Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
As a follow up to her debut book, Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness Between Trayvon Martin & George Floyd, Tamice Spencer-Helms is joined by folx from all walks of life and society to talk about picking up the shattered fragments of a faith we used to know. Life After Leaven is a podcast for those seeking to heal from the damage caused by toxic Christianity and rebuild something new and life giving in its place.
Life After Leaven w/ Tamice Spencer-Helms
Reclaiming Faith through Queerness: The Story of Brian G Murphy & Father Shannon T L Kearns
Join us for an engaging and enlightening conversation with Brian G Murphy and Father Shannon T L Kearns from Queer Theology - the brave souls on a mission to make queer theology and queer sacred storytelling available to all. We journey into the intersection of queerness and spirituality, providing not only a healing balm but also a potent platform for activism. You'll discover how understanding scriptures through a queer lens can be transformative and learn about the pivotal role our identities play in interpreting these sacred texts.
Venture with us as we traverse the diverse landscapes of faith and identity within Christianity. Alongside Brian and Father Shannon, we'll learn from black, womanist, and trans theology insights, emphasizing the significance of embracing Christianity in its entirety, complexity, and liberating ourselves from limiting frameworks. Hear firsthand about their personal conversion stories and how their queer identities have widened the realm of possibilities within Christianity.
As our conversation deepens, we address why some queer individuals choose to stay within Christianity, and the ways to do so that foster health, wholeness, and life. Unveiling the enduring power of the Jesus story, the tenacity of claiming tradition, and the importance of a spiritual practice, we hope to inspire. As we express our gratitude and promote learning, we reflect on the connections we make, and the role money plays in our lives. Join us on this inspiring exploration, and come away with new perspectives and a strengthened faith.
Life After Leaven is sponsored by Sub:Culture Incorporated, a 501c3 committed to eradicating cultural, social, spiritual, financial, and academic barriers for Black College Students. If you are interested in giving a tax deductible donation toward our work with black college students, you can do that here. Thank you for helping us ensure temporary roadblocks don't become permanent dead ends for students with marginalized identities. You can follow us on Instagram: @subc_incorporated, Facebook: facebook.com/subcultureinco, and Twitter: @subcultureinco1.
Our episodes are written and produced by Tamice Namae Speaks LLC.
Don’t miss out on what Tamice has planned next! Follow her on Instagram and Twitter, or subscribe to her Patreon page.
From the other side of toxic Christianity. I found myself faced with one question Now what this podcast is about that question? We have conversations with folks who are asking themselves the same things. We're picking up the pieces of a fractured and fragmented faith. We're finding treasure in what the church called trash, beauty and solidarity in people and places we were told to fear, reject and dismiss. I'm Tamise Spencer-Helms and this is Life After Leaven.
Speaker 2:What's up everybody. Welcome back to this episode of Life After Leaven. I'm your sick host, tamise Spencer-Helms, and I'm joined by the team at Queer Theology and I know I've talked a lot about them when we've done book stuff and I'm so excited to have them on the show. Brian and Shay, I'm going to have you introduce yourselves and then tell us who you are and what you do.
Speaker 3:for those who don't know you, Sure, my name is Brian G Murphy, he, him or they then pronounce both fuel great for me.
Speaker 3:I am Jewish, I'm a queer sacred storyteller, I am bisexual, I am polyamorous and for the past 10 years I've been working with Shay, with Father Shannon, queertheologycom, to do two things really, sort of like make the beauty that is queer theology and queer sacred storytelling and the sort of the sort of like new insights to the behind the happen when you fuse queerness and theology together accessible to everyone. And then also to teach folks how to do their own queer theologizing, even if they're just, you know, quote, unquote, like regular folks at home, not not pastors, not theolog, not, like you know, official theologians, not academics, but like. I think there's power in everyone. Telling their story and claiming their story, both in a healing sort of way, can be very healing process for folks, but it also can be a source of like being prophetic and activism, moving conversation forward. It's both looking backwards and looking forwards to sort of like harness the intersections of queerness and spirituality and story. Wow, that's my elevator pitch.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful, father Shannon. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So I'm Father Shannon T L Kearns I use he him his pronouns. I am a writer and a theologian and a storyteller as well and, yeah, like Brian said, we've been doing this for for 10 years and I think that you know the. The goal of this was always about creating a movement, right, and it was always about being content creators or providing resources, necessarily for folks, but it was really about, like, building a movement of queer and trans people who could?
Speaker 4:really integrate queerness and transness and spirituality and, like Brian said, really move the conversation forward in both an activist spirit but also in a theological spirit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, man, and like you said, you've, you guys have been going for 10 years and I'm using guys in the proverbial sense, but you so you've been doing this, you know, 10 years and I really was.
