All his Baptist-believing life, Jeffrey Knight Williams had been told inside and outside the sanctuary that homosexuality was wrong. For most of his life, Williams had struggled to reconcile his attraction to men with the condemning interpretations of scripture he heard in church.
That day, after reading his pastor's column, he decided there would be no more of that.
No more sitting before a man of God and being castigated for who he was. No more feeling awkward as the message from the pulpit deepened the conflict within.
When Williams read the printed message that expressed even more harshly the sentiments he had heard regularly on Sunday, he vowed never to return to that church.
"I just decided I wasn't going to take that, and I didn't have to," Williams, a 41-year-old engineer in Charlotte, recounted recently. "I wasn't going to subject myself to that."
Thus marked a momentous point in his journey from a Christian who kept his sexuality hidden to a Christian whose faith told him he was OK with God.
Struggle for acceptance
For years, gay and lesbian Christians have struggled for acceptance within their churches.
Public efforts like Soulforce, a Virginia advocacy group co-founded by Mel White, a former ghostwriter for conservative Christians such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, have adopted the nonviolent protest techniques of Gandhi and King. The group has picketed denomination conventions as clergy and laity inside debated gay issues. Founders White and Gary Nixon have been regulars at Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg. And private efforts, from heartfelt conversations with pastors to impassioned debates with parishioners, have exposed rifts and changed churches.
Below the surface are the debates that go on not just behind closed doors but also within the recesses of human conscience, both gay and straight. For gays and lesbians who read the Bible, pray regularly and attend church, the path to reconciling their faith and sexuality can be a particularly painful journey.
Even more painful than their internal struggles can be the messages from religious leaders who say their faith is fraudulent if they don't renounce their "gay lifestyle." Not many gays have escaped the thundering reminder of Scriptural interpretations that traditionalists say deliver an unyielding rebuke of homosexuality. And then there are the popular cultural stereotypes, which don't exactly portray gays and lesbians as concerned with religion.
But those who identify themselves as gay and Christian tread the path nonetheless, as a burgeoning network of churches and pastors becomes more welcoming. Some gays and lesbians have blended in at churches with understanding pastors. Some are finding homes in churches that have publicly welcomed gays. Still others are seeking out predominantly gay congregations.
"Just because you're gay, you don't have to bend in your faith or your church or your synagogue or what have you," said Santiago Hernandez of Raleigh, president of North Carolina's only chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay group.
For many gays and lesbians, that's a realization that comes only after many years of introspection, self-realization and determination.
Breaking through the walls
John Mayes was always in the church.
From his earliest memories, scarcely a service started without this son of three generations of Presbyterian ministers. It wasn't family fealty that delivered him to the pew, he recalled recently. If anything, the precocious Mayes was more conservative than his father, chiding the older man for nursing a bourbon-and-coke after a long day of counseling parishioners.
Nevertheless, the questions of Mayes' sexuality that nagged at him became spoken when a neighbor asked Mayes' father about the new earring his son was sporting. The question came bluntly: "Is your son gay?"
Mayes confessed his struggle to sympathetic parents, but that isn't to say he felt they were accepting — or even that he was.
"I had this image of myself as not being a good person," said Mayes, 40. "It's not like I had done anything (sexually), but I was ashamed of who I knew myself to be."
His religious faith led him to the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Virginia, where he earned a graduate degree and trained to become a youth minister. He knew other gay people there, and he even attended a coming-out party for a fellow student. But he didn't trust himself to let his guard down with either straights or gays.
"I put up walls," he said. "You begin to develop behavior to hide yourself, because you recognize that you or something in society says it's wrong. You spend so much time hiding and pretending, it's just unhealthy."
Chris Turner, a 59-year-old Charlotte insurance consultant, said she spent more than two decades trying to accept herself as a lesbian and a Christian. The latter hadn't always been hard to acknowledge, but the former was a struggle.
A Southern Baptist, Turner's family was in church "every time the door opened," she said. By age seven, she had begun having feelings for other girls. But when she looked around the congregation, she saw no one who was like the person she knew herself to be.
"It'll go away," she reasoned. She didn't tell her family or pastor that she was attracted to girls, and she occasionally tried dating guys.
Gradually, she fell away from church. Soon she wasn't attending services at all. Thus began years of wandering.
"I didn't know who I was, so I didn't know what I was looking for," she said.
Not all gay and lesbian Christians, however, have trouble reconciling their faith and their sexuality. Hernandez describes a much less painful route. He noted optimistically his belief that "the more religious the person and the more true they are to their faith, the more tolerant I find that they are."
Hernandez, a 30-something computer consultant in Raleigh, describes himself as a Christian "religious mutt" who prays regularly and reads scripture but doesn't belong to a church.
"A lot of my friends have shied away from religion because they think religion is sort of kicking them out," said Hernandez, who was raised Catholic. "And what I try to tell folks is that it's the other way around ... It's a self-selecting process. If you choose to leave the church, if you choose to abandon your faith, that's your choice."
