A death in the family.

December 22, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I received an e-mail yesterday about the death of a retired pastor, 89 years old. The news brought up mixed feelings in me.

As a pastor of the church I should feel some sadness for this man, who lived a long life and remained faithful to our church. I don’t know all the facts of where he served in his long career, but I only know of the one brief time—a few months—when he served as the interim pastor of a congregation I was attending.

This was in the 1980s while I served in a specialized ministry of the church.  I wasn’t officially “out” although my immediate superiors knew that I was gay and had been living in a relationship of more than 6 or 7 years. But officially I was still quite closeted.

But this particular pastor, in his 60s at the time “put two and two together” and realized that I was living with another man.  Now, perhaps in the span of his career he counseled and prayed and struggled with people who faced very significant life issues.  Perhaps he was quite supportive and loving with them.  But he never spoke to me about being gay, or how I could justify serving the church as an ordained pastor while living in a semi-secretive relationship with another man.  He never asked me about my faith, my pilgrimage in life, my sense of call, my understanding of the Bible, or any other significant life issue.

Yet I came to find out that, behind my back, he was spreading the news that I was homosexual.

Within two years I had been recommended by my bishop, and called from my specialized status back into the parish ministry in the area.  And within about a year in that position, I began to feel the suspicion of parishioners.  Before long I was asked to leave the congregation, but was never confronted over any significant failing on my part.  This story unfolded slowly, but within a few more years a woman who was in a position to know the facts confirmed for me confidentially that the reason I had been forced to resign was that people were told I was gay.  I knew that this particular pastor had been the one who launched the wave of rumors which pushed me out of the ordained ministry of the church.

Twenty some years ago, this was the fate of those who lacked the courage, the resources and freedom to just “come out.”  We were slowly, excruciatingly, hampered, limited, excluded, rejected in ways just as secretive as our lives were.  We were eliminated from the lives and callings and jobs and relationships we thought we were so skillfully preserving by keeping our own personal agony secret.  This happened everywhere in society, but especially in the church. It was as if no one needed to confront us or say anything, because we should just understand the reasons we were being rejected.  I think it must have felt similar to what African-Americans felt when they were passed over for a job or an advancement, or denied housing, or avoided in social settings—that they were just supposed to understand why they were disliked or discriminated against.  We were all supposed to internalize the shame which society implicitly demanded of us.

The upshot of my loss of career was the personal decision—with the help of a competent therapist—that I would never again go back into a closet.

But I have mixed feelings about the man who spread the rumors that deprived me of 16 years of my life work.

Was this like the patriarch Joseph in the book of Genesis: hated by his brothers, sold into slavery, and because of false accusations went to prison before being vindicated by God?  In this (overlooked) story, Joseph finally confronts his hateful brothers with love and forgiveness:

“His brothers were so dumbfounded at finding themselves face to face with Joseph that they could not answer.  Then Joseph said to his brothers, . . . ‘I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt.  Now do not be distressed, do not reproach yourselves for having sold me here, since God sent me before you to preserve your lives.’”—Genesis 45:4–5

This elderly pastor and I were brothers in the family of God, so I should be respectful of his passing.  The circumstances of life sent us along very different paths, and he would never have had reason to fully understand me.  When he personally brought great harm to me, I confess, it took years to expunge the bitterness out of my life.  We never saw each other again. He went into retirement.  I went into another line of employment for sixteen years.

And now at his death what am I to feel?  I came out; I have never regretted that step, and will defend the necessity of coming out publicly, especially within the church of Jesus Christ.

Society has changed—in ways for which this elderly pastor would, I am sure, have felt contempt.  Increasingly there is safety for more and more LGBT people to be who we are, and to live without the shame that earlier generations forced upon us. We still may have to duck some homophobic slurs and even violence.  But more and more we will not internalize the homophobia that previous generations accepted as inevitable.  Perhaps, like ancient Joseph, it took me years of life experience to be able to let my bitterness go and to forgive the one who intended harm, because now I know that God intended it for good.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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