Speaker 2:So a lot of my listeners if you've been listening to any of the stuff I've done for the book, you know that when I first came out, I Googled queer theology and you all popped up because both things well, one was new to me, the other one wasn't. I had always considered myself a theologian, love theological study, love studying religions and things like that, and didn't know if I could fuse those two things together, like fully be myself and also love digging into things like that. And so this was the first organization I found. When I, when I came out, it was like the a day later when I was thinking about how can I live a queer life and also stay connected to something that brings me life, which is the study of theology. So I'm wondering can you tell us a story? How did you get started and where are you now, after 10 years?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So I mean the. The story of the website is kind of funny in that you know Brian and I were on a probably a Skype call at that point maybe Google hangouts this before zoom and you know we would. We would get on a call, you know, once a week just to kind of talk and and to be in community and to talk about creativity and spirituality, and we're both watching the conversations that were happening in the Christian space in particular at that time and frustrated frustrated that it seemed to be really stuck in like is it okay to be LGBTQ plus and Christian? And like we weren't even talking at that point about like and what does that look like, if it is okay? It was really just like, is it okay? And both of us have been deeply moved by the work of queer theologians but found that work to be often really inaccessible.
Speaker 4:It's very very academic and heady and hard to read. And one night on one of those calls I was like I wonder who owns the domain queertheologycom. And we Google and realize that no one had it. And so we were like, oh, okay, well, we need to get that right now.
Speaker 4:And so we really bought it without a sense of what we were going to do with it, but just felt like this, we need to have this domain and figure out what there was something there, yeah, and so we started then a couple months later by doing a course on Google Hangouts with people, because you could only have 10 and we work two people to do reading queery, which was like what happens when we read the Bible from a queer perspective, and the energy and that Google's room was so good, we were like oh, this is this is the work.
Speaker 4:It's not about like is it okay to be queer and Christian or trans and Christian? It's not even like well, how do we work to get people to let us into their churches? It's like no, we have goodness and richness right here amongst us Right now as we're reading, and like this is can be transformative for us and for the church and for the world.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, how did you all meet? How did you all get connected?
Speaker 3:We met through a friend of a like. We had a mutual like best friend in common when we were all the three of us living in New York and so our friend Micah like, introduced us like at some group hangs a few times, shake him over to my apartment. I went over, I was like I saw him preach for the first time. I remember the first time I saw him preach I was like not his first time preaching, it was my first time seeing him preach but I remember like I was like seeing him preach and being like oh man, this is like really, really cool. You know a lot of like a lot of pastors when they preach it sort of like their version of like something that like they heard someone else tell which is like, which they like run a book, which like, and the person with the book heard from someone else, right, so it's like. But I was like it's kind of like remix theology where I was like.
Speaker 3:Oh, she is like creating like brand new theology in front of my eyes. This is wild. I want more of this. I want to do this myself. This is so powerful. And so then we just like kind of became friends and Shane moved to Minnesota and so we kind of kept in touch loosely and then probably started texting more and emailing more and ranting more about the state of like LGBT Christian down and then started, like she was saying, meeting up on zoom, yeah, just sort of like.
Speaker 2:Huh, so 10 years ago. Okay, I want you to describe 10 years ago what was the state of LGBTQ plus Christendom, and what is it like now? What would you say has been the major change?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so funny that you asked that, because so for our podcast we just invited a bunch of people to like record little messages reflecting back on what it was like for them personally 10 years ago and also sort of like where the movement was 10 years ago. I think like 10 years ago the prevailing conversation was is it okay to be LGBTQ and Christian? The primary concern for those of folks, just the fact that there was a debate at all, like the great debate site A versus site.
Speaker 3:B. The whole thing was like debating. Getting like gays to debate amongst themselves was like which one was right, Just messy right, and then even amongst people who were like it's okay to be gay.
Speaker 3:The primary concern was like getting let into majority straight, straight run institutional churches and sort of like conforming, like trying to like keep everything the same but just like a lot like whatever, like gay and also that right. So like there's sort of like discussion around purity culture. Deconstruction was just starting to happen. We get one of our early webinars. We had Lola on who does a lot of work on pretty culture. You know the idea of like being sex positive and Christian was like pretty fringe. No one was talking about polyamory until we started talking about it. If you use them to the project, the trans really talking about trans stuff?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was like an add on or an afterthought, like it was really like LGBT focused, really focused on sort of like acting on your homosexuality and like whether or not that is okay, and and so yes, that was, that was 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. So no conversations about trans, really kind of pitting different views of the I hesitate to say issue, but side a, side B conversation. And now, where are we now?
