening to this podcast, there's a pretty good chance that you fall into one of these categories, that you're one of these people, that you grew up Christian and at some point realized you were queer and were like, fuck, how do I, what do I do with that? How do I fit myself into this religion? And you've been sort of Christian that whole time and you have been either, you know, painstakingly carving out a place for yourself in the church. Maybe you've like bounced around. Maybe you feel really at home in a church right now, or you feel spiritually adrift, like a little bit of a wanderer. But like Christianity has been sort of like a constant presence in your life. Or perhaps you are queer and you grew up either connected to the church and then drifted away from it, or you were never particularly religious. And you have come out and you have a good sense of queer community and you're like, I got this queerness thing figured out. I'm not going to be on lock enough or whatever reason as an adult you're like, maybe there's something there about God, or maybe there's something there about spirituality, or maybe I miss the church experience that I used to have, or maybe I'm just like asking like big questions about like, what's the meaning of life or what's my purpose or where do I fit into the universe and you are like exploring and curious about faith and coming back to it, and I am as a queer adult but also maybe with some preconceived notions about what religion is or what Christianity is since when you stepped away however many years ago whether that was in your childhood or your teens or in your 20s. And now you're like here listen to me, to Father Shannon and I, yeah. Which I wrote that cases there you might be asking like, like why bother should I stay a Christian, should I leave a Christian leave Christianity how do I know what would be waiting on the other side for me like what would be waiting for me if I were to stay. And so this episode is for you if you're have ever asked yourself where you're in the midst of trying to discern what role you want faith in general to play and Christianity in particular to play in your life. If you don't know Father Shannon and I both grew up various versions of more conservative evangelical Christian I was probably more on like the liberal for even evangelical side of things and chin and was probably more on the like homeschooled fundamentalist side of things. And yet we both found our way to progress Christianity in our 20s or in college and into adulthood and like set up shop there started this website with y'all do.com. Because we realized and knew to be true that there was so much more to being an LGBTQ person of faith and always defending ourselves like against a handful of like Bible verses that anti gay homophobic Christians said to find us. And then like I don't know if you have closely you're following our story a few years ago, I officially converted to Judaism and what I described as like a few years or a few decades and then they came depending on how you were counting and so in this episode we want to explore for you help you think through the question of like when to stay and when to go and share a little bit of our own experiences in considering leaving Christianity or dabbling with that are taking breaks from the church over the years. What ultimately led Father Shannon to stay in the church stay a Christian and not only that become an ordained clergy and what ultimately led me to go down a different spiritual pathway. So that is where we are heading today. Shannon. Can you can you think of a I want us to sort of share some different moments that we've like had doubt about our place in the church and if Christianity was right for us can you think of like one of the maybe like your earliest moments of being like unsure if either there was a place for you in the church or if you wanted to stay in the church like flirting with maybe leaving or wondering what it would be like to leave. Yeah. Yeah I mean I definitely remember while I was in my evangelical Christian college and really starting to come to terms with the fact that I was queer. I didn't really have language around gender identity at that point but definitely was like oh I think I think that this liking girls thing is not going away. I'm praying really hard and it does not seem to be working. And I was also I think dealing with a lot of depression at that point and really I think starting to ask questions of faith in a new way that I had never had before. And I in the midst of that kind of mental health crisis. I really did that was the first time I seriously thought I wish I could just leave Christianity behind because it felt like most of the. Hard stuff I was dealing with like most of the depression stemmed from feeling like I wasn't good enough Christian there wasn't enough space for me in the church. I had right before the summer right before I went off to my evangelical college I went on a mission trip which I've talked about before. Where I was really harassed just like the best way that I can put it harassed by the adult leaders on the trip for being too close to the girls on the team and dressing like a boy. And it was it was very clear that like they had a problem with how I was showing up in the world. And that I think that had never happened to me before like people had commented before on like how I dressed and how I looked and that I looked like a boy and and that kind of stuff but it never to the extent of this trip and that really did a number on me and so that coupled with then getting to this evangelical college and I'm learning about things that I had never learned about before for the first time and I'm asking questions and I don't know it just all felt really hard and it all felt like it was stemming from faith and Christianity and God. And so I did start to really think like I want I wish I could leave the church right like it felt to me that it would be easier to deal with all of this stuff if I wasn't in the church and also that maybe the church was like the cause of all of the stuff. It probably wasn't articulating it quite like that as an evangelical college student. But there there really was this sense of like I feel like I wish I could leave while also at the exact same time very much feeling like I couldn't that I was somehow trapped and I don't know. I'm sure at the time a lot of it was like fear of hell. I'm sure that a lot