What my own experience with a non-affirming church has taught me, by Dr Anneke Schmidt

Prompted by a friend's question about my experience as a gay Christian who instantly felt excluded from my (then conservative evangelical) church community and large parts of my (also evangelical) family when I revealed my sexual orientation to them at the age of twenty, I started thinking today…

For LBGTQIA+ Christians, the line between active exclusion and passive withdrawal from Church can be thin:

Exclusion - whether it happens in the family or in Christian church contexts - is a strange concept. It sounds like an active process. As if there is someone at the door of your family home, or church gate for that matter, greeting you with the words: 'You can't come inside!' But although that has probably happened to some people in this literal sense, my own experience has shown that the change can be much more subtle.

In the case of the church I attended when I came out as a lesbian, I wouldn't say that it was 'active' exclusion that made me feel unwelcome all of a sudden. Instead, it was I who - rather intuitively - felt that there was simply no point in trying to find acceptance in this particular church community. Knowing their stance on homosexuality and other social issues, I neither wanted to expose myself to this energy of implied rejection, nor did I want to fight an ideological battle that was being imposed on me without consent. So, out of sheer self-protection, I decided to stay away from all church activities and fellow church members in the end. Active exclusion and passive withdrawal have been hardly distinguishable in my life.

My gut feeling, though, is that it was the right decision for me to make - not only for abstract theological reasons, but also for practical interpersonal ones. What I mean by that is that I have serious doubts about whether the people from church who made up my own little world at the time were the right ones to help me grow, spiritually, let alone dare to become my own authentic self over time.

How do I know this? Well, not one of the people from church, whom I had considered to be close friends prior to this change, ever contacted me again when I stopped attending their Sunday services. Not one! As someone who treasures loyalty and continuity a lot in any close relationship, I would simply not tolerate this kind of behaviour in friends any more. It was a bit like being 'ghosted' on social media today. One day, I was part of the community and thought I belonged. The next day, I was practically dead to them and 'doomed to damnation', I suppose.

With family, it’s slightly different, though, isn't it? You just can't avoid contact, completely, even if you wanted to for a while. At least not without heart-breaking effort and consequences! In my case, I felt the need to withdraw myself from the most conservative parts of my family in the same way as I had done with the non-affirming church I attended. Again, with little to no protest on their part, I must say. In fact, on the rare occasions that I did meet those relatives again over the years, be it at a wedding or funeral, I always felt as if I was faced with, but also participated in, what I can only call 'indifferent silence' or 'awkward small talk' now.

It's not like I was trying to hide my true self from them. At a big family event such as a wedding, for example, I would sit at the large, festive table next to the woman I’d shared my life with for years, but I had somehow learned not to bring up the issue of gay relationships and faith with certain family members anymore. Early attempts at doing so had led to painful arguments in which I was told that 'God condemns homosexuality' and that I could only attend certain family events if I promised 'not to be lesbian in front of the children'. Even though, to this day, I have no idea what 'being lesbian in front of a child' even means, I opted out at some point, one more time, and decided to stay away from such situations instead.

A word of hope for all those who feel excluded from the table of Christ:

Why am I sharing this with you today? Because my story is but one among millions of other stories of active exclusion and/or passive withdrawal from faith communities, happening in a wide range of contexts and times. I have heard and read about so many similar stories of marginalisation over the years - stories that were told by fellow LBGTQIA+ Christians; or by people who found the courage to oppose the institutionalised hierarchies and patriarchal structures of the Church; or simply by all those individuals who find themselves wandering the wilderness of an 'evolving faith', one that asks more questions than it could ever find answers to and values the spiritual power of doubt over dogmatic certainty.

What the stories have in common is that they all tend to express, in one way or another, deep grief for the loss of a sense of true belonging in this world, fear of the unknown, confusion about the purpose and limits of faith deconstruction and reconstruction which leads to a certain sense of disorientation, and a determination to find and spread new hope, however fragile it may be.

So, I am writing this to reach out to those who still suffer from cultural/social/religious marginalisation and have felt excluded from the table of Christ for too long. What you are going through is painful and real, but there is one thing I honestly believe every one of us needs to hear from time to time in our lives. Lately, it has been expressed most succinctly and beautifully, I find, by Pastor Jonathan Martin Page at the Evolving Faith conference in 2019. This is what he said, just before preparing the table for holy communion:

I want to say for everyone who has ever felt excluded from the table of Christ, I'm so sorry. I also want to tell you if you've ever felt excluded from the table of Christ, from the table of Grace, it was not the table of Christ you were excluded from! How do I know that? Because you were excluded.

"And if you were excluded from the table of Christ, then it was not yet the table of Christ. You know it's not yet His table if someone else is in charge of the guest list. If Jesus is not the one in charge of the guest list, it's not Christ's table.

- Pastor Jonathan Martin Page

For me, that's the perfect summary of what I have always felt deep in my heart: whenever you are excluded from the table of God in this life, it is not (yet) God’s table. Or to put it the other way around: any Christian table that excludes or refuses to serve certain people is inherently broken.

 'Exclusion from God's table' is an oxymoron. It's simply not possible. What is possible, though, and still happens far too often within Christian communities today is being rejected by fellow Christians who believe they speak in the name of God. That's why I want to encourage you to be suspicious of any faith environment in which God is not in charge of the guest list. I know the rejection is painful, and can be shocking at times, but God is hurting with you and will never fail to prepare His table for you - a table wide enough for everyone to be welcome, without exceptions.

So, here is my prayer for all the misfits and outcasts, for all the wanderers of the wilderness; for those who roam the in-between places of hope and doubt and all those fellow travellers who find themselves in the Here and There… That you may hear, through all the noise of this broken world, the prophetic voice within you. The voice which never stopped speaking to you and keeps calling you by your name, every new day.

I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called
‘Not my loved one.'
I will say to those called
‘Not my people,’
‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.’

- Hosea 2:23 New International Version