Speaker 3:I mean access, and also 10 years ago, like access international still exists, like people were, like it was, like said a side. B side X like side B was supposed to be like the compassionate thing. That was like better than therapy. People are still going to XP therapy, and maybe a few hours today, but like it was just like a different, such a different world.
Speaker 3:Not really no conversations around trans folks or bisexual folks, but it was. You know, bisexuality and so much as it is like you are oppressed by homophobia and like transgender and so much as like well, like you seem kind of gay, like like it's just some sort of like right.
Speaker 4:I think I'm going to name the podcast that I think we also need to remember like this is before you could get married in the United States. Wow, and you know this is in many, in a lot of places. This was like before you could get ordained as an openly LGBTQ plus person in many, many traditions not all of them, but like in a lot, most probably, yeah. And even if you could like, the odds of you getting hired in a church were slim to none. When I went to seminary and starting in 2006, I was only the second out trans person to like transition in my seminary, right.
Speaker 4:So like this is, this is I was talking to someone the other day who's like yeah, like almost my entire class is like queer and trans and seminary. Yeah, like we are in a, we are in a radically different place and I think that, like now, as we look at the conversation, you know there are still people that are trying to debate side a and side b or claim celibacy or whatever, but like that is not the forefront of what we're talking about. Like what does it look like to welcome polyamorous families into our communities? What does it look like for clergy to be openly polyamorous? What does it look like to, you know, really like center queer and trans voices and folks? It's not about like come to our straight church and be the token. It's about what does?
Speaker 4:it look like to have a community that is, like, centered on your experiences. That straightens this. Folks are welcome to join. And also it feels important to also say that, like since the 2016 election and having folks, you know, jumping ship on evangelicalism in greater numbers than ever before, indeed a circling back to some of the conversations that we were talking about 10 years ago and so this is also like encouragement for folks that are maybe new to this conversation or just entering in to really pay attention to the work that's been done at these conversations and happening for a really long time, and that there you might find a lot more movement and joy and freedom by jumping out of some of the conversations you're in and jumping ahead right. That that we don't need to rehash side a, side b.
Speaker 2:Please, let's not do that again. Moving on, moving on.
Speaker 1:I love.
Speaker 2:Okay, so here's what I want to do. Okay, Brian, go ahead.
Speaker 3:I think it's like so much more interesting to focus on the gifts that queer people bring and that queerness brings rather than sort of being in this defensive posture and I think it also allows more room for like exploring and celebrating our various like, for instance, I'm bisexual, right, and so when we focus on like my oppression, I'm like primarily oppressed on like the axis of like my quote unquote. Like gay sex right. Like homophobes don't really care if I'm married to a woman, they care if I'm married to a man right and so like debating on those terms.
Speaker 3:Like limits my identity because, like LGBT oppression that I experienced is like homophobia, right, but like when I get to say like, but that's like not all of me, though. And like what does it look like to be attracted to like multiple, multiple genders? And how does the experience of like being in gay spaces but not like totally gay and in straight spaces but not totally straight, like? What is that like? What's your like nuance? Like might I bring to the conversation? Or like when we're not just sort of stuck on like it's okay to be gay, like how does sex, you know, impact our theology? What is like like?
Speaker 3:What's the theology of like hooking up, and how does that like translate into welcome right, how people taken, you know, taking care of one another, how have like lesbians taking care of gay men's, and how bisexuals and trans folks been historic allies and bridge building. And how does like race and gender and immigration status and should be sad as all sort of like intersect, like it all. It's just like such a more richer, full, I think, both more human and also more divine conversation then. Like yeah, can I please come to your church.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do feel like we've definitely moved on from that question I can't I can't imagine there being churches, or I mean, they're up. Let me rephrase that there are definitely churches that are still anti, but I'm like at this point, are you all serious? It's just, it's 2023.
Speaker 3:Like I, just feel the gospel is not there, right, like you're there, like I don't want to go to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is like like you're saying like humanity is not represented here and it's kind of like you know, I was talking to someone one time and I'm like you know you talk about the church being this place of community and stuff like that, but like hardly anybody in your zip code could come into your house for one reason or another, whether it be that they're queer, whether it be that they're queer, they're fornicators, they're on drugs like all of these things like we talk about the church being this open space, but it but it really isn't.
