Welcoming a Queer
Thoughts on a Table for All
In my last post, I tried to outline some of the painful ways in which churches engage with queer individuals. In today’s post, I will attempt to flesh out some thoughts and ideas our group had on what a true and welcoming invitation to church requires. I write this in a place of continued wondering and questioning on these topics. I honestly am not sure that I’ve landed on a place of surety or not.
This came about in discussion of chapters 4 of Bessel Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and Marcia Mount Shoop and Mary Mclintock-Fulkerson’s article “Transforming Memory: Re-membering Eucharist”. A few thoughts from James Alison’s On Being Liked were also thrown in.
To begin, I want to re-iterate the felt experience of many queer Christians in relation to “welcoming” stances of churches. These positions often state “all are welcome” with no additional context, explanation, or discourse. Upon further investigation, one may then find rules and disciplines regarding limitations on leadership, sacrament involvement, or membership if one is openly queer. This is a model of hospitality closer to Boersma’s understanding where strong boundaries are needed.
Overall, we found three key items needed to make a church truly “welcoming.” 1) We want to be liked not just loved. 2) It needs to be a space that is safe enough for us to process trauma and won’t immediately set off our warning bells. 3) Closely related to #2, a church needs to have done the hard work of processing their complacency in oppression and will need to take a look at their practices to evaluate if there are modes of oppressing/minimizing sexual minorities within them.
For our reading group, such exclusionary practices, albeit from a place of truly attempting to be hospitable in their understanding of the word, can only inflict wounds and heartache. If we are not invited and allowed to bring the entirety of ourselves to God and community, then we begin to question if we are loved. This, is in fact, a point that James Alison brings up when differentiating “love” and “like.” For many queer Christians, we have met those who “tell us that they love gay people, and that is why they are so keen to change us.”(107) However, this sort of love implies that we are not also liked. That in order to be accepted we must first change from who we are at the present moment, and then we will be accepted. Instead, Alison pushes for the use of the word “like” as it is “rather more difficult to twist into a lie than the word ‘love’”. (107) Queers, along with everyone else, desire to find people and places were they are not just “loved” but also “liked.”
In addition to this distinction of “love” and “like”, our group also spoke about the importance of there being safety and space for one to start healing form past trauma. In Van Der Kolk’s work, he also speaks of the heightened awareness of those who have suffered from trauma. Thus, for those queer Christians re-entering into spaces which potentially hold a significant amount of pain and hurt, they will be on high alert (potentially overreading) for signs of imminent rejection and/or threat. Additionally, if this over-sensitization is to ever end, there needs to be the space for them to actually know that they are safe and actually welcome. (60–73)This would be hard to accomplish if one were to encounter small (yet repeated) reminders of one’s lower status within the church community. It could also be difficult if one senses that the church isn’t even quite aware of where they stand on questions regarding queer Christians. Silence can produce more anxiety than a clearly exclusionary policy. It might raise the question of “Will they eventually decide to kick me out? Am I actually welcome here? How long until they decide to kick me out?” Such questions and fears may not be based on a reality, but for many queer Christians, it is difficult to leave such questions of trauma in the past as they easily project into the now.
Somewhat related, the last realm of our conversation focused on an article related to Eucharist and a table “for all.” This article, by Shoop and Fulkerson, stresses that simply stating “welcome” or “for all” does not and cannot undo past grievances and complacency regarding oppression and marginalization. (It is important to note that this article was specifically written in regards to white churches “welcoming” black people and then being baffled as to why none came. However, our group found connection in some of the ways more conservative churches can treat LGBT people.) The article stressed that just stating “all are welcome” is a washing over the damage. “Welcoming” becomes an easy out to avoid hard, painful conversations where congregations own up to their complacency and part of systematic modes of oppression. The church can “open its doors to the gays” and then wonder why none show up. This might be that the “welcoming” was nothing more than a word or slogan. No processing within the church occurred, no questioning of church practices, advertisement, etc. was considered. Oftentimes, a “welcoming” stance is built off the fact that “our Eucharistic habits have created the expectation that we have a shared story and that we embody this shared story in our Eucharistic practice.” (145) Here, we find great contention as queers. Our stories are often different than those of our cis, straight friends and neighbors. Even within the queer community, we are all coming to the table carrying different degrees of privilege and disprivilege. There may be practices or modes of operating within a church that are simply counter-hospitable to queers. Thus, a church needs to do the hard work of evaluating itself to see if any changes are needed before they can be truly deemed welcoming.
