I’m a passive person. I don’t want this to be my dominating trait or identity, like introvert or gay or melancholic, all of which are also true of me. But if I must check one bubble between active or passive, I am passive. More often than not, I let life happen to me rather than make life happen. There are exceptions to this, of course: packing up my Mitsubishi Galant to hit the road for nine months comes to mind.
Being “active” in life need not always equate to flashy and crazy, but passivity is generally my tenor. I consider myself an adaptable person who finds a way to handle what’s thrown at him, a valuable skill to master, to be sure, but I’ve grown self-aware of my need to make life happen more often. My introversion is a great example of this, as I must force myself into interactions with people lest I naturally remain isolated.
A storyteller I follow refers to his growth in the numerical unit of past iterations of himself. “That was eight Robs ago,” he’d say of himself, back when he used to believe one thing or behave a totally different way. I’ve started viewing my own growth in this vein, thinking about all the Toms that have existed in this singular Tom, particularly with regard to this active-passive dynamic.
My passivity has run especially true in matters of relational conflict. Given the option to fight a conflict or flight a conflict (please excuse my incorrect usage of a noun as a verb in the name of symmetry), I will flight nine times out of ten.
Ah, but then there’s always that one instance . . .
I recently attended a men’s conference at a church separate from mine here in Asheville. I wasn’t particularly inspired by the event’s website, one of those stereotypical evangelical men’s conferences titled with bold, capitalized font and loud colors, a single paragraph description for “men” which, if you read between the lines, felt more like a conference for straight and married men.
I didn’t think anything offered at this “men’s” conference would be for me as a non-straight, non-married man; as such, I didn’t want to go.
But, I reconciled, I’d be going with a couple friends, and it was only a 4-hour commitment, not too far from my home, and if nothing else wouldn’t it be active and outgoing of me to step out of isolation for an afternoon?
It’s not like this melancholic gay introvert’s social calendar is ever bustling.
So, I went. And the conference started out okay. Nothing great, but nothing awful. It was lovely just to sit between two new friends while the first speaker delivered his big masculine hoorah. I’ve gotten to know and love and appreciate these guys over the last year, and my life wouldn’t be the same without them in this city.
After that first speaker, though, the conference took a hard turn. Midway through his message, the second speaker started espousing some pandemic conspiracy theory as gospel, as if we were all blind if we didn’t also believe it, and I’m still unsure what relevance (let alone appropriateness) that held to being a man of God. What, real men of God don’t trust their government or facts?
Maybe the host church didn’t know this guest speaker would say something so ridiculous? At least, that’s how I rationalized the idiocy I’d just heard.
After this guy spoke, though, the emcee of the event — the pastor of the host church — double-downed on the speaker’s claims. Rather than refute nonsense, he reaffirmed it. He actually took it further, blaming our government for mask mandates and social distancing and the like.
My entire body clenched. I couldn’t believe such overt politics and conspiracy-speak being preached at us from multiple men on a church stage — one of them a pastor. That their comments were of the extreme conservative bent made no difference; I’d have also felt uncomfortable with liberal politics being preached in a church building. I will admit, though, feeling particularly triggered in this idolatrous, cultish conservative age of Trump.
As we broke for lunch, I could have brought up my discomfort with my two friends on either side of me. I had plenty of opportunity. But also . . . passivity.
I remained quiet, reconciling to myself that surely nothing else nonsensical or offensive would be said. I went outside with my friends to enjoy a catered lunch from my favorite BBQ restaurant in town, assuming the worst was behind me.
Foreshadowing enough?
Later in the conference, the host pastor introduced a panel segment with the day’s three speakers, including that pandemic conspiracy dude, inviting the audience to ask them whatever difficult questions we could muster. Among several potential topics he rattled off, he invited us to inquire about the rise of gay identification in our nation’s youth.
My body once again clenched, my gut churning, this pastor’s prompt dripping with contempt for this rise, contempt for LGBT+ people. As if this were a problem to be fixed? As if more young people coming to grips with their sexuality were a bad thing? As if a 16-year old’s feeling far safer coming out in 2024, versus 1924, or even 1994, were so repulsive?
Thankfully, nobody in the audience did ask about this topic. I can only imagine the summersaults and nosedives my insides would have done. But this pastor would also make an utter doozy of an anti-LGBT+ comment to close the conference, which I’ll get to momentarily.
Comment after out-of-bounds comment, immersed in a crowd of a hundred of the straightest-of-straight Christian men, I felt pushed to the brink, no longer expecting to “get anything” out of this conference. This was sheer survival mode now, taking me back to teenage isolation and bully-evasion, staring at the clock with only a longing to go home.
I hadn’t felt that out of place in a church building since those middle and high school years. It’s a blessing beyond words to have found such a solid church home here in Asheville, but also in my previous church homes in Charlotte and Southern California. Whichever church I’ve joined from my mid-20s to my mid-30s, I haven’t just had to survive as some dimensionless heterosexual façade of myself.
I’ve actually been able to thrive in these three churches as the real me. The real introverted me who doesn’t fit neatly into an extroverted church culture, who needs structured times to connect as well as times away to recharge. The real melancholic me who needs to feel what many often ignore, who needs others to feel the brokenness with me.
The real me, a man attracted only to men, who needs his church not to tell me to stay quiet about my sexuality, not to turn me away, but let me in — all the way in with them.
I left that men’s conference with renewed appreciation that my sexuality hasn’t just been tolerated at these three churches from California to Carolina, but welcomed. And yes, there is a supreme difference.
I’m convinced more than ever that God has led me to each church, along with the circles of people within each church, through my adult journey. The gratitude is more tangible than ever.
But back to how this conference ended . . .