Speaker 2:And I really found, like I found your theology in particular, father Shannon, to be really helpful, as I was kind of figuring out how do I kind of look at some passages that used to mean things to me, that used to move me, that like moved me in very, very profound ways, but not knowing exactly how to how to kind of embrace those passages, and it took me a really long time even to get back into scripture, took years for me to even like want to open scripture again. Can you talk to us about what it's like to get back into that place and what does it mean to have queer perspective? You said a queer theology or queer theological perspective. For folks that don't know what that is, what is that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think for many of us, especially who grew up in maybe more conservative or evangelical traditions, denominations, many of us thought that we were really studying the Bible because that's what we were taught right that if you read the Bible a lot, if you go to Bible studies, if you go and listen to your pastor and preaching that, you are doing deep Bible study and that is like true-ish right In that you know a lot about what is in the Bible but you don't actually have any tools to understand that outside of, like your evangelical, conservative teaching. And so one of the things that has been really important for me is to make scholarly tools for reading and understanding scripture accessible to folks, Because a lot of folks feel like you have to either, like you do that deep evangelical Bible study or you like have to go to seminary, that there's no middle ground and it's actually possible to get a lot of scholarly information without going to seminary and without like reading heavy tomes about biblical studies.
Speaker 4:But you do have to actually learn some things about like historical context of scripture and the context of empire and exile, for instance.
Speaker 3:And also which resources to trust and which resources not to trust.
Speaker 4:Exactly exactly. Just Google and like trust the first thing that comes up right, which is the other way that people were taught to study the Bible, right? We got a hate comment on Twitter the other day that was like linked to Biblestudytoolsorg, and I wanted to be like if you are linking me to Biblestudytoolsorg A, these are not like actual Bible study tools and. B think you haven't done your work, Like this is not they were claiming that they had done lots of research.
Speaker 4:Anyway, I think that, like there's that piece of like learning some of the ways that scholars read scripture, that is really important, and then the second piece of that is that many of us have been taught that we somehow corrupt the text, that by bringing our full selves to the text, that we are doing it dishonestly, that we are just reading into the things that we want to hear, or that thinking the text say what we want it to say, but like the truth is that we all read from a particular context. It's just that queer and trans folks and black folks and Latinx folks, like we name the place that we're doing.
Speaker 4:the reading from and we're saying actually it matters that we do theology from this particular place and that none of us are doing theology from a neutral place, and so queer theology is just naming like we are reading the scripture as queer folks. We are reading the scripture as trans folks. For me, it's also important to name that like I read scripture as a white trans man from the United States. I cannot divorce my identity and the context I live in from how I'm interpreting scripture, and that's why it's so important that I never read scripture alone, right, that I'm always studying it While also reading womanist theology and black theology and theology written by people that are not from the United States, so that I am getting a fuller sense of what these texts mean, what they could mean.
Speaker 4:And I think that something really powerful happens when we put all of our identities and all of our ways of reading scripture together. And we also need the old white guys from Europe Like that. That's important. Some of them are right, some of them are right and they helped us get where we are for good and for ill.
Speaker 4:And so we have to understand that, but like we have to do this work and it's more complicated, right Then picking up and opening the Bible and like pointing to a verse and saying this is gonna be the verse that's gonna speak to me today, yeah, and also it's much more beautiful and rich and, I think, leaves us less at risk of reading something that's really gonna wreck us because we don't understand the context that it comes from.
Speaker 4:We've had these experiences right Of being quote unquote convicted by something, yes, but it's because we're reading something that was never actually meant for us or it was not meant in this way and like. So it's important. It does less damage to read it in this way too.
Speaker 2:Well, I think yeah. That's okay, good, no, do you have anything to add?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I see this journey that folks go on. They sort of like when you're leaving reading scripture in a conservative way, whether that's conservative, protestant, specifically evangelical also, like Catholic also, orthodox Also. Sometimes you go to like a liberal mainline church but like they didn't teach you how to read the Bible particularly well, or maybe you've just sort of absorbed the evangelical way of reading it through culture. And so lots of folks have evangelical understandings of the Bible without being evangelicals themselves. So that's just like a pin in that.
Speaker 2:That is so good. Say that again. You gotta say that again, Brian. I think you gotta say that.
Speaker 3:Lots of folks have evangelical readings of the Bible without the evangelicals themselves, because evangelical Christianity has so dominated the narrative around what Christianity is in general and what the Bible is in particular that folks, those are the only tools folks have and they're just like what they've absorbed without thinking, without realizing their osmosis. They don't know the alternatives are out there. So, like the number of times we meet people at progressive, liberal, mainline Protestant churches that like don't realize lots of people think that the flood was a myth, that like think that penal substitutionary torment, which is like God is angry at you for sitting in, so Jesus had to die in your place, is like the only way of understanding what happened like on the cross and how salvation happens. Right, that's like us too big and common, too big to a big, common example. Right, we see this progression of like your. So you first you're reading the Bible in a conservative way and then, for whatever reason, like that stops working for you. Maybe it's because you realize you're queer, maybe because you're like a black person or a woman in America. I'm like Donald Trump becomes president, you're like holy shit, right, and so there's.
Speaker 3:I think the first step is like the Bible is still right, but I don't like it and I am rejecting it, but it's.
