Religious Queers: An Oxymoron or Unexpected Synthesis

Christian to the flow (floor) like I can’t give the devil time of day

by Glorilla in ‘In My Bag,” by FLO ft Glorilla

 

Religious queers, who or what are they? To me, they’re queer people with religious affiliations to Christianity, Islam, or any other religion. It’s not much of a secret that most of the top religions (Christianity and Islam specifically), are conservative, homo — and queer — phobia.

These religions don’t allow, accept, support or recognise queer people. In their most extreme interpretations, queer existence is labelled as sinful, erroneous, and aberrant — a transgression requiring correction by any means necessary.

 

The relationship between queer individuals and religion has been fraught with conflict and pain. Religious authorities frequently subject queer people to ‘conversion therapy.’ This practice is cloaked in the language of spiritual healing yet comprises prayers, physical punishment, enforced fasting, public humiliation, and other decidedly abusive tactics, all presented under the guise of compassionate intervention intended to render them ‘straight’.

 

Perhaps most heart-rending is the fact that families often support these religious interventions, sometimes becoming complicit in severe abuse themselves.

 

For queer women, the situation can be particularly horrific, with cases of sexual assault by male religious figures like pastors, apostles and other church leaders committed with the purported aim of ‘curing’ them of their orientation and fostering heterosexual desire. You must like men, seh.

These horror stories abound and are just the tip of the iceberg. The crux of the issue then is with such experiences, how then could someone be queer and be religious at the same time in a fraught conservative and religious country like Nigeria?

 

This discourse recently ignited considerable debate on Twitter (now X), as users struggled to comprehend the concept of “religious feminists.” This conversation inevitably led down the rabbit hole to discussions of “religious queers.”

The tension appears irreconcilable: how does one belong to an institution that fundamentally rejects one’s authentic self? How might queer individuals navigate spiritual yearnings whilst facing potential ostracism, violence and psychological harm from the very communities meant to offer spiritual refuge?

 

To slow things down, what is religion?

I won’t use a dictionary or a famous scholar. I want to use my simple understanding, so walk with me.

 

Religion is a practice that involves ritual and or supplication to a higher spiritual being outside of the human realm, but with purported connection and control of the human realm. Religions are, to me, a natural part of human society and evolution. It doesn’t have to make sense (would be phenomenal if it did), but it works, providing spiritual enlightenment and has brought together communities, changing the world in no small way.

On the other hand, “queerness” is, to me, a rejection of the constraints and conformity religion and its institutions have placed on the human mind, body, expression, and sexuality. To be queer is to sin, and to love, and to worship at the altar of a God society frowns upon.

Queerness is not modesty, purity, debasement, or conformity. Queerness is the absurd.

I don’t want to go off on a tangent here, because this topic is nuanced. So, Religion, what about it?

 

Religions have types, but for this discourse and my experience, I’ll stick to Christianity. Christianity claims to have existed for as long as 2,000 years (also claiming this is how long the world and humans have existed — sigh, creationism. Don’t get me started.). The religion has an orthodoxy.

Although there are sects and splinter groups, the religion as a whole is largely socially conservative. It has excluded women and queer people from its ranks; Have actively pushed, and lobbied for anti-LGBTQ+ laws, and spread the “gospel” against queer existence in their churches with hundreds to thousands of followers. Even missionary events to Africa and other continents are being held to stop the spread of the “gay agenda.”

 

There’s a whole lot to dissect here, and permit me if I skip some history lessons and intersectional dimensions to Western Christianity, African/Nigerian Christianity and Western influence in Africa. Do bear with me, as this will be as simple as I can make it.

 

 

I want to bring out a specific part of this discourse, which is “religious queers” as established previously.

Despite the homophobia, queerphobia, misogyny, and bigotry rife in Nigerian churches, there are still members of these oppressed groups in these churches. You see them in church, all dressed up, happy, dancing, clapping, and cheering on their bigoted pastors who spew hate from the pulpit.

