By Orion Rummler, The 19
When Karmen Michael Smith moved to New York in 2003, he joined a new progressive Baptist church. He was raised with the idea that if he wanted to find community in a new place, he needed to find a “church house.”
But in a city known for its progressive views, the homophobia that had germinated his childhood church as if suddenly the overgrown grass was still waiting for him. Smith wanted to put down roots. He even took a job at the church as a member of the praise and worship team – but the pastor still refused to look him in the eye.
“This minister spoke to me in private. In public, I could stand right next to him and I would work at the church, and he would never look in my direction. He didn’t want to talk… it’s like I’m invisible,” he said.
From the outside, leaving Christianity or the Church may seem like an easy way out for LGBTQ+ people who face discrimination within their faith. But for many queer people, especially Black Americans, leaving the Church means giving up more than just a particular way of worshiping. New data suggests that queer Black Americans remain more faithful to the Church than other LGBTQ+ people.
What Smith experienced in New York was one of many moments that led him to speak out against the way he sees black churches treating their LGBTQ+ followers — and to explore his faith outside of the church.
The Black Church is a cultural and social center that, throughout the nation’s past, has been a unique source of protection and dignity for Black Americans. Community within the Church is not only centered on religion; family life, school life and daily support are intrinsically linked.
Growing up in rural Texas, Smith found community in his family’s Baptist church. He made school friends there, had sleepovers, had meals, sang with the choir. Then he grew up and he didn’t act like other boys anymore. He loved music and the arts, not sports. He wanted to become both Janet Jackson and Prince. Now that he was a teenager, his community began to ostracize him because of his differences.
“People saw very clearly, I think, that I was gay. But it’s not a term I would have used or even thought about in that sense. I was just me. And it became a threat. And then people in the church started looking at me differently. …and most importantly, these were adults,” Smith said.
Prejudice has rotted everything that had filled his “second home” with love. “Adults have become tyrants and dangerous people,” he said.
Smith is not alone. The complex relationship LGBTQ+ Americans have with Christianity and the demographics of those who choose to leave it are explored in new data from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and Utah State University. Nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ+ people who were raised Christian have since left the faith, the study found. — and those who remain are typically older, black, cisgender men and those who live in the South.
“The data shows a religious exodus,” said Tyler Lefevor, an associate professor of psychology at Utah State University and the study’s lead researcher. “Religions do a shitty job of affirming gay people. »
The bigger picture of the study reveals that for LGBTQ+ Americans, identifying as Christian is associated with greater experiences of stigma and stress. But the Church also offers a community that cannot be easily replicated elsewhere.
“The Church has always been, for Black Americans, the only place where we could be ourselves,” Smith said. “During Jim Crow and slavery, this was our place where we could present ourselves in our Sunday best, we could look good, we could be affirmed, inspired.”
The study found that of the 87 percent of Black LGBTQ+ people who were raised Christian, more than half of them — 53 percent — remained Christian. The research used a nationally representative sample of 1,529 LGBTQ+ people recruited by Gallup, who were surveyed in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Although the Williams Institute study did not measure the types of churches that people attend, the Williams Institute data does not measure the types of churches people attend. Pew Research Center shows that most black Americans who attend religious services go to black congregations.
In 2011, still living in New York, Smith left the church. In 2019, he became an ordained nondenominational Christian minister — something he had long believed he could never become as a gay man. In those years, Smith was seeking a relationship with God outside of the institution that had tried to convince him that God could never love him because of who he was.
“I learned that if God hadn’t wanted me to be this way, I wouldn’t be gay. And then I also learned about the divine privilege of being gay. …that it’s not anti-God,” he said. “It took me leaving the church to learn this. »
Although Smith visits churches from time to time, he is not interested in returning – unless God calls him back into a traditional church setting. He wants to reach people who have been pushed outside of the Church, however that manifests. As an openly gay black man, he feels different from many preachers; and he sees his ministry the same way.
Smith said he often receives calls and messages from queer black people, especially older men, who consider the church their family but don’t feel safe or included. They don’t know where to go. Many of them arrived after he published his book“Holy Queer: The Exit of Christ.” »
“I offer them two trips. You can stay, and I say find a qualified therapist that you can talk to, and a good friend that you can talk to,” he said. “If you choose to leave, know that even if you win, know that you will also lose something. »
That loss may be cultural, Smith said. The Black Church is more than a religious practice: it is a culture encompassed in unique music and art. Finding an affirming congregation could mean leaving the black church and losing that culture, he said.
But there are also spaces of acceptance within the Black Church. Dozens of churches Across the country and various faiths are part of the Community of Affirming Ministriesa Black LGBTQ+ coalition committed to creating safe spaces for queer and transgender people, as well as anyone else “harmed by oppressive religion.”
“I don’t understand why, with the number of choices we have, why people don’t choose to be completely free,” said Victoria Kirby York, director of public policy and programs at the National Black Justice Coalition, an organization defense of civil rights. group that advocates for black LGBTQ+ people.