He says he doesn't feel that "having the stamp of approval of a particular church" is important. "If there's a particular sect that doesn't want to have any homosexuals in their church, I'm fine with that," he said. "I won't attend that church. It's not something I really want to subscribe to."
The Rev. Nancy Ellet Allison, who leads Holy Covenant United Church of Christ in Charlotte, said many of the gays and lesbians who attend her church grew up in religious families but stopped in their 20s when they accepted their sexual orientation. "They think, 'If the church says I can't be gay and Christian... Well, I know I'm gay. Does that mean I can't be Christian?' They just drop out," Allison said.
For Williams, reading his pastor's critique of gay black men like himself crystallized his growing frustration with non-accepting churches. He responded by dropping out.
"I had just had it with the fire-and-brimstone sermons, the condemnation of gays and the condemning-to-hell kind of things. That was the kind of stuff I was tired of hearing from the pulpit," he said.
Williams stayed away from the church until his partner, Kevin Edwards, came home raving about Seigle Avenue Presbyterian Church. The two stayed at the downtown Charlotte church, known for its diverse congregation, for several years before they moved over to Holy Covenant United Church of Christ.
He had found a level of tolerance that suited him. Holy Covenant, Williams said, is very accepting — something he wasn't sure he could say about the churches he attended before he found Seigle Avenue. Although no one at his former churches had ever directed hurtful comments at him, he believes that was only for one reason: They didn't know he was gay.
"But I know had they known, it would have been different," he said.
Pew Report
The Rev. Chris Ayers of Wedgewood Baptist Church hears often from gays and lesbians who have struggled with their faith and their sexuality. Pastor of a church that is one of a minority in the denomination (it publicly welcomes gays), Ayers said he's heard from gays from across the United States and Canada.
"They're tortured. They're tortured by the traditional church," said Ayers, whose church a few years ago declared its support for gays and lesbians. "You hear their stories of terrible anguish. They think, 'If they could just find the right woman, the right man, have children, God would change them."
On top of the questions of faith that all believers struggle with, gays and lesbians must grapple with the added burden of history and scriptural interpretations. Most mainline denominations historically condemned homosexual behavior, though theologians offer different interpretations of what the Bible really says about sexuality.
Religious fundamentalists and conservatives read verses, among them 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and Leviticus 18:22, as unequivocal prohibitions against sexual acts between members of the same sex. While many of these people merely say they hate the sin but love the sinner, others have plainly and publicly condemned gays. Former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, for instance, who aligned himself with religious conservatives, described the nascent AIDS crisis as "nature's revenge," according to published accounts. The Rev. Fred Phelps, a fringe protestor, has made the slogan "God hates fags" his way of life.
More liberal Christians are much less likely to interpret the Bible literally. Many of them, for instance, interpret the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as less an indictment of homosexuality than a criticism of inhospitality. These Christians also point out Biblical edicts, such as ones favoring slavery, that are inconsistent with modern life.
Several Charlotte-area churches are more closely linked to this camp. Among them are mainline churches such as Holy Covenant and Wedgewood. In addition, two affiliates of the United Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches serve mostly gay congregations, while Unity Fellowship Church Charlotte ministers to a predominantly black, gay audience.
The United Church of Christ in 1972 became the first mainline denomination to ordain an openly gay minister. The church drew attention in the past year after its TV advertisement that proclaimed "God is Still Speaking" was rejected by ABC, CBS and NBC.
Though that attention still brings about 10 percent of the church's visitors, Holy Covenant attracted a significant number of gays and lesbians before, Allison said. The decision about five years ago to become, in church parlance, "open and affirming," cost the church a few members. Wedgewood Baptist, too, lost congregants after it opened its doors to gays.
Still, Williams and Edwards, who attend Holy Covenant, say its members have received gay and lesbian members well.
Just as preachers who condemn homosexuality say faith drives them, gay-friendly churches say they're guided by spiritual concerns.
Ayers grew up believing homosexuality was wrong but began to change his mind in college. There, he said, he was impressed by the ardent faith of a fellow student, a gay Lutheran who lived across the hall.
"That's what changes people," Ayers said. "We're not going to go get in a room and argue about it and people are going to be changed. People aren't going to be changed through Biblical arguments. What's going to change people is seeing the courage of people who are gay and lesbian Christians coming out and seeing their lives and hearing their stories."
Referring to some Wedgewood members leaving after the church became what Ayres calls "welcoming and affirming," he said, "This is nothing that I asked for. If you'd told me 25 to 30 years ago that I'd be who I am today, I would have told you you're crazy. . . .When you're confronted with the faith of these gay and lesbian Christians, you have to do something."