They revere these pastors, “Gen Z pastors” as they’re called. However, this is odd, and for the life of me, I can’t get the frown off my face when thinking of this conundrum.

Why would you, a member of an oppressed group, willingly put yourself in a space where you’re diminished and discriminated against? Why would you champion a religion that sees your existence as wrong and unworthy?

I’ll let the feminists and women handle the religious feminists. The queers, please take a seat.

In the dismantling of structures that prevent queer existence, the church has been a core top structure in the way. Queer theorists and activists have been outspoken about the church’s hand in our oppression, suppression and stigmatization.

The church has been by far the loudest and the ones that preach about and against queer existence. They comb through their Bibles, cherry-picking verses to justify their bigotry, weaponising scripture to validate hate. It’s not quiet. It’s loud. It’s pointed. It’s an attack. And it’s deliberate.

 

These verses become battle cries, hurled with righteous certainty and anger. One need only witness the spectacle of pastors behind their pulpits, voices rising to theatrical crescendos, denouncing queer identities as “abominations.” Their performative outrage serves to galvanise congregations against an imagined moral threat rather than promoting genuine spiritual understanding or compassion.

 

This rhetorical violence emanating from religious institutions creates not merely ideological barriers but profound psychological and social harm, particularly for those, I imagine, queer individuals who might otherwise find solace in faith communities.

They see being queer as a “practice.” You are not “queer” the way you’re black or cisgender. No. You’re practising homosexuality. It’s your choice. Even with all the research that shows it’s not a choice, they insist, it’s a choice, and you can change with the help of Jesus, God, or the holy spirit. Take your pick, as long as it scrubs you clean and gets the job done.

Queer people have stories of them crying in church, in their room, crying and begging God to take away their “gay.” Many have endured exhaustive efforts to change, all to no avail. Yet rather than them acknowledging the harm inflicted by religious doctrine, many queer believers construct elaborate cognitive frameworks to reconcile their faith with their lived experience.

They reinterpret their suffering as divinely ordained. Some unique spiritual burdens they must bear on Earth to secure their heavenly reward. In this twisted theological calculus, their very pain becomes evidence of their spiritual exceptionalism.

This rationalisation represents not merely personal coping but a tragic manifestation of institutional spiritual gaslighting. These people have convinced themselves that the very structures causing their suffering are simultaneously their sole path to salvation. They call themselves chosen. But really, it’s just denial dressed up in holy language.

Others who are not so delusional rationalise that the church and God love them regardless of whether they’re gay, lesbian, or trans. So, no matter what the bible or the church says, they’re free to believe. I can work with this, honestly.

These people need the church, the community, and their connection to God. Generally, queer people tend to be Agnostic or Atheists since they question God and the bible when they’re coming to terms with their sexuality.

Their findings lead them to Agnosticism. Generally, queer people tend to be liberal, agnostic or atheist. Even the ones who still hold onto religion usually lean left, socio-politically.

 

Yet Nigeria is a different beast with a wild counterpoint to this pattern. In a country where over 90% of the population identifies as either Christian or Muslim, and scarcely 1% acknowledge themselves as atheist, agnostic, or non-religious, we must logically conclude that most queer Nigerians maintain religious identities. This reality becomes an inescapable fact that non-religious queer Nigerians must inevitably reconcile themselves with. Chai. We meuve.

 

The conservative queers (how are you queer and conservative? Abeg shift.) are the ones we give the side eye. That aside, nonreligious queer people have set religion and the church aside, seeing how they can’t coexist with the church while being their authentic selves.

We see the church for what it is. The church as a power structure, sacred texts as sophisticated propaganda, and the divine as conveniently omni-everything, whilst simultaneously justifying persecution. This recognition has prompted a definitive break with organised religion. Yet when confronted with fellow queer individuals still actively participating in conservative, openly bigoted congregations, we see the profound cognitive dissonance. While harbouring hope that our religiously-affiliated brethren (see what I did there? giggles) might eventually arrive at similar conclusions.