of it was like being terrified of disappointing my family of feeling like I mean literally my entire community was the church. It was like my entire family was in the church my entire all of my friends were in the church. There wasn't really anyone that I knew that was outside of this very small ecosystem. And so that that moment of really feeling like I think I I wish I could leave this behind but I don't know how was very very acute when I was when I was in college for sure. Yeah I also had a probably like that was like one of my first cracks was college but in a very different way. It's funny because that you that this happened to you at your evangelical Christian college because I remember I I went to like a secular college in Los Angeles and partway through I decided to add on a minor like maybe a double major in religion. And I remember like friends from back home from church being like we really shouldn't study religion like a secular school it will really like it might like undermine your faith. So it's good to know like you can also be undermined undermined evangelical college also sure. Sure can but I remember like as a teenager like even in high school or like maybe like late middle school as I was like starting to realize that I liked guys. I had this and I at this moment which I made in a YouTube video many years ago which I tell an expanded version in our both us coming out this December reading the Bible through queer eyes. So check out our YouTube channel for that video for the video on like what the Bible says about homosexuality or reading about with your queer eyes later this year. But I remember being like well I've heard that being gay as a sin but like has anyone actually checked like maybe maybe it's just like a giant misunderstanding like such a like so naive and hindsight but also like what what's about right to just be like maybe no one checked and and looking it up in my teen study Bible and surprise surprise they're like commentary my teen study Bible written by Zander Vans was not affirming. But even when I got to like the last page like the last of the met lessons lessons in my teen study Bible about homosexuality. I remember being like hmm I just feel like maybe there's more to the story and that this isn't quite right and so but I didn't and like I also talk in the book and in the last of the talks we do at colleges and churches about like this really hamster wheel of apologetics I like went looking for a little while for like an argument that's like sort of like proved it was okay to be gay and found some that were compelling but then found evangelical arguments that like we're brought to those and I just with this was this constant back and forth and so it's not fun I was like I just somewhere inside of me have this sense that like I think it's just okay I don't have the words for but I think it's just going to be okay. And so gradually started to drift away from the church I was sort of like swapped it with young life because young like this getting started in my school and my mom worked for young life and I have lots of really apologize for the young like as a child and so it was sort of like well I'll do young like well I keep going to my like secular public high school. And then when I got to college I was just sort of like that like I went a few times to like an evangelical press but here or no it was PC USA but it was like on the evangelical side of the PC USA and I was like this just isn't for me anymore and so I just sort of like stopped going to church and I would sometimes like wrestle with like should I be going to church and my like being a bad Christian is like God mad at me and I'm gonna like lose my salvation. I would like sometimes rusted with those questions but mostly it was like living a really full fabulous queer life in Los Angeles like still like I was like I didn't come out my freshman year came out between my freshman and sophomore year but I like was self aware enough to like make friends with gay people and arrange to live with gay people my sophomore year so like I just like kind of put it on the back burner for a while. And very much at something I was like like I don't know I'm a Christian anymore like maybe I still am but like church religion faith I was not reading my Bible I was not going to church I was not a part of like small groups I was not like looking up Christianity on the internet like I don't think podcasts were I think but I wasn't like reading like Christian blogs right. And I think I think that would have been bad and I think I would have just sort of crossed faded away from Christianity without ever looking back and I it's funny because like I at the same time as all this is going down like one of throughout my life a lot of my best friends have always been Jewish my one of my best friends from in college freshman year. She was Jewish she was celebrating or observing Passover for the first time away from her family and she was nervous about keeping Kush for Passover by herself for the first time so I was like I'll keep going for Passover with you. So like I kept Kush for Passover my freshman year. My like in between my junior and senior college I took Hebrew lessons at how well with my like roommate who was like exploring his Jewish roots. And when I think when I was like 19 my mom asked like are you going to convert to Judaism. And I was like no I'm not gay and I can convert to Judaism like spoiler alert both things happened and so I don't know sometimes I wonder like what I like if I never come back to Christianity like what I had converted earlier there's one right never would have converted at all actually where I would just sort of be this sort of like generic American like post Christian like waspy type person. But at the end of my college experience I got involved in activism nonviolent direct action at colleges university that was for me against queer people. And I was like oh there's something here and I experienced like a something here in two ways there was a sort of like woo woo we there's something here. Like I forget who said it but there's this quote I was like never doubt that a small but committed group of people can change the world in fact that is the only thing that ever has you know the whole like. They tried to bury I say didn't know they were planting seeds like ripple you will never know like where the ripples reach like we were all 25 of us strangers six weeks