Thirty years ago today after I gave my life to my blessed lord and saviour Jesus Christ and was born again. I still remember how I felt afterwards, the almost overwhelming joy that I had found the truth, found the Prince of Peace, been forgiven, and had something of eternal meaning including a promise of being happy forever. Three days later I gave my heartfelt testimony of salvation in a crowded Pentecostal church in Sheffield full of young people, enthusiastic in their worship and pleased to be Christians, singing songs of praise with their hands in the air. I was absolute in my certainty that I'd made the right choice and that Jesus was my way, my truth, and my life.
In retrospect, walking into conservative Christianity was possibly the worst choice I've ever made but at the time it seemed right and I'd come to believe it was the only way. So praying that Sinner's Prayer and asking Jesus into my life was hardly a choice at all.
Hell or heaven? Despair or sure hope? Meaninglessness or eternal perfect meaning? Rejecting love or accepting love divine? It was a no-brainer for a vulnerable teenager. I was vulnerable too though I had a good home and wasn't ever going to be one of those "rough diamond" testimonies that get you a job on the evangelism circuit.
Thinking you're a monster because of your gender and developing severe mental health issues as a result of that plus trauma you've thoroughly dissociated and buried wasn't a crowd winner like if I'd been either selling sex for drugs or selling drugs to buy sex. Those were the stories that Christian crowds wanted to hear the saved talk about. You could hear the Oohs and Ahhs too if someone had been in prison.
My testimony was far less palatable. My testimony could receive Boos not Oohs. That did happen. Especially as church teaching on gender wasn't exactly accepting and since underneath everything my life wasn't full of the joy of the Lord in the way other people's seemed to be. I say seemed to be deliberately. There was a lot of acting, especially in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, by people who didn't seem to be getting as many blessings as other people and so felt guilt, shame, or rejected. In reality it was mostly that they were less suggestible but that obvious piece of psychology never made it to the sermons or the list of things we had to believe.
Over the next twenty-six years I was a part of many churches, Protestant and Catholic. Never Orthodox though I did read Orthodox works too. Jesus was my rock, my meaning, my hope, my everything. I read the Bible so many times. So many other Christian books. God was the core of my life and my identity. I was, metaphorically, totally crucified with Christ. There's a song about that Bible verse. I was a Christian and I walked by faith, the (false) assurance of things unseen. Hallelujah! By his stripes I am healed. Praise the Lord who heals all your diseases. What crap I believed!
It took more than twenty years for me to begin to disentangle myself from it all and another five before I could walk away. Several more to mostly heal from the damage. There are ways in which I'm still healing from religion, just as I'm still healing from other things.
I was broken when I went into the Church. Broken when I was baptised by a charismatic church in Sussex. More broken but able, at times, to hide it when re-baptised, or baptised properly, by the Modern Jesus Army in the Golden Marquee during one of their festivals. More broken still but strongly thinking I was finally following the right kind of Christianity when I was baptised yet again or conditionally baptised into the Catholic Church (Latin Rite).
And I was broken but beginning to find my way into freedom when I was rededicated - not baptised even though there was water poured over me - in Metropolitan Community Church, a congregation who helped me greatly, supported me, were patient with my constant doctrinal and practical questioning of my faith, and were brilliantly gentle and kind when I left them and left church and Christianity behind entirely.
I spent decades giving everything I could to the cause and life of God. Sometimes I could convince myself that he was healing me and that the joy of the Lord was my strength as I taught and was taught.
I sought better and purer ways to live for Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. Wandered round different churches. Turned Catholic after deciding it was historically more accurate, closer to what was seen in the early church.
I prayed for hours a day. Served as best I could, leaning on Jesus as my strength. Wept for the lost. Wept for myself.
I tried my best while relying on god because my best was filthy rags, to use a Bible metaphor. Apart from Christ you can do nothing. Nothing. I was that wretch, saved by grace that I deserved and I sang those hymns that wondered how God could love people. I loved the God who died for me, so infinite in mercy that he was incapable of forgiving anyone unless blood was shed. I deserved to burn for eternity. We all did. In short, I followed the religion that looked upon humanity in a worse way than any other major faith system and had a worse punishment too.
And God, beautiful redeemer, left me in pain, left me with my unhealed trauma, my mental health distress, my "evil abomination" gender and sexuality. I prayed so hard. So, so hard. I was prayed for. I was exorcised on occasion too. I was told I was doing it wrong because if I actually had faith I wouldn't have the problems. I was told to repent of depression, to repent of everything. Just trust Jesus and be happy. He commands you to be happy. Commands you to have a sound mind. One time someone I'd never met phoned me from across the country to say "I was depressed and I prayed and God took it away. So I don't see what your problem is!" The lack of compassion I sometimes met from people who just assumed I wasn't trusting and obeying properly was astounding.
It wasn't the people who added to my brokenness though. Not even the ones who would say "If you're depressed you obviously have sins to repent of." Yes, Christianity taught many of us to believe and say monstrous things. I stress it though. The people weren't the problem. The entire damn system of anti-human religion was. It's hard to fully love yourself, or even fully love and embrace others in their beautiful wonder when you're told everyone deserves punishment and that you have to die every day.
