Lanes
My name is Lanes (they/them), and I’m a queer, nonbinary Christian.
I grew up attending a local mega-church and began working for them at the age of 15. I’d been baptized twice, participated in numerous Bible study groups, and felt the call to work in ministry at the time.
Pronouns: they/them
Photo of Lanes
Part of working with them involved signing a document stating that I did not support women’s rights to their bodies or LGBTQIA+-affirming ideology due to the church’s political stance. When I took the job, it challenged my beliefs as someone who’d grown up as a person of faith but now saw the other side of the curtain. While I worked, it hurt my heart to serve at an institution that I knew did not serve or support me.
When my time working there had come to a close, I re-evaluated my faith. I’d been so pained by people I had lived my whole life respecting because my identity was no longer “Godly” to them. I had been hurt by the way that these people had used the Bible to invalidate my identity. I think it is so easy for some Christians to invalidate queer identities because they can take one Bible verse and point to one particular translation and base their lives and teachings on that. If we were to argue what is right and what is wrong based only on the Bible, there’d be so much circular reasoning.
At the end of the day, God knit me in my mother’s womb. He knew who I was, He knew who I was going to be, and He knows who I am. Being queer and being nonbinary is who I’ve always been, and if I am created in Christ’s image like the Bible says- then who I am is fearfully and wonderfully made.
Just because I’m queer does not make me any less spiritual or less worthy of God’s love.
Photo of Lanes
