...gay Christian message boards I belong to

I have just accepted an appointment, "Special Contributor: HIV/AIDS & Health", at http://www.gcoministries.net and I am a frequent participant at http://www.gaychristian.net where I met many of you.

That's where I will pull my recent testimony from as a way to introduce myself, albeit at some length, here:

March 11, 2006

My arrival at gay Christian message boards in February was part of a process of revival in me that I haven't experienced in many's the year.  Having been practically written off as dead in the mid-90s, due to critical illness - and then surviving a serious accident in 2003 - God is giving me more life, not less!

I grew up in a very liberal Christian family home, no more of a contradiction than gay Christian.

Admittedly the Bible was not a big part of those years, and so I do not have the biblical literacy that I sometimes would like.  However, I always seem to want to explain what I mean when I declare myself "Christian", such is the raw deal I think that label has sometimes deservedly received.  Something like the "What would Jesus do?" phenomenon, I wonder which denomination Jesus would feel most at home in.

Right now I'm equally a Christian activist (a supporter of Christian Peacemaker Teams, for example), a worshipful part of the flock when I can just let loose with praise and devotional music or reading, and an enthusiastic booster of my denomination's efforts to become even more inclusive.

This is my story, British/Canadian spelling and all.  I hope I can tell it with love – for family members or friends mentioned, for myself and, above all, for God.

There was a lot of stress around my birth in October, 1959.  There were concerns, even before I was born, that I might have water on the brain.  The son of my mother’s cousin was paralyzed for life as a result of this condition.  It turned out that while my head was abnormally large – the brunt of jokes for my first ten or eleven years – I was perfectly healthy.  Never much of a roughneck there was little danger of me hurting myself too badly - atlhugh I did do a pretty good job smashing my teeth when I fell off playground equipment one day.

I was the second son, my brother having arrived in 1955, and I was followed, sixteen months later in early 1961, by a sister (and another sister in 1968).  My place in the line-up seems to match the psychobabble profiles.

From the time I was very young, five or six, I had an unspoken same-sex attraction to everyone from Batman and Robin and Tarzan to the young minister of my family’s church congregation.  I also had a best friend who my father would later, prior to my coming out obviously, refer to as “effeminate”.  That implicit disapproval was an early message, though there were others from different role models, which I now see as starting my iternalised homophobia.  Unfortunately, for my friend, I was not always loyal to him when he was the focus of schoolyard taunts more than I seemed to be.

I was an O-K (an organist’s kid, as opposed to P-K which of course is a preacher’s kid).  Mom played a mean pipe organ, and also taught piano until very recently, and instilled in me a great love of all sorts of music.  I used to love sitting on the bench beside her as she reached all over the organ console, pulling out stops and flipping pages of music.  Unfortunately I did not stick to piano lessons but was musical in other ways as I will discuss further.

The United Church of Canada espouses an infant baptism/confirmation model of public confession.  When I was twelve or thirteen I remember feeling genuinely committed to Christ, or at least His Church, when I was confirmed although, until I had another much more personal encounter in college, it did not seem to be a very deep relationship.

My family's church was a small English-speaking congregation in a mostly French-speaking town outside of Montreal.  As a result we were often treated as a mission, up-start church even though it had been much bigger and more active way back in the early part of the twentieth century when first settled.  Ministers came and went fairly regularly in my day. 

One of my parents’ favourite ministers, in the mid-1960s, disclosed to them that he was gay – remember this was pre-Stonewall!  Their love and respect for him would bode well for me later on.

Back to my teenage years.  In addition to being physically abused (and however else one might classify an adult's bullying) by my elementary school principal (a family friend) when I was 7-10 years old, later - through my teens - I was sexually abused by much-older adult male strangers.  I was in what today I would recognize as "cruisy" areas but, at first, was totally naive as to what was going on.  I blamed myself for my curiosity, to say nothing of being drawn back again a few times.  To put it simply this was a traumatic time.

(I have written more about this, and will share it with anyone who asks.)

