On Being Christian As A Queer Person

The Conflict (and lack thereof) between my identities.

We all carry many identities. I am a father of three amazing children, I am a pastor’s wife, I am a daughter and a sister and an uncle. Admittedly that is an unusual combination of identities and they are facilitated by the fact that I am a trans woman and a lesbian—two identities which are also contended in my own culture and which deeply inform one another. There is a lot I could write about right there but that is not today’s project.

I am also a Christian. specifically I am a Charismatic Christian and an Anabaptist.

I tend to do a lot of writing about my thoughts on being queer as a Christian but today I want to flip that and say something about being Christian as a queer woman.

Two worlds; one person

Queerness remains significantly stigmatized and marginalized in our society, whereas Christianity is a historically and culturally dominant force in our society. And yet in me, as in so many Christian Queer people, my queerness and my Christianity do not just co-exist, they are mutually informed. My queerness is not separable from my Christianity nor is my Christianity separable from my Queerness.¹

My brother and I presented a breakout session at the Queer Christian Fellowship Conference last weekend; we talked about the problems of disgust theology and about the toxic impact that an overapplied disgust metaphor has had on the Church. During the Q&A portion we got a really great question from one participant (a queer man of color) who observed that we had been talking about how disgust theology leads to the church stigmatizing and othering queer people and asked us to say something about the fact that we were speaking to people who are both queer and Christian and how those two identities exist on opposite ends of a social power analysis. He wanted us to talk about what disgust theology looks like for those in power and he wanted us to share our thoughts on whether or not people who have been marginalized or oppressed are right to want spaces free of the influence of oppositional and oppressive identities.

He was entirely right to ask this and I certainly hope that my response was adequate.²

Now over the last few days I have seen the same, or at least a similar, topic on Twitter so I think maybe writing out a full response to his question here may be worthwhile. What then does it mean to be a Christian as a queer person?

My queer identity is one that is currently (and historically) marginalized by the society I live in. My Christian identity is currently (and historically) privileged by the society I live in. I could nuance that by looking at the power dynamics that are introduced by being a transgender lesbian in LGBTQIA+ spaces and by looking at the position of Anabaptists in the US and at ways that the history of abuse against peace churches that we have seen from the American Government over the years. None of the analysis I am about to offer is complete³ but I am going to keep this analysis as broad as possible.

So, Queerness and Christianity. To put it simply—and yes this is an oversimplification—Christianity bears the lion’s share of responsibility for my marginalization as a queer person⁴. Whether we are looking at the efforts of Christian Nationalists today, or the work of Christian conservatives over the last half century, or even the role that “Christian values” has played in the persecution, marginalization, and oppression of queer people over the last two millennia, Christianity as a movement has been deeply complicit in the suffering of queer people.

This is something that I am deeply conscious of. As I said in the meeting, when I walk into a Christian space I do it with my queerness front and center; when I walk into a [secular] queer space I am a lot more careful and subdued with my Christianity. This isn’t because I am ashamed to be a Christian—my Christianity is something I am proud of—but because I know that my Christianity will reasonably be perceived as dangerous in that space. And that danger, the complexity of that situation, is not the fault of queer people, nor should queer people be blamed for being uncomfortable with Christianity even when that Christianity is instantiated in a fellow queer person.

At the same time, those self same power dynamics mean that Christian (and post-Christian) queer people usually live with uniquely intense awareness of the historic and social tension between these two identities. It is against us more than any others that conversion therapy and near-constant anti-queer teaching and preaching have been deployed. And in terms of those queer people who are still Christians, that tension is likely an current and ongoing phenomenon for us. I don’t have the capacity (or the interest) to fully bracket my Christianity in queer spaces just as I have neither the capacity (or any interest) to bracket my queerness in Christian spaces. You are unlikely to find anyone more aware—in both embodied and cognitive ways—of the harm that Christianity has done and is doing to queer people than a queer Christian.

When I walk into a Christian space I carry my queerness as a challenge and as an invitation to the historic power that has structured that space and simply by existing in a Christian space as a queer woman and refusing to be cast out or to withdraw I present a challenge to the very power structures which have led to Christian oppression of queerness. Conversely it is only in the bodies of queer Christians that Christianity has any possibility of entering with humility into queer spaces and beginning to repent, apologize, or work towards restitution.

As my brother and I have written, social hegemonic power like what we see exercised by anti-queer Christianity is paradoxically fragile specifically because it depends on the exclusion of any “contaminating” influence. As a Christian queer person I have a right to Christian spaces just as much as I have a right to queer spaces and by exercising that right to exist as a Christian in those spaces I am already and automatically contributing to the destruction of that oppressive power structure. As I resist it’s attempts to expel me I am demonstrating the weakness and vulnerability—the fragility—of the structure. And as other cis, het, and allo Christians come first to tolerate, then to accept, and ultimately to celebrate my presence among them as my queer self, my queerness is transforming that oppressive structure into something new, more divers, more robust, and less harmful to queer people.

The Deep Irony is that it is exactly those identities which have been marginalized, oppressed, dispossessed, and persecuted, which poses the power of transforming oppressive power systems into something new.

That, of course is all very nice but it is not without real dangers. I do not for a second want to suggest that the entry of a Christian (queer though they may be) into a queer space does not represent a reasonable sense of threat. Just as I cannot “take off” my queerness when entering into Christian spaces, I cannot⁵ “take off” my Christianity when entering into queer spaces. At most I can (and generally do unless invited otherwise) background my Christianity in the same way that I can decrease the volume of my voice or wash to temporarily diminish the smell of my body. My voice and my odor are always a part of me; but sensitivity to the damage that similar (or even identical) voices and/or smells have perpetrated demands that I do what I can to keep the space a safe one.

And yes, this is—more than a mere inconvenience—painful to me. It means that I occasionally feel that I must check showing up as my own whole person in a space that is supposed to welcome and celebrate authenticity. The fault here lies with the church though, and not with my queer sisters, siblings, and brothers and I do well to concentrate the frustration of it on the church. This is also why it is important for the sake of all people for there to be some spaces (Like the Queer Christian Fellowship) where both Christianity and queerness will be celebrated. These spaces in particular must not be structured as exclusionary of non-Christians in any way beyond insisting that full throated Christianity be preserved as a valid topic, expression, and identity. It would be the height of cruel presumption to suggest that these spaces will transform queerness; rather they are cocoons for the transformation of the church.

A whole bunch of gloriously queer Christians at this year’s QCF Conference

1. I have written about the spiritual element in my own coming out process in the essay A Breath of Air

2. Tl:dr I said that, no, it doesn’t work in both ways—the oppressed and the oppressor should not be treated as equivalent if our goal is justice—and my brother Paul was able to offer helpful correctives to the overapplication of the principles we were discussing.

3. A complete analysis even within this single framework would require that we consider questions of race, disability, wealth, sex, and any number of other power-influencing characteristics.

4. Whiteness also has a lot to answer for.

5. I chose the word “cannot” carefully here. I am aware that we often construct identification as members of faith communities with a sense of choice but the fact of the matter is that I am no more able to chose to stop thinking the basic tenets of Christianity to be true than I am able to stop being attracted to women or knowing myself to be a woman. Further and regardless of any tricky epistemological questions involved, I certainly cannot, by force of will, end the impact that a lifetime’s cultural and spiritual formation as a Christian has had on my total person; neither can those queer folks who have found that they no longer believe, or who for other reasons no longer subscribe to Christianity as an identity, creed, or conviction.