Walking away from faith — my complex queer relationship with religion
Jesus walked with me through the most difficult time of my life, that period between starting my transition and finally coming to terms with being an adult. It truly was a personal relationship, the singular person I could talk to in the darkest moments. No shame, no judgements, simply all I had to do was prey. He heard all my woes, lighted my load. I took up my cross daily in his name gladly. Then, in the space of a single morning around age 25 this relationship dissolved like foam on the shore, melting away like it never existed.
Growing up in a UK evangelical Christian household was in many respects idyllic. The community was ready baked, connections and modes of thinking provided, and while I never completely got the world outside this bubble, it provided routine and warmth. My home church was a place of joy and inspiration, led by men (always men) of humility and understanding. Spiritually it was as far from the US version of Evangelical as, at the time, it could be. I never questioned it, very much a Christian apologist right up until the moment my faith evaporated.
Things invariably changed when I transitioned. All my cis straight white male privilege disappeared, shot through by this woman that morphed out into the wild. I became a stranger to their testament, though they never really got to meet the new me as I only really embraced this newness when I went to university away from home in 2000. Some may argue that the darkness in my soul was directly related to my trans experience, that the very nature of my beast was what was leading me astray. Respectfully, I call hokum on that, as looking back I think it was more my utter naivety about the way the world actually worked that was the root cause of most of my issues.
When the world crashes down on you the first instinct is to hunker down and find safe harbour. I did this through queer spaces and trying to connect with people, yet due to my faith there was always a Sunday disconnect between my external and internal belief structures. More than once my view of relationships and sexuality was clouded by Christian dogma, and the worst thing was that I never really saw the contradiction. Or, the hurt my words caused some people. Faith did weird things to my psyche, and probably the worst was the ability to simply shrug off other people’s pain at my turns of phrase in the firm belief that I was righteous. While I did not bash that bible, I certainly put my foot in it more than once. For that I can only apologise unreservedly.
2006 was a very complicated year for me, as on the one hand things were finally stabilising on the money and parent front, but on the other my mental health shattered across the floor due to a dysfunctional relationship that practically rendered my personality in two. While there is a lot to unpack from that period, one of the key crutches I depended on way my faith to get me through. This Jesus born serenity lofted me through depression, suicide attempts, dropping out of university, and several relationships for about six years, during which time I only stepped foot in a church when my parents were with me. Then something shifted in me, and I realised I needed more grounding in my faith, that apologetic me was not being spiritually nourished. Unbeknownst to me, the first day I set foot in this new church would be the first step on the road to renouncing my faith.
This new church was the opposite of my home church in one key respect, they were a pure, hardcore breed of Christian that took things way too literally. Not that my parent’s church were wishy washy in faith, but that this new church was ultra hard core. I felt I need this old time religion to salve my soul, that the ‘truth’ should be unvarnished. Ironically, it was not the word that undid this church for me, but the behaviour of the brethren. They never accepted my trans identity, and yes, you would be well to ask why I stuck it out for six months at the church if they actively rejected this core part of me. That I could handle in light of the Word, the fact I was denied communion and at every opportunity they would probe still did not put me off. It was a humble place, with soaring notions of faith and salvation.
I could handle the low level passive aggressive chipping away at my identity because I was not concrete in who I was. Strange as it seems, when faith is your bedrock, what is away is eternally malleable, no matter the hands of the sculptor. This old time faith was the jagged shores upon which I was tossed twice every Sunday, and it began to batter me into drift wood. In hindsight, if this next part had not happened my identity may well have shifted back towards a more cisnormative place, the core of my being fundamentally altered.
However, what happened next shattered my belief in the old time religion, and ruptured any faith I had in pastoral care. In the autumn of 2006 the church’s minister was doggedly trying to find out as much as he could about my dead name and identity, and I resisted fundamentally. Things came to a head when I visiting African preacher gave a barnstorming sermon, the sort that evokes all the Baptist fury of a revelation, and me being me I wanted to discuss it further with this preacher because my home church viewed this particular part of the bible very differently. He obliged with private one to one conversation, during which I poured my heart out, and inadvertently told him my dead name. All in confidence, or so I thought. Next thing I knew he told the church everything, sparing no detail, and that was that. The last time I stepped into the church the minister deadnamed me in the most triumphant manner possible, using it as a spiritual club to beat me around the head, assuming that I would appreciate his approach. It was utter humiliation, and even writing this cannot convey how disgusted I was by both the breach in confidence and the tone-deaf use of my dead name. I never went back.
In the following April I moved to York, where I sought out a church more akin to my childhood one, which I found at a local school. I attended three times, but found myself missing the old school approach to faith, the hard nosed ‘truth’, and did not go back. That was the last time I attended a church service in active faith. The congregation were warm and friendly, but part of me hankered after something more. It was an addiction to the hard stuff, and I did not realise this until long after I turned my back on it all.
My partner, the reason I moved, was a staunch atheist, avowed listener of Richard Dorkins et al. There is a Christian saying about a Christian not yoking themselves to an unbeliever, and I ignored this completely. For all our conversations about faith, and there were many, it was not his words or actions that finally undid the surly bonds. No, it was a radio interview that Dorkins gave on Radio 4 where he described the Old Testaments as Jewish tribal myths. It found a hidden chink in my faith, and as water rushing from a damn my belief just went. I cannot describe it other than one minute I believed, the next nothing. There was no emptiness, no heaviness or grief. I simply did not, and could not believe in any religion or spiritual faith. My bed rock crumbled away, and Jesus became this distant figure of myth and legend akin to Arthur or Robin Hood.
What is left is complicated, as while am I now an avowed atheist, I still have all that Christian knowledge and world view crammed into my core psyche. I reject almost all of it except love thy neighbour, which is a central tenet of my life. My queerness blossomed after I left the faith, finding deep and strong roots in people and community. I never regret my upbringing, as it taught me the fundamentals of connection and integrity, with a central plank of compassion and empathy. There are moments deep in the night or at the darkest moments of depression where Jesus would be a lovely comfort blanket, but now that is all he would be. I am not alone, for I have all the wonderful friends and family, and Jesus, well, he sits as a memory of times past.
