The Mennonite Story

I've just returned from attending the Montreat College Conference, which was themed "God without Borders." At this conference, I went to an afternoon workshop called Storytelling. In this workshop, we talked about affective ways to tell stories, particularly about our interfaith experiences in order to promote more interfaith communication and cooperation. It was led by a man who works with the InterFaith Youth Core (IFYC), an organization that seeks to empower young people of different religious traditions to work together to serve others. Towards the end of the workshop, our leader asked us to tell an interfaith story aimed at a particular audience. For the final story, he asked for a volunteer to tell a story as if speaking to their college president, asking for funding for an interfaith council on their college campus. It was silent for an awkward minute, and before I knew it, I was sitting in front of the workshop about to tell my story. This story is one that I had told to many individuals and peers before. I've told it in abridged and extended versions. I've told it in it's entirety and in bits and pieces. But I had never told it before an audience. This is that story.

I was raised in the Presbyterian Church and have always been what I suppose you would call a typical, or maybe stereotypical, Presbyterian. I was an active leader in my church's youth group. I was a member of a Presbytery Youth Council. I was a small group leader at a middle school conference three years in a row during high school. I was an officer of the Presbyterian Student Association at Presbyterian College. I think you might be getting the picture, but to put the icing on the cake, I was a camp counselor at Montreat, a Presbyterian Mecca filled with energetic, God-loving youth and adults alike running around talking about our Presbyterian ways. Because of this, last summer I decided to try something different, something new, something challenging. Through the Presbyterian Church, surprisingly enough, I found out about a Mennonite organization called Sharing With Appalachian People (SWAP). It is a home-repair service organization with locations throughout the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia. I would be working in Wild and Wonderful West Virginia as a construction site coordinator for the groups of volunteers that came in each week. I was excited to be doing service, to be living in a new place, and to be learning more about the Mennonite Church, a religious tradition I knew very little about.

At the beginning of the summer, I had been out as a lesbian for almost two years. So I had a very pressing question on my mind: What do the Mennonites believe about homosexuality? I was very curious to find out, but I also deeply feared the answer. During our orientation week, while driving in a van with most of my coworkers and my two adult supervisors, I openly asked that question that had been on my mind for months previous to that moment. I was told, immediately, the exact answer that I so deeply feared: Homosexuality is a sin. God intended for marriage to be between a man and a woman. Clinging on to hope that that was the belief of their church, and not of these individuals, I asked if they agreed with the church's beliefs about homosexuality. One of my supervisors sternly repeated herself: Homosexuality is a sin. God intended for marriage to be between a man and a woman. One of my coworkers even took a solid amount of time to explain how God could and would never love a gay person. I conversed with them for a few minutes, even citing scriptures, to defend the other side of their argument. I quickly realized that it was an argument I was not going to be able to win in that moment. Not to mention that I was growing more and more angry and was bound to say something I regretted. So, at that moment, I took a giant step back into closet. I never brought the subject up again until I decided to come out to one of my coworkers who I had grown close to. I felt he would be understanding, compassionate, and trustworthy. And I was right and am very grateful for that.

But as the days went on, things got harder and harder for me. I was ashamed. I was angry. I was lying to my coworkers, my bosses, and to myself. I was uncomfortable. And I grew more and more depressed. And I feared my neighbors. I was terrified they would judge me, hate me, and try to "fix" me, or at least fire me. This got worse as I learned that my Mennonite supervisors, due to the nature of Elkhorn, WV were also Pentecostal. Every Friday evening, we would hear a message from a local Pentecostal preacher. Messages that were very different than any I had heard before. Messages that were difficult for me to accept. Messages that made me more afraid and more uncomfortable. Eventually, I reached a point were I could no longer live or work in that setting and that community. One of my supervisors had a metaphor he used often: SWAP is like a train, and it's coming fast. You can either get on, and have the ride of your life, or you can get run over. So, one evening, I sat down with him and told him I was getting run over and I needed to return home the upcoming weekend. I gave him some other reasons as to why my time with SWAP had come to an end, and he compassionately said they would see me off on Saturday. I was ready to be returning to places where I knew I would be welcomed no matter my sexual orientation, some places welcomed because of my sexual orientation. But I still couldn't leave without coming out and sharing why our God loves all people of all orientations. Hopeful to change the way my coworkers thought about homosexuality, or to at least get their wheels turning a little differently, I made a plan.

After the group of volunteers left on Saturday morning, I informed my colleagues I would be leaving that day and returning home. I then asked them to join me in watching For The Bible Tells Me So, a documentary film that follows the stories of multiple families of various Christian denominations and their experiences with homosexuality in the church, and how these families were or were not able to overcome the hatred and pain that occurs within the church when homosexual people are persecuted. It also reveals how the Bible doesn't actually say anything about homosexuality being a sin. I didn't tell them anything about this movie before I played it, though I gathered one girl knew the general gist of the film as she told me, "Oh, they played this movie at my school. I didn't go." I replied, "Well, I suppose now you have to see it, don't you?" and pushed play. After it had ended, I stood up, in tears of course, and said to the group, "I'm not sure if you've figured this out or not, but I'm gay. And believe it or not, I'm also still a Christian." The two girls sitting directly in front of where I stood, one of whom was the same that missed her first opportunity to see the film, quickly dropped their jaws to the floor in shock. I know I hadn't come out to them, and I suppose it's a good thing they didn't make any assumptions, but I really thought the cargo shorts and all the flannel would have tipped at least a couple people off. One of my supervisors explained how when I had brought up the subject earlier in the summer, he and his wife had determined that I was gay, and decided to do their best to work with me anyway. After all, we're all sinners...I tried to explain that, in fact, me living as the person who God created me to be is not a sin, but his opinion was not going to change. I don't care much for the "Hate the sin, not the sinner" sentiment, but I suppose it's a start. We continued to have some interfaith dialogue, and the coworker who had originally explained God's lack of love for homosexuals, surprisingly explained, "If you condemn someone to hell because of who they love, and then call yourself a Christian, you're lying because you clearly don't have Christ in your heart." I was shockingly pleased, touched, and grateful to hear her make this statement. And I was honestly quite proud. She'd made a complete 180 degree turn by seeing For The Bible Tells Me So and I was the one who had showed it to her. My other, younger, Mennonite coworkers began to come around in their own special ways, saying things like "It's totally ok that you're gay. I knew some gay kids at my high school and they were cool. You're totally cool even though you're gay." I think it will be a while, due to their limited exposure to much of the real world, to really get the full picture, but some positive steps were made. My other supervisor even privately came to me and apologized for anything she may have said that made me feel judged, hated, or condemned. I simply said, "It's ok. You've been thinking that way a long time. I know I alone can't change you're beliefs, but I'm trying to." We then went out for a goodbye lunch at one of those Golden Corral type places before I hit the road for, you guessed it, my Presbyterian Mecca full of liberals and fellow homosexuals: Montreat.

While I was working with SWAP, I found it so difficult and impossible to live in that community. But now, looking back, I see how, on that last day, when we truly began an important interfaith dialogue, I could have more easily coexisted and we could have lived in a more positive interfaith community if I had only come out sooner. However, I sure was glad to get back to my people and be the Lesbyterian that I'm proud to be.