Dear Bishop Lewis
EDITOR’S NOTE: On January 1, 2020 the Traditional Plan went into effect. On January 3, the Protocol team issued their proposal for a new way forward for the UMC. The Protocol calls for a moratorium on all administrative or judicial processes addressing restrictions in the Book of Discipline related to clergy who are self-avowed practicing homosexuals or clergy who perform same-sex weddings. On January 17, Bishop Lewis issued her response to the Protocol. She rejected the proposed moratorium. and stated that she would continue to enforce the Traditional Plan. Virginia Methodists for a New Thing encouraged local clergy and laity to write letters to Bishop Lewis to ask her to reconsider her position. Following is one of the 357 letters sent to Bishop Lewis. The author shared this letter with her congregation. She is now sharing it with all of us as well.
Dear Bishop Lewis,
It’s not personal. I keep repeating that to myself, like in doing so it will take away the sting. I rationalize that organizations have rules and traditions to help keep order. They have to draw the line somewhere. The wheels of change turn slowly.
But the truth is no matter how many times I tell myself that it does not change the fact that it feels very personal. That is the wonderful thing about church and spirituality and faith, though; it IS so deeply personal. Our relationship with God, with each other, both so amazingly personal. Our role within God’s incredible plan: personal. My prayers and time spent in mediation with God: personal. My faults and shortcomings: personal. God’s forgiveness: personal.
Maybe that is why, more than any other person, organization, or law, the actions of the church always feel so awfully personal.
I realize that I probably won’t change your mind about how you feel about the LGBT community, but I want to make sure you understand why some of us take the recent actions of the church so personally. Because, as I mentioned above, nothing is more personal to me than the church and my faith.
I grew up happy and in a loving home. I was raised Catholic, went to mass every week, and even attended Catholic school. I grew up with the notion of God loving everyone and that God made us all unique. This was such a comfort to me as I had felt different in some way from the time I was very young.
I was 14 when I figured out what exactly it was that made me feel different…and I panicked. While the church preached that God loves everyone, I knew that there was a very clear line when it came to being gay. I racked my brain trying to remember when I made the choice to be infatuated with those girls in my 5th period but couldn’t figure it out. So, I finally decided to tell my parents, the two people I trusted, who knew me and knew how much I loved God and the church, who would understand that I didn’t mean to be gay. I came out. It didn’t go well. I pretended that I was just kidding. We didn’t talk about it again for 11 years.
During those 11 years I continued to go to church. I would listen to the sermons about the evils of homosexuality and feel so ashamed. Newsletters came out detailing the church’s stance on gay marriage, sexuality of priests, and the merits of conversion therapy. I knew that even though I could hide it from everyone around me, God knew all my thoughts and feelings. I was sure our personal relationship was ruined, that I had so disappointed him. I remember cutting into my arm with a razor after church one day. I was half trying to punish myself and half trying to bleed the gay out of myself. I knew that in the eyes of the church, from all the preaching and the policies, that being gay was not okay. I was not okay. It was personal.
I never acted on my homosexual desires through high school or into college hoping that that would make me okay in the eyes of God, but I still felt flawed. When I found myself attracted to one of my roommates in sophomore year of college I dropped out and joined the Marine Corps. There was no better way at keeping my desires in check than serving in a male dominated profession under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” I didn’t want to be gay. I wanted to be something that would be pleasing to God.
At 25 years old, I was out of the Marines, still attending church every week, helping with the youth group, and reluctantly falling in love with my first girlfriend. It was then that a member of the church asked to take me out to coffee. He bent his head to pray before we ate and then proceeded to tell me that he knew I was gay. The next hour was filled with his plans, and others who had found out about my sin, to write the Bishop to make sure that I was removed from helping the youth group. “We have to protect the children,” he said. He also mentioned that they would make sure that I was denied communion until I sought forgiveness and my soul was cleansed. He suggested that I seek spiritual counseling or a camp to help fight my unnatural perversion. He wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t church policy. Everything I heard that day, I had already heard from my priest’s sermons and policies handed down from church leadership, but there was no denying that this time it was very personal.
