Eight Reasons Why LGBTQ Affirming Pastors Might Stay Quiet

There are likely more secretly affirming pastors out there than you realize. Let's try to understand why this might be the case.

My favorite thing about live events? Responding to people’s questions. Because as often happens, a person’s particular question has a way of illuminating universal questions that we are all asking. This ongoing series, “Audience Questions,” is my way of responding to real questions that have come up in the past. These articles are free for all, however if you’d like to submit a question, that’s only for Paid Subscribers.

The following question got asked by an audience member when I was in Iowa doing a presentation of “Not an Oxymoron: Why LGBTQ Affirming Christianity Makes Sense.” I didn’t get a chance to respond to questions that evening, so I’m gonna answer some of them here on Perspective Shift.

One person asked about “secretly LGBTQ affirming pastors,” and this is part 2 of my response.

If you missed it, here’s part one 👇🏼 👇🏼 👇🏼

Pastors Who Affirm LGBTQ People (but Aren't Public about it)

Now, on to part two!

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AUDIENCE QUESTION

To review, someone once asked,

There are pastors who are personally LGBTQ affirming but they’re not open about it to their church.

I assume it’s because they want to please the majority; they fear losing members and money; and they don’t want to face the inevitable conflict that would follow.

My questions are:

1. How do you feel about it?

2. Is this common?

3. Why do pastors do this?

4. How can we make any changes?

MY RESPONSE

As I wrote the other day, this topic is deeply personal for me. I’ve got lots of feels on it.

For this post I’ll be responding to questions two and three.

First, it’s more common than you probably think.

Second, I can think of eight reasons why privately affirming pastors stay silent.

More Common Than You Think

The asker of this question inquired: Is this phenomenon common?

There isn’t any hard data or research on this specific situation, but as someone who has been in and around this topic for quite a while now, my guess is that it’s more common than you probably think.

While currently less than 10% of churches in America are open and affirming, there are many more churches that are led by secretly affirming leaders. I’d be willing to bet that if all the pastors who right now are secretly affirming made the choice to come out and lead their congregation toward full inclusion, we’d crack the double-digit percentage of total affirming churches in the US.

I have friends and colleagues who run groups and ministries and organizations that deal with this exact scenario. All over the country there are Zoom groups that happen where pastors (secretly) show up to meet with other affirming clergy (some silent, others not) to talk about this.

Typically those groups are designed to help leaders develop a plan for moving their church toward inclusion—which is fantastic. But some of the people on those calls simply believe that such a move is not possible, but they show up to these groups anyway looking for support and solidarity.

My point is, there are a lot of pastors and leaders who privately affirm LGBTQ people but who serve in and lead churches that do not.

Why Do They Remain Silent?

As for why these pastors stay silent, again, most of your instincts and assumptions here are probably spot on.

I can think of eight reasons why an affirming pastor might stay quiet on this matter.

1. It Will Stir Up Tension
   If a church currently is non-affirming, you can safely assume that most of the congregants prefer it that way. While attitudes toward LGBTQ people outside the church have been rapidly evolving (and for the better) over the past 20 years, inside the church the progress is much slower. This is still a hot-button topic and people do not go quietly into the night. They kick and scream and fire people over it. So if a secretly affirming pastor wants to open up to their church, they know that a prolonged season of debate, arguing, in-fighting, turmoil, and relationship loss is in front of them. Being a pastor is hard enough as it is. Choosing to create conflict and introduce chaos and more stress can, understandably, not sound super appealing.

2. The Church Will Lose Money
   For the most part the biggest donors in most non-affirming churches are more conservative, traditional people and families. The pastors I know who took their churches through the inclusion process have all attested to the reality that their financial support took massive drops as a result. Even when people didn’t leave the church entirely (which is reason #3), they often pulled their giving as a form of protest. There’s no way around it: going public as LGBTQ affirming (even if you don’t intend to move the church that way) will guarantee that you lose donors. Possibly even some of the biggest ones.

3. People Will Leave
   People leave churches all the time for all sorts of reasons. Pastors that lead from a place of trying to close up the back door will tire themselves out quickly. This is how you become a lukewarm, uninteresting, mega church. You just kinda be vanilla, don’t rock the boat, and make people feel good. What doesn’t make people feel good is when you start suggesting that the church has been wrong to marginalize, oppress, and discriminate against LGBTQ people. Kick that hornet’s nest and you could face a loss of 30-60% of your congregation. From a business perspective, there’s not a Shark on Shark Tank that would sign up for that kind of disruption to your customer base.

4. People Will Lose Their Jobs
   Unless the church is massively secure in its financial position, there’s no way to sustain losses to your giving at the levels that often happen when churches become affirming. Budget cuts will inevitably happen. Unfortunately, the biggest part of any non-profit’s operating budget is personnel. Pastors are (for the most part) decent folk. And as the leader, they are responsible for their employees (and in turn, their families). Many pastors might wish to come out of the theological closet to satisfy their own need for integration and wholeness, but they know it might very well cost them either A) their own job, and/or more importantly to some, 2) the jobs of people who work for them. It can be easy to say to a secretly affirming pastor, “Come on, grow up, stop being a coward and just go public already.” It’s far less easy (I’d hope) to say, “Get ready to either cut everyone’s salary, let a few people go, or both.”

