Testimony.

(I was recently asked to give a testimony to the LGBT faith group hosted by Urban Village Church here in Chicago. Here is the result.)

Waking up.

I came out of the blackout to discover that I was behind the wheel of my Buick, driving down a large, tree-lined boulevard I didn’t recognize. How had I gotten here? In what direction was I driving? Who was the person in the car with me?  How had I gotten so drunk?

I pulled over and told the stranger to get out of the car. When he didn’t seem to understand, I yelled at him and threatened to drag him out onto the shoulder of the road. Wisely, he got out.

I continued up the road and, finding a landmark, discovered that I was in a town 30 miles north of Dallas, which put me more than 50 miles from home. Upon arriving at my house an hour later, I checked the car, but discovered I had no glasses, no credit card, and no phone. I also discovered it was nearing dawn on the 25th of November. The last drink I remembered was on my birthday, November 22nd. Perhaps mercifully, the days in between are just...gone.  

On the way.

A few years earlier, my life looked completely different. In 2003 I graduated from Harding University, a Church of Christ school in Arkansas with a B.S. in Chemistry, and moved to Chicago to study at the University of Chicago Law School. I came to Chicago afraid I would be out of my intellectual depth, but I quickly discovered I thrived in the work hard/play hard environment. Which is to say, I knew how to work hard, and I desperately needed to play hard after 18 years in Texas and 4 years in Arkansas.

I did well enough in school to be asked to be a research assistant by a quirky but brilliant Contracts professor known for helping graduates secure tenure-track teaching jobs. And In my second year of law school, I was offered an internship with Skadden Arps, one of the largest and most profitable law firms in the world. Skadden, the best of the best, made its name by perfecting the art of the hostile takeover, so it isn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy place -- its main office in New York is affectionately referred to as the “Death Star.”  I split my time as an intern between the New York and London offices, and was offered a permanent job in London with a starting salary that was well on the other side of obscene. All I needed to do was graduate, and I was on my way. I didn’t ask the obvious question: on my way where?

Free from the constraints of Texas and Arkansas, I was definitely working, but I was also playing...hard. My drinking, which started in secret at my Christian college, accelerated during my first few years of law school, and particularly during my schmoozy, boozy summer internships with Skadden. But I deserved to have a little fun, right?


Screw you, God.

But In 2005, while I was working (and playing) in New York, I got a call from one of the Elders at Lakeview Church of Christ in Chicago, the church I attended since graduating from Harding University. Lakeview is a small church, and since Churches of Christ don’t ordain priests or pastors, all are expected to participate in the life and leadership of the church. At Lakeview I led worship, presided at the Lord’s Supper, taught classes, was involved in outreach, and occasionally preached. I was also part of a group trying to include women in the leadership and public worship of the church for the first time. I’d put myself, as always, at the very heart of the church.

That day Jeff, one of the Elders of the congregation, told me I’d been outed by someone at the church who didn’t like my theology and who didn’t care for the way I was agitating for women’s equality in the church. The complaining member of the church argued that gay inclusion was the next step after inclusion of women in public worship. The Church had to put its foot down before things got out of hand, and the Church certainly couldn’t have a homosexual leading worship.

The Elders agreed: the Church was to stop talking about women’s inclusion, and I was to be disciplined. I was told I had two options for continued membership in Lakeview Church of Christ: I could disavow my homosexuality (either completely or by promising celibacy), or I could step down from all leadership positions in the church, and attend church without serving publicly. Otherwise, I would be “disfellowshipped,” (removed from the fellowship of the saints), which is Church-of-Christ-speak for excommunication. I had been silenced.

I’d had enough. I told the Elders thanks, but no thanks. Then I calmly said “fuck you” to God, and began walking away from it all: God, the church, school, my research, my job, my family, my friends, and my boyfriend.

The Church of Christ.

