New Horizons in Faith
BY STEVE ROTHAUS
Nan Van Den Bergh grew up in a religious household: born Baptist, raised Protestant, baptized at 12. ’’I was pretty involved as a youth,’’ Van Den Bergh recalls. ``I had a minister who was very intellectual. He gave me a lot of validation and feedback .’’
As a teenage feminist, Van Den Bergh felt less and less comfortable at church and abandoned organized religion. Then, in the 1970s on the beach of San Diego, Van Den Bergh was writing poetry: ``I felt something was working through me, a voice through me. It made me feel I could reconnect with organized religion.’’
Van Den Bergh eventually came out as a lesbian and found Dignity, an Episcopal ’’welcoming and affirming congregation.’’ She attended services and took communion for the first time in years.
Now 59 and a professor at FIU’s School of Social Work, Van Den Bergh wants to help lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth reconnect with their spiritual sides. She and university co-workers have organized
’’Spirituality LGBT Style,’’ an FIU fair supported by many of South Florida’s gay-friendly congregations.
’’I never want a child who is LGBT to ever feel he or she is not a child of God because of their sexual orientation,’’ Van Den Bergh said.
’’I’ve had students . . . who identify with the gay community, who are also spiritual. They ask me where to go for a place of worship that will welcome them,’’ said Gisela Vega, 41, FIU’s assistant housing director and one of the fair’s organizers. ’’Being spiritual myself, I thought that made no sense. God doesn’t discriminate if you are gay or lesbian.’’ Vega is a Roman Catholic lesbian. She was lucky growing up:
``People were placed in my path who always affirmed my orientation and who I am.’’
Many young Catholics, however, feel alienated by the church. ’’They give up. They turn their faith into something hidden, that you can’t be gay and Christian,’’ said Vega, a member of the MCC Circle of Life Church in South Beach and advisor to FIU’s gay Stonewall Student Union.
Many young gay Jews also feel alienated. Temple Israel of Greater Miami, a mainstream Reform synagogue with a large gay membership, will participate in the fair.
Amy Mallor, the temple’s executive director, remembers going to synagogue as a young girl: ’’Religion for me when I was growing up, we saw husband and wives sitting next to each other,’’ she said. ``It’s rooted in our community that heterosexuality is the norm and homosexuality is not the norm.’’
TEMPLE WELCOMES ALL
Temple Israel welcomes everyone, said Mallor, who came out of the closet about 11 years ago, when she was 40. When gay people come to Temple Israel, ’they say, `Oh my God, I can’t believe it.’ It’s a feeling of freedom and major comfort,’’ Mallor said. ``They can hug their partner, hold hands with their partner and no one says anything. They can unite in prayer.’’
The Rev. Irene Monroe, a graduate of Harvard’s divinity school, believes the journey is not just spiritual, but psychological. ’’Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living.
When I realized I was a lesbian, I had to shuffle things a different way, counter to my fundamentalist background,’’ said Monroe of Cambridge, Mass., a speaker at Monday’s fair.
’’When I discovered I am a lesbian, I didn’t realize what a gift it is. And it’s only because of the journey I’ve been on,’’ said Monroe, who was abandoned as a baby in New York and raised by nuns in a Catholic orphanage. She attended the ``traditional black church.’’
`DAMAGING MESSAGES’
``I heard the same damning and damaging messages you hear in any Christian fundamentalist church, your theological qualifier: Love the sinner, but hate the sin. Leave your sexuality at the door of the church. If you bring it in, we’re going to exorcise it out of you.’’
Clarke Hyrne grew up in North Miami and attended Northwest Baptist Church and the church’s Christian academy. At 13, he realized his attraction for both men and women. He came out of the closet in his sophomore year at FIU, where he is an English major and member of the Stonewall Student Union.
’’I went to church throughout high school,’’ he said. ``I just kept going until I finally had enough. One Sunday, they passed out the Florida petition for marriage and I saw all these people I knew signing it. I can’t say I was sad because I expected it, but I was disappointed in the people. . . . The fundamentalism turned me off. It brought out a more agnostic way of thinking.’’
Hyrne, 21, said he will go to the spirituality fair, but doesn’t expect it will make much difference.
’’I don’t see that happening,’’ he said. ``Everyone experiences doubt in theology or in their leaders, but when the doubt and the reasoning behind that doubt is so strong and it pushes in from so many directions, when it pushes in the chicken egg of your beliefs, the egg just cracks.
’Jesus said, `Bring unto me the little children.’ They should be doing that, too, not chasing them away. Their prejudices and actions are creating a stumbling block for believers.’’
MiamiHerald.com