At the beginning of my junior year in college I set out to join the church. I was 19. On the way to the church in town, I met a friend coming back from town and told her that I was going to commit myself to an institution. We walked to the church, and to her surprise, that was where I went.
Getting into the Church was remarkably difficult. I've never been able to understand the popular view that religious people were bugging everyone to accept Jesus or that religion was pressing in on every side. I didn't know anyone who went to church. If they did, they certainly wouldn't mention it in casual conversation. I'm not sure that anyone I knew believed in God. None of the faculty did. After I'd joined the church, I mentioned that I had joined the church to the most congenial faculty member at my college while describing a paper on Aquinas I was writing. He looked uncomfortable and finally blurted out that something to the effect that he'd expected better of me.
Years later, involved in evangelism committees in the church the view was that the most effective evangelism was person-to-person, bringing friends to church. This assumed that people still lived in communities where people went to church and that inviting them along would be a normal social thing like inviting them to come along to their gym on a freebie guest pass. I didn't have any friends who, as far as I knew, were religious believers; if any were, they were in the closet and certainly weren't going to invite anyone to their church. I saying that I didn't think person-to-person invitations would be effective I mentioned this. The next day I got a spate of emails from other members of the group saying that they were my friends and they welcomed me. I didn't go back.
As I knew by then this was par for the course. Everything was turned into some sort of therapeutic interaction. And this was part of the training. I went to a workshop to be trained as a facilitator for an adult education program – DOCC, Disciples of Christ in Community – with the usual large sessions, small group break-out sessions, and 'materials'. As part of the training, we were told that in any conversation we were to get behind the propositional content (though they didn't use that term) to the 'burden', the emotional baggage, which was what the person really meant. The literal meaning was superficial, just hiding what was really going on underneath and that if we took what they were saying literally we were dismissing what they really, meant. We were being trained to be patronizing, to dismiss people, not to take them seriously. Members of the evangelism commission had been trained. They assumed that the 'burden' underneath what I was saying about how remote the church was to many people who had no friends who were churchgoers was a desire for acceptance, wanting them to assure me that they were my friends, etc.
Insiders don't understand how remote the church is from outsiders who live in secular worlds or how difficult it is to get in. If you were an outsider, would you go to a church on your own? I wouldn't. I suspected that churches were ostensibly public spaces that were really private. Would you go into a mosque on your own, without being invited or without someone to take you? Or even a synagogue? I wasn't even sure that it was possible to join a church. As I'd understood it growing up the only ways in were birth and marriage. After investigating I discovered it was possible to join a church, but it still wasn't clear how to go about doing it. There were no advertisements or announcements with information on how to apply.
I had heard of the curate at the local Episcopal Church from a gay friend (howzat for a throwaway line), so when I decided to join the church I called the church in town and asked if I could have an appointment to see him. The interview did not go well. I met M.T., the curate, at the church door from where escorted me to the outbuilding he called his 'cottage'. He settled me on the couch and asked if I wanted a cup of tea. And, what kind, he asked. Tea in my experience had been of just two kinds: hot and cold. I said that since he likely knew more about tea – he was British, hired for his RP – that he should choose. That was my first experience of Earl Gray. He put on an apron, a woman's apron, and set to work. After pouring the boiling water, he covered the teapot with a fussy tea cozy. Jeez, I thought. Whatever. The tea was very good though.
We sat catty-corner to talk. I told him that I'd taken theology and philosophy of religion classes, that I'd thought about it, and wanted to join the church. He went off in another direction. He had, he said, known people who were concerned about social justice and through their work as activists had come to the Church. I was blank. Then he tried something else, I forget what. It was clear that he was trying, but I couldn't understand what he was trying for. I suppose he was probing for the 'burden'. Nothing resolved, he suggested meeting in my dorm room the following week. He was very keen on meeting me in my dorm room which I think, in retrospect, was a symbolic gesture – reaching out to students. Years later during my very brief involvement at the cathedral, the committee I was in met in the gay community center, even though there was plenty of room in the cathedral and it would have been more convenient.
The next week we met in my dorm room and again I didn't get any answers about if, when, and how I could join the church. We met a third time, with my friend L. in the room for moral support and defense. I had written something up which I gave M.T. I forget the details but it was an explanation of why I wanted to join the Church – and why the Church should let me in. Very well, he said, there was an adult confirmation class coming up. He would call me to let me know when. And he left.
I waited but he did not call. We'd had these conversations in September and early. I waited for him to call until I got back to school after Christmas and then, in mid-January, I called the church to ask about the adult confirmation class. I had lucked out: the class started later that week. M.T. apparently had no intention of calling me back: he hadn't taken me seriously.
As I write this, I'm still puzzled about what he could have been thinking. He probed and poked, trying for some kind of response, possibly to get me to disgorge some burden, and when nothing came may have concluded that I was playing games with him. But he was the gatekeeper. He was teaching the adult confirmation class.