ZJ's Narrative - Agender Protestant
So now...my personal story.
My religious journey begins as a Lutheran one. I was raised in the ELCA, the liberal body of the Lutheran church. In 2009, the ELCA made it allowable for people in same-sex relationships to be ordained as pastors.This is relevant because of how the denomination is seen to outsiders - it is seen as inclusive. And in some ways, it is.
Growing up ELCA gave me many amazing things - connections to multi-generational mentors, an understanding of my Scandinavian cultural heritage, and a community of young people interested in how the world works and came to be. I care about those questions, and as an adolescent often felt lonely while asking them. In my late teens, I was so engaged in this community that I was considering pastorship myself. I now wonder how that would have gone for me, considering.
Considering I am polyamorous, and I have heard stories of ELCA pastors being expelled for polyamorous relationships. They ordain folks in "lifelong, committed, monogamous relationships".
Considering the ELCA requires it's pastors to be married if they are cohabitating, and I now understand marriage has unjust roots.
Considering their are some differences in rules for "same-sex" and "opposite sex" oriented clergy. My intimate relationship cannot be defined by those categories - I am agender, my partner is transmasculine and genderqueer.
Considering I no longer believe that Jesus is savior of the world.
The way that last one happened is interesting. It actually happened 2 months before I came out as queer (I am still not out, in many concrete ways, as agender). It was the summer of 2015. Marriage equality had just passed in the US, and I had just completed a year on the leadership team of an evangelical organization.
I chose to spend time in evangelicalism because it excited me. Lutheranism is quite intellectual - it does not assume that the world is radically different than it appears, or that miracles are about to happen. Evangelicalism...well who knows? Maybe the sun won't rise tomorrow. We have to be vigilant in saving souls.
Exciting, yes. And flawed. Imperialistic.
In the summer of 2015, I was living in Ghana, among other evangelical Christians. The talk about US marriage equality, conflated with the LGBT community, was often paired with talk about demons, and rapture.
I would not have told you then, that I was queer. But somewhere inside I knew I was.
When my colleague said: "This American law is God bringing the end times," I knew then that his god was not mine.
Though I knew Lutheranism and Evangelicalism to be different, I considered their god, the Christian God, the same. And if He was not mine, who was?
I lost the idea I had built my life on that day. And though I would continue, in the following years, to grapple with the idea of Christianity's "God", it never sat well with me again.
Losing God was not a a sad moment. It was weird and beautiful and quite unexpected. When I read my journal from that day, I see that losing God was a physical feeling. Whatever entity I understood to be God whooshed out of me with my friend's words. I felt it.
Losing God was a spiritual moment.
When you lose the thing that ties together your worldview, you have the freedom to create your own worldview. That is what I have done and am doing. It is an innately spiritual process for me.
The process of leaving my Lutheran traditions was messier. Because Lutheranism had given me community in addition to my worldview, and they expressed themselves as LGBT inclusive. So I read queer theology and worked at a Lutheran camp. I tried to see if it was still for me, and I said goodbye slowly when I saw it wasn't.
Because when I lost God, other criticisms starting working their way into my life. How could a man, Jesus, understand my experiences as an agender person? Mainline Protestants say God has no gender, and yet continue using "He". Christian missionaries had stamped out a myriad of diverse spiritual practices worldwide, including in my second home of Ghana, and even liberal traditions seemed quite unapologetic about this.
So I left. Slowly. And along the way, became engaged with goddess spirituality, astrology, and Quakerism.
My religious journey begins as a Lutheran one. I was raised in the ELCA, the liberal body of the Lutheran church. In 2009, the ELCA made it allowable for people in same-sex relationships to be ordained as pastors.This is relevant because of how the denomination is seen to outsiders - it is seen as inclusive. And in some ways, it is.
Growing up ELCA gave me many amazing things - connections to multi-generational mentors, an understanding of my Scandinavian cultural heritage, and a community of young people interested in how the world works and came to be. I care about those questions, and as an adolescent often felt lonely while asking them. In my late teens, I was so engaged in this community that I was considering pastorship myself. I now wonder how that would have gone for me, considering.
Considering I am polyamorous, and I have heard stories of ELCA pastors being expelled for polyamorous relationships. They ordain folks in "lifelong, committed, monogamous relationships".
Considering the ELCA requires it's pastors to be married if they are cohabitating, and I now understand marriage has unjust roots.
Considering their are some differences in rules for "same-sex" and "opposite sex" oriented clergy. My intimate relationship cannot be defined by those categories - I am agender, my partner is transmasculine and genderqueer.
Considering I no longer believe that Jesus is savior of the world.
The way that last one happened is interesting. It actually happened 2 months before I came out as queer (I am still not out, in many concrete ways, as agender). It was the summer of 2015. Marriage equality had just passed in the US, and I had just completed a year on the leadership team of an evangelical organization.
I chose to spend time in evangelicalism because it excited me. Lutheranism is quite intellectual - it does not assume that the world is radically different than it appears, or that miracles are about to happen. Evangelicalism...well who knows? Maybe the sun won't rise tomorrow. We have to be vigilant in saving souls.
Exciting, yes. And flawed. Imperialistic.
In the summer of 2015, I was living in Ghana, among other evangelical Christians. The talk about US marriage equality, conflated with the LGBT community, was often paired with talk about demons, and rapture.
I would not have told you then, that I was queer. But somewhere inside I knew I was.
When my colleague said: "This American law is God bringing the end times," I knew then that his god was not mine.
Though I knew Lutheranism and Evangelicalism to be different, I considered their god, the Christian God, the same. And if He was not mine, who was?
I lost the idea I had built my life on that day. And though I would continue, in the following years, to grapple with the idea of Christianity's "God", it never sat well with me again.
Losing God was not a a sad moment. It was weird and beautiful and quite unexpected. When I read my journal from that day, I see that losing God was a physical feeling. Whatever entity I understood to be God whooshed out of me with my friend's words. I felt it.
Losing God was a spiritual moment.
When you lose the thing that ties together your worldview, you have the freedom to create your own worldview. That is what I have done and am doing. It is an innately spiritual process for me.
The process of leaving my Lutheran traditions was messier. Because Lutheranism had given me community in addition to my worldview, and they expressed themselves as LGBT inclusive. So I read queer theology and worked at a Lutheran camp. I tried to see if it was still for me, and I said goodbye slowly when I saw it wasn't.
Because when I lost God, other criticisms starting working their way into my life. How could a man, Jesus, understand my experiences as an agender person? Mainline Protestants say God has no gender, and yet continue using "He". Christian missionaries had stamped out a myriad of diverse spiritual practices worldwide, including in my second home of Ghana, and even liberal traditions seemed quite unapologetic about this.
So I left. Slowly. And along the way, became engaged with goddess spirituality, astrology, and Quakerism.
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