Abstract
How do queer Christians navigate the tensions between faith and sexuality? This article points to the spirituality of struggle as an answer. In the context of the Philippines, a society known for its religious and moral conservatism, we define this spirituality as an ongoing process in which queer Christians aspire to discover and fulfill God’s will for their lives. We explain this spirituality in the form of three questions we gathered from our interlocutors: Who am I? Whom can I love? And why me? Taken together, these questions reflect the deepest concerns they have about faith and sexuality. Recognizing the spirituality of struggle offers significant contributions to studying religion and gender in the Philippines: by recognizing queer religious identities as dynamic, negotiated acts steeped in ambivalence and by serving as an empirical counterpoint to the militant Christianity in the country. These insights are drawn from semi-structured interviews with sixty-six young adults who self-identify as non-heterosexual men. They are also from different Christian denominations in the Greater Manila Area.
Introduction
For his twenty-fourth birthday, Rey decided to make it more meaningful by visiting an adoration chapel near his place. A profound realization struck him while he was deep in prayer. “I don’t know what happened, but during that visit, I somehow uttered these words: ‘Lord, I’ll take it if it’s your will for me to be gay.’” Rey turns introspective when we ask him to explain what possibly happened. “Maybe I can be an instrument, you know, like, maybe to inspire fellow gay people that it’s okay to be gay and still be a good Christian.” Rey is Catholic.
For Rey, it is possible to be both gay and Catholic. He even insists that a gay man like himself can be a “good Christian.” Like many other Filipinos, however, he does not deny the dissonance (Cornelio 2016). But the tension, to him, is not an incapacitating burden. Instead, Rey describes the contradiction as a “challenge”—deeply personal. Because he is a gay Catholic, he knows he must face people who question his choices. One time, he opened up about it to his spiritual mentor. The latter’s comments made him feel like “shit, I must be a really bad person.” Rey comes from a devout Catholic family and studied in Catholic institutions, including the university where he finished his undergraduate degree. Perhaps because of such encounters, Rey draws on moral reasoning to narrate his case. “Maybe not all people will understand. Maybe I’m wrong, too. But this is how I see things. Really, at the end of the day, I don’t hurt other people, and I still honor my creator. For me, this is why the New Testament exists, where it’s clear that you are to love God as you love your neighbor.”
In situations like this, Rey’s peers may opt to reject religion, treating it as an oppressive institution to one’s queer sexuality (Harris 2014). Many accounts have been written in the Philippines to reflect this narrative (Chu 2021). Accounts, on the other hand, have been written too about Christians and churches that affirm lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) identities (Cornelio and Dagle 2022). For these progressive entities, oppression is the result of homonegative teachings and practices. Conversion therapies and well-rehearsed teachings that God created only two genders are some examples (Joaquin 2014; Chu 2021). While these progressive faith communities constitute a minority in the country, they are notable spaces for queer Christians and their religious allies.
The way Rey responds to the tension seems to be in between these two possibilities. He does not, for one, deny the tension. But he does not fully embrace both identities either, as if there are no felt contradictions. Instead, he considers the dilemma a challenge since even talking about it in his religious environment is “still a taboo.” This, to him, is a personal struggle. “At the end of the day, this is about my personal relationship with God.” And yet he considers this challenge a “mission” too, possibly the will of God for his life. He is convinced that how he leads his life as a gay Catholic might be an inspiration to others who are like him. “It’s my cross to bear,” he tells us.
In the context of the Philippines, how then do Rey and his many peers navigate the tensions they encounter between faith and sexuality? The answer: to be queer and Christian is a burden that needs to be carried. But they are willing to take it insofar as it is possibly God’s will for them. The cross that Rey invokes is thus a helpful metaphor to capture what we propose in this article as their spirituality of struggle (Joaquin 2014). We define the spirituality of struggle as the ongoing process in which queer Christians aspire to discover and fulfill what they believe is God’s will for their lives, with respect to their faith and sexuality. With this definition, we echo the broader literature about spirituality as an encounter with the transcendent and a search for personal authenticity at the same time (Heelas and Woodhead 2005). We present this spirituality in terms of the three questions we heard from our interlocutors: Who am I? Whom can I love? And why me? Taken together, these questions reflect the deepest concerns they have about faith and sexuality. We unpack each of these three throughout this article.
