Hello, and welcome to another Pivot Northwest Podcast. This is part two of a three-part live podcast series on young adults, the church, and how the church intersects with the queer community. In February of 2020, Pivot Northwest facilitated a panel discussion with members of our community whose lives and work touched this intersection. This is not an authoritative discussion, but instead it's meant to help people have better conversations on sensitive topics closely tied to identity and belonging.
We hope you are blessed by this conversation. Let's continue moving forward because I feel there's some other energy that we definitely want to get into. Right after blessing, there's a sense of theological, like pushing us forward in our imagination of who God is. So, you know, blessing is a very kind of more concrete thing, like offering us a practical or a new way of looking at our life, but I actually, in our conversations this week with Kay, she brought up a really interesting new sort of, I don't know, a blessing of interpretation different.
Could you share that with us, Kay, and jump off into a conversation of how our imaginations can be expanded even more with theology? Yes, yes. Reverend M. Barclay, who leads, co-leads and flesh ministries, they have an interpretation of the Genesis story.
They talk about how in the beginning of Genesis, it says God created light and dark, land and water, male and female, but we have dusk and dawn. We have marshes. As human beings know that these in between spaces exist, even though Genesis does not say God created light, dark, dusk, dawn, Seattle clouds. God, why did you create those?
So because we as humans can understand that the Genesis story says these binaries, and we know that reality has everything outside of those binaries and also those binaries, then we can apply that to sex and gender as well. Yes. And what's awesome is that the dusk and the dawn to me are the most beautiful sites. Ooh.
The in between. Don't drop the mic. It's going to make a really bad sound. In between.
Wow, thank you. I know it's putting you on the spot, but what other have you all encountered any other examples of that? Obviously, that's something that he wrote in a book, so that was something that they probably sat with for a long time and developed, and I'm not sure that all of us are up on our queer theology. But beyond that, what other examples of how you may be you personally changed in your faith by people that you know, whether they be clients or friends, what are some other experiences that our listeners might be able to relate to and reflect on in their own relationships?
One of the things that I've noticed recently, and this has been really organic, but so one of the things that I do a ton of in my work is so I run an institute that trains therapists and physicians and clergy and sexual health and understanding their sexual biases because you don't, so we just live in such a messed up country, you don't get any of that training in grad school. You know, we like to pretend somehow sexuality isn't a part of our lives. So we have this institute where you can get that training. And so I do a ton of supervision of professionals in that area.
And so I do a lot of stuff staffing cases around sexuality and so many conversations around queer issues all the time. And so working around pronouns has been a part of my life now for a bunch of times and it just started creeping into my life that, wait, wait, wait a minute, we have this triune God and you can't understand God outside of the context of a relationship, God is a relationship. So how is it that we don't use the pronoun they, just to me doesn't make any sense that we haven't always done that, you know, and I've just been finding myself naturally going there in the last bit of time and that has just been feeling so natural and I feel like that's the gift that has come naturally from my work with the queer community and with the therapists and physicians and I have that work with the queer community and it's just taken so long. That's been instearing us in the face for always.
A few of the things that have been a gift to me is, well, one is watching shows like Shits Creek and all of TV shows and movies that represent the queer community well, but more importantly normalizing queerness. One of the, so I'm pretty fresh with my journey in identifying as a pensexual cis woman. And one of the things that has that, I guess like caused the delay is because I can't, and I mentioned this earlier, I can't help but think that there is such a thing, maybe it's more unconscious, that there is such a thing as like this barometer or this measure of what it means to be queer, to look queer. And so every time that I see somebody who is, you know, with their physical appearance that look a bit more queer and then if I compare it to my own preferences, I feel like, oh no, maybe I'm not gay enough.