After four hours of unchecked politics and conspiracies, along with homophobic sentiments, I just wanted to leave and do my best to forget all about this awful event I never even should have signed up for. I started to see the light as the worship team assembled for some final songs, including an altar call for men to step down and receive prayer.
And then, in his closing prayer, the host pastor cried out to God that “we have a man wearing a dress in our nation’s health department,” referring to an openly transgender official currently serving in our government.
This bully pastor’s prayer set me off like nothing else I’d heard that day, like nothing I’ve heard in a church in 36 years.
A transgender person in our government is the epitome of our nation’s woes? The fiercest threat to masculinity? Are you the kind of man I’m supposed to be?
Are you fucking serious?
Notwithstanding yet another brazen political overstep, Bully Pastor’s words were utterly devoid of any shred of humanity. The person he cried out against may have just as well been a mutant, a monster — not a fellow human created in the image of God, His most prized creation.
I struggled to believe all of this was even real. Surely I was having the funkiest dream, struggling to awaken from an unwakeable sleep. Did an actual pastor of an actual church really say such a horrid thing for a hundred people to hear?
I opened my eyes for the rest of his closing prayer, blinking quite a few times. The more I understood his words, the more I considered the ramifications, the angrier I got in my seat.
What if that invoked official were in the room? Or a loved one of hers were present? Would any of those people be drawn nearer to Jesus in that prayer or hell no?
Or how about this actual possibility: what if someone in that sanctuary, a room that included teenagers, definitively experienced gender dysphoria, or simply didn’t know what they were feeling in this dissonance with their sex and gender? How else would anyone struggling with their gender identity interpret such a pastor’s prayer of disgust for a trans person in our government but that they are also the epitome of all that’s wrong with America? Simply for existing and struggling and not fitting into his straight, macho-man mold?
Did the Gospel advance in that closing prayer and in that entire conference? Or did someone — multiple someones — leave the church that afternoon feeling worse than they felt that morning, worse perhaps than they’ve ever felt about their body and the state of their soul, their very relationship with God?
Did Jesus or shame win the day?
As someone with a G to offer my LGBT+ siblings, I can say that if I were 16 in the room, or even 26, shame would have handily defeated me. It nearly won over me at 36.
Nearly.
After the conference I did indeed race home, leaving my friends, sick to my stomach. My passivity beckoned me to “forget about it” and move on with my life; pretend it didn’t happen, and never go back to that church again.
Two or three Toms ago, I’m convinced this is exactly what I would have done.
But not this Tom.
I spent the next few days in literal stomach-churning debate about what to do. I embarked on a solo hike for three hours, following a solitude assignment for one of my men’s groups. The assignment encouraged me to ask God to “search my heart,” according to the psalmist, listening for His voice with every step. And then after this searching, the naming — what does God see in me?
I teared up on that hike as three words emerged:
Empathy.
Boldness.
Justice.
I care deeply about my fellow man, particularly my fellow sexual minorities.
I will tell my story, both for myself and for those not ready or not safe to tell theirs.
And I will call for accountability and integrity in ministry where neither is intact.
I left that hike convinced of what I needed to do. The action I needed to take.
While at that men’s conference, I failed to stand up to this bully pastor. Part of me regrets not finding him after the conference, or even storming the stage or shouting at him mid-prayer.
I was angry, but I was also scared. Terrified, actually. He was so much bigger than me, both physically and emotionally. How could I possibly speak confidently or coherently to his face? Was going home to write him something the cowardly or ultimately wiser move?
A friend recently affirmed my levelheadedness, for showing restraint at the conference and granting myself time to collect all my thoughts. I appreciated his affirmation, also thinking there’s probably an uncomfortable middle ground in there somewhere — some form of “reactionary restraint.”
What would this bully pastor have had to say, how far would he have had to push the line of ignorance and bigotry, before I could no longer stay silent in my seat? Surely, there’s a line.
Nevertheless, collect my thoughts I did for the whole next week.
I spent that week writing this pastor with, I hope, a proper balance of direct criticism with open invitation. I shared some of my story and offered my perspective as a sexual minority in the room, and I also called him out on the multiple inappropriate, if not awful things he said that day. Things that sounded nothing like the Jesus I follow.
Beyond the harrowing reality of what this pastor said that day, the perhaps scarier realization is the permission he gave a hundred people in the room — a hundred Christian men — to deride and shame queer people in the name of Jesus. After all, if a pastor can say what he said on a church stage, isn’t every believer allowed to name-call their leaders, their neighbors, their children’s classmates, or even their own children?
I cannot even imagine what a father with a gay or trans child will do next after that conference. Or if a father from that conference will one day have a gay or trans child, how will he react to their coming out based on this pastor’s words? It’s a horrifying thought.
I sent this bully pastor my honest feedback on his men’s conference, and while I’ve yet to receive a response, an uncertainty lingering in the air, I also feel greater peace and resolve for this life I’m living, including a budding confidence in who I am. Those first couple days after the conference, I regretted going. I regretted not trusting my intuition about the event.
But now I’m grateful to have attended, to have experienced firsthand what so many queer and SSA people experience in churches across America and around the world: a place where it isn’t safe to struggle, to bring their sexuality or gender identity into any speck of Christian light. A place where their bodies and identities are attacked, shamed, and deemed the epitome of our nation’s depravity, that they themselves are depraved in God’s eyes.
After the conference, my introversion led me deep into isolation. My melancholic spirit prompted me to grieve viscerally. And my sexuality, driven by my empathy and boldness, propelled me to action, to seek justice.
Back in middle school, I wouldn’t dare stand up to my bullies. I took their verbal beatings or ran away from them whenever they got close.
But that was eight Toms ago.
This Tom will make life happen when life happens to me. This Tom won’t as easily tuck his tail and run.
What I experienced at this church was deflating and disgusting.
And I won’t stand for it.
