Sharing my story of faith could get me fired.
I am a gay man, and I’m ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacraments with the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
But let’s start at the beginning…
I grew up in Ontario, in a family on the conservative evangelical side of Christianity. My grandmother spent her days watching TV evangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and recounting fearful tales of communists and lesbians building guillotines to kill all the Christians.
When I was 10, we moved to a small town where the only church options were United or Presbyterian. This was shortly after 1988, when the United Church made their landmark decision to welcome gays and lesbians in all aspects of ministry. To a man as opposed to homosexuality as my dad, there was no option: we were becoming Presbyterian. Even still, my grandmother accused us of becoming pagans.
To my family, there was nothing more evil, more beyond the power of God’s love, than being gay. As my dad would write in the PCC chat rooms, gay was a choice you made after rejecting God and abandoning yourself to hedonistic lust. In my Christian high school, I would hear rumours of graduating students who escaped our small community to embrace the “homosexual lifestyle.” I imagined them in the dungeons of Toronto, lost in a haze of opium smoke and kept warm by burning Bibles. I was determined not to become one of them.
If being gay was the consequence of abandoning God, my first recourse was to stick to God more fervently. I prayed hard and read my Bible. I helped start a prayer group for Christians who felt our fellow students weren’t Christian enough. While others prayed for easy exams or the O.J. Simpson trial, I prayed silently to be cured of gayness. But no matter how hard I prayed, my feelings never changed. I could only conclude that, despite my efforts, my faith wasn’t good enough for God.
Afraid of falling into temptation and being condemned to hell, I chose to stay in our small Christian community for my undergraduate degree. While my classmates went on dates, fell in love and dreamt about marriage and children, I spent nights at home, angry and depressed. I hated where I was, I hated who I was, and most importantly, I hated God. God placed on me a burden and a suffering that no one else faced. And should I, for one moment, let that cross slip from my shoulder, I would face instant damnation. I feared God, but I couldn’t love God. In the end, I felt the only safe place for me would be the rural mountains of China, where no one had heard the word “gay.”
My parents would hear none of it. “You’re not running off to teach English in China,” they argued, “what do you really want to do?”
By this point, I had been working as a church organist for several years and I felt a curious call to stand behind the pulpit. But becoming a minister terrified me. Yes, I was running off to escape my homosexuality, but at least in China I could hope for a midnight rendezvous on the banks of the Yangtze. As a minister, I would be permanently committing myself to a life alone. Yet if God was calling me to ministry, there was no choice but to obey. I went to seminary, full of anger and resentment—obeying God, but not loving God.
You need to understand that I began my theological training more vehemently opposed to homosexuality than the Westboro Baptist Church. That summer, on a Youth in Mission trip to Hungary, I heatedly argued, without a hint of irony, that the Bible was clear on the issue and that God wanted gays to live celibate, lonely lives. Our Hungarian hosts looked at me confusedly and—I recognize now—with a touch of pity.
Others had warned me that my seminary was a liberal place where they tore apart the Bible, so I walked into my first class with all my defenses up. I raised my theological fists, ready to have my faith attacked by heretical professors one step away from atheism. But no attack came. To my surprise, my classmates and professors were faithful people who loved God, even though they took a different interpretation to the Bible. I questioned how that could be.
My college boasted the largest theological library in Canada, and that year I took out every book they had on homosexuality. I could quote the passages against homosexuality by heart, but here, for the first time, I heard different interpretations. Different but still faithful interpretations. It left me puzzled but unconvinced. “There might be two interpretations,” I reasoned, “but without a clear sign, I’d rather not risk my soul by questioning the status quo.”
Now I’m too practical to believe that God works today in signs and wonders, but in this case, God gave a big sign. As part of a student conference, I was scheduled to attend an LGBTQ worship service. This was, as far as I knew, the first time I would be in a room with openly gay or lesbian people—gay people who claimed to be Christian. I was nervous, and terribly sceptical.
I don’t remember how I got to the church, I don’t remember who was with me, I don’t remember what they said—but I do remember the Lord’s Prayer. It was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences I ever had. Over a hundred gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people raised their voices in the loudest, most Spirit-filled rendition I had ever heard. By the time they crescendoed to “For Thine is the kingdom,” I could barely hold back the tears. In my mind came the words of Peter as he defended the inclusion of Gentiles: “God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us.” (Acts 15:8)
God loved these queer men and women. And God loved me. As much as I was told “God loves you” in church, I couldn’t believe it till that moment. God really did love me, just as I was. I was overwhelmed with joy.
I could write about the excitement of falling in love, the pain of coming out to my parents, the threats I’ve faced in the church and the way my faith has grown because of them… But what you need to know is that since the moment I accepted myself as gay, my faith has flourished. I have become more trusting, more hopeful, more gentle and more kind.
I spend most of my days now in ministry with the queer community of Edmonton. We’ve gathered a group of Christians who have been rejected by their churches because of their gender or sexual identity. Sometimes a young person will ask me, “What if we’re wrong? What if we’re all really going to hell?”
I tell them to look for the fruits of the Spirit. If God is with us, we should see more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, as Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians.
When I look back at the life I had as a closeted gay man, I see an abundance of anger, bitterness, self-hatred, self-righteousness and fear. I obeyed God, but I was far from godly. In comparison to that, I am a new person today. When I accepted that God loved me just as God made me, I was born again—and yes, the irony of it makes me laugh, too.
In the Presbyterian Church, sharing this story of faith is enough to have me disciplined and removed. But I’ll take that risk. For the sake of 12-year-old me in rural Ontario who has discovering that “who they are” causes division in the church, I must share my story.
While our denomination argues over “what to do” with people like me, I want our youth to know that God loves them—no matter who they love. And if there isn’t room for us in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, we’re still welcome at God’s table.
