I was baptized as a Lutheran on Saint Patrick’s Day in 2002. Laughter from my entire family filled the little church as I splashed around in the bowl of holy water the pastor was trying to pour on my head. No one expected me to come out 18 years later.

For a lot of my childhood, religion was a pretty important part of my life. I turned to prayer and the Bible a lot. When I started to realize that I liked girls, I hyper-focused on the Bible verses that condemned all homosexuals. It felt like a part of my world was crumbling away. How could something that brought me so much comfort shut me out completely because of one small piece of me?

To read more about the fragile relationship between a queer woman and the Bible, scroll through Olivia Covey's personal essay on Medium, after you've finished with this piece, of course.

This experience is not uncommon. The intersection of religion and queerness is not a popular topic to discuss in church. When these conversations do happen, they bring division, fear, and anger. With so much negative energy around their existence, LGBTQ+ people are often left feeling unwanted in religious settings.

Liz Pence, a student at Chicago Theological Seminary school, knows the pain and confusion this causes for many in this community. As a bisexual seminarian, Pence, who was involved in many different ministries in their church, like youth group and choir, still felt as though she was not accepted.

"I remember my earliest encounters with queer sexuality in the church were not accepted; they just weren't," Pence says. "It was more accepted for my male peers to be sexually exploring with women than it was for me."

According to a study done by Public Religion Research Institute from Jan. 2016-2017, 46% of LGBTQ+ adults were unaffiliated with any kind of religious identity. Pence says that while deconstructing during her junior year of high school she had a "double consciousness" of adhering to the evangelical Christian norms while also sticking to her sexual identity.

"I was kind of like, you will take Jesus from my cold dead little gay hands," Pence says. "I was still very passionate about the church and also very passionate about my queerness, but the passion of my church sort of existed in one realm, and then my queerness existed over at school."

Affirming Worship, originally the Gay Christian Network, hosts worship nights in local gay bars for LBTGQ+ Christians to interact with their faith. Affirming Worship has met in bars such as "Atmosphere" in Andersonville, but they haven't physically met since March 2020 due to the pandemic.

They aim to create a safe space that is not in a church, but a place to recreate the experience of playing worship while in a gay bar with a "stripper pole and praise songs," says Isaac Taylor, a musician for Affirming Worship.

Even as churches aim to create a more welcoming and inclusive space for this community, some still fail to stick to that promise. As Taylor says, some churches may not recognize the difference between being "tolerated and being celebrated."

"Many churches will lie and claim to be 'welcoming,' but with cultural conditions that you try to change your sexual orientation or gender identity, or conceal it," he says.

Many LGTBQ+ Christians have found more acceptance outside of the church and have experienced more love from a community apart from their faith. Pence says what saved them from "going off the spiritual deep end," was affirmation from their friends who didn't consider themselves Christians that proved God's unconditional and affirming love for Pence.

As the queer community continues to fight for acceptance within the church, most LGBTQ+ Christians are already immensely involved in their church. It's up to churches and their leaders whether or not they want to address this issue and start the conversation of openly accepting queer people into their congregations.

"It's easy to preach condemnation on people you ignore the existence of," Taylor says. "If there is going to be any conversation, people have to be willing to care. There needs to be a change of heart and mind, and I pray that God will do just that."