The Church of Christ, in which I was raised, developed out of the Restoration Movement, the frontier movement that also spawned the Christian Church and the Disciples of Christ. The leaders of the movement sought to restore the purity and unity of first-century Christianity by going “back to the Bible” and abandoning practices not found within the pages of the New Testament. Though it sounds crazy to this postmodern Christian, the founders of the Restoration Movement genuinely believed that if all Christians would just read the Bible literally, the pure, unadulterated, unified Church of Christ could be restored. Everyone will read the same words, so everyone will agree on what God wants, right?

Though Restoration leaders would never say the words Sola Scriptura (they sound too...well...Lutheran), they became obsessed with the Bible. The historic creeds of the Church were abandoned because they aren’t found in Scripture, Christian tradition was viewed as apostate, and even the celebration of Christmas was viewed as suspect. I remember being taught that there was no such thing as theology, there was just the Bible. And in an attempt to out-protest the Protestants, we were taught that denominations were “unbiblical.” We, the Church of Christ alone, we were The Church restored to the earth at long last.

In hardcore Church of Christ families like mine, this meant that a person could grow up and never set foot in a church belonging to another denomination, particularly not a church as liberal as, say, the Southern Baptists, who had a piano. Marriage outside the church is taboo, and even friendships with those outside the Church are suspect, since it essentially means fraternization with the damned. The Church operates more like a sect than a denomination.

Other features of Churches of Christ: strict congregationalism with absolutely no governing structures, weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper, belief in baptism by immersion as necessary to salvation, exclusively a cappella singing in worship (and there’s always A LOT of singing), and though Elders and Deacons are chosen from the men of the congregation, there is a complete lack of ordained clergy. And did I mention an obsession with knowledge of Scripture? (I honestly believe I did well in law school because reading and interpreting texts was almost second nature.)

Young men in this Church were trained to know the Bible, and because of the church’s anti-clericalism, we were expected to learn to pray in public, preside at communion, preach, evangelize, and baptize. We were the priesthood of all believers. Baptism in the church was itself evidence of a call to ministry. No pressure.

This all brought with it strong denominational identity. I didn’t go to a Church of Christ: I am Church of Christ. This fundamentalist Church was in my marrow, and it was the lens through which I saw God and the world. All of my family are Church of Christ, as were almost all of the friends I made before I was 25.

God versus Gay.

As you can imagine, the call from the elders was not the first time my faith and my sexuality had been in conflict.

I was a shy, timid, kid. To my father’s unending consternation, I preferred spending time alone with a book (or playing with the girls) to spending time playing sports with the other boys in the family. So, as a child, I was (cue euphemism) “toughened up” by my father. My father didn’t want me to grow up “soft”, and told me that he’d rather I be dead than a faggot. So, he took me hunting, enrolled me in sports, made me play with other boys, and beat the shit out of me when I showed weakness (crying was sure to trigger a beating). It would be easy to think that this was just Southern life gone wrong, or a cycle of abuse continuing, the victim becoming the aggressor. But it was more than that.

The abuse and the obsession with masculinity were an attempt to teach me how to be a man. My dad thought that if he could just force me to “act like a man,” I’d end up married with children, like him. All of this was based on twisted notions of “Biblical manhood” and “traditional family.”After all, God commanded us to be fruitful and multiply, and created us male and female. Sodom was destroyed. Romans 1 tells us what happens when men turn away from God.

And didn’t the Apostle Paul, the highest authority in the Church of Christ, teach us that husbands are the head of the household as Christ is the head of the Church? Disobedience to Dad, then is the same as disobedience to Christ. Men and women have different places in the world, in the family, and in the church, and blurring of the lines between them by being, for example, a man who cries, is unnatural and unbiblical. Salvation comes through obedience, obedience of children to parents, wife to husband, husband to Christ. Disobedience, nonconformity to God’s plan, deserves fatherly punishment, because punishment here on earth is better than punishment after death. Or something like that. Suffice it to say: it was fucked up, and it had scriptural footnotes.