That kind of internal dialogue that goes on, I also think about, I also think about, so my brother, he's gay and he's also partnered and I can't help but think about his own journey and knowing that he is gay since young. And I can't really consider myself, like I never really struggled whenever I had like a quote unquote struggle, like in the church, I grew up in, I was in a Bible school and I didn't really like have a hard time seeing my roommate, my female roommate change kind of thing. And then it wasn't until a conversation with a friend, Jen Marino, if you're listening, I love you, she was the one who really helped me in this journey and had asked me, Gibbs, my queerness is not defined by my suffering and that to me was, it just unlocked and opened the door for everything else. I think about the fact that there is no measure, I think about the fact that there are so many ways to express your queerness, to be queer or to show that you are, to really express and love the way that you are attracted to everyone.
And that to me was liberating. And yeah, the TV shows that I have, that I watch and the movies that I see, the music that we have today and I feel like that's one of the benefits of being alive during this time, the representation and the stories that are now a little bit more visible than they were. When I put myself in the shoes of 20-something, when I think of when I was 20, I think about both the pressures of having most of the American marketing machine, marketing towards your dollars, which is still, I think the case, except now it's more on social media, you don't see it as easily as, it used to be all integrated and more, more public, everyone got the same experience. Now everyone gets individualized experiences.
But it's such a whiplash to go from being the center, being centered because of your spending power, and really I guess it's more teens, 20-something's spending power, 20-something's is a sore subject, right? For young millennials, not so much for older millennials, sash gen xers like me. But then to go into the church and not be centered, be so uncentered. And then to be queer on top of that, and to be so un-sensored.
And then to watch a TV show, and to have your story right there in front of you, and right there in front of your friends and family, like as I put myself in that experience, it's a roller coaster. Do you have anything on this matter to share with us, Ellie? I do have one thought that I feel like I get a lot in my context, and it does deal with a little bit of suffering. So maybe, I don't know, if people need a warning for that, then this is a warning for suffering that some of my friends have experienced.
A lot of my friends who are queer, and not all by any stretch of the imagination, but a number of them, because of their time in churches, have felt like, you know, if the church doesn't welcome me, does God? And what does that say about my worth, and what does that say about my goodness, and maybe I shouldn't be here? I think that's something that I hear all the time, every week at least, from someone that I know. And I think I'm still in a space right now where there's a lot of argument around queer folks should be allowed to be pastors, or should be allowed to be married in the church.
And I have so much rage around this. Like, I think if our theology is making people believe that God wants them dead, then something is wrong. Like, then our theology is wrong. There's something wrong with it.
Like, I'm sorry. That's just it. It's not the good news. It's not the good news.
And we're about the good news. And so I think in spending time with queer people in my community and my church community and my friend group around my neighborhood, I think people deserve to thrive and live and know that they're loved. Like, this isn't that hard. And so I look at our theology and I'm like, if the church is going that way, are we too far gone already?
Like we have to keep moving towards goodness and life and care for each other and abundant love and care and liberation and justice. And that's what I read in scripture from beginning to end. And so I think in looking at scripture from that lens of liberation and love, I think now it's everywhere. At first, I think I looked at it and I was like, okay, so how scripturally do I get to a certain place?
Because I grew up pretty conservative. And now it's like, oh, it's literally every chapter, every verse from beginning to end. If we're looking at the scriptures that way, like, oh, so I think it's just a more, I think in talking with queer people and learning from queer people, it's like, oh, I can like relax. It's like, oh, scripture is beautiful and life-giving.
And our faith is about care for one another and love and joy and liberation. And it's just freeing and lovely. So yeah, I don't know that I have others' things to say that. I was going to reflect back.
I mean, it's probably not just the queer community that has challenged you as a pastor, right? There's other intersections. Definitely. And specifically, we're talking about what it's like to be young versus out of your 20s later in life.
And of course, we have the intersections of our racialization issues in America, our ability and disability issues and how the church intersects with those. But I'm 100% with you. And do you feel like that has been an ongoing process that started maybe even in school or even younger? Or do you feel like that's only been more so in your professional life as a pastor trying to make sense of that?