I was totally broken inside, though hiding it as much as I could, when I found that first crack that led, eventually, to being able psychologically to escape. It came in rebellion, starting a book by someone I'd been strongly told to avoid. A "false" Christian, Matthew Fox. In the mid-nineties we'd placed the blame for the "Nine O'Clock Service Scandal" firmly at the feet of Fox, who had been consulted on liturgy. So we were able to be proud and claim the sexual abuse there was his fault, not the fault of proper Christianity where such evils wouldn't happened!
I never finished the book, Original Blessing, but it was enough to give something that grew - that spirituality is always creative, evolving, and starts from the via positiva, not the via negativa at the initial core of Western Christianity. He also proposed something I absolutely believe now but which I couldn't accept at the time: That the doctrine of original sin is heinous bullshit!
That form of Christianity I lived, following the beliefs and practices of so many churches, gives hope but it's hope that a problem has been solved. That problem turned out to be unreal, invented, and ultimately anti-human. Original sin was only a part of that invention.
There are other forms of Christianity. Healthier forms. For decades I was warned against the heretics, not to put my salvation at peril by going near them. I'm very pleased to have met some of them, even worshiped among them while navigating myself slowly out of religion. Metropolitan Community Church (Northern Lights) in Newcastle Upon Tyne was one of the good places. Unitarians and Quakers also helped me along the way too and there are individual Christians who have incredible lives drawing from faith that's positive about humanity.
Some scars remain. Memories remain. Bible verses spring to mind often and every now and again unhealthy guilt or unhealthy religion jumps out of my head. Not because of any god of course. It's just how human brains and minds work. I still read, at times, some Christians, some theists, some for whom Jesus is still very important. They're just not the Christians and Jesus followers whose style of religion caused me and so many other people great harm. I still have my books by Matthew Fox, John Shelby Spong, Gretta Vosper, Jim Palmer, Quaker writings, and other authors too and follow some Christian writers and groups online, including ones campaigning for full acceptance and inclusion of LGBT+ people in all churches. Some of the writers I read have versions of Jesus who I'd very gladly sit and eat with just as I'd enjoy the company of my Christian friends.
Thirty years after giving myself to Jesus in the Sinner's Prayer I know this:
It was for freedom that the grace of Clare has set me free from the law of sin and death invented by religion.
And when, two years ago, six missionaries gathered round me in Sunderland and kept telling me about the sinfulness and hopelessness of people all I could do was look around and see the incredible beauty of each person who passed, often covered in pain and suffering and worry, but always fabulous grace underneath the surface waves.
I got out of religion and have worked hard to recover from it. I have no regrets about that.
I was within the Christian religion for twenty five years, mostly within unhealthy forms of it. I have regrets. Of course I do. They don't change anything. Yet they remain.
What is more important though is my future. How every day there are new choices to be made, new ways to grow both compassion and passion, new opportunities for the adventure of a less certain life, and new moments in which to enter deeper into healing and radical acceptance. The future is unpredictable but within the possibilities we can seek to receive, give and cultivate light. Within every moment we can learn to be more fully human, more fully loving, more fully creative beings. After all, that's what the Jesus without dogma would love for us to be.
My testimony was far less palatable. My testimony could receive Boos not Oohs. That did happen. Especially as church teaching on gender wasn't exactly accepting and since underneath everything my life wasn't full of the joy of the Lord in the way other people's seemed to be. I say seemed to be deliberately. There was a lot of acting, especially in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, by people who didn't seem to be getting as many blessings as other people and so felt guilt, shame, or rejected. In reality it was mostly that they were less suggestible but that obvious piece of psychology never made it to the sermons or the list of things we had to believe.
Over the next twenty-six years I was a part of many churches, Protestant and Catholic. Never Orthodox though I did read Orthodox works too. Jesus was my rock, my meaning, my hope, my everything. I read the Bible so many times. So many other Christian books. God was the core of my life and my identity. I was, metaphorically, totally crucified with Christ. There's a song about that Bible verse. I was a Christian and I walked by faith, the (false) assurance of things unseen. Hallelujah! By his stripes I am healed. Praise the Lord who heals all your diseases. What crap I believed!
It took more than twenty years for me to begin to disentangle myself from it all and another five before I could walk away. Several more to mostly heal from the damage. There are ways in which I'm still healing from religion, just as I'm still healing from other things.
I was broken when I went into the Church. Broken when I was baptised by a charismatic church in Sussex. More broken but able, at times, to hide it when re-baptised, or baptised properly, by the Modern Jesus Army in the Golden Marquee during one of their festivals. More broken still but strongly thinking I was finally following the right kind of Christianity when I was baptised yet again or conditionally baptised into the Catholic Church (Latin Rite).
And I was broken but beginning to find my way into freedom when I was rededicated - not baptised even though there was water poured over me - in Metropolitan Community Church, a congregation who helped me greatly, supported me, were patient with my constant doctrinal and practical questioning of my faith, and were brilliantly gentle and kind when I left them and left church and Christianity behind entirely.