The spirituality of struggle sheds light on how else queer Christians might be dealing with tensions between faith and sexuality in religiously and morally conservative societies like the Philippines. In this way, our work echoes the extant scholarship on queer spirituality that acknowledges the different ways in which the LGBTQ+ deal with the dynamics between faith, sexual orientation, and gender identities (Munt 2016). Based on this growing body of work, some are able to integrate them fully into their life trajectories, but others choose to reject one in favor of another. In our study, tensions do exist, and we wish to examine how individuals deal with them, some of whom may not necessarily be intentional about aiming to reconcile the differences.
Ultimately, our work contributes to religion and gender in the Philippines, both as an emerging field of inquiry and as a pastoral matter. First, it recognizes that being both queer and Christian is a negotiated act that is perhaps never completed. By paying attention to its processual character, the spirituality of struggle recognizes that tensions exist (and may never go away). But far from being incapacitating, this ambivalence is curiously generative. As our study shows, the struggle is an ongoing process of discovering but also questioning oneself and the religious relationships one is part of. In many cases, this process is emotionally charged as well. In other words, how queer Christians respond to the dissonance between faith and sexuality is neither categorical nor absolute. Approaching struggle in this manner shifts the attention from the assumed end goal to the very process itself (Avishai 2020). This means that identity integration or reconciliation is not always the end goal, as it might be for other queer Christians (Fuist 2017). Second, the spirituality of struggle serves as a counterpoint to the homonegative theology pervasive in the Philippines today. We trust that these ideas will open up conversations about the religious lives of the LGBTQ+ community in the Philippine context. A counterpoint to militant Christianity in the Philippines, the spirituality of struggle may be a viable explanation for the endurance of religious life among queer Filipinos. As we will suggest in the last part, this has an interventionist potential.
Research design
Our study relies on interviews conducted with queer Christian men in 2019. In total, we interviewed sixty-six interlocutors, most of whom are young adults (twenty-one to thirty years old). Although we did not aim for empirical generalizability, we purposely set the following criteria to cover a wide array of possible perspectives from as many different kinds of queer young adult men as possible (Miles and Huberman 1994).
Informants' self-identified gender identities.
Informants' breakdown by denomination.
The third is in terms of their socioeconomic backgrounds. Our interlocutors come from different contexts, including graduate students, young professionals working in call centers based in one of the capital’s business districts, and hair stylists from the working-class district of Tondo. Their occupations are broadly categorized into professionals, minimum wage earners, and unemployed/students.
While the coverage is not entirely representative of all queer men belonging to different religious traditions and socioeconomic backgrounds, the sample in our study is wide enough to accommodate different perspectives. We recruited our participants through snowball sampling, beginning from referrals within our network of personal and organizational contacts. As a matter of ethics and safety, we also refrained from issuing public calls through social media to avoid the risk of compromising potential interlocutors’ identities. Interviews were then conducted in a mix of English and Filipino, languages commonly spoken in Manila. Informed consent was obtained verbally and duly recorded prior to the start of the interview. All of our interlocutors’ names have been anonymized using pseudonyms they chose for themselves. Finally, the study asked our interlocutors to narrate their stories, paying attention to the tensions they faced between their gender and religion, specifically in areas of piety, intimacy, relationships, and even political choices. For the purposes of this article and as a contribution to this special issue, we have identified the different ways in which they expressed these tensions and how they negotiated them. Based on these themes, we have arrived at what we present in the rest of this article as their spirituality of struggle.