Still, we have to simultaneously acknowledge that others will remain inextricably entangled in theological frameworks that fundamentally reject their authentic selves.

 

This divide has characterised the discourse between nonreligious queer people and religious queer people on X. I’ll make some things clear right now.

I don’t hate religious queer people. I work from a place of understanding. As long as they’re not bigoted, Trumpie and close-minded, I can work with them towards change.

Religious queers in churches need to start being honest about the church and the powers that be that exclude and silence them.

Religious queers, we non-religious queers aren’t your enemies. We attacking your religion might come off as a personal attack. It isn’t. The church has become your whole world. So, an attack on it and the pastors is an attack on you.

If more religious queers attended more liberal and accepting churches, I’d be glad. Why? Because liberal churches in the West (sadly, not Nigeria), in tandem with clinical Biblical scholars (Dan McClellan, and Bart D. Ehrman for example) are revealing the truth about the Bible (that those homophobic verses aren’t targeting queer people or the spectrum of sexuality at all.)

Hence, that’s why I can see queer people reconcile their faith with their sexuality. Nevertheless, the bible doesn’t prop up queer marriages or existence. So, don’t go around championing it as a queer liberation text.

 

With that said, I want to offer a few cogent thoughts on why, in the Nigerian context (this can be extrapolated to other countries, even in the West). Why queerness and conservative Christianity (I have to make this distinction) simply don’t mix like jollof rice and mayonnaise (an absolute culinary crime, if you ask me, but I’ll try it o).

It’s not just “going to church” or believing in Jesus. Conservative Christianity is a rigid, literalist, often ultra-traditional approach to the faith. It clings tightly to specific interpretations of the Bible, especially around gender roles, sexuality, family, and morality.

Any deviation from that is a sin. Think “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” crowd. Think “submit to your husband” sermons. Think of pastors who believe being queer is a demonic affliction or a Western import. You get this gist, abi? Good!

 

In Nigeria, this form of Christianity is basically the default. The average church upholds conservative values not just theologically but culturally and politically. It’s a worldview that believes society must bend to scripture (their version of it), not the other way around.

So when queer folks show up in that space, it’s more than uncomfortable. It’s dangerous for you to appear as your authentic queer rebellious self. Because this isn’t just “we disagree.” This is “you’re an abomination,” “you need deliverance,” or worse, “you are a walking sin, a danger to kids and society, and should be locked up.” It’s that serious.

 

I won’t try to convince you that God doesn’t exist, or religion should be expunged from society (won’t work — would be nice though). I know what religion and the church mean to you. The community, the service, the sense of purpose, of someone watching and guiding you. That in this world and beyond, there’s an everlasting being that loves you and will be there for you.

Awwww, that sounds beautiful and fantastical. I can’t fault you for believing this, especially if this is what you grew up in. The theistic debates can be left to those who do it best, not me!

I made a claim and my foundational thought is that your religion (conservative) and church do not support queer causes and liberation. Not a smidge, not a whisper, not a prayer. That’s my hill to die on. Meanwhile, the queer community is getting absolutely battered from all sides. Be it socially, politically, economically, mentally, or physically. And the church? It’s not just watching from the sidelines, and it’s often holding the megaphone, directing the attack.

Here’s a question, just for you to think about. When there’s a pride march or protest for queer rights, for your right to exist in Nigeria rather than run abroad, will you, my religious queer siblings, actually show up?

Will you be there, with placards, standing shoulder to shoulder with us? And what about your churches and pastors? Will they raise their voices to champion our causes and push for more queer rights in Nigeria?

You already know the answer. It’s no. They can’t and won’t do that

And truth be told, you won’t either.

Instead, they’ll plant themselves firmly in our path, villifying, demonising, and dehumanising us as though we’re the source of society’s collapse.