As was expected of a bright Church of Christ young man like me, I attended Harding University, a Church of Christ school in Arkansas. This was also part of a poorly-planned attempt to straighten out. I went so far as to be re-baptized my freshman year, thinking that perhaps the first one hadn’t worked since I still wanted to sleep with men. Harding was a traumatizing experience, where I was isolated, threatened with expulsion, and made to listen to really bright people do really awful things to Scripture. There was even a required course called “Christian Home.” You can imagine, I am sure: it’s an experience shared by LGBT students at Christian universities across the country.

It was while at a Harding-sponsored study abroad program, sitting on a hill overlooking Florence, Italy, that I decided I would come out of the closet. Study abroad gave me just enough distance to finally start the process. When I returned from Florence to school in Arkansas, I headed to the bookstore and purchased The Church and the Homosexual, by John J. McNeill and Gay Theology without Apology, by Gary David Comstock. Those two books (followed by many more) taught me a new way of doing scriptural interpretation, and new ways of looking at Genesis 19, Romans 1, and the other texts I had so long feared. Able to read scripture with a critical eye for the first time, I quickly cobbled together my own version of a “Get Out of Hell Free” card.

In all this, though, my approach to pro-gay theology was purely theoretical. I became able to argue that God loved gay people as much as straight people, that one could be both gay and Christian, and that our traditional ways of dealing with sex and sexual orientation in Churches of Christ were deeply flawed. But I kept all of my gay theology books hidden in a box in the top of my closet, and I tore the book covers off in case someone should walk in while I was reading them. And, though I was finally fairly certain that I probably wouldn’t burn in hell for being gay, I kept the secret to myself for almost another full year. I was sure God didn’t hate me, but I wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with me. I was theoretically sure God wasn’t going to send me to hell for being gay, but I was still full to the brim with shame and self-loathing.

But, I came out anyway. I told friends, a couple of Harding professors, and in 2003, my parents. My folks responded by outing me to my brother, sister, and extended family, and by promptly cutting off  all communication with me. This silence lasted for several years, and was briefly lifted only to be reinstated when I walked away from the church. From 2003 until I got sober in 2008, my family and I basically only spoke at holidays and when my father was being treated for prostate cancer.

Walking away from life.

So, no, the phone call with the Elders of Lakeview Church of Christ wasn’t the first time I’d experienced conflict between faith and sexuality, not by a long shot. But that day, something clicked. It was as though all the religious abuse I’d survived came back in ONE GIANT EMOTION. And I couldn’t handle it.

I was angry at God and the Church. I was deeply hurt, though I wouldn’t admit it, and felt abandoned by a Church that had been my family. And so I gave them both the middle finger. My anger and pain came out sideways and I began dismantling my life. It made sense at the time.

I left work and went to the bar. I’d been a problem drinker for some time, my refrain always: “you’d drink too if you’d grown up like me.” But for the first time that summer, the summer of 2005, my drinking moved to the next level: it became both necessary and self-destructive. I began drinking to feel numb. I stopped going to church, stopped going to class, stopped returning my professors’ emails, and got a job at a restaurant in Chicago. I was in full-fledged flight from reality.

Drinking, at that point, probably saved my life. I was completely incapable of dealing with the pain I felt upon leaving the Church of Christ. And I couldn’t ask for help, because I was unable to show weakness, for fear of appearing unmanly or unworthy. Drinking was my self-prescribed medication. It was the only way I could sleep, the only way I could pretend to have a normal life for just one day. I kept planning to kill myself, but always just got drunk instead.

So, from 2005 to 2008, my life continued its slide down. I was able to make it to work at the restaurant, but that was about it. I drank myself into a blackout almost nightly, and began waking up on the streets, in bathhouses, in alleys, in the apartments of strangers. I started drinking before work, otherwise my hands shook so much I couldn’t hold a pen. And though I was making a thousand dollars a week in tips, I could barely make rent. All my money, all my energy, and all my time, belonged to the bar.