Queer spirituality and the spirituality of struggle
This section turns to the broad literature on queer spirituality. Our observation is that struggle as a theme permeates this body of work. This is to be expected; the many contexts in which queer individuals are embedded are often fraught with homonegativity (Yip and Page 2016). In a way, therefore, we are approaching queer spirituality from the point of view of struggle. We offer two theoretical foundations to account for this perspective.
On one level, some scholars have examined queer spirituality through the lens of queer theology. In a seminal work, Claudio Bardella (2001, 117) refers to these theological reflections as “Queer Spiritual Discourse.” Drawing on genealogical methods, for example, a queer reading of biblical “texts of terror” like Sodom and Gomorrah reveals that the issue at stake is rape and not homosexuality. A queer reading of the Trinity also calls into question the solely reproductive purpose of human relationships found in traditional interpretations of Genesis. The “theology of friendship” it espouses, drawing inspiration from the work of St. Aelred in the twelfth century, questions patriarchy and homophobia. For Bardella (2001, 133), these readings can empower queer individuals to embrace gay relationships as “intrinsically revolutionary.” More recent theological reflections build on this. And yet they also problematize those that emphasize only gay or lesbian identities. For theology to be authentically queer, theology should also contest these very categories and acknowledge “queers of colour, bisexuals, trans people, and intersex people” (Aburrow 2009, 154). In these theological reflections, to struggle is an ongoing process. To a great extent, this reflects the very character of queerness, which is to contest normativity.
On another level, struggle is the backdrop in the lived religion of queer Christians. This is why one enduring scholarly interest is in how and why queer individuals remain in religious institutions that have for years caused them pain (Sumerau 2017). Four modes are typified in the literature (van Klinken 2019). The first privileges faith over sexuality, in which individuals choose to abandon being gay, for example, to follow what they believe are their faith’s injunctions. By contrast, the second privileges sexuality over faith. Individuals who negotiate the tension in this manner abandon institutional religion. For many people, this is a gradual process, with atheism as a viable option. The third strategy is called compartmentalization. Individuals who adopt this strategy do not make any attempts to reconcile faith and sexuality. The last one is integration or reconciliation. Individuals who follow this route conclude that “God has nothing against queer people” (127). The process of reconciliation might involve rereading biblical texts to challenge patriarchal theologies that perpetuate traditional heteronormative structures (Bardella 2001). These readings contribute significantly to a broader queer spiritual discourse that can ultimately shape the way faith communities relate to the LGBTQ+ among them. Reconciliation might also be enabled by supportive environments, such as those that accompany queer individuals through a long process of denial, coming out, and finding affirmation (Hinman and Lacefield 2020). In these affirming spaces, LGBTQ+ individuals can ultimately reconcile faith and sexuality (Fielder and Ezzy 2018).
Our present work on the spirituality of struggle complicates these strategies. 1 We propose that the spirituality of struggle might be somewhere in between the four modes we have identified above. The spirituality of struggle, as spelled out in this article, acknowledges that there are queer Christians who acknowledge that both faith and sexuality are essential to them, and yet they are neither compartmentalizing nor reconciling them. Put differently, the spirituality of struggle, as we propose in this article, acknowledges the complex process individuals undergo, in which neither reconciliation nor privileging faith over sexuality (or vice versa) may not be intentional. In this process, queer individuals draw on various resources “to construct meaningful lives” (Yip 2016, 45). As will be evident throughout this article, we argue that finding spirituality in the very struggle is one attempt to construct a meaningful life. The words of a gay Christian in Jodi O’Brien’s (2004, 181) ethnography are instructive: spirituality lies in “living a contradiction that defines who I am.” For many like this person, abandoning their faith is not an option, for it provides them with “a sense of meaning and purpose” (185).
