Affirming: A Life and A Gift
Affirming is the story of a fellow queer Christian named Sally Gary, who happens to be a dear friend and mentor of mine. Since reading the book a little over a week ago, I had to take the time to share my thoughts and my deep gratitude for this work. The memoir follows Sally’s journey from early childhood in the Church of Christ and her belief that same-sex relationships were sinful to current day, as she is now leading an affirming Christian organization for the LGBTQ+ community, families and allies, as well as married to her beautiful wife, Karen Keen. Affirming is a culmination of Sally’s breathtaking life so far, a life full of both its wonderful and its painful. After reading this incredible memoir, I want to spend some time unpacking who I believe it is for and why. I want to specifically look at two groups of people: LGBTQ+ people (both inside and outside the church, but especially the latter) as well as cisgender heterosexual members of the church.
What I think this book offers to LGBTQ+ individuals, including and perhaps, especially, those outside the church:
I will admit that when I read any work on faith and sexuality, I always think first about queer individuals who want nothing to do with the church, and rightfully so. Does this work make space for them, their wholehearted selves? Without a doubt, I believe Affirming does. Sally offers validation for the pain that the church has caused us as a community and in many cases continues to cause. Sally explores this pain through telling stories of herself and those close to her, stories of injustice and deep loneliness. Sally holds in beautiful, human tension the reality that this is not the end of the story. There is a new invitation in this book. There is a new becoming, a new welcome, a new baptism, a new rebirth. Sally sees beyond the binaries of “us versus them” and advocates relentlessly for the God pursuing all of us, whether we’re sitting in a pew or not.
What I think this book offers to cisgender heterosexual members of the church:
A loving and grace-filled invitation to do the deep work it takes to see God in the faces of all human beings. So often we grasp with clenched fists our need to make who we believe God to be precisely clear to those around us. Sally offers us an invitation to loosen our grip ever so slightly, that we might recognize God made everyone around us, too, and in any moment they may be the ones giving us a glimpse of His glory. Sally, through reconsidering and diving deep into some of her favorite Scriptures and memories, helps us make sure we won’t miss the God in others by giving all our energies to grasping. As Sally shares in her revisiting the parable of the Good Samaritan, “it is easy to put ourselves in the place of the helper. But how much more vulnerable and disconcerting to receive help from someone we dislike or even despise. The story asks us to imagine someone who disgusts us as the hero of the story.”
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I am personally tremendously proud of all Sally has put into this book. Moreover, I am tremendously thankful for the way Sally uses her intimate story to guide, to exemplify, and from there, to nudge us to take responsibility for what is our own in this conversation. Sally doesn’t do the work for us, nor do I think should she. Instead, she exemplifies what this work may be, that we may be emboldened to lean in where we ought to, and in our own way. And by “the work” here all I really mean is paying attention and expanding. I believe that Sally is both mentoring us as we expand our capacities to see the face of God in all around us, as we expand our understanding of what a cisgender heterosexual Christ-follower has to offer a queer human being and what a queer human being has to offer to the church. Sally exhibits tremendous vulnerability, and vulnerability’s accompanying power shines through. By painting her loneliness with specificity, more (including myself) are able to feel less alone. By opening up about experiences from her past that could have consequences in the real present, she rises to the courage required in queer Christian leaders in 2021: a relentless pursuit towards truth, justice, and deep compassion. She shows us the necessity for self compassion in proclaiming her story, that we may get a firm grasp of what we’ll need when proclaiming our own. She shows us that our tribes can lead us back to ourselves, even as we hold those tribes accountable to the pain their actions caused. She takes responsibility for her story in a way that makes her and Karen’s story a landing place for queer couples in need of home.
I know my boyfriend, Preston, and I are less alone with Karen and Sally in the world. In fact, I want us to go on lots of queer world-travel type adventures together. Maybe we’ll give Rick Steves a run for his money when COVID is gone. In fact, as we each step more into our own and into who God created us to be, I somehow know we will. What Affirming offers, and paves the way towards, is a world in which lots more of us are free to know Christ, to love ourselves as sexual minorities and to know there are others like us to go on queer adventures with.
Thank you, Sally. From the bottom of my heart. Now, go! Read it!