I think it started maybe when I was a junior high and a couple friends came out to me and then hearing the stories of another friend who was pulled over by the police and had a very different understanding of what the police were there to do than what I had grown up with, because I was white and I did not have the same experience as he had as a man of color. Well, a boy of color at that point is a child. And yeah, and at that point, I didn't have understandings of like, I had received certain things from my churches and books that I was given, you know, this is how you think about scripture in this way. This is how you think about God in this way.
And these people that I loved so dearly like didn't really fit into those. And then I started to realize too, like, as a woman, I don't really either. You know, like, I'm looking at these categories for like, you know, for being a Christian woman and like, you're supposed to be really quiet and really nice and like, not supposed to have any anger and like, you know, you're supposed to be like, sure to demure and well, it turns out I'm really tall and I have a lot of rage and, you know, it's just like, I can't, I just don't fit in these things. And then, you know, I felt a calling to be a pastor and well, that's not, you know, super well accepted in a lot of places.
So I think once you're in one of those places or once you know someone and love someone who isn't in one of those places, you know, who doesn't match up with whatever the scriptural view you've been taught, I think then you start to be like, okay, something's off and I got to read it. So I got to figure it out. I got to talk to people and I think it's those stories like that's, I think that's how people in scripture did theology, they did it through their own understandings of God and what they experienced. And so I think we're just doing the same thing as people I've been doing forever.
You know, I don't think it's, but I also think of scripture maybe a little less like an evangelical these days. So I'm not, am I getting trouble for not adhering to that it's infallible or inherent and I don't, yeah, I don't believe those things anymore. I think all of us are already in trouble. I figure.
Yep. Here we are. I don't want to be with anyone else. That's great.
Tina, you talked a little bit about pronouns. Would you like to hear some historical and scriptural basis? Love to. All right.
So I'm just going to summarize in December of last year, the LA Times came out with an article about the history of they as a singular pronoun and they list Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, and a whole bunch of other dead white people who used singular they in their publications. And we all know how much the institutional church likes old dead white people. So that's so that's covered. So in biblical Hebrew, there was no gender neutral pronoun.
So he is everybody and eunuchs are mentioned several times throughout scripture, sometimes not so nice, like eunuchs cannot own land, eunuchs cannot get married, eunuchs are neither men nor women. And in the book of Isaiah, eunuchs are blessed. And then in the book of Matthew, Jesus himself blesses eunuchs. There are many different translations of what that means, but he definitely said eunuchs blessed.
And a lot of non-binary and transgender theologians today question if eunuchs were transgender people. I mean, transgender is a very new term. So if you had a time machine and you managed to go back to that moment in time and say transgender, everybody would be like, what? We don't speak English.
So we do have the historical and the scriptural basis for people who are non-binary, people who are transgender. So I propose that the churches who say that this is some new fangled heresy are not biblical churches. And even with pre-colonial, I do work around post-colonial studies and one of the pre-colonial traditions in Philippines, it wasn't even Philippines, it wasn't called Philippines at the time since Philippines is named in honor of a Spanish king named King Philip II. But the indigenous tribes in pre-colonial Philippines had this ritual called, and I will butcher this, Daidai.
It's basically a tradition where when you reach adolescent years, you will decide what gender and sexuality you identify in. And that is actually like a public announcement and proclamation to your tribe. And I have no doubt that because of that ritual, our language has gender-neutral pronouns. We don't have she, he, her, him pronouns.
No, in addition to the research that you give us. Thank you. And I do also want to add that the term Two Spirit, referring to indigenous people in the United States and Canada, that term came about at the third annual Spirit Gathering of Gay and Lesbian Native People in Winnipeg in 1990. Two Spirit is an overarching term that covers people in various Turtle Island indigenous communities who don't fit the white, complementary, and gender binary.
And for people in Seattle, there is a Two Spirit community, yes. And I think that since Seattle established October 14th as an indigenous people's day, many churches here that want to celebrate that day might be a good idea to reach out to that community. And it was so young that it had been in use here and there, but that's when it became okay, we are using this term now. And I also, I don't think it's a coincidence that the misuse or not using they, them as a single singular pronoun.
