I grew up in an irreligious household in Minnesota, just outside of Minneapolis-St. Paul, in a suburb called Coon Rapids. Religion wasn’t really a part of my life when I was young. I was baptized right after I was born, but the baptism was held as an excuse to get my family together and celebrate the addition of a new child. I didn’t grow up going to church and was pretty ignorant of the religious beliefs of others.
When I was 11 years old, I was invited by some friends to go to a youth group at a non-denominational charismatic evangelical community church. There were a couple of factors that preceded that invitation that put me in a position where such a community would be appealing to me. The first was that the year prior, I had started reading a lot of books, like Hiroshima, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Roots. I became aware of all of the suffering in the world, that people committed horrible atrocities against one another. I really didn’t have any way of making sense of that, and I was looking both for a way to put human hardship in some framework and to find hope for justice in the world. The other life-changing event that preceded my budding religiosity was my parents separating. By that point, my father had stopped being a reliable force in my life, and my mother went from being a homemaker to simultaneously working multiple jobs. My family began to disintegrate. As I quickly learned, the youth group had a huge support network and people within it who took an active interest in my life, who wanted to hear about my struggles.
I remember feeling very welcomed. The people there took more than just a superficial interest in me. They immediately cared about what I was going through, and the community was fun and engaging. After my third time there, I thought, “I really like it here. I like these people’s beliefs. They are trying to make a difference in the world.” The idea that there was someone watching over me, someone who would take care of me, was also appealing. So I decided to accept Christ into my heart.
I became really involved in the church. Wednesday night youth group always kicked off with icebreaker games and worship music. People would then break up into small groups, discuss what was going on in their lives, and do Bible study. I loved reading and discussing the Bible. One of the things that drew me to Christianity was the idea of Jesus being a social reformer. I saw him as a rule breaker. To me, he was someone who had relationships with the people who were seen as less than everybody else. I had grown up in an environment where I could see that there was economic disparity between my family and others in our society. I always felt like I was not seen as being on the same level as some of my peers. According to what I heard from my church, Christianity leveled the playing field. The youth group had a mix of people from all walks of life, both the popular kids and kids like me.
But problems began to arise. After just a couple of months as a Christian, I finally admitted something to myself that I’ve always known: I’m queer. That presented an enormous internal conflict.
I knew that being gay was not something that was acceptable in the eyes of my church. Homosexuality was often discussed in the small groups and in the sermons. The Teen Study Bible that I had said that if you are gay or if you practice the “gay lifestyle,” you will be punished by God, get AIDS, and burn in hell forever.
I tried to turn myself into a heterosexual. I knew that being gay was not something that I had chosen, but I remember beginning to believe that my homosexuality was a spiritual test, some kind of punishment that I had received for not being a good enough Christian. I was determined to rise to the occasion and beat my ailment. I doubled down and began spending my lunch period at school in the evangelical math teacher’s classroom fasting and doing Bible study. On the surface I appeared to be a model Christian, but on the inside, I was slowly coming apart.
I kept my secret to myself. I was convinced that if I revealed the truth about my sexuality, I would be cast out. As a child, I was full of life, interested in everything and very inquisitive. But once this struggle started, I became pretty reclusive, spending my nights in devotion in my room. Even though she was preoccupied with trying to keep us together as a family, my mother started to wonder if something was wrong.
Things got worse, and I got to a really dark place. I couldn’t understand why I was being punished; I felt like I was being the perfect Christian. I started contemplating suicide. One night at my father’s place, when he wasn’t home and my siblings were asleep, I went to the kitchen and took out a knife. I went into the bathroom, turned on the fan, and locked the door. I sat down in the bathtub. I had all these romantic notions of suicide, but it didn’t feel romantic to me. I was sobbing, snot dripping down my face. I held the knife above my wrist and mimed cutting my wrist just to try it out to see what it would be like.
I couldn’t do it. I was so unhappy, but somewhere deep down inside of me I wasn’t quite ready to quit. I don’t know whether I decided to go on because I felt like there was still hope for me to change or whether I believed that I didn’t need to change, but I knew that I had to find a way to become okay with who I am.
I began what would become an uphill climb. I started keeping a notebook that I filled with different Bible verses that I felt gave me hope that change within Christianity was possible. I hid it in the back of my closet. One day, my mom went into my room to clean up, and she found it. She read it and discovered the truth. She picked me up from lifeguard training, told me that she had found my notebook, and that she knew what I was struggling with. Being in the closet, I was constantly terrified, convinced that if anyone knew, everyone would be horrified by me. When my mom told me she had discovered the truth, I thought, “This is it, say goodbye to your life.” I was worried that I might be disowned. But my mom was compassionate, and the next day, she took me to see an LGBT-friendly minister. For the first time, I was exposed to an alternate Scriptural position on homosexuality. My mom had called up Lutheran churches in the area, looking for someone who could talk to me. The minister she eventually connected with had a gay roommate in college and felt very strongly about LGBT equality. The conversations that I had with him changed my life.
I spent the rest of high school being a progressive Christian. I reconciled my homosexuality and my Christianity and became involved in the movement for LGBT equality in Christian churches. I found an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America congregation with an openly gay minister. They had a group that met on Sunday afternoons for LGBT high school students who wanted to discuss these issues in a safe space. Eventually, they hosted the first pro-LGBT summer camp for Christian teens. I felt really welcomed by that community.
Despite my religious progress, I recognized that I still had some long-held doubts about my Christian faith. I had always been taught that doubt was a test, not something to be upheld as a virtue. I remember being in an evangelical church when I was in middle school and watching everyone speaking in tongues. I could never join in. At the time, I thought the reason why I couldn’t was because I was spiritually unclean. Although these experiences contributed to my doubts, I had a community that was welcoming, and at the time, that was the most important thing to me.
It wasn’t until I was in college that I really started to have serious, open skepticism. I went to a Lutheran school in Minnesota, Augsburg College, and studied to receive a degree in religion. I enrolled believing that I wanted to go into the ministry. I felt like my experiences had prepared me to help struggling people. I thought that perhaps God had put me through my experiences so that I could have empathy for others.