By foregrounding this point, our theoretical position thus complicates the seemingly “neat” modes of negotiating the tension between religion and sexuality. In her introduction to a collection based on an extensive research program on queer spirituality, Sally Munt (2016) cautions observers from resorting to categorical conclusions. For example, one’s choice to treat faith as more important than sexual orientation might lead some observers to immediately conclude that this is internalized homophobia. Another observer may suggest that this exemplifies a hierarchy of identities. Drawing inspiration from these criticisms, we propose that the struggles queer individuals confront might become in themselves resources or even spaces for spirituality to emerge. Indeed, earlier scholarship about the autobiographies of gay Christians demonstrates precisely this point. Daryl White and O. Kendall White, Jr. (2004) have analyzed accounts by gay Christians from different denominations. They contend that what they refer to as “gay spiritual autobiographies” resonate with accounts written by African-Americans. Both echo themes of capture and punishment, as well as escape and refuge. In both genres, “providence and grace figure prominently and intertwine discovery and struggle in the telling of a new coming into being” (White and White 2004, 214).
What this means is clear to us: It is possible that for some gay Christians, providence and grace figure in their life experiences as prominently as do discovery and struggle. From this vantage point, we can define the spirituality of struggle as the ongoing process in which queer Christians, while acknowledging the palpable difficulties between faith and sexuality, aspire to discover and fulfill what they believe is God’s will for their lives. This definition recognizes that spirituality is a search for the divine as much as it is a search for personal authenticity (Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Wixwat and Saucier 2021). Whether the search leads to denouement—either in the form of rejection or reconciliation—may (or may not) be part of it. In other words, the spirituality of struggle we are proposing acknowledges two conditions: the reality of struggles and the possibility that struggles are spaces for spiritual encounters. We develop these two points as follows.
First, the spirituality of struggle recognizes that struggles exist. In the case of the LGBTQ+, religious spaces, especially non-affirming ones, are inescapable sites where homonegative theologies are deployed in different ways. These spaces may come in the form of the family, church, or school. From microaggressions to conversion therapies, religious spaces foster a deep sense of shame among LGBTQ+ Filipinos, especially those who wish to remain committed to their religious traditions (Campos et al. 2022). At the same time, these spaces either deny or silence the place of queer Christians and the discrimination they encounter. This is one among many reasons why, in the Philippines, these sites have been described as “spaces of unfreedom” (Cornelio and Dagle 2022, 28). But these spaces are sites of “losses” too, where queer Christians, in their desire to be recognized, are systematically rejected (Fielder and Ezzy 2018, 1). The loss of intimate relationships in the family and the church—sometimes with fatal consequences—is a familiar story for the LGBTQ+ individuals who choose to come out in their religious communities. In this light, the struggles queer Christians face cover different domains of religious life. As Julie Exline and colleagues (2014) show, struggles are not only moral. They are interpersonal and may even affect how one sees one’s value and ultimate purpose in life.
Second, the spirituality of struggle recognizes that contradictions in themselves are spaces for spiritual encounters and deepening. Far from rendering individuals helpless, struggles may even inspire critical reflections and action on the part of disenfranchised individuals and groups. For this reason, emerging theological reflections reclaim shame (hiya) as a tool to reclaim dignity and self-acceptance. To reclaim hiya is to name the very sources and experiences of shame in religious communities and expose them for their patriarchy and heteronormativity (Campos et al. 2022). In this sense, spirituality is found in the struggle. Indeed, this is also the point that Mark Chater (2000) makes in his seminal work on spirituality and struggle. He argues that struggles that come out of the tension between the promulgations of institutional religion and the realities of everyday life become opportunities for people to reflect on freedom and oppression.
We end this section by reflecting on why shedding light on the spirituality of struggle is important in the Philippine context. One reason is that the spirituality of struggle for queer Filipinos is an empirical matter that has yet to be unpacked. As we have mentioned above, scholarship points to identity integration or reconciliation as one of the many potential answers. However, as we show in the succeeding sections, identity integration or reconciliation for the ones we met is rare. Instead, what we find is the “centrality of ambivalence,” not “stable outcomes” but “meaning-making journeys” (Avishai 2020, 362).