The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.

During this time of downward trajectory, I made one great effort to save myself. One day, my lesbian-latina-Yale-educated-atheist-feminist roommate told me to snap out of it. “I can’t believe I’m saying this” she continued “but...you have to go to church. Now.”

I agreed. Something had to change, and though I still didn’t want anything to do with God, I began visiting churches. UCC, UU, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran...they just didn’t quite fit. And then, remembering Gene Robinson’s consecration as Bishop in 2003, I went to Church of the Ascension, an Episcopal Church on La Salle Street, where I witnessed liturgy unlike anything I’d ever seen. And I was hooked.

To someone raised in a church without sacraments, images, stained glass, holidays, clergy, choirs, organs, or incense, the Episcopal Church was a radical shift. The emphasis on liturgy, mystery, and sacrament seemed the polar opposite of Church of Christ emphasis on correct doctrine and knowledge of Scripture.

But I began to understand that the Episcopal Church had something deep and true to offer me, and I began regularly attending Church of the Atonement in Edgewater. In 2006, I was confirmed as an Episcopalian, my final separation with the Church of Christ. Confirmation almost didn’t happen, since the Episcopal Church requires proof of baptism before Confirmation, and I had no proof. Churches of Christ don’t exactly issue a baptismal certificate after they dunk you in a fountain on your college campus in Arkansas.

So I became an Anglican. I was astonished and by Church of the Atonement’s emphasis on the Eucharist (Holy Communion). Churches of Christ celebrate communion weekly, but it is nothing like Mass at Atonement. And I was struck by just how much Bible there was in a denomination I knew to be so liberal. Three scriptures and a Psalm are read every Sunday! From a giant silver Bible! Plus, the Book of Common Prayer, the prayer book of the Episcopal Church, cites scripture more effectively and beautifully than any Church of Christ preacher.

So, hesitantly at first, I returned to the church. But I left God on the shelf where I’d put him years before, and made it clear that though I would worship him from afar, I didn’t want him anywhere near my day-to-day life. And, though I’d found a new church where I was welcomed and loved, and where I could receive communion and participate in the life and worship of the church, I was still damaged. I was still drowning in fear, and shame, and addiction. The blackouts, the drinking, the slow but steady self-destruction continued.

On my 28th birthday, miserable, lost, and alone, I started a binge that would last three days and finally lead me to freedom. A few days of death, and then my Lazarus moment.

Back to life.

On November 25th, 2008, after the 3-day blackout, I finally understood what people had been telling me for some time: I was going to die if I didn’t get help. I drove drunk often, and had already developed many of the physical symptoms seen only in older alcoholics. I’d tried to stop drinking many, many times in the past, including a stint in rehab, but it never seemed to take. I was full of fear and shame, and I felt completely and totally lost. But, knowing that I could not stop drinking alone, I went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

When I arrived at the meeting, I looked awful, smelled worse, and didn’t want to talk to anyone. I sat in the back row and didn’t raise my hand when the moderator looked directly at me and asked if any new people were in the room. I tried to run out of the room as quickly as I could after the meeting, but was stopped by short, angry-looking bald man. I thought I was going to be scolded for not raising my hand or for some other breach of etiquette. Instead, he looked me in the eye and said, “You never have to feel this way again.” That moment was, and continues to be, the deepest moment of grace in my life.

I politely listened to Geoffry, struck by the fact that a man who looked so angry could be so kind. I wanted to ask for his help, but I didn’t think I deserved it, and I was sure I’d disappoint him in the end. So I thanked Geoffry for his time, exchanged phone numbers with him, and left.

On the way home, I was sure I’d never go back. It was strange that Geoffry and the others in AA were so nice to me. Didn’t I deserve to be punished, or at least scolded, for what I’d done? I believed I was beyond help. Then, the phone rang. It was Angry Geoffry.

