An Open Letter To Friends Attending Non-Affirming Churches
Dear Friends Attending Non-Affirming Churches,
This administration, and all that’s transpired under it, has heightened an imperative for political participation at all levels. Nothing and no one is exempt from it, especially those who concern themselves with social justice and with the welfare of their neighbors. The Church, as a spiritual and moral authority of a society, bears an immense responsibility to respond directly to these present circumstances. To many outside the church, it is the Christians who elected this administration, Christians who marched on Charlottesville with torches, and it is Christians who tout that “all lives” matter.
There is far too much at stake for any church to carry on as usual. Whatever stance it once took to preach the Gospel but not make waves is glaringly tone-deaf and dangerous. How the Church chooses to treat the most vulnerable, marginalized, forgotten, and exploited, especially under this administration, is of the utmost importance today. No nuance of theology is greater than how a church makes room for, cares for, represents, and advocates for the least of society. There can be no justice unless there is justice for all. Until all are free none are free. So then if we recognize that we are responsible for each other’s freedom, we must take stock of how our privilege might actually be stunting the livelihood of others before we can be active agents in each other’s liberation.
As gay Christians, we want to speak from our experience to address the tacit discrimination against LGBTQ+ people within many churches. We want to address those churches and its congregants who see themselves as advocates for social justice yet bar women from leadership and bar LGBTQ+ people from serving.
Two and half years ago, my wife and I were kicked out of the church that we had loved and served for years because we were openly in a relationship. This was a long and painful process, but during that time and even in its aftermath, we decided to remain quiet and non-disruptive. We had many one-on-one conversations with you in which we were forthright in our anger, pain, and frustration, but we never wanted to see any fractures in the church. We didn’t want any wedges to be driven for our sake. We were still on shaky ground ourselves, and we were afraid of convincing anyone to change their minds, lest we be wrong or lest we presume too much of what anyone might need or be called to. Faith is much too personal and we were hesitant to elbow our way into that intimacy.
But in times like these, we now see that the stakes are not just about us. We have an administration who believes many of its own people are better off dead or deported. There are millions of people who are told everyday that their existence is a burden, that their personhood is not whole, that they are unworthy. Rather than being a refuge from this hate by speaking out against such rhetoric, far too many churches are at the forefront using the Gospel to justify that rhetoric. Many more stand idly by, quietly pushing policies that in fact still promote those same hateful and harmful sentiments with equal consequences. It should not just be a moral imperative, but also a spiritual necessity to speak out against all discrimination. The marginalized should not only be welcomed in but advocated for, now more than ever.
With spikes in LGBTQ+ suicides, restriction of care for those with AIDS, and the denial of Trans people to exist in public spaces and serve in the military in a Trump and Pence America, the inaction of moderate churches is wildly dangerous. To see socially conscious churches and their congregants continue to put up moral barriers that exclude the very people who desperately need allies and support is the antithesis of the Gospel. We have a lot of anger in these times, but when we think of our LGTBQ+ neighbors who can’t even find refuge and love in churches, our fury deepens. The ground below us that once felt shaky is now fiery with urgency and we no longer feel afraid of speaking up.
And this is what we want to say, loud and clear, to you who claim to be for equality and who say you love us and our LGBTQ+ siblings: By staying in churches that do not accept, value, represent, and therefore love people in the LGBTQ+ community, you are advocating against us, against our existence, against our rights, and against our equal personhood. Whatever you may personally feel on the subject matter, showing up in these non-affirming communities is giving credence to their discriminatory institutional values. By giving your time, your money, or even just showing up every once in a while, you are tacitly allowing the denial of our seat at the table, and this denial is asserted again and again each Sunday through a liturgy that bars the entry of people whose humanity is seen as lesser in the eyes of the church.
Maybe you are staying in these churches because while you do “love” us and support LGBTQ+ people out in the world, you do not believe we have a place in the church unless repentantly living a celibate life. Maybe you stay at these churches that kicked us out because you believe that the church made the right decision. If that’s the case, then at least you are consistent and aligned with the values of these churches to which you have given your allegiance. Godspeed to you as you work out for yourself what Jesus’s command to love your neighbors radically and unconditionally means. Godspeed to you in building a community that confesses Christ and yet presents the Gospel with strict membership codes.
Others of you might object to this letter because you feel that you do in fact love us — that you believe in our whole personhood and in our rights to serve and to love whomever we want and to pursue whatever we are called to. But that is truly suspect when you continue to find value in being a part of a church body that denies and undermines our lives. To continue attending a church that irrefutably diminishes LGBTQ+ people is to be complicit in diminishing us. In particular, the ability to disagree with these churches yet continue attending them is to casually brush such people under the rug because it is no cost to you.
In the past, we would have never asked anyone to leave their church, because many of us have very personal reasons for remaining in a church. But now, we believe there is a clear condition under which we should leave a community however beloved, and that is when the way that community values and treats other humans is in disagreement with how we believe Jesus wants humans to be valued and treated. You will never find a perfect church with which you fully agree and love wholly, but the concessions you might make to stay regardless of those things should be nuanced theological issues or preferences of style and comfort. A line has to be drawn in the sand when it is people who are at stake.
Gay and trans people are not issues. We are not theological quibbles. We are humans. We are your friends, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. If church authority claims we are not welcome at God’s table and may not be members of its body, then it is fundamentally telling us that we have no gifts to offer, that our love is lesser, that we are invalid neighbors unworthy of seeking Christ beside you, and that we are disqualified from serving one another. You bear this message when remaining in these churches.
Jesus spent his ministry reaching beyond the rules of religion to welcome in those cast out by religious authority. Even without agreeing on a Biblical defense of homosexuality, our hope has been that we would all come to agree that expelling people from a community is not of Christ. If Christ said “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me,” then perhaps each time a gay, lesbian, bi, trans or gender queer person comes to your church and is refused membership, refused communion, refused the opportunity to serve because they have failed your religious litmus test of heterosexuality, you have likewise closed your church off to Jesus.
We do not take lightly the many reasons for staying in any church. It is your foundation. All of your friends are there. It is where you get and give support, where you do life. You feel you are growing spiritually there and it is incredibly hard to find another church like it. And undoubtedly these reasons are important. But our question to you is this: if your church denies other humans the same love, community, and support, is it still worth it to you? Can you authentically thrive under the fellowship of a community whose point of view on LGBTQ+ people is that they’re hypothetically welcome in the pews but that they must be put in their place theologically and be told to either denounce their existence or be cast out as community members? Is your own comfort and fellowship more important than the credibility, fullness, and worthiness of others’ lives? If so, then do not claim to love your LGBTQ+ neighbors nor claim to believe in justice for all as your justice is only for some. If not, then stop saying yes with where your body worships on Sundays .
With weary love,
Jess & Kristen
P.S. We bring up this idea of worthiness very intentionally because it is a word taken directly from the Book of Order of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the denomination that kicked us out. In it, there is a large section on excommunication, which we were referred to when the elders of the church came to our home to present this as the path they would take if we didn’t repent and break up. In this section, it says, “[The pastor or leaders] shall then show from Matthew 18:15–18 and 1 Corinthians 5:1–5 the authority of the church to cast out unworthy members…” The EPC has in plain writing that it believes that members of a church who are to be excommunicated because of their sin of homosexuality are unworthy, unworthy of the sacraments and unworthy of the fellowship of Christ.
