Coming Out In Christianity Religion, Identity And Community

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 29 (2007) 131-178

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Melissa Wilcox, Coming Out in Christianity: Religion, Identity and Community (Blooming- ton, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003). xii + 221 pp., $22.95, paper.

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit upon all ﬂesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your [young] shall see visions, and your [old] shall dream dreams.

— Acts 2:17, NRSV

The Acts 2 account — the dramatized birth of the Christian church — has served as inspira- tion for the common-day global Pentecostal Movement. The declaration of God’s spirit being outpoured upon all ﬂesh has initiated creative interpretations in the lives of Chris- tians today. Given the contemporary discourse of identity politics including race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and sexuality, an exploration dealing with the issue of sexual- ity and Christianity is to be understood. In Coming Out in Christianity, Melissa Wilcox tries to answer the question of exactly how one negotiates life as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) person while, at the same time, adhering to the Christian faith tradi- tion. In a particularly Pentecostal context, the question arises as to whether LGBT-identiﬁed persons can be included as “all ﬂesh” of Acts 2:17; if so, what will be the nature of their prophecy, visions, and dreams?

Coming Out in Christianity is structured as a tripartite reading: (1) identity, which explores the formation of one’s Christian identity alongside an eventual coming out as an LGBT person; (2) community, which discusses the socio-historical foundation for the for- mation of faith communities such as the Universal Fellowship of the Metropolitan Com- munity Church (UFMCC) that seek to reconcile Christian and sexuality identities in persons in aﬃrming ways; and (3) identity in community, which looks at the identity of the UFMCC as a denomination and members of it.

Wilcox, Visiting Johnston Professor of Religion at Whitman College, explores the lives of several LGBT-identiﬁed persons who are all aﬃliated with the UFMCC, an open and aﬃrming Christian community that welcomes LGBT persons and allies to worship. T is denomination, founded by Troy Perry in 1968 upon his being ousted from the Church of God of Prophecy, has roots in Pentecostalism. Ecumenical in scope, UFMCC boasts a variety of worship styles and beliefs within the denomination. As an example, one church Wilcox proﬁles, MCC Valle Rico, has very strong metaphysical undercurrents in which members engage in crystal healing services and read everything from the Bible to New Age material. “The pastors have been known to advise inquiries from conservative Christian backgrounds that MCCVR may not suit their needs” (21). Many of the other churches emphasize gifts of the Spirit, including speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing through laying on of hands.

The salient question that Wilcox attempts to answer, as she untangles the idea that “one cannot be openly and proudly lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender and also be a Christian” (10, is how one deals with multiple, seemingly conﬂicting identities. She traces the con- tours of this coming out process through a series of surveys (117) and interviews (72), all with persons aﬃliated with the MCC community.

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 29 (2007) 131-178

The most persuasive aspects of the book are the interview responses that Wilcox recounts in abridged, nonexhaustive form. The stories of heartbreak and silencing as well as emo- tional and theological harm through heterosexist, heteronormative religious culture can never be adequately told. Each new story presents a fresh perspective to the type of violence perpetrated on people’s lives by homophobic Christian traditional practices and ideologies. Interestingly, it seems that many of the people interviewed retained a sort of Stockholm syndrome relationship — the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with or sympa- thize with his or her captor — aﬃliating themselves with the UFMCC but also on occasion revisiting the oppressive churches and/or denominations of their youth, many times remaining peripheral to or closeted within the latter.

T ere are many questions looming that this works leaves unanswered: Do the voices represented in the book represent a coming out that is situated inside Christianity, or is this representational of a newly negotiated socio-religious identity? Moreover, closets are implied by the title’s usage of the metaphorical “coming out.” Yet, we wonder what particular closet is implicated and ﬁnally transcended. A nuance to the idea of the coming out would have been helpful: LGBT people, regardless of how out they are, will always be interpreted through the closet, as its nature always cloaks individuals from someone or some institution that is valuable to their life. (See Eve K. Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet, University of California Press, 1990, for a valuable discussion of the usage of the metaphorical “closet.”) Finding the corollary within Christianity would prove useful.

As a black gay male, I (Crawley) must say that the absence of racially and ethnically diverse voices was disheartening. T ough acknowledged by Wilcox as problematic, none of the survey/interview respondents were of African descent; an overwhelming 81.9 percent of the respondents were white. The glaring absence of these voices speaks volumes about the fact that blacks and other racial-ethnic peoples experience identity formation in religion and sexuality in vastly diﬀerent ways. Still, the book is successful in presenting the trans- gressive politics and theology of the UFMCC denomination and in describing the personal experience of LGBT persons in nonaﬃrming and aﬃrming communities. Much can be learned from its reading by persons not acquainted with issues of diverse sexualities and Christianity, though a nuanced discussion of race will be needed elsewhere.

Reviewed by Ashon T. Crawley and Alton B. Pollard III

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