Leaving My Church
I recently tweeted about an experience meeting with the pastor of a progressive church I’ve been watching online the past few months and the response to what I shared was surprising. I sent it just before I hit the trail for a 5 mile run and by the time I finished the run I had several messages. “What church?” Where can I find this church?” What I said is that I had found my people. And what I also said is that when I shared about faith deconstruction with the pastor, he asked me to write for the church newsletter. What I didn’t say was how I went through the process of leaving my last church and landing in this one.
What was the first sign that it might be time to leave my church?
I wish I could say that my discomfort with the church began the moment I started to realize the ways in which others weren’t welcome, but at the time I didn’t look beyond myself enough to see it. I could write an entire piece about why this is so problematic but I’ll leave it at this. If folks that feel safe and comfortable in the church are able to look outside their own acceptance and speak up for the folks that are not seen, perhaps we could start to shift the tide. Until then, we will not see change. The first signal for me was the first time it wasn’t “others,” it was women.
After not attending church for awhile, I had gone back in desperation when COVID hit in March 2020. I landed in a church I had previously been connected with, watched online every week, printed the service notes, discussed it with friends, and even joined a small group. In early fall between sermon series the pastor spent a Sunday answering questions “Ask Me Anything” style. Instead of a pre-recorded service, everyone watched live while a staff member posed submitted questions for the pastor to answer on the spot. The questions ranged everywhere from the pastor’s take on chili dogs, to why the church hadn’t opened for in-person services yet, but somewhere in the middle was a question about complementarianism. The specific question was actually about how having female staff members fit into the leadership of our complementarian church. The pastor explained that complementarian means that men and women complement each other and are equal before God but don’t have exactly the same roles, and egalitarian means that all roles are equally available to everyone.
While I knew that different churches had different ideas about the roles of men and women, this was my first real introduction to the words complementarian and egalitarian and it didn’t sit right with me at all. The more he taught, the worse I felt. He pulled from 1 Timothy and stated, “the reason we take a complementarian view rather than egalitarian is because Adam was formed first.” He went on to say that he liked to put this in the category of, “things I wish the Bible didn’t say because it’s so out of step with our culture.” As he walked through the question, he clarified that women could be on staff and use leadership gifts, but they were not allowed on the teaching team or the elder board. My husband didn’t listen to the talk, but when I chatted with him about it later, he shared my discomfort.
Why did I stay in my church for so long?
While I was a bit uncomfortable with the new clarity around women’s roles in our church, I wanted to check out their upcoming series called Race, Hope, and Justice. It would last five weeks, and the pastor had travelled across the country with a film crew in preparation. He read almost two dozen books to research and pulled in footage from Charleston, SC, Washington DC, Montgomery, AL, and Memphis TN. It was very nearly a docu-series about the history of racism in America and the role of the church. There were so many good and beautiful things about this series, but the same kind of uncomfortable clarity started to show up. When he dove in to the meaning of Black Lives Matter, he was sure to point out the ways in which our church did not line up with the aim to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” and made it crystal clear by explaining what a family ought to be which was everything cis-gendered and heterosexual. At times he empathized with the “personal responsibility” viewpoint that perpetuates the narrative that if folks in America just work hard enough then they will have a good life. By this time I had joined a small group and I would express my discomfort over Zoom on Sunday evenings. Once I emailed the pastor directly. As we unpacked the details of his sermons, I commented in my group that regardless of whether I agreed with everything or not, he certainly did take a comprehensive approach.
“It’s not surprising,” the small group leader said, “given his approach to other difficult topics in the past.” I was curious, so I started digging.
It turned out that at his former church on the other side of the country in 2015, during the same week the nation made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states with the Marriage Equality Act, this pastor was preaching a sermon series called, “The Church and Homosexuality.” Afraid that I would be compelled to email the pastor with many thoughts and questions, I lined up my dad to watch the series with me, but I also read Matthew Vines’ book, “God and the Gay Christian” to get the affirming perspective. As the pastor unpacked every passage in the Bible that talks about homosexuality, I was able to see the alternative interpretation presented in Vines’ book. In the end, the series presented a non-affirming stance that said LGBTQ+ folks were welcome to be in the church, but the only way to live out God’s calling in their lives would be to remain celibate or try to be in a heterosexual relationship. Throughout the series were interviews with a gay man in their congregation that maintained the celibate path and he talked about how lucky he felt that other families in the church invited him over for game nights and dinners so he wouldn’t have a lifetime of loneliness. When I discussed the series with my parents, they both said they would recommend it to anyone exploring the issue.
“Except my gay friends,” I replied. The pastor had explicitly taught that Christians should not attend same-gender weddings, even for family members, to avoid giving the impression that they approved of the union. I couldn’t help but wonder how many Christians had listened to these sermons and took a solid, harmful stance against the weddings of their loved ones. I felt like this was just purity culture rebranded and targeting LGBTQ+ Christians. Ultimately, this exploration began my faith deconstruction. I knew I would rather choose to love others than hold fast to an interpretation of the Bible that taught that a person’s true identity was inherently sinful.
Again, I wish I could say that the clarity pulled me away, but I stayed at my church. I had community. We were having conversations about race and justice. I hadn’t gone to seminary so not letting women preach wasn’t holding me back from anything. I knew it wouldn’t be a safe recommendation for my LGBTQ+ friends but unsurprisingly, I didn’t have many LGBTQ+ friends at the time. Since I didn’t have anywhere else to land and I was feeling generally accepted and comfortable, I stayed. As I write these words I acknowledge how wrong it was to prioritize my personal comfort over advocating for those that are excluded, unseen, and often harmed by these messages in church. I speak up something fierce now, but that doesn’t change the fact that I spent years feeling just comfortable enough to stay blinded to the hurt around me.
How did I finally decide to leave my church?
After the insurrection at the capitol, I wrote a blog post called Deal Breakers and discussed my own personal deal breakers and questions I had about what that meant for where I worked and where I went to church. I published the post on a Saturday night, and early the next morning I had a message from a friend. She mentioned that she attended a church where the folks in the community had the same deal breakers as mine. They were egalitarian, had an open and affirming stance toward the LGBTQ+ community, a heart for justice, and many had gone through faith deconstruction. She gave me the link and said I was welcome to check it out.
I watched both church services that morning, the old one and the recommended one. The church I had been attending for almost 10 months preached a sermon on habits. It had likely been pre-recorded and included a discussion on how to increase the good habits and decrease the bad ones. I wrote down the title of the book they recommended and flipped to the progressive church. The platform was Facebook Live and was nowhere near as digitally edited as the first, but they opened with two questions. “How were you feeling on Wednesday watching the events at the capitol? How are you feeling today?” In an instant, I knew I had found my place.
Within two weeks I joined a group with the new church reading through the book, “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson. I suddenly knew what it meant to be part of a community that actively worked to elevate the voices of the unheard, love others because of (not despite) who they are, and create a system of shared leadership that doesn’t give too much power to one person or even one small team of people. I acknowledge, based on the feedback I got from my original tweet, that this kind of community doesn’t exist everywhere. But I am hopeful that as more people listen to the discomfort, articulate their own deal breakers, and stand up to fight against manipulative biblical interpretations, these communities will become more common.
I purposefully did not name my old church or pastor in this post because the church I attended could have been a number of evangelical churches across the country. Complementarianism and the non-affirming stance toward the LGBTQ+ community are the norm in evangelical spaces. I also want to reiterate that working hard to be an ally now does not erase the fact that it took too damn long for me to stand up for others. I was wrong, and as I learn and grow I hope to do better.