And you? You’ll maintain that deafening silence, perhaps mustering the courage for a timid social media post when a queer liberation hashtag is already trending. How brave. Sigh,

So forgive us — actually, scratch that — when non-religious queers look at you and see folks who’ll happily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the oppressors while singing hymns to rejoice in our destruction.

Pardon us for raising an eyebrow when we see you beaming in your church pews while your pastors couldn’t be bothered to preach mercy for the queer community. What really twists the knife are the queer choir members, the closeted queer pastors and apostles who spew the very hate that wounds them from those sanctified pulpits.

So no, don’t expect us to apologise when we turn our noses up at this charade.

 

To further buttress my point, I was in a church (one of those Pastey churches that worship their Head Pastor — ding, ding, ding, the next Gen Z Adeboye and more loading). I don’t attend church. My friend, like all religious friends, dragged me to the church. I sat in that church, cold and stone-faced, listening to the perverted sermon of the pastor. Calling queer existence a sin. He, proudly, blamed the ills and woes of the world on the queer community and feminists. Saying the devil was working through our movements to bring down the church, all in the name of progress.

I saw the congregants nodding, looking contemplatively, clapping, and cheering on the pastor. He knew he had them. I was cold and hot at the same time. I wondered if anyone else was queer. How or what were they feeling? Could they stand this? How do they listen to this every Sunday? However, everyone was in the religious fervour. I attended a few more times, and it was just queer bigotry and female submission preached.

 

So, my fellow queer people, how do you sit through those sermons? What do you think or rationalise? How do you leave church happy and fulfilled? I want to laugh. My thoughts are cynical. To me, I believe that:

You think your sin of being gay has been forgiven. That your sin is just like any sin, like adultery or theft. As long as you’re celibate and act straight, you’re doing right by God.

You think that at some point in your life, when you’re done sinning (being gay), you’ll have the model straight lifestyle ( a wife and kids, or husband and kids). You’ll denounce your gay “side” and fully commit your life to God and straightness so your immortal soul doesn’t burn in hell.

You think you can always ask for forgiveness (the 70 x 7 rule) after having gay sex. So, religion is there to ease your guilt.

Or you’re agnostic and can’t leave the church at all, or just yet.

 

Nevertheless, the church makes you complicit in our oppression. You can’t and won’t challenge your pastors in church ( stand up and tell them they’re spewing bullshit). You won’t contradict them in public or social media (“Ride on pastey” and whatnot, y’all will comment.) All for your immortal soul, I guess. However, you’ll want to benefit from the progress the queer community is making despite the church? That’s not fair. What do you give back to the community?

 

The very queer community you’re not so ready to align with in public or on social media is the very community that makes your existence tolerable in Nigeria. Look, you might have your critique of the community, we in the community also do. It’s not rosy.

However, we’re there for each other, no matter how that may look. Yet, you in your religious gatherings and communities don’t have a proud “religious queer community,” neither can you be authentic in religious spaces. You’re hidden. A shadow of yourself, putting on a persona imposed on you by the church, you’re complicit in oppressing us.

You think your sin is being or having gay sex. After all, the community to you is full of sin and the devil. Yet, when you want to have sex, to feel the body of a man or woman, to let out your most intimate and truthful part, you look for a queer person in the community to do it with. Then, you go back to church and join your pastor in preaching about purity culture and the sin of homosexuality.

Where’s your shame?

Let’s move on to the fact that in Nigeria, from what I know of, there’s no queer person who God has called to open a church that accepts queer people, pro-feminism or even liberal. For where? Laughs. Your market no go sell. Think about it. Such a person’s church will be burnt or destroyed. Your life would be in danger from violent homophobes. You won’t have congregants and other religious queer people will be afraid to step foot into your church, fearing they’ll be outed.

