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happy pride month to religious queer people, who feel like they’re contradictions, or told that they’re contradictions, but stay true to these important parts of themselves anyway. happy pride to the queer religious people who have to explain their identities, and who have to defend their faith or their queerness in either circle.

i love you, i am one of you, thank you for being in this community with me.

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Queer Christian loneliness paired with regular gay loneliness and autistic loneliness is quite the treacherous combo. Which is why I’m honestly quite surprised God would give it to Me, the Whiniest Bitch Who Ever Lived

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I am happy because everyone loves me

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Very strange to me that people will tell strangers you can’t be queer and Christian. I don’t recall asking for your permission.

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Being a Queer Christian is beautiful actually because in a world telling you that you aren’t loved you get to look to God and say “Don’t worry; My faith is stronger than their fear”

And there is something poetic to that.

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We Christians, we are the worst, we have a serious problem. We say everyone is welcome to come to church but when they do come, we are unprepared to receive them. We stand closed off in our little circles but we must welcome everyone. Everyone. The person might be your future killer, so what? That is God's business, not yours. We must open the circle. A man comes to me and says "Father, I am a homosexual and I have AIDS" (AIDS was a very frightening thing at this time. Very serious. Many priests would not visit people who were sick with it because of fear). And I said "So what? I am a doctor and Christ says His mercy is for the sick." Because this is the thing, mercy. We must always think "how would the Panagia [Virgin Mary] meet this person?" She would remove her veil and place it over them and cover them in mercy. So must we show mercy to all. Mercy. Mercy. We Christians are useless without mercy.

-Father Evangelos Papanikolaou

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Introduction

This is a side account meant for religious posts and reblogs, which I felt I wanted to keep separate from my main account. Because, at the moment, I want to keep this account very separate from my main, I will not link my main (I might link the two accounts later, but I'm just not too comfortable doing so right now). But, if you do know who I am/recognize me, hi!

(Also yes, the rest of this is copied-pasted from my main account's community post cause I felt like it was a good introduction)

I'm DJ, 18 years old, and I go by They/Them pronouns. I'm an agender lesbian, and I've had a rocky history with my Christian faith, but recently I've been feeling called to return.

To be perfectly clear, I am a "side a" Christian, meaning I fully support queer people and do not view homosexuality as a sin. (And no, I will NOT be wasting my time with bad faith arguments. Please look up the mistranslations in the bible and consider cultural context at the time the bible was written. Anyone who tries to be homophobic/transphobic in my comments will be blocked.)

Background story is under the cut.

tl;dr, I was raised Catholic, left the church during COVID due to their bigotry, and recently came back to the Christian faith as an Episcopalian while maintaining some of my Catholic practices (Rosary, Marian devotion, belief in purgatory, stuff like that). (I guess I could be called an Episco/Anglo-Catholic?)

For some background, I was raised Roman Catholic in a conservative family for most of my life. I've been baptized, had my first communion, and was confirmed. Living in that environment led me to being afraid of being my true self. I learned to hide who I was, be afraid of my parents and community, and I began to resent the church for the scars they inflicted on me. However, when COVID hit, and we couldn't attend church, my family (mainly parents, I already stopped caring when I found out I was queer) did some reflection, and decided to leave the Catholic Church due to their mistreatment of queer people and women. (So basically my parents are now fully accepting of who I am, yay!)

So for about 5 years I denounced my old faith, pretty much hated Christianity and it's followers, and believed almost every Christian was out to get me and my community (especially Catholics).

However, some of my view of Christians/Catholics changed when I met a Catholic girl from a city who was completely chill with gay people (including her parents!). It was hard to believe she was being honest, as I was so used to my local rural Catholic community being so hateful and hypocritical. But, meeting an affirming Catholic definitely made me re-think my views on the greater Christian community.

Very recently, I've been feeling very called to return to my Christian faith. While I will probably never dare return fully to the Catholic Church (My absolute MINIMUM requirement for me to even consider coming back would be them FULLY affirming queer people), I realized I've got a LOT of options for churches who will treat me with love and dignity. I've been attending my local Episcopalian Church with my sister, and I seriously love the community there (Even if I'm the one singular teen there lol). I've just been feeling like God is calling to me to come back without fear of being treated like crap, and he's pointing me to the truly loving people I need in my life. I don't know if it sounds weird, but lately I keep having this image of Jesus hugging me in my mind, and it brings me so much joy.

I don't know if I'll stick with Christianity, as I'm currently in the "trying Christianity one last time" phase right now. But so far, in the Episcopalian church, and seeing the loving and affirming communities on Tumblr, I've felt far safer than I expected. Due to both how young I was when I "checked out" of the faith, and how long it's been since I practiced, I've forgotten a LOT of what I was taught in the church and catechism. So, I've been doing a lot of re-learning. Recently, I've been re-learning how to pray with a Catholic rosary and really digging into my bible (Annotating a bible is actually kinda fun!).

So I'm making this Tumblr sideblog to connect with fellow queer Christians online. Tumblr is one of the few safe online spaces (Pray for me to stay FAR AWAY from the Christians on Pinterest!) for queer Christians that I've seen, but I'm glad these spaces exist.

If you read all of this, thanks! I've been dealing with a lot of internal conflict and healing from religious trauma, but seeing affirming Christian communities like my local Episcopalian parish (And our local United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalist churches) and Christians on Tumblr has helped me immensely. Thanks for being the loving people we desperately need in the world right now

(P.S. I do not hate Catholics. In fact, many of you are very wonderful people, and there are reasons why I kept several of my Catholic beliefs and practices. Just because my local Catholic Church hurt me does not mean ALL Catholics are to blame. Just wanted to clear that up in case this post came off as anti-Catholic.)