At the first opportunity to do so, well before it was legal for me, I drank.  This set me off on yet another secret, shame-filled path.  Although I gave it up for a while when I was first saved (see below) drinking was a 'coping mechanism' for many years to come. In the ensuing years I have given it up entirely, then inched back to moderate, responsible drinking.  Right now I do not have strong feelings for or against it and it has not caused me any difficulties for many years.

Leaving home to attend college, always a church-goer, I finally accepted Christ - in the evangelical tradition - one night while I was in college.  I had just hitch-hiked back from my cousins, who had themselves recently converted, and I sat on my bed reading the Campus Crusade for Christ pamphlets (with the stick figures and the selection of seating arrangements on or around the Throne.)

Not wanting to go to bed any more unsure than I was I prayed the "sinner's prayer".  Then I walked over to my pastor's house and gave him my good news. 

I was baptized a few weeks later, Easter Sunday, 1978.
 
Not long after that I sang a solo, "The King Is Coming" by The Gaithers.  (I have been in choirs singing everything from Bach to Bebe Winans.)

Given my family's more "mainline denomination" traditions this baptism was probably as big a shock to them as my 'coming out' a few years later!  My new church thought of itself as somewhere between Pentecostal and Baptist.  I enthusiastically participated in a charismatic sub-group of the congregation until, in 1981, my pastor wrote a scathing anti-gay Op-Ed piece in the local paper. 

This coincided with a major gay civil rights struggle (or so it was framed) happening in Toronto. This was when I found out about MCC and, in short order, came out to my family. At that time I learned that my brother was also gay.

My blog "My journey with AIDS - day by day, year by year" at http://kennchaplin.blogspot.com  might tell you more about me.  Suffice to say that, for a time, I walked away from the evangelical tradition and smacked right into the individualistic gay milieu.  Never without a church home, however, I attended MCC Toronto for much of the 1980s and 90s and it was a moderating influence on a life that was otherwsie quite out of control.

From 1980 to 1987 I worked in a Niagara-area radio station, as a reporter, and commuted to Toronto to attend MCC - where I remained a member until about seven years ago.

I moved to Toronto in 1988, after losing my job in a round of pre-Christmas layoffs.

Unfortunately in my self-directed attempts to find my way around the mine-field which is gay life sometimes, I tested HIV-positive about a year later and have survived a couple of serious brushes with death since then.

I remember clearly saying to myself, "Well if anybody deserves AIDS it is me!"

Thankfully my journey has allowed me to faithfully deconstruct that statement, beginning with the false assumption that illness of any kind is "deserved", then trusting that God would no more want me to be sick - just because I am gay - than any other of His beautiful creations.

It's only been relatively recently that I have stopped expecting death any day now - and this was well after I had stopped believing that I deserved it - and have begun to earnestly look again to God for strength and guidance for my daily life-beyond-survival.

As horrible as things have been, at times, I have felt the seismic shift of victory recently and I have always had, at the very least, the spark of hope that I am worthy of God's love. I hope I can live out my days with dignity and care for others.

While my writing may hint otherwise, I no longer bear deep-seeded ill will toward those who have wronged me. That was only hurting ME through my self-abusive behaviours. The family friend and teacher I know to be dead and I have had no contact with the men (strangers) who sexually abused me.

I am sorry that I did not get the help I could have used at a much earlier age but I trusted no one back then and, with such misguided self-sufficiency, it seems I was destined to take the route I did. I only wish now to be an example to others and point to the hope we can all feel as fully worthy members of society.

For the past several years home has been an "affirming" congregation of the United Church of Canada, the denomination which I was raised in.  And...during those angst-filled years in college, when I didn't know who I was (or accept it)...I was led, as noted above, to a personal relationship with Christ, was baptized and enjoyed the lovely fellowship of an "Associated Gospel" congregation. 

Music has always been an important part of my relationship with God, whether it was sitting on my mother's church organ bench as a kid or "shouting to the Lord" with praise and thanksgiving in a choir or spirited worship service.

I trust God delights in us overflowing with gratitude and praise.  It is with gratitude, not a sense of obligation, that I praise God as faithfully as I can. It sure beats the alternative!

Blessings,

Kenn