One denomination was formed more than 30 years ago to do exactly "something." Founded in 1968, the predominantly gay and lesbian United Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches has 43,000 members and 250 congregations, according to spokesman Jim Birkett. Ten congregations, including MCC Charlotte and New Life MCC, are in the Carolinas. MCC became a member of the North Carolina Council of Churches, a statewide group that represents more than 1.5 million members of 15 Christian denominations.
The Rev. Tim Koch of New Life Metropolitan Community Church said the church was created to meet needs of gays and lesbians that weren't being met by other denominations. As mainline churches grow more accepting, he said, the church that began as a church of gay refugees still fills an important niche. "We actually reflect upon the life experiences of gay men and lesbians," Koch said.
Koch said he has detected a "subtle but important shift" in the way gays and lesbians are regarded. "There's a very important recognition that gays are neighbors and part of the landscape," he said. "There's not much of a blind spot."
On a recent Sunday, Koch led about 30 men and women through a service that, along with a sermon and hymns, included a request that members pray for a lesbian and her partner who were absent to attend a gathering family of members who still had hopes she might turn straight.
During communion, Koch advised the congregation that they need not be members of any church to participate in the service: "All that we ask is that you come as you are, believing as you do, with a heart open to love; for that is how God loves us — just as we are."
Not infrequently, the theological schisms that have developed behind church doors spill out into the public square. Charlotte, like many cities, has had its share of gay-themed disputes, including the arts-funding debacle concerning a production of Angels in America and recent debates over Mecklenburg County's nondiscrimination policy. County commissioners recently voted 6-3 to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in its personnel decisions, but not before Republican commissioner Bill James noted in protest that, "A man's rear end is not for another man's private parts."
Coming to terms
For many gays and lesbians, the most hurtful anti-homosexual rhetoric comes not from the mouths of politicians, but from the people charged with ministering to their souls.
The youngest of eight children, Williams grew up in South Carolina in the "type of church where you got the hell-fire-and-brimstone type of thing." It also was the type of church that preached homosexuality is an abomination, and gays are going to hell.
When he moved to Charlotte in the mid- to late-80s, he left that church behind — and not just geographically. But before long, he yearned for the spiritual comfort of church. He began attending services, listening to sermons at churches that weren't necessarily accepting of gays. He even joined one. "I needed that back in my life," he said, simply.
Williams began to wash himself of others' condemnation. It was one step toward finding acceptance within himself.
"I had gotten to the point where I wondered if I was worthy of God's love," Williams said. "Every night, I prayed, 'Lord, if this is not what you want for me, remove it. I knew it wasn't my choice to be gay, but I wasn't sure it wasn't going to condemn me to hell."
That included coming to terms with family members who love and accept Williams and his partner but still, he suspects, are uncomfortable with the subject. One sister admitted she believed homosexuality isn't a choice but said it wasn't something that had to be acted upon. "That is still something the family does not talk about," Williams said. "I suspect they are concerned about....where I am going."
Turner, too, said at least one family member had trouble accepting her homosexuality. She was 40 years old before she gave up denying she was a lesbian — more than 30 years after she knew she was attracted to girls. While most loved ones were fine when she came out, she suspects the reason her older brother no longer talks to her is because of her sexuality. Others at St. Luke's Lutheran Church receive her kindly, though some don't seem to grasp that the woman sitting beside her on Sundays is more than a good friend, she said.
About the time Mayes came out, at 33, he left his youth minister job, both because he wanted more free time to explore who he was and because he didn't want to cause trouble for the church.
"It probably would have become a pretty big issue, and I didn't want to go through that," he wrote in an account of that time. "I was having enough difficulty coming to my own self-acceptance not to have to worry what 2,500 members of the church were going to think."
Ultimately, what leads some gay and lesbian Christians to accept their sexuality is the one aspect of religious life that others might believe is most at odds with it. By reading the Bible and related scriptural interpretations, some say they learn to see the passages in a different light. Mayes, for instance, now views Biblical scripture more as a storybook and less as a written code.
"That is not to belittle it in any way," Mayes wrote. "I think that that is really making it more powerful. It is the writing down of God's people searching for God."
These gay and lesbian Christians know from examining themselves that they are OK.
"If there were a way for God to change me, that prayer would have been answered," Turner said emphatically, with teary eyes.
"For me, I came to realize that being gay was not something against God," Mayes says. "I know (being gay) was not a choice of mine."
Gradually, Williams said, he began to realize that "God loves me, no matter what."
"He didn't make any mistakes," he said. "I've prayed about it, and I believe in prayer. I believe that if He didn't want it, He would remove it."
So when a preacher whose church he once attended kept urging him to join the ministry, Williams no longer felt he had to hide.
"I said, 'Reverend, there's a part of my life I haven't told you about."
The pastor's response floored him.
"He said, 'You know, and I know, there are a lot of gay ministers in the pulpit...It's not a sin to be gay, but it's a sin to act on it.'"
That answer was no longer good enough.