5. They Don’t Feel They Have Anywhere Else to Go
   Did you know most pastors are incredibly, incredibly smart and talented and skilled in many different ways? It’s true. Do you know what else is also true? Almost no one outside the church understands or gets that. Meaning, it’s hella hard for pastors to find gainful employment outside the church, especially if that’s all they’ve done their whole life. Those who do manage to find good work outside the church will often crush it because we are self-motivated, work well with others, can turn around projects quickly, are good communicators, have high character, and are great with people. But that requires someone out there to give us a shot. It’s crossing fingers that someone out there will stare at a resume with a Bachelor’s in Pastoral Ministry and a Masters in Theology, with 20 years experience as a pastor, and say, “Yes, you’re hired!” The low probability of that happening is what terrifies most secretly affirming pastors—hell, it terrifies most pastors in general. A lot of pastors might want to do something else, but they’re convinced no one will hire them. So the prospect of losing your job, losing your health insurance, maybe losing your home (as happened to me), and then not knowing what you’ll do next… these are legitimate concerns and understandable fears that hold back many, many secretly affirming pastors.

6. They Fear the Impact on Their Image & Reputation
   Maybe “image” here is not the best word, but basically what I’m saying is that most pastors (in my opinion) have worked hard to be above reproach with regards their moral character. Obviously there are egregious and heinous exceptions to this, but I’m not talking about the exceptions. I’m talking about your everyday, center-of-the-bell-curve person who’s dedicated their life to the vocation of ministry. That person takes their role as shepherd seriously. Furthermore, they’ve probably invested many years establishing a credibility with their community around spiritual matters. But what happens when a Christian (especially a pastor) comes out as LGBTQ affirming is they immediately get branded by their community as a heretic, false prophet, deceived-by-culture, etc. They are “dangerous” (this is what I was called). They are a threat to the Gospel (that’s what my termination letter read). While we might all believe that we ourselves have the kind of backbone that can withstand the total annihilation of the image we’ve built for ourselves, and the unfettered questioning of our reputation, I’m not sure too many people would willingly throw away their good name like that. When you come (of the theological closet) many people will stop trusting you. Many people will turn on you. Many people will see you as a failure, a fraud, and/or a fool.

7. It’s Scary
   Look, this may just be another way to re-state some of the above reasons (fear of losing job; fear of losing money; fear of losing reputation), but I think it’s worth granting its own number because fear is a hell of a de-motivator. Unless someone has intentionally built practices designed to strengthen their resolve, unless they’ve purposely stepped in to fearful spaces in the past and thereby built up those muscles of courage, most people choose the less-scary path. Doing hard things is, well, hard. I think one of the downsides of the world we live in is an increasing sentiment of, “If you don’t like this then just keep swiping and scrolling and eventually we’ll curate things specifically to your preferences.” Why do something hard and scary when you can, well, not do that thing and keep going on your vacations, buying cool Christmas gifts for your kids, get another book contract, and add a seventeenth service to your Easter weekend! Truth be told, some pastors simply lack the spine, the fortitude, the balls/ovaries to be clear and open with their beliefs.

8. They’re Earnestly Trying to Shepherd Their Diverse Community
   This is the Reason on this list that took me the longest to settle in to and appreciate. Previous versions of myself wouldn’t hold space for this Reason. I didn’t accept it. It sounded hollow, like the rationalizations of those who are more accurately motivated by the above fears. But it’s time I check-myself years after having wrecked-myself. The reality is that change does not (typically) happen over night, either in individuals or in institutions. Rome can neither be built nor substantively altered in a day. This means that time and patience will be required from both the leadership and the community side of any church attempting to become affirming. It’s possible that some pastors are “secretly-affirming” because they are, you might say, working in the shadows to prepare the way toward inclusion. I can imagine a context where a pastor has led their flock for so long that they know their people, and maybe we can trust that their instincts to take it slow and strategic outweigh our utterly removed outsider opinion of just-rip-off-the-bandaid-already. And that’s just one hypothetical, I could probably conjure up half a dozen more, but the point is all the same: I do think that there are contexts where it might not only make sense, but be good (perhaps even the best) leadership for that pastor to remain silent… for a time. If it’s just delaying the inevitable because they’re scared, well, then I’ve got other things to say (in a future post). But if it’s done from a sincere place of truly trying to shepherd their diverse community as best as they know how then, well, who am I to judge. In response to Part 1 of this series, one person (an affirming pastor who pastors a non-affirming church) commented,

“instead [of talking publicly about inclusion], I resort to talking in generalities about loving and accepting people for who they are. No, it's not sufficient, but it's all I can do right now.”

I hear you. I see you. I honor you and your approach.

Understanding is not the same as Agreeing

Now, I’m not saying the above reasons excuse (all) pastors for staying silent.

Like I said the other day, this topic is too important to too many people. Harm is actively happening in churches that don’t affirm LGBTQ people, so you know that I am ALL FOR more churches become affirming.

Rather, what I’m hoping to offer is some insight into the WHY.

It doesn’t mean you have to agree. It doesn’t mean you have to then go, “Oh, well okay, I guess that’s fine then.”

No, a person can both understand why someone does a thing and also say that thing is not okay.

But I wanted to at least show you my own journey on this topic—both as someone who was the affirming and silent pastor, as well as someone who has done this work for many years now and has learned quite a bit about this phenomenon.

It can be tempting and easy to demonize the silently affirming Pastor. Which like it or not, is not a loving posture to take.

So how can we stir up love in our own hearts for people we disagree with?

As Thich Nhat Hanh said, 👇🏼 it must start with understanding. 👇🏼

Love Our Enemies? But, like, HOW?!

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Coming up in part 3, I’ll take a quick detour from the original question and unpack a few of my thoughts responding to the above 8 reasons why pastors might stay silent.

Then I’ll wrap it up by offering some thoughts about what I think we can do about all this.

See you then.

What do you think?

I’m curious your thoughts on the seven reasons I listed above?

Do you have personal experience with any of them?

Does it help you understand the situation more? And if so, does that impact how you feel about it?

Feel free to share publicly (via comments) or privately (via sending me a message).