Speaker 3:But I still can't like let go of the idea that, like the conservative understanding of the Bible is correct, but I'm just like angry at it. And then like the next step, I think, is that people are like the Bible is wrong, or like fuck Paul. Or like I want to get, I want to be a Jesus follower, not a Christian right, and so there's sort of like like cutting and pasting parts of the Bible and parts of the Christian tradition, which I think is not inherently a bad or a wrong thing. But I think that there's like this really, if you can push through that and break on to the next level, you get to a place where, like the whole Bible and all of Christianity and all of its mess is like beautiful and available to you. And so I think about like I can track the journey for me with like Romans one, romans one needs to be scary. Then I was like Romans one doesn't count. And now I'm like I love Romans one. I could preach a queer sermon on Romans one and Romans two Right.
Speaker 3:And so, like the things that you, there's a. I think there's a period of time after folks have like come out of conservative Christianity, where parts of the Bible or parts of theology or parts of faith still feel scary or prickly. I'm like, maybe most of the time you feel not scared and you don't feel unsafe, but it's like but I can't open that door or I can't get too close to that, and we found that that still is giving this like, even if you're all conservative, like for your base base, like even even that is too much power if you have to avoid it.
Speaker 3:And so there's like not a passage in the Bible Christian, or are you not afraid to be like, yeah, give me that and I can like wrestle, I can wrestle with it, and that is part of the process, and when you get to there like anything, fucking freedom. Anything is possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I'm glad that you took me there. I'm sorry Like I keep always cutting you off, cause I get excited when I hear you talk, but this is beautiful because you led me right where I wanted to go. On the internet, the interwebs, I made a comment that got some people in my DMs and I said you know, I'm wearing a light jacket called Christianity, and when it gets uncomfortable or too hot or too cold in here I just take the thing off. So I got a lot of comments about that. But I wanted to ask you cause I know, brian, you did you recently convert to Judaism? Were you always Jewish I finally.
Speaker 3:So I grew up evangelical. Well, I grew up Christian going to the evangelical church. I was sort of had like one foot in the evangelical Christian world and one foot in like the secular world in Maryland. Okay, but I it's been like a multi-year process that I recently finalized maybe, but by the time this episode comes out, like half a year ago maybe.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah. So what I'm going to ask you is and Fr Shana, are you still, you're still identifying as a Christian?
Speaker 3:I am, oh he's all, in All in.
Speaker 4:They're going to have to write it from my cold dead hand, cold dead hands, or eternally court consciousness?
Speaker 2:no, just kidding, definitely kidding. So I was thinking what do we do? There are some folks who are like I still love Jesus, don't know about the Jesus is God thing. There are people who are like even if Jesus is God, I don't care, I don't want to be a Christian anymore. There are people who are like no, jesus is real. I've had experience, but I don't want to come near Christianity with a 10 foot pole. And other people are like I don't believe in anything. Others are like I don't know anything, I'm just going to try to be a good human. Can you all talk to me about what led to first you, brian, what led to your conversion, and then, in Father Shannon, what caused you to stay?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think that I will start with. I think that if you're queer and Christianity is important to you, or like was important to you and you want to continue being important to you, I like believe that there is like an important place in the church for you, and I might have like converted to Judaism and like officially left Christianity, but I'm still like right there in the trenches alongside of y'all fighting for your place and your voice and your mission because it is like so Necessary and I learned something about the time through quick questions and stuff.
Speaker 3:Right, I think that one of the nice things about sort of like doing this work with Shae for so long I learned in the past few years as part of this process in Judaism is thing called a Huffruta partner and it's like you have like one person, but there's like it's a pair usually and you sort of like study Torah, study Tom, literally talk about theology together, and I was like oh.
Speaker 3:Shayla and doing that for 10.
Speaker 3:But like, but so, and sort of doing it together in public means that like for the entirety of the curriculum has existed. I've been like I don't know if I count as a Christian, I don't know if I believe in God Maybe I'm an atheist and she has always been like if you want to be Christian, like you're Christian enough for me, right, and where she is like she is up, like was in seminary and then like then working at churches, now like an ordained priest, right, and so you kind of get like this full spectrum of belief from ordained priests, like kind of sort of Christian atheist, kind of agnostic, but now Jewish, right, you also have a whole spectrum of like. When we started, shae was celibate. Now he's an agonist. I'm Paul Gamers and like a people's spot, right, so there's just like a wide all points in between sort of our possible. I think that, like there's so many ways to be a Christian in particular, and so I don't feel like I left Christianity because my beliefs made it not possible for me to stay a Christian right.
Speaker 4:Like.
Speaker 3:I think that you can believe in, you can be a Christian and have like questions about the like, the exact nature of like, jesus's divinity, right, like was he always?
