Queer Women and Religious Individualism

4 Negotiating Religion: Continuity, Conversion, Innovation

Asked how she would introduce herself to people interested in this research project, Christine Peña said simply, “My name is Christine. I am a spiritual being having a human experience, here on this planet. Hello.”1 Though each participant answered this question in different ways—and some found it awkward and had trouble answering at all—their experiences and beliefs reveal a similar breadth and interconnectedness in the roles played by religion in their lives. Certainly not all would describe themselves as “a spiritual being having a human experience,” but the human experiences of childhood, parenting , family tensions, daily stresses, sexual awareness and exploration, moments of great beauty and utter despair, are all intertwined with and sometimes read through their religious beliefs (or lack thereof), their beliefs about religion, their religious and spiritual practices, and their past experiences with religions and religious people.    Although all but one of the core participants were raised within traditional religions—two in Judaism and twenty-six in various branches of Christianity— only six remain active participants in those religions, and only one of those reported no significant period of non-attendance or unbelief during her life. Four others have retained their identification with the religion of their childhood, but have enough disagreements with the institutional forms of that religion that they have elected not to attend services. Eleven participants, on the other hand, regularly include organizations outside of Christianity and Judaism in 4 Negotiating Religion continuity, conversion, innovation • 82 | Queer Women and Religious Individualism their spiritual repertoire, and while some of these organizations are explicitly religious, others are not—as the final section of chapter 3 demonstrated. The latter groups serve as religious resources less through design than through the individual innovations of their members.    In relating the history and the present state of their relationships with religion , the women in this study told me stories of ardent commitment and deep disagreement, of intensive spiritual searches, indifference, and even revulsion. Tradition is important to some as a source of continuity in their lives; it has brought only rejection to others, and for a third group it has provided a theme upon which to base improvisations. Each of these stories is different, sometimes to a surprising extent. What holds them together is not a similar pattern of growth or development, but rather a similar complexity: what these women believe now and what they practice now are inseparable from their past experiences with religion, their cultural backgrounds, their journeys of sexual and gender identity and sometimes equally complex journeys involving other identities, their experiences as women, their experiences as lesbians, bisexuals, and polysexuals, their theology, their economic status, their parents, siblings, children, and extended families. To tell the stories of religious change and continuity in these women’s lives is, in some ways, to tell the stories of their lives. Consequently, this chapter begins at the beginning, as it were, by discussing the religious upbringings of the participants. It then moves to a consideration of participants’ experiences with developing and claiming sexual and gender identities—experiences that are deeply intertwined with family dynamics and aspirations and, to a lesser extent, with religious identity.    Religious histories, familial relationships, and coming-out experiences all provide a grounding for participants’ more recent negotiations with religion, and it is such negotiations that are the heart of this chapter. The development and current forms of participants’ religious beliefs and practices fall along a spectrum that ranges from continuity through conversion to innovation; participants also frequently weave together aspects of these three main patterns, both over time (for instance, someone who followed one pattern in young adulthood but another in middle age) and simultaneously (perhaps by emphasizing conversion but retaining a strongly innovative aspect to their religious practice). Thus, although I discuss these patterns separately below, like all ideal types they become far more complex when applied to real human lives.    Within the three overarching rubrics of continuity, conversion, and innovation are several subtler distinctions. Those whose religious pathways show primarily patterns of continuity have chosen either what I call a “stay the course” path, remaining within traditional congregations of the denomination or religion in which they were raised, or a “tradition with a twist” approach, drawing on innovations within their religious traditions to find or create a comfortable Negotiating Religion | 83 space for themselves. Those I class loosely under the rubric of “conversion” include women whose primary religious...