I think that happened right around the same time as the Indian relocation movement and the boarding schools. I'm not saying that's causational, there's a pretty strong correlation as to why that went out of vote. Okay, you were pointing out to me earlier that a lot of the way, I mean, it makes sense that the way a community expresses itself is very regional. It's very scene oriented, you know, like I think of like music scenes or maybe a scene around a university or educational institution or a scene around a specific arts or, you know, we think of Seattle having a jazz scene back in the day and other things.
So what is your impression of the Seattle scene as an outsider? You already given a little bit of that. So I think we'd be really curious to know. And then another question I'll ask, and this is really after the conversation go wherever it wants to go.
I feel like it's already going that way. I'd love to spend a little bit of time on intergenerational relationships and how queer folks actualize those and how those work in the church and how people mentor intergenerationally versus spaces that are only for groups that identify as homogenous for support, for rest, for peace. I think for 20-something, that's a constant struggle. Do I hang out with the older folks or the younger folks or do I hang out just with my group?
And I think what we're landing in our work is that they're both necessary, but there are seasons. So I'd love to get into that. But first, tell us what your impressions of Seattle are a little bit more. If there's anything you haven't said, if you said I've said it all, then that's fine.
When the 36 hours that I've been here, well, I did do a lot of Googling. She's a researcher. Yeah. I did a lot of Googling before coming here.
And I do see a lot of people who are united by something similar, whether it's drag or whether it's the two-spirit community or whether it's how much you people love granola. People here do form communities. It doesn't look like people sit around saying, oh, I wish someone would do something. Like, people are doing things here.
I feel like I can't really speak to how connected those communities are with each other, especially along racial lines. I don't know. I do have many different thoughts, but I'm also hoping that as I spend essentially another 36 hours here that will develop more. Yeah.
Well, I guess I specifically in comparison to Texas and other places that you spent time in the nation. Oh, boy. You know, what ways are we doing well as a city, as a culture, maybe even, I mean, I know you had less experience with the church here, but you know, us, our team pivot, which represents a smattering of churches, and then how's that different from the other communities you've experienced nationally? And anyone else who's had any experience nationally that panel can jump in on this?
I always love it when I walk down the street and I hear more than two languages being spoken. So I love that that's happening here. And I don't have to go anywhere special for it. It's just happening.
I love that there's a variety of food and not in a Yelp, let's make money sort of way. This is just what people eat. And this is just what people cook. This is just what's happening because these are the communities that we have.
I do find it odd, and Martina, you and I have talked about this a little bit, that I have not seen that many homeless people. And we did talk a little bit about the city moving homeless people around, especially in places where tourists like me wouldn't see them. I am familiar with the city of Austin, and they recently did the same thing. Cities like Austin, and I've been in Portland for a short time, and sorry if you're in Portland and you're listening to this, cities that say that they're progressive are really just progressive for white people.
From what I've seen of Seattle, that's not the case as much here. I haven't been here long enough to say how accurate that perception is. But it seems like there's a little bit more, people are keeping up with the race a little bit more. I've been chomping her around.
I'll be honest, I've been pointing out things like the needle in the troll, and not necessarily pointing out, oh, that's the lot where I know some folks can't. To be fair, I asked specifically about the troll several times. She did. She did.
Well, thanks for letting me put you on the spot. Yeah, I mean, just you're bringing up the story hour, and some of the other things that you know, I think sometimes we, and I've already said this, I feel like I said this multiple times this week, sometimes we worry about what else we need to do and we don't take a moment to take a breath and look back and see what relationships and things we've done that are good things to celebrate and to keep us going forward. So back to intergenerational relationships versus finding a safe space. What are your thoughts on that?
What have you seen 20-something doing in your experience to recharge, especially in the queer community, or reach out to mentor each other, to get mentored? What are the experiences you all have? And that have been maybe both heartening and disheartening? One of the things I've seen in the kink community where there's a lot of queer folk is there's more intergenerational things going on there, and I think that that community's done a good job creating safe space to open up story and lives and connection and support, at least here in Seattle.
