Grief

In 2015 I was assaulted. I discussed it in a previous blog post. My assailant wanted to "beat the homosexuality" out of me.  About 4 months ago I started to go through EMDR therapy because I am going through PTSD from the assault.

EMDR therapy is surprising and jarring at the same time. The science behind it is still ongoing, but I have been forced to confront issues that I had never thought I would need to confront. One issue that has been apparent is that I am still grieving. It's not just the assault that happened. It's everything that followed. I went through a divorce. I lost my ordination as a Salvation Army officer.

When I tried to be a lay member at my local Salvation Army congregation, I was thwarted by my divisional commander (like a bishop), with support from the local officers (pastors).

Since then, it has been a mixture of nostalgia, grief, and outright terror for what I experienced from The Salvation Army.

Nostalgia

The nostalgia comes from mostly the good things I experienced while in The Salvation Army. I enjoyed the overseas ministry I had:  from serving in refugee camps in Albania and Kosova to running congregations in Germany. I was profoundly blessed and forever changed by my time there. I consider, however, that being over there changed me more than any tangible good I could do there.

I have nostalgia for the music, too. We had some wonderful brass bands, which is a very British institution. This is why I always played a cornet and never a trumpet. I also tended to eschew anything woodwind.

I also have wonderful friends who, to this day, have been my friends and allies, supporting me even financially when things have been really bad for me.

Grief

Then there is the obvious grief. I mourn what might have been. I see fellow friends who are still officers in The Salvation Army, in positions I thought I might have liked to have had, doing ministry I had wanted to do, knowing that this is forever taken away from me. This is always accompanied with resentment and bitterness, both of which I do not like, but which I constantly struggle with now.

I mourn what could have been, what should have been, and what will never be.

At the same time, I realize just how toxic of an environment that was for me. I am now grateful to be out of The Salvation Army.

Condemnation

I have family members and friends who regularly condemn me for talking bad about my experiences in The Salvation Army. They accuse (maybe rightly?) that I do not represent The Salvation Army in the right light. For instance:  I often neglect to say that in the debacle of not being accepted as a soldier in the local Salvation Army corps (congregation), that I was eventually accepted as a soldier (lay member).

This is true. I had to have a face to face meeting with the divisional commander (like a bishop). He told me he didn't want Branson to become a controversy for same-sex marriage because of a blog post I had written. (Originally he had said because he didn't believe I was true to my covenant as a member of The Salvation Army.) By that time I had been regularly attending my new church in Springfield. I had refused to attend the Salvation Army church in Branson while my membership was in question.

So I tried going back to The Salvation Army. I felt extremely uncomfortable there. Several of the members of that church had already unfriended me or blocked me on social media, including the pastors. There was no attempt on healing or restoration. I will admit that the pastors eventually unblocked me on social media. I was grateful for that.

However, the damage had been done.

Neither here nor there . . .

So here I am, grieving.

Grief is hard and painful. It is also a part of being human.

What is hard about it for me?

Every time I drive by a Salvation Army thrift store and see that blazing Red Shield, I inwardly cringe. When friends and co-workers tell me that they are going to support The Salvation Army this Christmas, I die a little inside. I avoid eye contact with that smiling bellringer in front of grocery stores and I definitely refuse to donate to them.

During the Holiday Season of 2022, I received a letter from The Salvation

Army, asking for donations from me to support their work. Since I know how this mail appeal works, I realize that this was done by a third party, hired by The Salvation Army, to solicit donations from people all over the United States. The local officers (pastors) of The Salvation Army (probably?) had no idea that this was sent to me.

At the same time, I felt they were saying:  "Hey, we kicked you out and ruined your life. Could you give us some money?" Nothing like rubbing salt into an already fecund wound.

People will say to me:  "Don't you want to help other people? The Salvation Army does good work!"

Yes, they do. Absolutely they do. I have been a part of it. I have been there when we fed refugees who had just fled a war zone in Kosova. I have been there, providing meals to the residents of Meißen, Germany, when their town was flooded out. I was there, giving meals to law enforcement officers as they searched for the body of a baby girl, who had most likely been killed by her father.

Those were good things. They really were.

At the same time, because of my sexuality, I was told I could never serve in ministry again in The Salvation Army. I was called a heretic for saying the Bible is rarely clear about anything, let alone sexuality. I lost my home, my pension, and my livelihood because of who I am.

The Salvation Army is not all bad, but The Salvation Army is toxic for me.

Unavoidable

I cannot escape being around The Salvation Army either. Many of my friends are still members of The Salvation Army AND are progressive in their theology. They hope for a better future for The Salvation Army. I do, too, but it will not include me in that future.

I am currently in a wonderful relationship with another man. Because of this, I cannot be a member of The Salvation Army, even if I wanted to. If we were to get married, it could not be done in a Salvation Army facility. When I had been married previously, my father (who is a retired Salvation Army officer) officiated the ceremony. He would not be allowed to officiate again if it were my boyfriend and I getting married.

The Salvation Army is a homophobic institution, despite their protests to the contrary.

As much as I would like to, I cannot escape The Salvation Army without doing something extremely radical.

I will never shop in a Salvation Army thrift store again. I will never put money in the kettles during Christmas. I certainly won't ever donate to them again. They have hurt me so much.

So if I wince when we talk and you say you just got this great outfit from a Salvation Army thrift store, that's why. If you ask for donations for The Salvation Army instead of giving you a present on your birthday, I will ignore it.

Allow me to grieve. My grieving is on my timeline. To ask me to get over it negates the trauma that I went through.

The Asbury Revival

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How it Began . . .

