Katie Hays - Family of Origin, Family of Choice: Stories of Queer Christians

These narratives speak boldly and carefully about the courage queer folks and their families embody as they discern their way through disclosures and invitations to enter closets and as they invite others to get to know them anew. These relationships are ever-changing and significant as families of origin and choice recognize their beloveds, wrestle with the meaning of their lives together, and become open to transformation. The writers beautifully speak to the pains and the celebrations of queer people whose resilient spirits have much to offer to communities and the world.

JORETTA L. MARSHALL

professor of pastoral theology and care at Brite Divinity School

Hays and Chiasson have assembled a fascinating and forceful collection of stories from LGBTQ+ Christians about their experiences with kinship and condemnation, love and loss, reconciliation and resilience, and coming outand coming to terms with ones queer self. An engaging, well-theorized, and well-researched text that calls cis-het Christians to lean in, listen, and believe; a text that will make a marked contribution toward repairing the harms that Christian families, faiths, and fellowships have inflicted (and still inflict) on LGBTQ+ persons.

TONY E. ADAMS

chair and professor of communication at Bradley University and author of Narrating the Closet

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

www.eerdmans.com

2021 Katie Hays and Susan A. Chiasson

All rights reserved

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-0-8028-7857-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hays, Katie, 1969 author. | Chiasson, Susan A., 1954 author.

Title: Family of origin, family of choice : stories of queer Christians / Katie Hays and Susan A. Chiasson.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021. | Summary: A collection of first-person narratives from LGBTQ+ Christians about navigating their family relationships after coming outProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020049006 | ISBN 9780802878571

Subjects: LCSH: Sexual minoritiesReligious life. | Sexual minoritiesBiography. | Sexual minoritiesFamily relationships.

Classification: LCC BV4596.G38 H39 2021 | DDC 248.8086/6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049006

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Once, I directed a national church-planting ministry and also preached in several of Americas largest churches. But when I came out as transgender, I lost every single one of my jobs and most of my friends. Overnight I had become a pariah, a supposed danger to the church and her purposes. I was devastated. I had been with the ministry for thirty-five years. I never had a bad job review, and the growth we experienced was steady and strong. Yet I was gone within seven short days after coming out, ostracized from the denomination my family has been a part of for generations, stripped of my pension, and left without a church home, the place I served as a teaching pastor. It was the darkest chapter of my own complicated narrative.

In the evolution of our species, what brought humans together beyond the level of blood kin was not the need for safety but the need for meaning. Why are we on this earth and for what purpose? That is why we told stories around the campfire. We were driven by our collective desire to craft a compelling story. Our need for story is biological. We do not sleep without dreaming, and most people do not dream in mathematical equations; we dream in stories. In my work as a pastoral counselor, I often see a breakthrough arrive hidden within the narrative of a clients dream. A good story invites us to do the work of showing up. It bids us to create our own narrative instead of numbingly accepting the stories our culture prepackages for us.

All three Abrahamic religionsJudaism, Islam, and Christianityare desert religions and as such were initially religions of scarcity. There was not an abundance of resources in the desert, so every community had to take care of its own. In their fundamentalist forms, all three religions remain religions of scarcity, believing a common enemy is necessary for the community to survive. Where no enemy exists, they create one. One of the enemies created by fundamentalist Christianity is the LGBTQ population. Though 48 percent of us identify as Christian, two-thirds of us are no longer welcome in our communities of faith.

Fortunately, I found a church in Denver that nurtured me back to health, and I now serve as one of the co-pastors at a sister church they helped start, Left Hand Church in Boulder County, Colorado. Thanks to a few well-received TED talks, I am also a frequent speaker on gender equity. Whether I am speaking in London or Louisville, I end all of my talks by saying, The call toward authenticity is sacred, and holy, and for the greater good. Living authentically is not easy. Families are thrown into turmoil. Friendships are ripped apart. It takes courage to journey authentically. But it is worth it, because the authentic journey is sacred, and holy, and for the greater good.

Toward the end of my first TED talk, I told the story of my ninety-three-year-old father, an evangelical minister who struggled with my transition before graciously choosing to honor the journey of his child. Dad passed away recently, but our last few years together brought healing and reconciliation. What I did not mention in that first talk was that my mother never did accept me as Paula. She saw me twice after my transition but withheld any affirmation of my identity. As is so often the case when an LGBTQ person comes out in a nonaffirming family, there was no unqualified happy ending. My father accepted me; my mother did not. How does a family recover from that kind of trauma?

In Family of Origin, Family of Choice: Stories of Queer Christians, Katie Hays and Susan Chiasson have brought fifteen touching narratives to the pages of a vibrant and hopeful book. Fifteen generous souls from Galileo Church were interviewed by Susan and Katie and graciously allowed their stories to be told. These are stories of struggle and reconciliation, despair and hope, sorrow and joy. They are complex stories that emphasize the dignity of each person involved. There are no bad guys on these pages, only humans trying to make their way through difficult circumstances. When a family member comes out as LGBTQ, superficial family relationships rarely survive. Only those families willing to go through the chaos and emptiness of the dark night find their way to the new dawn. Some of the stories do not end as you might hope, but all of them are redemptive. Katies and Susans comments provide a clear path for families to embrace their loved ones who have risked everything to live authentically.

In the epic Greek poem The Odyssey, the journey of Odysseus was not finished when he returned to Ithaca. He accepted another journey, this time inland. He traveled until he came to a place in which people did not know an oar when they saw one. There he planted the oar he carried with him, an offering to the god Poseidon. Only then did Odysseus get to return home and live into sleek old age. Like Odysseus, we are all on a journey, maybe our first, maybe our last, but all into the unknown, undertaken when it would have been easier to sit on the couch binge-watching someone elses journey. But this living is serious business, and we are all pilgrims, called onto the road less traveled. And for all the uncertainty, we can know two things: The world can change for the better, but someone has to pay the price.