“I decided to call you, since I know you’re afraid to ask for help. You don’t think you can get sober, and you don’t think you deserve to be happy. God loves you, and so do I.” He told me that he’d decided to be my sponsor, though I hadn’t asked him, and that I now had to do whatever he told me. “Don’t drink tonight, and meet me at Starbucks tomorrow. Go home, thank God for keeping you sober today, and get in bed.” I went to bed sober that night, and haven’t had a drink since.

The work of sobriety was not what I expected. Geoffry listened to my story, and paid close attention when I talked about church. And then he told me that he was taking charge of my prayer life. I was only to pray one prayer in the morning, “God, please keep me sober today” and one prayer in the evening “God, thank you for keeping me sober today.”

And we quickly began working a program of recovery. The first three steps of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous involve admitting powerlessness over alcohol, coming to the belief that some higher power can help you recover, and turning your life over to that power.

It was clear from the start where I would have trouble. I had little trouble admitting that I was powerless over alcohol -- Maker’s Mark had been running my life for a few years. And I had little trouble admitting that there was a power, God, that could help me recover. But I did not believe I could or should turn my life over to that God. He’d had my life before, and he’d royally fucked up. I told Geoffry my life was my own, not God’s.

Geoffry gently reminded me that perhaps for once I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. After all, I was the one who couldn’t stop drinking. So, perhaps, I should just shut up and try it his way.

Geoffry reminded me that Christian theology teaches that God iss a refuge, not just an avenger. He reminded me that he, Geoffry was created in the image of God. That god-imaged part of him led him to reach out to me. It was, he said, God acting through one person to restore the dignity of another person. It was a start.

Geoffry then told me to go home, pray, and sit quietly for a while. Then, I was to write out my own idea of God, a God I could give my life to. I went home somewhat agitated, but did what he said. Then, as I began to describe God, I conveniently forgot the judgment of the Church, the past wrongs of my family, my mistrust of God. Instead, I began to remember verses of Scripture I’d memorized as a child and teenager. I remembered hymns that had been sources of comfort. I remembered words from the Book of Common Prayer:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and  my burden is light.

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee; Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not; As Thou hast been thou forever wilt be.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him...

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

O Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to Thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain, that morn shall tearless be...

The words continued on, and on, and on. They were a litany of scripture, prayer, hymn, all jumbled together, but all reminding me what I knew, but had forgotten: God is love, end of story. God is peace, and joy, and rest. God is faithful to me. I can give my life to a God like that.

And so, slowly, I continued with the work of sobriety (it took me three months to get to the third step). I didn’t understand it at first, but Geoffry was teaching me that I don’t keep myself sober; my higher power keeps me sober and I get to enjoy the journey. And this wasn’t some evangelical, bright light from the heavens, faith healing, Paul on the road to Damascus moment. I didn’t suddenly embrace God and stop craving alcohol. Quite the contrary.

The work of sobriety involved daily, slow, steady improvement of my spiritual connection to God. Those daily prayers, “Keep me sober” and “Thank you for keeping me sober” continued, and new prayers were added. Slow, steady, slow, steady, slow, steady, day by day by day by day. Prayer, after prayer, after prayer.

Eventually, I found myself in a new place, I finally understood that God gives a shit. I finally came to believe, not just in theory but in practice, that God is my refuge and my strength. God matters, today, and God’s work happens here on earth, when one alcoholic helps another. Who knew?

I continued in the program and eventually had a month, six months, a year of sobriety. I got rid of old resentments, made amends, all that jazz. I worked the 12 steps, then worked them again. I tried to finish law school, but wasn’t able to because of some of my drunken antics. Oh well, worse things have happened.

