That Time I Asked My Church, “Where Are All the Gay People?”

Twenty years ago, before I opted for a John Prinesque approach to Christianity — “move to the country, eat a lot of peaches and try to find Jesus on your own” — I sat in a circle of folding chairs in the hallway of our non-denominational, suburban church. Some might call it a mega church, although, to be fair, I’m unsure of the cutoff for “mega” qualification. Does a coffee shop count? Pyrotechnics? Or just stadium seating? Either way, our small group leader failed to show that morning, so twenty of us sat around, eating glazed donuts and making small talk.

I’m never one to let a missing authority figure go to waste, so I jumped at the chance to lead our small group in a new topic of conversation — more along the lines of George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” church edition. After all, I had studied to be a preacher at one time in my life.

With a woeful attempt to suppress a mischievous grin, I began, “What are all the topics that we wanted to discuss in youth group but were afraid to ask?”

Keen to play along, others who’d also been raised in staunch, fundamentalist homes rattled off the usual culprits: masturbation, pornography, drugs, before invariably landing on homosexuality.

“Perfect, let’s start there,” I suggested. A topic rife with theological landmines. Just how I like it. “Show of hands, how many have either a friend or family member — extended family included — who is gay?”

Eighty percent of the hands shot up. The rest, I suspected, were either embarrassed to admit it, sheltered from the realities of their family secrets, or generally lacking in curiosity.

“Perfect, now — answer me this one, ‘How many of you know an openly gay person here at our church?’”

**crickets**

Not one hand.

“How is that statistically possible?” I wondered aloud in feigned astonishment. “Or, maybe a better question is, ‘Why do gay people feel uncomfortable attending our church?’” The question lodged itself uncomfortably in the circle, like a cake donut swallowed minus coffee. “I mean, our signs all over town say how much we love people. Why don’t our gay people feel the love?”

That was the first and last time I led Bible study.

I think about that question a lot, “Why do gay people feel uncomfortable attending Evangelical churches?” Whenever I do, I recall a verse I memorized as a child. It’s from Corinthians: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

After almost 50 years on this planet, I believe I’m closer to an answer. Let’s see if you are too. Finish this sentence with me, “Love the ____, but hate the ___.” If you answered “sinner” and “sin,” you might be an Evangelical.

The ironic thing about that sentence is that it includes an extra ingredient that Jesus didn’t add to his ultimate theological recipe. Jesus’s greatest commandment was “Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” No reminder to add a pinch of hate. Hate is theological corn syrup — you don’t need it, but Big Church receives subsidies, and people like the taste, so they add it to everything.

What makes Christ’s greatest commandment so difficult to apply is that most of us don’t love ourselves. Instead, we hate, pity, and scorn. As a result, we end up loving our neighbors as ourselves — horribly. We’ve been deceived into believing that self-love is prideful, arrogant, and weak. But why is that? God can do it, but we can’t? John 3:16 doesn’t start, “So God so hated the sinner…” It clearly states, “God loved the world.” Hard stop.

Few communities know the challenge of loving yourself more than the LGBTQ community. I’ll admit something to you that’s almost unbelievable: Outside my cousin — who moved to NYC after coming out — I didn’t personally know a gay person until my twenties, nor a trans person until my forties. I went to Christian schools, attended church on Wednesdays and Sundays, and everyone I knew was like me. It’s easy to hate things you don’t know or understand.

I thought rejection by my community was tough, largely stemming from my questioning authority — and I’m a straight, white American male. I can’t imagine growing up constantly hearing, “I hate the way you walk, your talk, your dress, and the people you hang out with.” It would be like a looping “I Hate Everything About You” playlist. And then, to add insult to injury, being told by those same people every Sunday, “But Jesus loves you.”

So, why tell this story now, twenty-some years later?

One of my children recently told me about an event that transpired at their school. Two special needs children were holding a Pride flag when chants from a group of popular kids rose up, calling to burn the flag. They began arguing that an American flag should replace it. They eventually ripped the flag from the special needs kids’ hands and made off with it. Later that day, during an assembly, another student was singing a recital piece — a daunting enough task — when shouts of gay slurs erupted from the audience. The children stealing these flags and yelling these hateful words were Christian children who’d formerly attended Christian schools.

I thought to myself, “That is ignorance. I know it—I was it.” I never consciously harbored racist feelings, nor had I been taught them, but I remained ignorant of how my actions and language affected other people. And because my world lacked diversity, I remained ignorant and no one taught me how to change.

My child said they hadn’t participated, wondering aloud, “Maybe that’s what an ally is? I don’t really know what that word means.” It was at this point that I realized I had failed to be an ally myself. I knew twenty years ago that as Christians, we were failing to show love. I’d tried to educate myself and be loving, but I hadn’t been clear enough with my children on how to act when hatred presents itself in everyday situations.

In my last article, I wrote about how a new Christian reformation needs only one thesis — a return to the heart. Headstrong and weak-hearted Christianity breeds hatred, separation, and violence. Only by shifting our awareness from our heads to our hearts can we stop our judgmental brains from running the show, judging ourselves and others in the process.

Warning: you will begin to recover our feelings. This may suck for a while, especially if you abandoned your emotions due to trauma. The pain of feeling again can be overwhelming, but stick with it. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. You’ll find that you’ll also recover your ability to feel other things, lik e love, joy, and eventually, compassion. Finally, your intuitive voice will return — some call it God, the Holy Spirit, Spiritus sanctus, whatever. It is there as a lamp unto your feet to guide you along the Path of the Heart.

As you begin to love yourself, hate will diminish and be replaced by love, true love, agape love for all humanity. You can finally love your neighbors (and who makes a better neighborhood than the gay community!) as yourself. You’d be amazed at what the world looks like through God’s eyes.