My story of crisis with church

I guess I have to accept that you can't come out as gay to your fellow church members and expect that they will all embrace and accept you. But I was naïve. I thought that telling them the truth would help them to help me as I sought to resolve where I was at. I was eager to talk because I thought people could help me.

It's 16 months later for the big public showdown and I don't want to tell the whole story now. One day I guess I will. It isn't finished yet. I am back at the point of being able to contribute a little bit to the church. But I don't yet see that there is a space there for me.

When I talked to the church, I spoilt my case by a little slip. I'd written down in advance that I ‘accept it [my sexual orientation] from God, even though I would never have chosen it'. That sentence came out as my accepting it as a gift from God. Actually that was and is exactly the point I had come to. There was nothing condemned, nothing flawed about me other than just the average battle with sin. Yet funnily enough this upset people more than almost anything else I said. I'm still answering questions from people who are sure that I want to overturn the whole basis of biblical morality.

What I hadn't counted on was the enormous power of people to operate from polemical positions and to blank out any interest in me as a person. I forgot the huge security that most people gain from clear and simple positions. Fundamentalism is a very natural position; perhaps the first position for the religious person. In an age when most people drift around, probably the start of the religious life is the place of the discovery of deep convictions.

True, these were not the only voices I heard at church. There were others with other more generous attitudes; those who reached out from their hearts. I felt their love, but it wasn't easy to treat it as a restorative experience. I can see on reflection that these were the truly noble people with the depth of faith and love which is the real substance. But they never seem to have any chance of influencing others. In my denomination, long ago someone warned that whenever legalists conflicted with open-minded people, the legalists would win, because they could not and would not give way, whereas the open-minded were always prepared to wait for others to get to where they are.

There are plenty of narrow minded people from the liberal side as well, and in all cases their intolerance shows when they name-call their opponents. I hope I never slip into that way of thinking. For many years I blocked the personal issue by an internalised homophobia. So I could talk convincingly of the problems of homosexuality for the church in the third person, as if it didn't touch me. I think it was a way of ensuring that it didn't. So I really can't call names.

It was a strange decision to keep going to church after what I faced in the initial reaction. I never expected that it would be that hard. Why did I do it? Maybe because I had said to the church that I wasn't giving up, even though I was stepping down from all formal roles because of the accusations and suspicions. So every Sunday I tried to go. And then the problems really began. A few people began to say the most astounding things. As these remarks sunk in, I saw my space dissolving to nothing. So I would come to the door of the church, and a wall of blackness would hit me. Sometimes I couldn't go in; at other times I could just get inside. For a while I sat between friends in my old position in the centre, but I found that I would end up in an almost hysterical state of tears. Eventually I found that if I sat against the far wall I was safe and I could detach myself sufficiently from people to be able to cope. I am still sitting there, and I really resent it if someone beats me to that seat. (There seem to be a few other people in search of that seat.)

It is hard to explain the grief and the pain. At least one person tried to explain to me that I had to leave, for my own well-being. And some Sundays I just couldn't make it and would phone up the minister of another church and ask if it was OK if I came there.

In the end it was the death of my parents which gave me back my humanity. After nearly a month away I seemed to be accepted when I came in. The only problem since then is that worship for me has taken on a different dimension, and it seems missing in this service.

I think that in a way knowing God is an experience that goes on deep in your being, and sometimes the development is disconnected from everyone and everything else. It is really good when you are a fellow pilgrim with others. And I am. But that pilgrimage seems to have little to do with church.