Speaker 4:God.
Speaker 3:Is he God Like? Is that a theological claim? But he's like really God like. How did his? How did he understand himself versus how did his like the scripture? I don't understand him. Versus the Holy Church, versus us today, right, like there's lots of different ways to be a Christian and that's coming just on Jesus, quote unquote, as divine right and so like, if you're like I think that I want to be a Christian, but I'm like not sure if I can be quote unquote because X, y, z, like do some time really examining, like is that actually a just qualifying thing for?
Speaker 1:you.
Speaker 3:Like I think if you were, like I want to be a Christian except, but like I want to be like a total asshole and scorch the earth, and like I also believe in, like a different God, like in my bedroom, like I don't know, maybe that's not, maybe Christianity isn't for you, but like. So, like I think there are some, I think there are some women to how big the tent can be, but it's a pretty frickin big tent and so, and I have found that when I was a Christian, like queerness, like only enriched my faith and like led me deeper into faith, and I don't know if I would have become Jewish had I not gotten back into faith and like reclaim my faith and not been as scared of like sort of like, made peace with being a queer.
Speaker 2:Christian.
Speaker 3:I was like I did this, that I can kind of move on my journey to Judaism. I was telling in the rabbinic court it's like two years or two decades in the making, right Like I, I I'm. One of my earliest memories is making latkes. I have always had a lot of Jewish friends in my sort of like inner circle. Many or most of my close friends have been Jewish. My first boyfriend was Jewish. Like when I came out and my parents are being weird like two, two friends, parents in particular were like really sort of like. So I get parents to me they were Jewish.
Speaker 3:I grew up in a very Jewish area. So like I went to a bar about Mitzvah at least one every weekend and all seventh grade, sometimes two or three Right so I knew a lot of the prayers by heart. In addition, in addition to Christianity sort of like springing off of Judaism and so therefore feeling familiar to a lot of Christians, regardless of their exposure to like actual modern day Judaism.
Speaker 3:I also had a lot of exposure to actual practicing modern day Judaism and so it has always sort of felt like a second home to me that I had been curious about, like maybe I could make that my permanent home, but I had like some own hangups around, like what it means to convert to Judaism that I had to deal with and I think also just like this sense of unfinished business within Christianity, I didn't want to be like running away from Christianity, right.
Speaker 3:I wanted to make sure that I was like running towards something and so like I think that like if Judaism didn't exist, like heaven forbid, right. Like I, like I think I could have been a Christian for my whole life, right. And also Judaism just felt like for me personally, like on a day to day practices and just like communal gatherings situation, like more like who I feel I am called to be, but like I don't necessarily think that is the path for everyone. I don't think anyone needs to become Jewish right.
Speaker 3:Like we don't, we don't proselytize, like I don't think that everyone needs to be Jewish. I just like, as a person, like you don't have to become Jewish, you can be Christian. You can be not Christian, but I do think that if you were raised Christian like whatever you decide to be spiritually if you can do that from a place of power and freedom rather than from a place of, like, fear and reactivity, you're going to be your much better for you in general, because there are a lot of people also who are no longer Christian but are still scared of the God they don't believe in. Right, right, come on.
Speaker 3:That's good, that doesn't. That doesn't help anyone either, so like. So one of the things that we feel really passionate about is like we want to help. If you're a queer person who was raised Christian and Christianity is important to you, we want to help you, sort of like, have the most vibrant queer Christian faith that you possibly can.
Speaker 3:And for whatever reason Christianity is, like, not a good fit for you. We want to help you leave well, we want to help you leave healthfully. We want to help you leave fully, so that you can go on and thrive wherever you are, because it, like you, deserve so much more than sort of like kind of leaving but still being having you put in the door, or kind of leaving but still being scared or triggered or reactive all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You just like, want like freedom for all queer people everywhere.
Speaker 2:Well, Shay, I saw you. I saw you nodding your head that even if people want to leave Christianity, you want to make sure that people leave it. Well, like what's making you stay? Why are you still a Christian?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, I think for me there's a. There's a couple reasons, right. One is that I am still very much captivated by the Jesus story, right, that there is something so deeply beautiful in that story for me and in the ways that Christians have wrestled with and understood that story over millennia, and so that is really that's important to me. I find I find continued meaning in Christian practices and Christian scripture and Christian stories. So that's part of it. Part of it is stubbornness of. There is a sense of like. You are not going to tell me that I cannot claim this tradition because, whatever, that this is mine to, and that I get to choose to be a part of it. And then, finally, I think it's a sense of like I.
