There is no caveat to belonging
Or, thoughts on the third night of camp when the name of Jesus is used as a tool of exclusion and none is more affected than the LGBTQ+ community.
Belonging. There’s nothing like it. But within white evangelicalism, belonging often comes with its own set of caveats, particularly around the person of Jesus.
I write the following in Church Camp:
Forty years later,1 the life of faith doesn’t feel as easy as it used to be—the name of Jesus now layered within a journey of belief and disbelief, of running away from Gd and being pulled toward God in synchronous moments along the way. I suppose the Jesus of my church camp days is still there: his compassionate love the one my inner compass points toward, his fierce justice the guide I try to follow. But Jesus is no longer the tool I use to prove an equation correct or the name I use to draw divided boundary lines between who’s in and who’s out. No longer is he the one whose name I employ for positions of place within an inner circle or for decisions of who remains on the outside of understanding. This Jesus comes not with warnings or caveats of belonging, for he is no longer the one in whose name harm is done, for whom exclusion becomes the rule. I believe in a Jesus who does no harm.2
As it goes (and as you may have picked up in the recent post on the patriarchy), each chapter in the book dives deep into a particular theme. Chapter 3 is no exception, not when it looks at the one—Jesus—intentioned for belonging is also the one most used to divide and create barriers around belonging.
And within white evangelical spaces, none is more affected than the LGBTQ+ community.
In truth, “Many white evangelical church camps discriminate against queer communities not only because they can (and their religious beliefs that homosexuality is wrong or sinful validate such discrimination) but also because ‘LGBTQ equality threatens their religious freedom,’ even if ‘what’s at peril is not religious freedom but their ability to discriminate while receiving government support.’”3
What happens as a result?
They do not allow a transgender boy to stay with his male peers in a boys’ cabin, or they terminate staff members on the spot if their sexual orientation does not align with policy standards. They do not allow veteran senior staff to return, due to their sexuality, or they assign young, effeminate male staff members they ‘think might be struggling with their sexuality’ to hard labor because ‘it’s what the child needs.’4
The list goes on, because in other words, it’s still going on. It’s still happening. It’s still the norm.
Belonging is still not the story for so many of our LGBTQ+ friends, in the name of the one who was the most inclusive of all and in the very place that should be marked by the most inclusion of all.
It’s at this point, dear reader, that I start to picture many of your faces.
I picture those of you that I worked with at camp, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five years ago now. I remember so many of our conversations — many of them marked by phrases like “love the sinner, hate the sin,” just as I remember, for some of us, those conversations of theological wrestling, when we began to wonder if we’d gotten it wrong.
Because for some of us, I don’t doubt this chapter is going to cause controversy.
I also picture those of you who are a part of more progressive circles of Christianity. I picture Saturday night’s dinner table, when five of us who are looking toward ordination in the Episcopal Church, gathered together over soup and bread. Queer and straight, we believed in our collective call, we embraced our belatedness.
Which is to say for some of us, I think this chapter is going to be a balm.
I think of those of you that I do life with on an everyday basis, in my neighborhood, at my kids’ schools, and in other areas of life. You do not identify as Christian, nor as a person of spirituality, so to you, the entire concept of exclusion at the hands of religion is just another form of hate.
Because for some of us, I imagine this chapter is going to be infuriating.
But I also think of those of you to whom this book is dedicated—to the ones whose stories changed me along the way. Your identities as dearly beloved children of God, who also happen to find a home under wide and expansive umbrella terms of LGBTQ+ initialisms, made a difference in my life. You kept loving me even when I kept on getting it wrong, even when I hadn’t fully changed my mind,5 even when I didn’t embrace the fullness of your personhood.
Which is to say for some of us, I can only hope this chapter is going to be an honoring.
I’m proud to share the stories of multiple queer-identifying folks who have a story the rest of us need to hear. I’m grateful for the bravery many of them faced in sharing their stories with me, and then, for some of them, in letting their lived experiences dot the pages of this book.
For all of us, I dare a little reimagining at the end of the chapter—which in this case means an unbounded Jesus that “comes from an unbounded kind of Christianity that’s not about who’s in and who’s out but is instead about a particular direction in which you move.”6
Because for this particular Christ, everyone’s in. Everyone belongs.
There are no caveats when it comes to belonging.
Carry on now—
c.
PS: Please, preorder a copy of Church Camp yet if you haven’t already. Preorders are like love letters to authors, because they show bookstores, libraries, and other publishing outlets that there’s a real need for the book! Also, tour dates were announced on Friday and be on the lookout for launch team information later this week!
“Forty years later” refers to 40 years after asking Jesus into my heart when I was a little girl.
Church Camp, page 57.
Church Camp, page 62.
Church Camp, page 63.
“Changing my mind” is often an umbrella term that refers to moving from exclusion to inclusion, particularly when it comes to LGBTQ+ and the Church. Need a resource? Read David P. Gushee’s Changing Our Mind.
Church Camp, page 74.