I began sponsoring people, and was able to look them in the eye and say “you never have to feel this way again.” I began to rebuild the relationships with my family, and mended friendships I’d broken. I apologized to a boyfriend I’d loved deeply but had walked out on. I rediscovered joy in the small victories. I discovered the joy of Ben & Jerry’s and Golden Girls reruns. I stopped taking myself so seriously, and starting trying to find small ways to be of service. I developed a sense of peace that depended less on my daily emotions and more on my trust in God’s fidelity. A calm assurance that everything is going to be OK, in the end. A new baseline of joy and freedom, not fear and isolation.

Testify.

So that is my story. I grew up fundamentalist, came out, lost my church, got drunk about it, hit bottom, found God again, and got sober. That’s my story, and this is my testimony:

God matters. God matters today, here, and now. God is not a distant, removed creator. God’s love is radical, crossing all boundaries. God’s love isn’t confined to the Bible, or the past, or the person of Jesus. God’s love is here. In this room. And it will be here tomorrow, whether I’m doing dishes in a restaurant or kneeling in a church. God is with us, whether we are safe in our beds or passed out on the street.

I know this not because I read it in a book. I know this because when I was lost, God found me. I don’t mean that I was lost in that I was unsaved, or not numbered among the Elect. I mean that I was lost. I was dying spiritually, and I was slowly killing myself, physically. I was was waking up in my own filth, or on the street, or full of shame. I could not save myself, so God reached out to me through one of his creatures and restored my dignity. God rolled away the stone and called me out of death.

God’s love reaches out in loud ways, sure, in revivals and prayer meetings and the Incarnation and Gay Pride parades and the beauty of nature. But God’s love is also steady, quiet, and calm. God’s love is the man who looks to you and says, because he knows it is true: “you never have to feel this way again.”

I tell you what I experienced: I was pushed out of the church, but God told the church to go fuck itself and came and got me through an angry, bald, gay alcoholic named Geoffry. Now I get it: God is a shepherd, walking out into the night for a lost sheep. How queer.

This tells me that my work as a Christian isn’t what I thought. My work as a Christian isn’t to find the right church, or to be ordained and put on a collar, or to create perfect liturgy. My work as a Christian is simply (radically) to tell people God loves them. To help people remember that they are made in the image of God. Or to tell them for the first time, if no one has told them before.

I’ll start now. Church gays: God’s love is here. Now. Whether you’ve been excluded from ordination, or silenced in your church, or excluded by your family or faith group, or marginalized by the gay community because you aren’t shiny and wealthy and white. God desires you; you are made in the image of God. God’s love is as real in the dark moments of your life as it is on Easter Sunday. You never have to feel that way again. God is love, and love abides.

Today, I am reminded of God’s resurrecting power, God’s radical welcome, and God’s desire to be with us most clearly in the sacrament of Holy Communion. In Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, we come to God’s table and are fed. No expectation, no fee, no conditions. Holy Communion is the icon of God’s welcome to all.

At the communion table, God puts God’s self in the hands of women and men to be distributed to other women and men freely and joyfully. In Churches of Christ, lay people come forward, break bread, and take it out into the congregation. In the Episcopal Church, liturgy leads up to the moment when the host is consecrated and then distributed by the priest. Regardless, God’s people are fed from God’s table, because God’s love abounds.

True to form, the Book of Common Prayer is succinctly eloquent on this point. Before communion is distributed to the people, the priest is directed to stand at the altar, raise the host and chalice, and say: “The gifts of God for the people of God.” God is the Bread of Heaven; we take God into ourselves and are filled with God’s love. Sunday, after Sunday, after Sunday, the Sacrament reminds us that God’s kingdom is today, and today we are fed today from the very body of Christ.

I testify: resurrection doesn’t just happen at Easter, or at the Eschaton. I experienced God’s resurrection in my own life. I am a queer, bourbon-soaked Lazarus, and I tell you that I have been raised from the dead. I was dead, but I am alive. And I feast at God’s table, because God is love. Thanks be to God.