Unemployed Theologian

On the last day of June 2018, I celebrated Pride month by coming out to the world as bisexual via social media post, and the aftermath of that decision has shaped the last year of my life, for better and for worse. Indeed, it's been a year full of encouragement, hope, trauma, pain and confusion, often all at the same time. Almost everyone in my life has been so tender with me, so affirming and lovely. But not quite everyone. In certain circumstances, certain circles, I met resistance. Fear. Shame. And it’s really messed with me. In fact, a question has plagued me in the time since I’ve come out, sparked by hard conversations and suddenly-strained relationships: is God’s love still for me? Am I still included in His family? To quote gay Christian writer Jeff Chu: "Does Jesus really love me?" My gut says yes. The first idea I ever learned about God was that He loved me, that I was unconditionally, radically, holistically embraced by the Source of all love and light i...

“One of my favorite writers died” doesn’t capture it. That wouldn’t account for how I’m feeling right now. It’s more than that; she was a friend. And not just to me, but to anyone who needed a friend like her: someone to stand in the gap for us, to affirm our worth when the world denies it. Someone to model honesty in doubt and dignity in disagreement. Someone to stand in Christian spaces while full-throatedly supporting those whom the church has ignored, rejected or abused. Rachel Held Evans was a superhero, at least to me. Eshet chayil, woman of valor. I met Rachel when she passed through George Fox University (my alma mater) on a speaking tour to promote her second book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood . I was superficially familiar with her work at the time, having only read a handful of her blog posts, but they had certainly piqued my interest. Her voice resonated with where I found myself at the time: crumbling under the weight of doubt but desperate to find something salvageabl...