You can imagine, and this is not outside the realm of possibility. An out-and-open queer pastor with his congregants on a Sunday in church getting harassed, injured and killed in church. You know that Nigerians are capable of this. So, God has called no one with the fire and temerity to open such a church. Such a pastor would be called a false pastor. So, what’s God doing?

In churches where the choirmaster is Gay, where the Pastor’s wife is Bisexual, and where the head of the Ushers is Trans, none of them will come out and steer the church right, towards acceptance. Y’all keep quiet and let hate reign as long as Jesus opens the way for salvation for your souls.

 

As an addendum, I know of some out queer Christians who would happily champion queer causes publicly. Still, the fact stands that you’re a minority within a minority in your religious communities, and the church would quickly shun you.

 

For many queer theists, simply, we don’t trust you, because you choose your religion every time over your queerness. Maybe, even if you’ve accepted that you’re queer, as long as you want to comfortably live in Nigeria, you’ll have to renounce your queerness. You’ll have to nurture a niggling hope that God will cure you.

It’s stressful, I must say. I don’t envy the lives you all live. I know you want to have your cake and eat it too, and that might be possible. What grates on our nerves is when you carry out bogus justifications for your religion, participate in and enhance our oppression (ex-gays), and are willfully blind to what your religion does in oppressing anyone not conforming. You know this, but your cognitive dissonance trumps all.

You are walking a tight rope as your existence isn’t welcomed in the church. So, you have to mould and twist yourself into what the church wants. You might be doubting religion and God, but you won’t leave because …. you don’t even have a reason.

I understand those who are atheists, but their circumstances force them to attend church. Nevertheless, do not try to justify religion to us. You come to us preaching and offering (forcing, if not jokingly) to take us to church. I’m glad you find the fulfilment you need in church. Just know that what the church offers is a poisoned apple. You’re free to believe, and I won’t provide justifications for my non-belief.

While Pontious Pilate washed his hands to “take” his hands off the execution of Jesus, he also did nothing to stop it. His actions were symbolic, and he had the blood of Jesus in his hands in the end. It’s the same for you too, religious queers. You might believe and say you’re not part of our oppressors. That you have a “personal” relationship with God, or some other mental gymnastics.

Despite that, you’re still one with our oppressors. You’re Pontious Pilate. If you can’t work towards our liberation with us, you’re a participant, willing or not.

 

To wrap things up, this piece is not to hate. Nonetheless, I want to reveal what you might not have thought of when you go to church and worship your pastors. How you come off to nonreligious queer people.

Be that as it may, I see religious queers as an unexpected synthesis. Y’all are redefining what being religious and marginalised is. This is an uncharted terrain, but you can work to reclaim religion and make it a force of good.

Before that can happen, you need to speak up and see that your conservative churches and pastors are not all they make themselves out to be. They claim to love and follow Jesus’ teaching, but they’re doing the devil’s work.

Jesus has wonderful teachings. By all accounts, he stood up for the oppressed. He’s a great mentor to follow and emulate. Rather than sit in line and swallow your pastor’s and the church’s spiel hook, line, and sinker, you should question it.

Liberate your mind, challenge the institution and bring real change. You’ll be able to be yourself, “live to the glory of God,” and carry out your God-given mission on Earth.

Maybe, just consider that this burden is not a test or challenge for you to be abstinent. Rather, it’s a divine mandate and instruction that you should disrupt the devil’s claws in the church. Be the revolutionary force Jesus was to the Jews and synagogues.

You also have to come to terms with one bitter truth — “The church and the Christian orthodoxy as a whole will not accept you, as their message would be anti-queer and anti-feminist in nature.” And that’s the real deal. I hope things will change and I’ll be proven wrong.

Do what you must, but don’t forget, your existence in the church is an oxymoron (it’s antithetical), but with the right steps, you can make this a synthesis that other queer people can respect.

 

Written by MELODY PHOENIX and can be reached here;

https://medium.com/@ephemeralmelody