Copyright 1992 by Robert Williams
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group.
CROWN is a trademark of Crown Publishers, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Williams, Robert, 1955 July 21
Just as I am : a practical guide to being out, proud, and Christian / by Robert Williams.1st ed.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. GaysReligious life. 2. SexReligious aspectsChristianity. 3. Williams, Robert, 1955 July 21 I. Title.
BV4596.G38W55 1992
208.664dc20
91-39920
eISBN: 978-0-307-81875-1
v3.1
To the members of ACT UP and Queer Nation, whose courage and relentless passion for justice lead them, it seems to me, to follow closely in the footsteps of Jesus the Christ.
C ONTENTS
Who Says?
Sources of the Truth
The Starting Point
Trusting Your Inner Voice
The Bad News
The Good News
The Authority of Community
I Believe:
Basic Christian Doctrines
Healing Our Images
The Divine Feminine
Our Elder Brother
Incarnation and Sacrament
Celebrating Gods Gifts
Queer Ethics, Sin, Evil, and Reconciliation
Finding God in Gay Experience:
The Vocation of Queer Christians
Responding to Gods Call
Claiming Gay Pride
Eros as Vocation
The Vocation of Commitment
Protest as Vocation
The Vocation of Being Queer
The Resurrection of the Body:
Life, Death, and Healing
Addiction and Recovery
AIDS and Christian Healing
Death and Afterlife
:
Taking Stock
I NTRODUCTION
My Own Journey
Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou biddst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come; I come!
I had sung the song dozens, perhaps hundreds of times, for it was used at least once a month as the final hymn, the Hymn of Invitation, and I had been regularly attending church for all of my eleven years. But suddenly, that Thursday night, Junior Night of the week-long revival at Pioneer Drive Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas, the words of the hymn came alive. They were sung for me. Jesus was calling me. I had a mental image of being out in a field, hearing God call to me from far away, and I was rushing toward the voice, crossing barbed-wire fences to get there. There was a compelling urgency to this visionI wanted to gobut at the same time, there was a slight sense of dread. I felt that the call I was attempting to answer was also a call away from something.
Feeling almost as if I were pulled by an unseen hand, I stepped into the aisle. Halfway down, Brother Jack met me, shook my hand, then put his arm around my shoulder and guided me in praying that Jesus would come into my heart at that moment. A few minutes later, he presented me to the congregation as having just accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. He called my mother, who was in the congregation, to come and stand with me at the front of the church, as people filed by to shake my hand or hug me. At about the third such greeting, without fully understanding why, I broke into tears and sobbed throughout the rest of the process. Mostly, I felt happy, loved, and supported, but that vague sense of dread lingered. What have I gotten myself into?
From that moment, Jesus the Christ has been the primary passion of my life. I have continued to follow him, through dozens of different churches in at least four denominations, through New Age study groups and gay religious caucuses, through the most Byzantine expressions of anglo-catholic worship and piety, to the enthusiasm of the charismatic renewal movement, to the most politically radical expressions of faith. My religion has taken on many forms, but the goal of seeking and serving Christ has never changed.
By the time I was in high school, the fervor of my devotion to religion had begun to frighten my parents and irritate my teachers. The summer before my senior year, at another church service that ended with the singing of Just As I Am, I again walked down the aisle to make public the fact that I felt God was calling me to full-time Christian service. I attended a Southern Baptist college and intended to enroll in a Southern Baptist seminary. But I couldnt. I just couldnt imagine myself in the role of a Fundamentalist minister. I began to feel that my religion and my intellectual development were on a collision course, that I was being forced to choose between them.
I decided to resolve the conflict by searching for a church that encouraged, rather than denigrated, intellectual exploration. Jeanette Gift-George, the Christian actor and dramatist who was a mentor to me at the time, once told me, You are a very angry young man. I think youd be a much more loving person if you were, say, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian. I tried being a Presbyterian first. Over twenty years of fierce indoctrination that equated anything remotely catholic or ceremonial with the satanic had made me literally afraid of the Episcopal Church. Still, I had always been a closet catholic. As a child I was fascinated with the images of catholicism I saw on television and used to play at such pious actions as making the sign of the cross. I found the Presbyterian church offered only half of what I was looking for. It certainly did value intelligence, but in the long run, the worship service was too similar to what I was leaving behind. It was still too protestant.
Finally, I got up the courage to visit an Episcopal church. I felt compelled to whisper to the usher who handed me a bulletin, Ive never been in an Episcopal church before. I dont know what to do. He told me to just do what everyone else did. On the one hand, I felt lost. I felt like a fool because I didnt know when to sit, kneel, or stand, and I had no idea what the other manual actions were about (though I found them fascinating). At the same time, I had an overwhelming feeling that I had come home. I thought to myself, This is where I belong. This is where I was born to be.
A psychic once told me I had a guardian angel who had been with me since I was twenty-three years old. God knows I needed an angel that year! Within a space of a few weeks, I moved from my small hometown to a major city, acquired my first apartment alone, started a new career, left the Baptist Church to become an Episcopalian, and came out. When I visited my first gay bar, I felt exactly the same as when I had visited the Episcopal church: On the one hand, I was afraid, unsure of myself, lost; but on the other, I knew, This is where I belong.
On my second or third visit to a gay bar, I ran into the priest of my newfound Episcopal church. Sensing this was all new to me, he said, If you need to talk, give me a call. A few days later, I had an attack of guilt and self-loathing, culminating in my burning about $75 worth of gay pornography. I called my priest and told him I did need to talk. He spent an entire day with me, loading me down with books to read, and walking me through a crash course on what I now call The Bible and Homosexuality 101. It took a while for my heart to catch up, but at least on an intellectual level, all my negative religious upbringing was set aside in one sweep. Not only did I no longer feel a conflict between my sexuality and my spirituality, they were now inextricably intertwined.
