Finding Our Way Home - A Bridge Between Trauma and Divine Love

As I approach the end of my path toward ordained ministry, I find myself standing in a sacred space of reflection. Currently, I am serving as a pastoral care intern at the Cathedral of Hope UCC in Dallas - a place that is not only the world’s largest LGBTQIA+ - centric church but also a vibrant beacon of what it means for queer people to repair the often toxic and abusive relationship that many of them had with the churches of their past and reclaim the love of God as their birthright.

In this role, and as I look back at the map of my own life, I am struck by the different terrains we travel to find God. My journey began in the United Church of Christ (UCC) in the 1980s. While the denomination back then hadn't yet reached the full, vocal embrace of queer people it holds today, my experience was one of safety. I was lucky. I grew up in a loving environment where I experienced no clergy abuse and heard no unloving messages that wounded my spirit. Later, in the 90s, I found my way to the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) of Washington DC. It was there that the "color" was turned up on my faith. I learned what it meant to worship within a queer community that didn’t just listen to stories of God’s love but claimed it, shouted it, and wore it as armor.

However, I am acutely aware that my story is not the universal story of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Acknowledging the Wound

Over the years, I have listened to the stories of my beloved queer siblings, and I have come to realize how deep the scars of religious trauma run. For many, the "Church" was not a sanctuary; it was a site of surveillance, judgment, and spiritual violence. The attacks on our community by those claiming the name of "Christian" have been relentless. These leaders and communities have often represented the very worst of humanity under the guise of divinity.

I want to be very clear: I am convinced that these voices do not represent the Jesus I know. The Jesus I follow is the one who moved toward the margins, who embraced the outcast, and whose primary language was radical, inclusive love.

But for someone who has been told from a young age that God hates them, or that their very existence is an abomination, "God" becomes a loaded word. It becomes a trigger.

The Baby and the Bathwater

I often think of religious trauma through the lens of an abusive relationship. When you are in an environment that harms you, the first and most vital objective is to stop the harm. For most people, that means leaving. It means walking away from the pews, the hymns, and the steeples. And it also means walking away from a community that was also a refuge, a home, and often good in others ways despite its cruelty.

The tragedy of toxic theology is that it teaches followers that God and the Church are inseparable. They bind the Creator to the institution so tightly that when you reject the toxic institution, you feel you must also reject the Creator. In the necessary act of self-preservation, many throw the "baby out with the bathwater."

I mourn that loss of connection, but I want you to know: I understand it. I do not judge the person who says, "If this is God, I want nothing to do with it." That is a rational response to an irrational amount of pain.

A Legacy of Radical Inclusivity

Sometimes, when we advocate for the full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people, we are told that we are "watering down" the faith or following "modern trends." But when I look at the early church, I see a very different story. Paul, one of the most prolific voices in the New Testament, was obsessed with a radical kind of diversity.

In his letters, Paul consistently hammered home the point that the Christian community was made of people who "shouldn't" be together. He wrote of a church composed of slaves and free people, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and those the empire dismissed as "barbarians." To Paul, the church was a place where the wealthy entrepreneur and the enslaved person sat at the same table in total equality.

If Paul were ministering today, I believe he would be preaching that same uncomfortable, radical inclusion. He would argue that a church that only includes one "kind" of person - one political view, one gender identity, or one economic status - is a church that has forgotten who God is. If God is Lord of all, then God is Lord of the liberal and the conservative, the cisgender and the transgender, the wealthy and the poor. Inclusion isn't just a nice idea; it is a theological necessity. If we exclude any group, we are essentially claiming that God is only the Lord of "our kind," which is a much smaller, much less powerful God than the one I know.

A Ministry of Cutting Through the Noise

As I look toward my future ministry, I do not want to be another voice forcing beliefs on a community that has already been forced into too many boxes. My goal is not to "convert" or to argue. Instead, I want my ministry to be about cutting through the noise of Christian Nationalism and the static of hate.

I want to represent the love and inclusivity of Jesus to my queer siblings - gently, lovingly, and without attachment to the outcome.

I want to offer the possibility of a God who is not a judge in a courtroom, but a Creator who celebrates your uniqueness. A God who looked at the spectrum of gender and the infinity of human love and said, "This is good." I want to be a bridge for those who miss the sense of community and the "something more" that faith provides, but who cannot yet cross back into a traditional religious space because the gatekeepers were too cruel.

Reclaiming the Divine

When I speak to those who have left toxic churches, they often admit to a lingering ache. They miss the shared songs, the collective silence, the sense of belonging to something larger than themselves, and the relationship to the Divine. They have given up on God for very good reasons, yet the spiritual hunger remains.

My hope is to create a space where we can talk about the Divine without the baggage of the dogma. I want to help my community realize that you can have a relationship with the Spirit that created you without having to subscribe to the theologies that tried to break you.

God celebrates your identity. God celebrates your love. God celebrates exactly who you are, right now, in this moment.

Moving Forward Together

I know how much meaning, resilience, and community my faith has given me. It has been my North Star through the complexities of life. I long for all my LGBTQIA+ siblings to experience that same sense of being anchored in love. But I know we cannot get there by ignoring the trauma. We get there by walking through it, side by side.

If you are someone who has been hurt by the church, please know that you are not broken. The system was broken. You are a masterpiece.

As I finish my studies and move into this next chapter, my door and my heart are open. Not to tell you what to believe, but to remind you that you are loved - unconditionally, intentionally, and wonderfully. Let - us find our way home, whatever that "home" looks like for you, together.