Speaker 4:My life has been so deeply and radically impacted by Christianity. Right, childhood was centered in the church. My family history and stories are stories of evangelical Christianity. The United States, for better or for worse, has been shaped by evangelical Christianity, like indeed. And so for me there's also a part of like. I have to make sense of this tradition. I have to really do the work to figure it out, and I know that for some people, doing that work means that they're like out right, like I do not believe any of this anymore and like full again, like Brian said, fully, fully support that journey.
Speaker 4:It's like this.
Speaker 4:This, this story has been such a guiding principle in my life that, like what I want to do is figure out how to do it well and how to do it, but I also want to, I want to echo some of the things that Brian said, because I think that they're so important to say them twice Right, which is that if you are simply staying in Christianity because you're afraid, because you're afraid of going to hell, because you're afraid that God is going to smite you, like it's time, because you're afraid of your parents, like right, like fear is not a good reason to stay. And also like, if you are leaving but like you haven't actually done the work to unpack how this tradition has shaped you and formed you, what it is that you're leaving behind. What we've seen over and over again is people who have left and then replicated evangelical Christianity and whatever thing that they've left to go towards right, whether that's like they've converted but like not really. Or they're an atheist but now they're an evangelical atheist who's trying to get everyone else to sign on to the atheist train, like the amount of evangelical atheists we have had.
Speaker 4:I'm after. Oh, my God, I'm like man. Go in peace. But like I have done my work, I need you to write.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:The sense of like. Whatever tradition you're in, we I think both Brian and I fully believe that you need some kind of practice. We would call it. Spiritual practice doesn't necessarily have to be. You need some kind of practice that roots your life. You need some kind of community that centers, you need tools that you can turn to before and during and when things are hard. Right, we believe that that's like a universal.
Speaker 4:Whatever tradition you find yourself in like, let that be a tradition that is leading towards health and wholeness and integration. That is giving you more life, not less. That is leading you in freedom, not fear. That is operating from a place of abundance, not scarcity. That is the journey that we want people to be on and we're neither of us are really tied to like what that looks like, we just want help you get free. And so if you come to us and you say, and you do some work and you're like actually like now that I'm afraid of hell, I don't think I care more, great, what is the thing then? That's a big one, anchoring to you and rooted, like what will help you feel rooted. That's what we're invested in not making sure that you stay Christian or that you leave Christianity, or that you're a particular type of Christian like, I don't care. We find a story that orients you right and I really love that.
Speaker 2:I love that so much. I actually felt almost emotional because my partner and I my partner went to Gallaudet and so fully immersed in the deaf community and so their chosen family has now become my family and one of the people in our chosen family actually my daughter's godmother now and one of the things that has been so beautiful about that is there are Jewish people, pagans, agnostics, atheists, like, and the times that we have together around ritual, around being grounded in community, the way we take care of each other. It's so beautiful to feel like you know and I will say you know I'm doing the work too. So I'm kind of like I'm not sure, I don't know where I would go.
Speaker 2:I feel very much compelled by the story of Jesus, but Christianity used to be like a onesie, and now it's just a jacket right, like I don't feel as it's losing its grip on me and it's not as necessary for me to fully live into what I feel like Jesus has taught me right, but at the same time, like you're saying, it's grounded in this tradition of all of these people trying to figure out when you find out that there are all of these different types of Christianities. I agree with you. I think we've got to do that work, like let's not just leave evangelicalism. I mean, what are the people in the East talking about? Like you know, what are the Nakamati documents talking about? Those types of things I think matter as we do this work. So I appreciate you saying that that, like, let us leave, but let us leave. Well, because I have been, I have encountered folks who are more the evangelical, atheist type and they're just not fun people to be around and typically I mean honestly, typically it's like they're just not. There's stuff that has not been dealt with when a number of levels that I think maybe even religion couldn't cover over in a lot of ways that now, like I don't have anything and now you just stuck with you and all that unhealed shit is coming out on all of us. So, as we like, take the turn towards the coroner.
Speaker 2:I think the people that listen to this podcast they're in a couple of different spaces Some have just decided I'm done with toxic Christianity, I'm leaving it Maybe not Christianity, but I'm leaving toxicity, and I don't know what that means. And there are some folks who are trolls, who are listening to try to catch me in something. And then there are those who are sneak listening, who are in situations where they have to kind of do this in the closet. They're listening to these things in the closet for their sustenance, and so I want you to think about them.
Speaker 2:As we think about the last three questions I'm gonna ask you, which are what are you bringing? What are you bringing from the rubble? And obviously, father Shea, you're still a Christian, but I know that for you, you said you have rootedness and evangelicalism, so we'll just kind of do have you unleavened from evangelicalism, right? And then, brian, like kind of, what are you keeping? So what are you bringing from the rubble? What are you binging? Are you watching something, eating something, drinking something? And then what are some words for us to live by? And in any order you can each go.
