Pastor Andy Stanley famously said that churches should be the “safest place on the planet” for LGBTQ youth.
If you were a queer Christian student unpacking your bags in your East Campus dorm room, would Christian ministry be the first place you turned?
“Queer issues within Christian religious life at Duke,” said Pastor Katie Aumann, “are seriously overlooked.”
At first, that statement struck me as bizarre. I know dozens of Christian students across faith groups, and I know dozens of queer students across social groups. But I don’t know many who identify strongly as both.
The reason is not that those students don’t exist. Half of LGB individuals identify as Christian.
Nor is the reason that Christianity and queerness have little to do with each other. Their shared history is extensive. And campus religious groups, much like their denominational affiliates, are a theological mixed bag. For some students at Duke, however, some basic truisms persist.
“It can be hard to be out and open in Christian spaces at Duke,” junior Tommy Klug said. “With so many LGBTQ people who have been burned by the church, it can be uncomfortable to talk about faith in queer spaces. It can feel like they are mutually exclusive identities.”
That division breeds complacency in Christian groups. Klug noted that “when these identities grow separate, fewer LGBTQ students are open in faith communities. And as a result, groups don’t feel the need to address inclusivity.”
“When Christian groups are siloed from one another, there isn’t an added push to challenge ideas about identity. It’s easy not to pay attention to issues that affect students who aren’t in the room—the irony is that exclusivity is what pushed out those students in the first place,” Klug said.
Groups become insular beginning with recruitment. Many students become involved with campus faith communities similar to those from home, but outreach is also a factor.
“It’s a huge problem that less affirming groups are more aggressive with outreach. It’s hard not to notice Campus Crusade for Christ or InterVarsity as a first year,” Klug said. “Smaller, more liberal groups tend to rely heavily on that home-to-college pipeline, but if you just stroll past marketplace, it can be easy to find yourself somewhere that is a poor fit.”
One of Duke’s largest Christian communities, the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, recently announced a national policy to fire leaders who support same-sex marriage. As a result, LGBTQ students may not find the most affirming groups—if they decide to search for a group at all.
For other students, it can be difficult to move between groups. “Taking the first step to explore other religious life communities was made difficult,” senior Kristen Larson said. “Most people had already settled into a group after freshman year. I added myself to listservs and came to events, but I felt like an intruder.”
Self-selective recruitment and the formation of close-knit communities certainly function to silo faith communities. That reality is inevitable. But other forces are operative as well. Unlike other cultural or identity centers on campus, Christian religious life at Duke is funded independent of the university. Local congregations support campus ministries that align with their denomination, and campus faith leaders must justify funding needs to partner congregations.
“Groups become protective of their members.” Rev. Katie Aumann said. “We’re incentivized to maintain our group—not always to put on interdenominational programming or to help students find their best match. That also makes it difficult to have conversations that are theologically challenging.”
“I tried to advertise a discussion group about LGBTQ identity within the church, but our group’s leader was really opposed,” stated an anonymous member of another large, conservative Christian organization on Campus. “Whether it was to prevent students from skipping regular worship to attend, or whether it was because of the subject matter, it wasn’t healthy.”
That dynamic poses a real challenge—especially for identity and issue-based Christian communities. It can be nearly impossible to reach a critical mass without interdenominational outreach, and the burden falls disproportionately on those who are on the margins of the church.
But denominational siloing affects more than identity groups seeking community—it affects everyone within the church. When interdenominational and interfaith spaces are made rare, ministries don’t engage with one another. Competing ideas about faithful discipleship go unchallenged. Personal relationships are foregone. Students seeking healthy Christian community are denied the agency to find a spiritual home. And silence—silence on issues that matter, silence that is decidedly unChristian—becomes harder to break.
Spurring progress and inclusion within traditions that continue to promote theology irreconcilable with our commitment to love our neighbors as ourselves requires more than earnest prayer—it requires us to talk to one another. When we are brave enough to broach conversation, our better angels have never failed to shepherd us toward inclusivity. The challenge is not winning the debate—the challenge is starting it.
Ask your group to host an interdenominational worship, to promote joint events, and to partner with cultural and identity centers. Ask a stranger to worship, and ask your community how it can become an even more welcoming neighbor.
Ask your faith community to open up—to lean into discomfort and challenge assumptions about faith. Ask about BLM or same-sex marriage, and ask how you can better engage with those who disagree. Ask your clergy if they are PRIDE trained, and ask how they might better affirm queer members in their group.
Before we can love our neighbors, we have to meet them. Extending Christian community can be tricky. But it begins with asking this: how am I helping to move religious life forward at Duke?
Tanner Lockhead is a Trinity senior. His column, “not straight talk,” runs on alternate Mondays.
Edit 10/17/16 1:39 PM: removed typo
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