I spent decades giving everything I could to the cause and life of God. Sometimes I could convince myself that he was healing me and that the joy of the Lord was my strength as I taught and was taught.
I sought better and purer ways to live for Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. Wandered round different churches. Turned Catholic after deciding it was historically more accurate, closer to what was seen in the early church.
I prayed for hours a day. Served as best I could, leaning on Jesus as my strength. Wept for the lost. Wept for myself.
I tried my best while relying on god because my best was filthy rags, to use a Bible metaphor. Apart from Christ you can do nothing. Nothing. I was that wretch, saved by grace that I deserved and I sang those hymns that wondered how God could love people. I loved the God who died for me, so infinite in mercy that he was incapable of forgiving anyone unless blood was shed. I deserved to burn for eternity. We all did. In short, I followed the religion that looked upon humanity in a worse way than any other major faith system and had a worse punishment too.
And God, beautiful redeemer, left me in pain, left me with my unhealed trauma, my mental health distress, my "evil abomination" gender and sexuality. I prayed so hard. So, so hard. I was prayed for. I was exorcised on occasion too. I was told I was doing it wrong because if I actually had faith I wouldn't have the problems. I was told to repent of depression, to repent of everything. Just trust Jesus and be happy. He commands you to be happy. Commands you to have a sound mind. One time someone I'd never met phoned me from across the country to say "I was depressed and I prayed and God took it away. So I don't see what your problem is!" The lack of compassion I sometimes met from people who just assumed I wasn't trusting and obeying properly was astounding.
It wasn't the people who added to my brokenness though. Not even the ones who would say "If you're depressed you obviously have sins to repent of." Yes, Christianity taught many of us to believe and say monstrous things. I stress it though. The people weren't the problem. The entire damn system of anti-human religion was. It's hard to fully love yourself, or even fully love and embrace others in their beautiful wonder when you're told everyone deserves punishment and that you have to die every day.
I was totally broken inside, though hiding it as much as I could, when I found that first crack that led, eventually, to being able psychologically to escape. It came in rebellion, starting a book by someone I'd been strongly told to avoid. A "false" Christian, Matthew Fox. In the mid-nineties we'd placed the blame for the "Nine O'Clock Service Scandal" firmly at the feet of Fox, who had been consulted on liturgy. So we were able to be proud and claim the sexual abuse there was his fault, not the fault of proper Christianity where such evils wouldn't happened!
I never finished the book, Original Blessing, but it was enough to give something that grew - that spirituality is always creative, evolving, and starts from the via positiva, not the via negativa at the initial core of Western Christianity. He also proposed something I absolutely believe now but which I couldn't accept at the time: That the doctrine of original sin is heinous bullshit!
That form of Christianity I lived, following the beliefs and practices of so many churches, gives hope but it's hope that a problem has been solved. That problem turned out to be unreal, invented, and ultimately anti-human. Original sin was only a part of that invention.
There are other forms of Christianity. Healthier forms. For decades I was warned against the heretics, not to put my salvation at peril by going near them. I'm very pleased to have met some of them, even worshiped among them while navigating myself slowly out of religion. Metropolitan Community Church (Northern Lights) in Newcastle Upon Tyne was one of the good places. Unitarians and Quakers also helped me along the way too and there are individual Christians who have incredible lives drawing from faith that's positive about humanity.
Some scars remain. Memories remain. Bible verses spring to mind often and every now and again unhealthy guilt or unhealthy religion jumps out of my head. Not because of any god of course. It's just how human brains and minds work. I still read, at times, some Christians, some theists, some for whom Jesus is still very important. They're just not the Christians and Jesus followers whose style of religion caused me and so many other people great harm. I still have my books by Matthew Fox, John Shelby Spong, Gretta Vosper, Jim Palmer, Quaker writings, and other authors too and follow some Christian writers and groups online, including ones campaigning for full acceptance and inclusion of LGBT+ people in all churches. Some of the writers I read have versions of Jesus who I'd very gladly sit and eat with just as I'd enjoy the company of my Christian friends.
Thirty years after giving myself to Jesus in the Sinner's Prayer I know this:
It was for freedom that the grace of Clare has set me free from the law of sin and death invented by religion.
And when, two years ago, six missionaries gathered round me in Sunderland and kept telling me about the sinfulness and hopelessness of people all I could do was look around and see the incredible beauty of each person who passed, often covered in pain and suffering and worry, but always fabulous grace underneath the surface waves.
I got out of religion and have worked hard to recover from it. I have no regrets about that.
I was within the Christian religion for twenty five years, mostly within unhealthy forms of it. I have regrets. Of course I do. They don't change anything. Yet they remain.
What is more important though is my future. How every day there are new choices to be made, new ways to grow both compassion and passion, new opportunities for the adventure of a less certain life, and new moments in which to enter deeper into healing and radical acceptance. The future is unpredictable but within the possibilities we can seek to receive, give and cultivate light. Within every moment we can learn to be more fully human, more fully loving, more fully creative beings. After all, that's what the Jesus without dogma would love for us to be.
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