That's the community I know best, and there I think that they are finding ways to support and hear each other in an intergenerational way, and I was just trying to think through that. I think your life has to create a space for the intergenerational stuff to happen, like to cross over. And so I think that's the question, does your life, does your work or your neighborhood or your something bring you into that space so that the generations can cross over? I think when it does, there's a lot of richness that happens, provided that the people have a curiosity for each other, you know?
Yeah. And I remember one time I was listening to something, Krista Tippet was talking about how she always has kept people older and younger in her life, and what a richness that has been. And I know from me teaching at a university that has been the case too, and I think that that's in the community that's there and there's a richness there. But I think you have to decide that that's something that's important to you to surround yourself with multi-generations because you see what it brings in your life and that you are somebody that really values that.
I think for the person who's older, it's coming in as a learner, it's not coming in as an expert. We've seen that a lot in our churches, where there is intergenerational mixing. The permission is granted to the curious. Yeah, right.
And I see myself as somebody like, I might have resources that are of value to you, and if I do, you may partake of those, I'm coming as a learner because I think you have a pulse on things that I don't have a pulse on. And that's what I want to be aware of because there's just so much happening on the ground. And because I also realize that we've been sucking up your resources. We as in.
We as in people my age. People in their 50s and 60s have been sucking up your resources. Thanks a lot, Tina. Yeah.
Yeah, it's been, it's, you know, it's rough what's happened. What's happened since the 80s with regard to the income gap has been stunning and disgusting. You know, and I watch it affecting my own children and it just saddens me so much. You know, and I feel like we've come to a place where we have to live in community now, you know.
And I feel like I'm a place of resource and that's my responsibility, but not as an expert. One of the things that we think we're learning, we kind of caveat everything at this point because we're not done. And I'm not even sure when we're done. I don't say it with any surety, but young adults are saying to 20 something, they're saying to older folks, we don't necessarily want your stuff.
We don't want to clean out your house. Oh, absolutely. We don't want your engraved altar plates. Nope.
When you go to a church that's closing and actually visited one just a few weeks ago, you walk inside. The pews are all there. The altar pieces that are maybe made of even precious metal are sitting there waiting to be sold at a garage sale. Yeah.
Or maybe find another church that will take them, but they're not sure when that will come about. But those aren't Etsy. Seriously. Well, I think that this person was really hoping to keep it in a church, but I hear you.
I hear you. Yeah, redesign it. Yeah. So that's a really hard thing to hear when you're trying to create a intergenerational relationship is intergenerational relationship is I don't want your stuff.
I don't want your baggage. I don't want your way of living. Yeah. But that is really true.
But there is wisdom. And there's so much wisdom in that. I've had phenomenal conversations with my children about that. And yes, one at first got response, yeah, that's hard, but then just remain curious about that is so powerful about, you know, we, my generation was the acquire, you know, consume meat, generation, and they are, no, you know, and there is such wisdom in that and really stopping and listening and they are about quality experience, you know, and not stuff.
And they can see that stuff has not made people happy. What were the categories? I think you brought them in K, the what is real, what is good, what is beautiful and just with those games. Yeah, that was games.
Yeah. Give me those again. Yeah. The viewers asked the spiritual question, what is true?
The experts asked what is real, and then millennials asked what is good, and the next generation will ask, but it's beautiful and just. And I do want to add that a large reason for that generational divide was after the depression, people accumulated, they especially accumulated stuff that was very valuable, very precious, and they didn't really use it, it would usually sit in a box and an attic, or it might sit on a sideboard for everyone to look at, maybe use a Christmas. And then after the recession, that's when it became more experience-based. So there's a very big difference between valuing stuff after the depression and valuing experience after the recession.