Speaker 4:I was thinking about this the other day because someone asked me what do you miss from your evangelical days? And so it's such a fascinating question to me because there are so many things that on the surface I miss. But I think that part of the work that we have to do is really figuring out what is under that thing that we say that we miss. Right, like when I think about community, it's like sometimes I miss the easy community, but it's also like that community was really conditional and like I don't miss that and so I have right. So it's just thinking about that, but I do think that like for me a deep love of scripture is something that has remained a constant for me, Even though I read scripture in radically different ways right.
Speaker 4:In ways unrecognizable to my small evangelical self, but that rootedness in language, in words, in stories, in scripture is definitely something that I bring with me, even as I'm like telling folks like you have to learn to read differently, but you can love scripture and you can still be rooted in these stories as you move into whatever is next. I'll stop there for a minute and see if Brian wants to answer that one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is such a great question. It's also like a question that one of the rabbis who was part of my conversion process asked me like what are you bringing? What are you gonna bring with you? So what a beautiful question. I think that I'm bringing. Oh, it's like so many things. I'm bringing so many things. I think that some of them are a sense of that I am part of something bigger than myself and that I am responsible for people other than myself a sense of community, a sense of curiosity, a sense of the world is not as it should be, and that we can be a part of preparing the world right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:That's something that we see in Christianity energy is in different ways right. That like things got wrong and we need to make things better, and that there are like tools that I can tap into to help me appreciate and savor like the joys of my life and that can help me get through like the hard valleys of my life, and that all of this is like better when we do it together and when we take care of one another.
Speaker 2:So good.
Speaker 3:What I'm taking with me.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. What are y'all binging?
Speaker 3:I'm binging this Danish TV series called Rita because I'm trying to get back into my Danish, I think that's great.
Speaker 3:Inside of Sanctuary Collective, one of our members was talking about watching Red, white and Royal Blue and so I tried to listen because it just came out when we're recording this on Amazon and I was trying to read it in. I was trying to listen to the audiobook in Danish and I was like I'm not good enough at my Danish. Yet I was listening to the Danish version of Red, white and Royal Blue, but that inspired me to then like pivot, and so I'm binging this Danish series called Rita and I'm also, on a more serious note, finishing up this book that I've been reading. It feels like for forever. I just keep putting it down, but it's so good. It's called On Repentance and Repair by Robert Diner Grutenberg.
Speaker 1:Very good, that was great.
Speaker 4:I went to the drama bookshop when I was in New York earlier this spring and bought more plays than I should have A very large, large plays and so I've been making my way through that stack and that's been really fun Reading plays by people who are just really experimenting with form and with story. And, yeah, like there's a play that is told in tweets. I have no idea how you would stage this thing. Apparently it's being staged in places. I'm just so fascinated. So those are some of the binging a bunch of plays right now.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's so good. Okay, Words to Live by. Think about our audience and I'll let you go whenever you're ready.
Speaker 4:So I mean, I just I think for me this sense of for folks that are well for the trolls, like get a hug, properly the one that is helpful to the world.
Speaker 2:If you're gonna troll, join my Patreon. Exactly put your money where you're about this.
Speaker 4:I think, for the folks that are feeling either they're just beginning on a journey or they're still in the closet in some kind of way. I remember being in that space and this sense, this deep fear that it was always going to be hard right, that it was always gonna be terrible, it was always gonna be a struggle, it was always gonna be lonely, it was always gonna be plagued with guilt and with shame. And I just wanna say to those folks like that's not true, that there is a future where there is peace and abundance and integration and wholeness and freedom from fear and freedom from shame, where you have a community that you couldn't even have dreamed of, and so you just have to keep going. You have to keep going through this hard part. Look for the allies, look for the people who can walk with you in this time, but just keep going, because a beautiful future awaits if you don't win.
Speaker 2:So good right.
Speaker 3:I think that I would say that, whether you believe, like, in a God who created all of this, or whether you just believe that we're all products of chance and evolution, that, like you, being here is a miracle, that you are a product of like millions and billions of years of creatures coming together and creating something new over and over and over and, over and over again through the eons and that, like at your heart center, like you are good and you are curious and like, by tapping into, like both of those things, like everything else is figure out, figure or outable, and like you will figure it out and you will not be the first nor the last person to figure it out. And there are people who are ready to figure it out alongside of you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you all so much for being on the show. So thankful for you. I'm so excited about 10 years, so congratulations.
Speaker 3:Thank you and.
Speaker 2:I'm hoping that you know a lot more people connect with you all find you and learn from you. I appreciate just the role you played in my own journey and hopefully my listeners will too, so thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 4:Thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening. To pick your money in your heart is. Don't need to sub. Quack your ink and clean the path for black students today.