I was in Hughes Auditorium, the sanctuary of Asbury College (now University), where we were required to attend. Attendance counters were located in the balcony, making certain we were in our assigned seats, marking off 1/3 of an attendance point if we were doing homework or, worse still, falling asleep. The very uncomfortable wooden seats helped ensure that we would not nod off, but occasionally you would see a classmate do the ubiquitous "chapel nod," where one almost dozed off, but then suddenly woke up, appearing to nod in agreement at what the speaker was saying.

We were told of Revival Meetings, planned for the next 5 evenings. For this we were not required to attend, but we were definitely encouraged to attend. This was in 1991.

So, I went to one. I went to all of them. Each night there was an "altar call," an invitation to go forward to a wooden rail to kneel and pray. Sometimes people would pray with you. Sometimes not. I was searching for meaning and fulfillment in my life, so I went forward to pray. In all honesty, I was expecting something of a miracle to happen. I wanted to hear an actual voice from Heaven and God telling me what to do. Instead, a woman approached me. To this day I don't know her name. I actually think she might have been the wife of one of the professors. She asked if she could pray with me. I consented and waited for her to begin.

And that's when I became extremely uncomfortable. She started to speak in tongues. As far as I knew, it was not any known language. I grew up in a Christian tradition that did not speak in tongues. We were taught about them, but never ever encouraged to use them.

"The Lord is telling me that you have the gift of tongues," she said.

. . . I was silent. I didn't know what to say. God never told me that.

"Have you ever prayed in tongues?"

"No . . . "

"Well, you should just let it out, just let it come naturally."

There was nothing natural about that to me. I was an introverted, closeted bisexual young college boy, who still didn't know what he was doing. I began asking God what I should do. This woman became very insistent with me, almost badgering me to pray in tongues.

Perhaps God did give me a solution and a way out. I wanted her to stop pestering me and it seemed that the only way for her to stop was if I began to pray in tongues.

So I prayed in tongues.

Well, one tongue:  German. I prayed in German.

That was perhaps like throwing gasoline on a flame. She became very ecstatic about this. I wasn't fluent in German yet and praying in German was not something I was taught in high school. I began to run out of things to say and I was "rescued" by a seminary professor, Dr. Stephen Seamands, who was the preacher for that evening. He calmly led her aside and told her that perhaps she should leave me alone.

I then had a wonderful prayer time with this man. He believed I had the gift of prophecy. Whether or not this or is true, I don't know.

Jumpstart

And so it happened. Every year in the Autumn Asbury would host a series of Revival Meetings, which tried to jumpstart the Revival of 1970. Many books and articles have already been written about this Revival, which happened before my birth, but whose aftereffects lasted a long time. Young people left the campus in 1970 and spread the news of what happened and what they experienced.

These scheduled Fall Revival meetings seemed to want to coerce something to happen. Of course, that could totally be my own impression.

My impression, then, was that people remembered the Revival of 1970. They loved it. They loved the feeling of what happened to them during that time. They wanted it to come back again. 

And, just like a drug addict looking for that initial high, they tried to recreate the circumstances of that first Revival, hoping to get the spiritual high they so desperately thought they needed.

Cynic

I feel very much like a cynic right now. It's not a good feeling, I'll admit to that. I have become disillusioned by much of what Evangelical Christianity has had to offer. 

Even during my time at Asbury, they also had another Revival, this time in 1994. I was a student then. What started out as a chapel meeting didn't stop. One of the professors took over and led a prayer meeting that refused to quit. People came to pray for several days. It wasn't as big as the one in 1970. According to people who had been to the one in 1970, it seemed to be quieter. I, myself, went to several of the prayer times. I gave testimony (which means I spoke about what God was doing in my life). Looking back at it, I'm actually quite ashamed at what I said. It held little spiritual import.

The next year, 1995, saw the Toronto Blessing come to Wilmore United Methodist Church. Wilmore is where Asbury University and Asbury Seminary are located.

That was just plain weird.

The Toronto Blessing was a charismatic "revival," which was epitomized by intense laughter. I attended one of their meetings. It was like hearing everyone laugh at a joke I didn't get. I even heard people howling like wolves and barking like dogs. I didn't get it. I didn't laugh. In the crowd, also not laughing, was the seminary professor who had prayed with me earlier in 1991, who had "rescued" me from the woman who wanted me to pray in tongues. I asked him what he thought about it. He said, quite logically, that we are not surprised when people cry when they pray. Why should we be surprised when they laugh? At the same time he told me that we would know if this is from God when people stopped focusing on the gifts and focused on the Giver.

What he said seemed like very sound advice and I have used it to judge if something is of God or not.

2023

Revival has come to Asbury University . . . again. Friends of mine on social media began to share that another chapel meeting did not stop and people were still there, praying. Most friends of mine who went to Asbury were ecstatic. A few have expressed skepticism.

I don't know what to think of it. After the "Revival" in the 90's, I still had to be in the closet. My counselor at the college thought I was a sex addict for being attracted to both men and women. (I never had had sex before then, either.) Asbury has increased its restrictions on the LGBTQ+ community and its demographics still tend to be overwhelmingly white (81%, with only 55 black students out of a population of 1400).

So what do I expect out of a revival? In historical contexts, a revival brought people back to God and spread God's love, no matter who they were.

I am skeptical because of what has happened to me in the past. I was rejected, ostracized, and kicked out of the Evangelical Community. Asbury is part of that community. And, like someone who has gone through domestic battery, I am very cautious to see that this abusive partner has really changed.

If Revival actually happens here, great. I will rejoice for them and be among those who are glad that they have renewed their relationship with God.

Otherwise, this is just one really long chapel meeting.