I left the church and spent the next many years very lost. My parents had chosen to stay with the church. I shut down spiritually, feeling unworthy of a personal relationship with God. I made a lot of bad decisions during that time. Looking back, I think I was mostly trying to match whatever evil this was that everyone else saw in me. Thankfully I happened upon a good counselor and got my life back in order. Well, except for my faith. My faith and my relationship with God seemed irrevocably shattered.
Then something amazing happened. I met a woman who I could share all of me with…even those messy, unsure, mad at God for making me this way parts. In her I see all of the best parts of Jesus and the faith I used to cling to…love, compassion, forgiveness, gentleness, and patience. She became my wife and a constant blessing to my life.
She too, being gay, has struggled with church and her faith, but, unlike me, never lost her desire for a personal relationship with Christ and a church. So, with each other’s support we vulnerably ventured out to find a spiritual community that would welcome us as broken and different as we are. We were blessed to find the Kingstowne Communion. It was full of people who didn’t think that our being gay made us unworthy of God’s love or of being participants in all aspects of worship. It felt wonderful to be part of a spiritual community again and I felt that wall that I had put up between God and myself start to come down.
When the Methodist Church decided to uphold the restrictions for the LGBT community outlined in the Book of Discipline, it all came flooding back - feeling dirty, less than, unwanted, and feeling unworthy of God’s love and grace. I watch as church leadership cling to views on who I am and how my very being affects the church, as if my being fully included at my place of worship, making church and faith a part of my marriage, and working on my relationship with God somehow threatens them or their institution.
I know that you probably didn’t want to know this whole story and that it probably won’t change how you feel about me and my life, but I hope it impresses upon you the power that church leadership, that YOU, have on making people feel worthy of a relationship with God and the church. I know that puts a lot of weight squarely on your shoulders, but my guess is that you entered this profession because of the important and weighty work that the church can do. That work can either reflect the love and compassion of Jesus Christ, or it can inflict harm that takes a lifetime to mend.
Please remember, as you make decisions, that the church, God’s church, is not a building or an institution, it is people. People who are wonderfully different - some who are assured of their faith, some who are struggling, some who feel worthy, some who don’t, some who are straight, and some who are gay, and the list goes on and on. So as hard as it is, just know that every decision you make is always very personal.
________________________
The author read this letter aloud in worship at the Kingstowne Communion on February 9, 2020. After reading the letter, she added these remarks, specifically meant for the people of Kingstowne.
Words for Kingstowne:
To you, the people of Kingstowne Communion, I want to first say thank you for welcoming Carly and I into your community without hesitation or judgement. It has meant a lot to us, and frankly, at times, it still takes us a second to realize that there isn't some sort of catch. Never a "we love you despite your sin", never "love the sinner, but hate the sin", never even a "we accept you...anyway".
Second I know that my letter was directed at church leadership, but what I really want us as a community to understand is that our fight is or should be bigger than just gay clergy or weddings. I hope what my story helped you see is that this is bigger. It is about making sure that a person never sits in church hating themselves. That nobody ever has to have the fleeting thought again when something bad happens to them that maybe, just maybe, they are being punished because God doesn't actually love them. That no kid goes home and tries to hurt themselves because the church, a place they love, tells them that they are dirty. And that nobody, NOBODY ever feels that they are not worthy of God's love because of who they are.
Again, thank you for being a community that is willing to take a stand, take on the hard work of this fight and for being willing to have hard uncomfortable conversations like this one. And finally, thank you for being patient with me as I slowly start to realize that this really is a spiritual community that loves and accepts me and my wife for exactly who we are and that just maybe God does, too.
Meghan Collins, a former Marine Corps sergeant, lives in Alexandria, VA and serves as a teacher with Fairfax County Public Schools. She met her wife, Carly, while serving in the Peace Corps together, and they have been married for a little over 3 years. Meghan attends the Kingstowne Communion, a United Methodist new church start in the Kingstowne area of Alexandria, that just recently voted to become a Reconciling Community.