And I think that the generational miscommunication about stuff versus experience is really missing this shared experience, because really the depression and recession were very, very similar in terms of being afraid about paying your bills, how you're going to eat, where you're going to find a job. I hope that people can maybe connect over that core experience as opposed to divide it over how it shaped them. And those are core things that 20-something's have to figure out. Oh, yeah.
What do I do with my education? Where do I live? Who am I in relationship with? How do I get to my job?
What job do I do? Will I like my job or not? When you start looking at tasks of being 20, it's rebuilding your network after leaving your parents' network. And I find that if you could draw one similarity from the boomers all the way to the Gen Z, that's still the task.
So that list. This segues into one of the questions I really wanted to get into, and I almost forgot, which is, what do you see in the queer community where the queer community is saying, I don't want what your battles were to the older queer community? So that was a little bit of that in the New York Times article where they were talking about how they don't use the same terminology generationally. The Gen Z, Y, X, and boomers, they use different words.
And in fact, the very word queer is not as acceptable to some generations because they experience it as derogatory. And now, right now, I think it's being reclaimed, if I'm correct. So what do you see that's happening internally in that community and how might that relate or be important for the church to understand? I think that one of the underlying ideas that we were discussing is that every generation has a different collective trauma and response to the suffering.
And they have, and therefore because of the differences in the experience and what was broadcasted in media, everybody in the particular generation has a different set of assumptions and biases and ways of trying to survive and make sure that they plant the seed so that it would grow enough for the generations afterwards to live by. And so with that, I want to emphasize the importance of context, and that does include language. What, where my mind went to in terms of intergenerational relationships is how I feel not necessarily a certain sense of responsibility, but I feel like I want to let those in their 20s, my fellow millennials, that there's a difference between debate and discourse, that debate has more to do with having a winner and a loser or having somebody have a last laugh. And I feel like the conversations that we've been having about marginalization, privilege, LGBTQI plus, all that, I feel like there's more of the spirit of debate than there is with discourse, whereas discourse is more navigated by our curiosity and our exploration of how much we can learn from each other.
And so I feel like as somebody who's in their 20s, I'm aware of my tendency to polarize, to already make assumptions, not knowing that their language and their context and their set of priorities are different. And so that blocks the connection that incites the shame and that incites the guilt-tripping and that incites the blaming of others. And so I love that you brought up the community, because I'm reminded of the BIPOC community where, I can speak for myself, I feel like I already have an intergenerational mentorship that's going on with my ancestors with my, I was just at a poetry night the other day, and there were two, two women of color who, and I don't think they even knew about this, but they brought poetry or poems about their mother's mother's mother. And I feel like there's already this inherent assumption or understanding that whatever, as a person of color, I already inherit not just the suffering and the pain of my ancestors, but also their resilience, also their wisdom.
And so there's not just the collectivist mentality that goes on with today, but also with time. Again, another thing the church could learn from, I mean, how often do we really consider our ancestors and their legacies, like the offering plate that has the person's name engraved. And I mean, I remember when I was a kid, I didn't understand, that was a pillar in the community, that's part of my story in the church. No one taught me that.
Yeah, and that's one of the things that I despair over what the church is missing. That there's this impulse to want to say that that's syncretistic, meaning you're fusing together multiple spiritualities and rituals that are not of Jesus. I went to a Bible school that was really anxious around that, like if I bring this drum from West Africa, if I bring this chance, or if we talk about meditation, you can feel the tension in the room. And that to me was like, it shows the assumption that there is a standard of being Christian, that white American exceptionalism is deep and prevalent in the white evangelical church and sets us up to other eyes, to colonize and to impose.
So yeah, that would be my invitation to the church today too. If you claim that this gospel and this text and this Jesus is powerful, then you shouldn't be afraid, that this is afraid to try to protect it. Yes. Thank you for listening to this pivot Northwest podcast.
We hope it was encouraging, inspiring, and helpful. Please do all the things that help others to know about our work, such as liking, subscribing, writing. But mostly, we hope that you will share this with other young adults and young adult leaders so that they can feel encouraged and inspired in their faith and participation in the church. God bless.