Another reason is that reflecting on the spirituality of struggle highlights its critical and aspirational ethos. In this sense, this scholarship is interventionist. After all, naming the struggles and their sources is part of the process of confronting religious homophobia (Fielder and Ezzy 2018). Thankfully, psychologists in the Philippines recognize this point and have done significant work to help affected queer Christians (Evangelista, Dumaop, and Nelson 2016). Naming these struggles also brings to the surface the painful contradiction within religious spaces where they are either denied or simply dismissed, even if some churches profess that they are still “deserving of dignity and protection” (Goh 2020, 193). The hope is for these stories to compel religious leaders and people of faith to recognize—at the very least—the very human yet divine struggle of the LGBTQ+ individuals in the community and to begin reexamining the oppressive structures within their churches that perpetuate their suffering. In this light, a link clearly exists between queer spirituality and liberation theologies.
By way of ending this section, we wish to emphasize that paying attention to the spirituality of struggle is not to deny the many other ways queer spirituality is rendered possible. As Todd Fuist (2017) has repeatedly asserted, it is likely that there is no tension at all for others. More importantly, our work is not meant to romanticize struggling. Inasmuch as religion might animate homonegativity, so much in the spirituality of struggle can counter it too (Harris 2014). The struggle, as Arvin Joaquin (2014) argues in his work on gay Catholic Filipinos, is ultimately a call for the Church to become an ally and acknowledge their existence.
The three questions
In this section, we turn to our findings based on interviews with our interlocutors. As we have indicated above, they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and Christian denominations. In spite of this diversity, their stories find commonality in experiences of microaggression and other forms of discrimination in religious spaces. It is in this light that for many of them, the cross is a symbol of suffering and victory, sin and redemption, death and new life (Joaquin 2014). These tensions are at the core of their Christian spirituality and which our queer interlocutors experience even more intensely.
In what follows, we spell out how the spirituality of struggle manifests itself in their lives. To reiterate, the spirituality of struggle is the ongoing search for God’s will in their lives, especially given the tension they have between faith and sexuality. It comes in the form of the fundamental questions our interlocutors ask about themselves and their capacity to love: Who am I? Whom can I love? And why me? These questions encapsulate the search but also the ambivalence with which they are confronted as queer Christians. Many of them have not renounced their sexuality as prescribed in their respective congregations. Nor have they entirely denounced the yoke of religious homonegativity. Instead, they continue to navigate the struggle of staying true to God and self, which does not necessarily entail a linear progression from repression to acceptance, or vice versa. This reiterates what other scholars have noted about the ambivalence of spirituality (Avishai 2020).
Who am I?
The question “Who am I?” captures our interlocutors’ struggle to make sense of their identity as both queer and Christian. Some have recognized and even affirmed that both identities can coexist as their “calling” or “mission.” Yet such acknowledgment is usually coupled with the constant assertion of the need to be a “good person.” It derives from the enduring feeling that being queer means being morally inadequate, and thus, forces them to constantly prove themselves as upright. In this regard, the spirituality of struggle is manifested in two ways.
The first is in the commitment to being faithful. Its underlying assumption is that a gay Christian can be a “good Christian.” Rey, whom we introduced at the outset, uses the image of the cross to describe his “mission” as a gay man. But for him, this cross is more of a “challenge” than a burden. Rey does not deny the tension. However, in accepting who he is, he gains clarity of purpose in loving God and his neighbor despite what society might say or think. On the one hand, this might mean that in being gay, one does not “do anything wrong” or “hurt anyone.” To be a faithful Christian, in spite of his sexuality, is what Jason insists is his calling, a direct affront to the homophobic teaching he encounters in his congregation. But faithfulness, on the other hand, is also about developing a more robust faith as a Christian. Feriz, a member of the progressive and affirming Philippine Independent Church, sees his previous struggles in determining his identity as bakla as formative and fundamental to his faith. He uses the image of the earthen jar to describe his faith and gender. From being “soft” like wet clay, his experience has molded him into the person he is today. An active youth leader in his parish, Feriz tells us: “My faith has been strengthened when I learned that gays are accepted, and that the church had programs for us.” Thus, Feriz asserts: “Nothing can break me.”
