Today (as I’m writing, which is 16th Feb), I’ve been prompted to think about some of my journey to get here. I’ve got another showing of Rainbow Religion coming up in a few weeks (plug plug), and I brush over it quickly there - but there’s some interesting highlights, reflecting back, that I guess I wanted to note now. Things that feel interesting for me today, identifying now as both queer and Christian (though still doing plenty of unpacking around the latter of those two and what it means for me).
The standard part that I mention - I grew up in a Christian family. But going deeper on that - very Christian. Growing up, I didn’t know any family as not being Christian. When I was quite young, my dad was a pastor for a bit (and has been for a bit before I was born, I think, not sure exactly how long). His grandfather has also been a pastor, and quite a well-known one in Western Australia church circles (my dad and his family are from WA). My mum was also fairly involved with church when I was younger, mostly in music. I was the eldest of four, and being the young hyperlexic autistic good little Christian that I was, just devoured the Bible. I’m pretty sure at this point I’ve read all of it at least twice, maybe three times, and much of it more than that. And since I also loved public speaking from a young age, that then translated across to doing sermons - which I also had some opportunities to do from just high school age as well. Then I was at a Christian high school, and the uni that I was at had a Christian group there as well.
Fast-forward a couple of years, and I’m at Bible college. It’s just a year-long course, and more meant as something to grow and equip young leaders in the church, but still, Bible college! Came out the other side with a Diploma of Christian Studies, which sounds fairly boring, I’ll admit. But I enjoyed it while I was doing it, and certainly made a lot of connections in the denomination I was in (Churches of Christ, which is something a bit different here in Australia to in some other countries). I ended up doing an internship at church a couple of years later (mainly leading the tech team), and they needed me to do a bit more study as part of that - I thought I’d challenge myself, so I took them at Masters level, in theory heading towards a Masters of Divinity (which either sounds very impressive or very ludicrous/pompous, depending on who you are), but I only ever did three units.
Then, I worked for Koorong for a while in their main warehouse. If you’re not familiar with Koorong, they’re basically the main Christian bookstore/CD/DVD/gift sort of place in Australia. They have about a dozen stores or so across the country, maybe a couple more? Not sure, been out of the loop for a while. But yeah, they were a well-known name in Australian Christian circles.
Then I also had a stint working with Hope 103.2, Sydney’s biggest Christian radio station. Might also be the biggest in Australia? Not sure. I’d been listening to them since I was a kid, they were the usual station that parents had on in the car. Then volunteered to run with them in the City2Surf one year, then volunteered at their donation drives that ran in November and June each year, then ended up getting a job in their contact centre for a while. Got to know the folks there pretty well, and how it all works; interesting seeing behind the scenes.
Then I ended up leading the music at an Anglican church as a regular job one day a week for a few years. That was interesting - going into a place where basically everyone had views that were quite different to mine, and trying to figure out the balance. Still made a lot of good friendships and connections, and put a lot of myself into many of the kids/teens there. But it was certainly challenging.
And now - I’m in a very different place, following a very different path. And many of the people and connections from those previous times and places probably don’t want much to do with me. But it’s interesting thinking about what I can do with that now, and how I can use what I have learned to speak into places others might find difficult, or to help bridge divides that feel vast.
Even though I’ve spent most of my life in Christian spaces, and only a couple of years now in queer ones - it feels like I’ve got queer stuff a lot more figured out than Christian stuff. I don’t know if that says more about the effects of trauma, or just the nature of trying to comprehend God; stuff is weird. Part of me wants to try and bridge the gap between these two. Part of me is still figuring out what I now believe, what it is that I’m telling people about. In many senses, I think I don’t know. But perhaps we never really can, anyway.
