I confess: I started going to church again.
I swore I wouldn’t. After straying from the fold six years ago, I swore I would never again, by my presence, tacitly condone such a flawed, corrupt, damaging institution. I swore I would never sit in a pew, crack open a hymnal, or fill in the o’s of a Sunday bulletin with one of those dull, little pencils by the offertory envelopes. But I have.
And I started going again, as it happens, because my girlfriend sings in the choir, and I wanted to hear her.
“I’m pretty sure this sends me to an even deeper level of hell than I was already going to,” I said at lunch one Sunday. “Not only am I apparently gay, but now I’m parading it around a church that I attend as an atheist hypocrite.”
“All the clergy at that church are gay. All of them.”
That’s true. New York City Presbyterians. There was also a giant, welcoming rainbow flag with lots of assuring wording that everyone was welcome. We’re not in Missouri anymore, Toto. (They do still have the little pencils, though.)
“Also,” she said, “I don’t find the term ‘atheist’ very useful.”
“What do you mean it’s not useful? It just means I don’t believe in God.”
“What do you mean when you say, ‘You don’t believe in God?’”
“What do you mean, ‘what do I mean?’”
“I mean: what do you mean?”
Don’t read her question as criticism. It wasn’t as though an old youth group friend was confronting me about my wayward ways. Frances knows and is a party to most of my wayward ways. But she has a way of taking absolutely nothing at face value.
(Long sigh.)
“I mean that I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic being that sits in heaven, knows all, and decides if people go to heaven or hell.”
“Pshh. I don’t believe in that either, but I’m not an atheist.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I find it more useful to call myself a Christian.”
“You can’t just call yourself a Christian.”
“Why not? Isn’t Christianity just a language? It’s a language that I speak—a language I choose to speak. So I’m a ‘Christian.’”
I had never thought of Christianity as a language. To me, Christianity was a set of beliefs based on the words of the Bible that you either subscribed to or didn’t. It was a test that you could pass or fail—the results of which you only learn when you die.
“That might be true for some people,” Frances said, “But not for most.”
“You couldn’t possibly know how many people it’s true or not true for. It’s definitely true for the people I grew up with.”
“First of all, they don’t represent all Christians. Second, are you sure?”
“Well, I’ve certainly never heard anybody talk about it like that. I mean, come on. You know Southern Baptists.”
I knew that she knew Southern Baptists because I just gotten back from her grandpa’s funeral at a Southern Baptist church in North Carolina. I didn’t know her grandpa well, but he was beloved by his Winston-Salem community. The service was moving, and the reception afterwards was lovely—though quite difficult for both of us to navigate as a couple. I didn’t want to pull any attention at the ceremony or be the cause of any unpleasantness—as proud as I am to be her girlfriend. So introductions were a little dance of polite dodges.
“And who are you?”
“Oh, I’m here with Frances. Down from New York.”
“Oh, what a good friend you are to come all the way down here. Welcome.”
Occasionally, friends or family members would pull me to the side and quietly let me know that they had heard about us—and that they are so glad that we’ve found each other. Those were sweet moments, though they were both encouraging and terrifying—as it reinforced the idea that we might need to be reassured quietly to the side.
“It’s just good that you both understand where the other one is coming from,” a family friend said. I took the comment to mean, “You are great—and completely doing the right thing by hiding in the far corner of the fellowship hall.”
So yes, Frances knew Southern Baptists. Real Southern Baptists. But they were far away at the moment. “Forget the Southern Baptists for a second. You don’t have to call yourself Southern Baptist.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Right,” she said. “I get it. You were traumatized by the Southern Baptist church.”
“I didn’t say ‘traumatized.’”
“I know. I’m saying it, though.”
I thought the term a bit dramatic. But I took her point. I have known women who were told to stay in abusive relationships because divorce was wrong (and did so); I have seen fathers turn their backs on their gay sons; I have sat in pews for dozens of marriages, listening to women pledge to submit to their husbands, agreeing to the hierarchy of God, man, woman; I have known people who were sent to conversion therapy for falling in love with the wrong person; I have been told, countless times, that I would go to hell–that I would be tortured for all eternity–if…if I had sex before marriage, if I had sex with the wrong person, if I didn’t get baptized the right way, if I didn’t submit fully to the teachings of Jesus as interpreted by fundamentalist preachers, if I asked the wrong question, if I didn’t have complete and utter faith in what they were telling me. I had shame drilled into me. “Christians” did all that in the name of Christianity. All that while telling me that God was love.
That’s a lot for a kid to deal with. It’s a lot for anyone to deal with. And for someone like me, who wanted to be good but simply observed that the world outside contradicted a whole a lot with what people were telling me—for someone who couldn’t stop the questions–maybe it was even a bit traumatic.
“All I’m saying,” Frances went on, “Is that by calling yourself an atheist, you are cutting off communication. And sometimes you have to cut off communication. There are good reasons to. You have good reasons to. But for me, I want to keep communicating. I don’t believe that institutions are changed from the outside. And I think this is an institution that needs to change. To do that, I think I have to call myself a Christian.”
“But doesn’t that seem manipulative? I think that’s what bothers me. I feel like so many people use ‘Christianity’ to manipulate others. I feel like I was manipulated by it. I would never want to do the to someone else. I wouldn’t want to be the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. I would feel like I was lying.”
“What are you trying to manipulate them to do? See people? Love people? Accept people? Accept themselves? Help people? You are a kind person.”
“Right. You think that. But the way they see it, I’d be leading people astray—leading them to hell. Doesn’t get much worse than that if you’re fundamentalist. That’s anti-Christ stuff. It doesn’t matter that I like Jesus and believe in loving my neighbor or spend two hours cutting out little animal pictures for my fourth graders with autism.”
“But isn’t that what Jesus was doing with the Pharisees? Standing up to fundamentalists–”
“I don’t think that argument will fly with them, and you don’t have to convince me.”
I took a second and then continued. “What it boils down to, I think, is less about whether I call myself an atheist or not—and more about whether the person I’m talking to believes in hell or not. Like a literal hell. If people believe in literal hell—and they are certain about their interpretation of who is going there—then there’s no use trying to communicate. They think the only way to love me is to save my soul in the way that they feel their souls were saved. They feel compelled to change me. I can call myself a “Christian” all I want. When they hear what I believe, they will just say, I’m not a Christian with the same confidence that they will tell me I’m not gay; I’m just wrong. Or confused. And that’s frustrating because for the first time in my life, I’m not confused! About that, anyway. It’s maddening…”
At this point, we had to take a moment for me to stop crying. I’m a crier. And I’m crying because the people I’m talking about aren’t theoretical; they are real. Some are family.
“It’s shitty,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Have you tried talking to them?”
“There’s no point.”
“Maybe not all Southern Baptists feel that way. Think of the people you know who support you….“
“Not all. But most. Or enough. I can show you the letters from my hometown optometrist, if you need a concrete example. I know I don’t have to, though. You understand.”
And she did. She had non-theoretical people too.
“I still don’t think we have to allow Southern Baptists to define Christianity. They certainly don’t get to define you.”
I think she might be right, but I can’t do it. I can’t call myself a Christian. I’m not there yet.
So this Sunday I’ll sit in a pew, fill in the o’s of the bulletin, suggestively smirk at my beautiful girlfriend, and simply consider her notion of Christianity as a language—wishing that I could believe that it could truly become a language of love for people like me.
