Why I’m Leaving My Church
| Updated
At twenty, I’m starting to
find myself defining my identity in terms of “used to” phrases. I used to
stress myself sick about my grades. I used to play Little League Baseball. I
used to think that I’d never be able to drive.
I also used to be Methodist.
That change was made a few days
ago, but it’s been a long time coming, if I’m being truly honest. My
relationship with God has frayed, fractured, and finally outright disappeared.
I feel betrayed, and abandoned. The church that was supposed to love, nurture,
and support me - the one I was baptized into, the one I pledged myself to at
fourteen when I was confirmed - has turned its back on me.
Being confirmed was not the only
thing I did at fourteen. I also came out as a gay man. I was terrified that
everyone around me would reject and despise me. The rhetoric that I heard and
the images I saw were of faith communities shouting down their LGBT members,
driving them out of their sanctuaries, and rejecting them. I had hoped, perhaps
naïvely, that my church would be different. I wanted them to embrace me,
unapologetically, and welcome me back into the fold.
I grew up at the First United
Methodist Church in Moorestown, New Jersey. A relatively progressive body, the
church just celebrated its 200th anniversary. I sang in the church choir from
kindergarten through my senior year. I even had a few starring roles in church
productions, playing Jonah, Noah, and even Jesus for the annual Mother’s Day
musicals. My paternal grandfather was a long-time member, and had donated the
giant cross on the outside wall in memory of his late wife. I remember that,
for a while, it felt as if every time I asked about it, I discovered something
new that he had given to the church. It was such a big part of his life, second
perhaps only to us, his family.
Like most teenagers, I went through
a phase of casual agnosticism. I wanted to sleep in late on Sunday mornings or
catch up on homework. Church was no longer a priority, and apart from keeping
my commitment to sing in the choir I stopped going. With the advent of high
school and later college, those visits decreased further. When my grandfather
died my freshman year of college, I felt like going to church was just too
painful. Seeing the pew where he had sat every Sunday occupied by someone else
felt wrong.
But more than that, I had a
sneaking suspicion that I just wasn’t welcome. I couldn’t prove it. Nothing had
ever happened that made me believe that I was no longer a valued member of the
congregation. I just felt as if in order to go to church, I had to step back
into the closet to avoid any potential issues. I dressed in a masculine
fashion, and tried to deepen my speaking and singing voice. I wanted to be the
last person into services and the first one out. I worried that if I said the
wrong thing, or used the wrong tone of voice, I would be “found out” and cast
from the sanctuary. I always felt like my behavior and mannerisms were being
monitored.
Like many separations, mine from
the church was slow and lengthy. That drifting process I described before was
one that took months - indeed, years - to occur fully. But I decided to
cauterize the wound about a month ago following the United Methodist General
Conference in Oregon, where clergy and representatives refused to vote on
whether to accept LGBT congregants and extend them the full rights of church
membership. Even though I wasn’t sure whether I ever wanted to get married,
much less in a religious setting, it stung to have that option removed for me.
And while the general Methodist body and my individual church are two different
institutions, the general silence coming from our church was deafening. They
know that I’m gay - virtually everyone does. I’m not the only one, I’m sure.
But instead of joining me in solidarity and standing up for the rights of LGBT
Methodists to be treated fairly, they looked the other way. And it hurt.
I know I wrote earlier that I feel
abandoned by my faith. Yet I also feel strong and open-minded. I feel like I
have a direction for my life. I feel like I have a plan. I have a good
relationship with a higher power, one I feel no need to label or
anthropomorphize. I am who I am, I believe what I believe, and I have yet to be
smote from the earth; as far as I’m concerned, that higher power values me and
that’s the most important thing.
I still have many friends,
relatives, and neighbors who attend my church. I know many members who are
leaving. I know others who are staying. I know some who, as I have perceived my
church’s leaders to have done, turned away and ignored the issue. I don’t pass
judgment on any of the congregants for their choices. But I do pass judgment on
my church’s leaders for not doing their job. As I learned in Sunday School
growing up, Jesus taught us to love one another regardless of whether or not
you personally agree with them. Jesus sat with prostitutes and lepers - he
loved the least of us. It is hurtful to hear lectures from pulpits all around
the country teaching of Jesus’ unconditional love but refusing to enact it when
it comes to LGBT Americans. The personal is political, and the political is
personal. The decisions made at general conferences and on Capitol Hill affect
congregants, and clergy need to realize that.
I have hope that my church will do
the right thing, even if that means standing up to the governing body. And when
they do, I will come back. But until then, I will take the lessons they taught
me so many years ago and do what I can to teach them back. We don’t need
healing or reconciliation. We need action. We need love.
Follow Harry Lewis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/halewis_
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