ago and like look at us now like united by this sort of like belief that the world can be different than it is and we all just sort of like been willing to do that. To put our lives on hold for months at a time to try to like embody and enact and realize that different world. And it was a lot of Christians and former Christians but also like some Buddhists like some Jews like some very committed atheists and it was just sort of like I was like beautiful like you know which he will be sort of way but also. Because there's a lot of like really progressive like radical leftists like some mainline Christians that I brought to Jesus also and I was like oh there's like something here specifically about Jesus and Christianity and Christianity is radical roots and this is the kingdom of God and heaven and. Like. That's like it was like activism like brought me back to to faith. I think like the first time and I just like it was it was like one of a few different sort of like saw conversion of saw moments where it was like oh like the scales fell off my eyes and I just like saw things in a new light and I was like oh. This Christianity is totally totally different than the Christianity of my childhood and there's like something here for me and I'm actually in hindsight. Really glad that I came back to Christianity and like got involved and like with this sort of like liberating powerful proactive like kind of almost like aggressive but for aggressive for good sort of like version of Christianity because. There's no version of God that I was very dependent on just like so thoroughly convinced that like evangelicals and the fundamentals are totally wrong and I know some folks that leave Christianity maybe earlier in life or like have never experienced a sort of a more forming version of it like there's like so these were like lingering doubts of. Of hell or retribution or karma or whatever and nothing you have to. Experience progressive Christianity before you can leave it but I am like I am glad that I came back because. It made me appreciate the sort of like the breadth of Christianity to see like the ways and it's like the black church is really doing awesome stuff and like the global south church and just like there's like a lot of really cool people if they like. Radical nuns and in Vietnam war like as like peace activists just like a lot of really cool stuff that has been birthed out of Christianity and that's so that like reignited me again and I'll because I can pause there. Yeah it's interesting that you say that because I I don't think I could have or I would have understood this at the time but I do think that even in my as I was feeling like how. Man it would just be so much easier if I could leave Christianity behind why I was wrestling with that in college. I did I do think I had this sense of like. Yeah but like the the questions are still going to be there. Right like I I could stop going to church and stop reading my Bible and stop engaging in any of this community. And also I'm still probably going to wake up in the middle of the night and worry that I'm going to hell. So I think I had this this notion of like I've got to wrestle my way through it and like maybe at the end I will come out saying I don't believe any of this anymore but like it if I don't wrestle it all the way to the ground. There's always going to be something unresolved in me. And so I think that like that is what initially set me on a journey of I think I'm going to confront I'm going to stay in it and I'm going to confront all of the questions which then led me to like reading a ton of books and and doing a lot of work and for me. So many of the questions were actually like not about queerness. Those kind of actually got answered along the way right like as I did the real work of like why did Jesus have to die again. What what is this thing of like God is loving and God's going to send a lot of people to hell if they don't believe in their right way and like torture them forever and ever. Is that really an act of love? We have it if you're asking those same questions we have a web a workshop called why did Jesus die that doesn't help for free. Which you can find out more about it. Querytheology.com slash why did Jesus die. Yeah. So I had a lot of questions about like the atonement and about hell and about the end times. And the thing is like as you start to do work around those questions and answering those questions and really like digging deep into what the church has believed over the years about those questions. You you find out that like it's a it's a lot more complicated than I was taught in my evangelical church and that they're like that there are different interpretations that go back to the earliest Christian tradition, which of course I had never been taught. And that for me was a moment where I think I started to be like, oh, there's something really interesting here. And there are lots of other ways to believe that don't look like this one exclusive way that I have been taught because I literally I don't I don't know that I had ever met anyone growing up. I mean, I'm sure I had met people that weren't evangelicals, but like I never really met any serious person of faith growing up that wasn't an evangelical. And or like I was taught to not take their faith seriously. So you can chicken or egg. You know, I never like had serious conversations with someone of another faith or even another version of Christianity to like snap me out of it. And so I was really uncovering all of this stuff on my own. And of course, like then once you start asking those questions and and I was really fortunate that I after I while I was in college and right after college. First I got hired at a United Methodist Church. Again, very much still evangelical, but like they ordained women, which is not something my church growing up did. And this church like really affirmed my call to ministry in a way that like no one had in my church growing up. And so like that was a that was definitely a moment. And then I got hired by an American Baptist Church. And the pastor that I worked with at that church was absolutely like Liberation Theologian. He had studied and done some kind of post collegiate work on Christian anarchism. Like so the odds that I found this pastor in this tiny Pennsylvania town who then took me under his wing like he's handing me Jacques Alul and like thinkers that I would have. Like ever w