The second is in recognizing the struggle’s social dimension. Rey is convinced that his mission is to be an encouragement to other gay Christians, that it is “okay to be gay and still be a good Christian.” This sense of mission—to be an encouragement to other queer Christians—is an oft-repeated theme throughout our interviews. In this sense, the cross is not just a “challenge” but also a “blessing.” Jason echoes Rey’s point. “For me, this is a blessing from the Lord,” speaking of his identity as a gay man. “It is a blessing because as long as we’re not doing anything wrong and we’re not hurting anyone, we continue to serve and thank God,” he tells us.
While many of them think of their immediate spheres of influence, others also think beyond. Max, a twenty-five-year-old Episcopalian, says that his struggles in the church as a gay person are not divorced from the struggles of others. “I can imagine the young gays who enter our church. What will happen if they learn that their elder Max gave up, who was supposed to fight for them? That’s something I cannot take,” he tells us. Santi, a leader in the Philippine Independent Church, considers their work in creating safe spaces and promoting inclusivity in the church as “small pockets” of victory in their struggle. “Paraphrasing the evangelicals, let me say, each soul we win is a victory,” Santi tells us. “Each person who can articulate the same thing, and who feels that this is the right track, is a victory…The fact that one LGBT [person] comes out to a parent is a victory.”
For others still, the calling is expressed in terms of advocacy work. They recognize that the struggle is not only internal to themselves or their congregation; they feel that their calling is to struggle with other LGBTQ+ in society. Garnet, a volunteer for an organization working with persons living with HIV, sees his work as an integral part of being a Christian. “I believe that being a Christian entails helping the community, not just yourself, because you can save lives,” he tells us. Max resonates with this statement, saying that “being a Christian bears weight” as this entails doing good works and “not just singing hallelujahs.”
Where might this sense of calling come from? For many queer Christians, the answer lies in the many rejections encountered in their own religious spaces. Riri is a Catholic who grew up in Tondo, Manila’s working-class district. He recounts to us a troubling encounter with a religious figure. One time, the priest asked his congregation who among them was queer. Seeing that some hands were raised, the priest asked them, “Why did you become bakla? Why did you become tomboy?” Riri admitted to being hurt by what the priest did but decided to confront the priest after the gathering, even though some reacted immediately. “I gathered the strength to face him and tell him there is nothing wrong with being bakla. It is true that we are not recognized in the Bible, but this is what we feel,” Riri said. The priest then answered, “I understand you, my child. But if you can still change yourself, there is still time.” To this, Riri responded, “I am happy here. This is the journey I chose, to become bakla.”
For Rey, Jason, Riri, and others, their spirituality of struggle lies in their enduring struggle of identity—whether it is possible to be queer and be a good Christian at the same time. But the paradox here reveals much about their spirituality. For Feriz, the struggle of being gay contributes to the person that he is, and he finds affirmation and perfection in his faith community. On the other hand, Riri is convinced that being bakla is not necessarily wrong despite what their religious leaders might say, and thus chooses to embark on the journey of being bakla. Hence, we also see how the acknowledgment of being queer also comes with the recognition of the difficulties and traumas associated with living as a queer person in a society. Those in progressive spaces, meanwhile, acknowledge that their personal struggles as queer individuals are tied in with both religious and social struggles. As Mark, a government and development worker, tells us, “gender struggle is not isolated from the struggle of the people.”
Whom can I love?
Being queer transgresses social norms of love and sexuality, greatly influenced by religious mores. The question “Whom can I love?” captures our queer interlocutors’ struggle in expressing emotional and sexual intimacy while trying to discern and abide by what they perceive as “God’s will.” In this sense, the struggle for identity spills over to the dilemma over relationships.
Kevin, the son of a born-again Christian pastor, embodies this spirituality. He tells us that being gay makes him feel “happy.” In fact, “it feels liberating.” He then goes on to share that “since I outed to my parents, nothing is really more satisfying than just to be who you are.” But he seems to contradict himself in the very next sentence: “but I feel like, you cannot be that way. If you want to serve the Lord, if you want to please Him, you have to be where He wants you to be. And that is what I’m saying as the ‘other side.’”
“The other side” that Kevin refers to is what he also qualifies as God’s “grand design” of marriage between man and woman, having children, and raising a family. “With all my heart, I believe that,” Kevin assures us. Yet he also admits questioning God at times about what he considers an “archaic” and “traditional mindset.” “Lord, is this what you really want? Is this what you really intend to say about this certain thing, that only heterosexual love is permitted?” Kevin asks. “Did it ever occur to you that this love is so peaceful and serene and not problematic?” Kevin describes this push-and-pull as akin to bargaining with the Lord. “But it’s just that, I just don’t think that the Lord is going to bend towards what I really think about it. It’s not like that,” he concedes.
Paul, a Baptist, believes that the attraction to men is a “struggle that I can overcome.” Like Kevin, Paul thinks that he is not “engineered to marry a guy,” even if he likes the attention he gets from other men. “I know I’m not happy because that’s how I feel. I’m not happy because I struggle. Engaging in something perceived as wrong by those around me does not make me happy,” he tells us. Paul admits that he has never engaged in penetrative sex with another man as he is afraid it might “affirm” his feelings. He then explains that religion plays a “significant part” in this, as he has always wanted to be a pastor. This “calling” is inspired by the joy he encounters while serving in his church. “All my dreams are rooted in fulfilling the plan of the Lord in me,” Paul concludes. “These are my emotions now, and they are very powerful. I wouldn’t trade sex for it, which I believe is very pleasurable.” The internal tension that he grapples with is palpable as the interview ends.
Some of our informants resonate with this push-and-pull experience, especially in the context of sex. Cei, who attends the evangelical megachurch Christ’s Commission Fellowship (CCF), admits that “it feels good to do what is not permitted.” Yet Cei claims that he feels the Holy Spirit’s conviction whenever he engages in homosexual acts. “You are not the Cei of the past. You are already God’s own,” the Holy Spirit would seemingly tell him, according to Cei. John, a member of the influential indigenous church Iglesia ni Cristo (INC), says he loves being in the INC “even more than his life.” But he admits that he would sometimes fall into “temptation,” causing him to feel “heavy.” He would then pray to God to change him and “correct his mistakes,” believing that it is always “possible” for him to change: “Perhaps not yet, but gradually,” he says.
Much of the struggle is derived from the theologies and practices encountered in church. But much of it is also reinforced in their families. This is one theme that recurred in our interviews. MJ, a member of the Philippine Independent Church, recounts his prayer back in high school when he first felt attracted to the same sex. Growing up in a family that saw being bakla as “evil,” he felt the need to repeatedly ask God to “make me a straight guy” and to remove “all those sexual desires towards the same sex.” MJ then believed what his mother taught him: God would grant whatever he prayed for. “Lord, whatever it is that I feel, please take it away from me. Whatever it is that I feel is not right, please fix it,” he prayed then. At one point, MJ hoped that God would take away these desires the moment he woke up the next day. Gino, a Jehovah’s Witness, recalls his mother’s counsel whenever he felt the urge to engage in same-sex relations: “If you feel that way, you just have to fight it, fight it.”
In these narratives, one discerns the trauma derived from fear. The fear of excommunication, for example, was natural for some queer Christians who belonged to fundamentalist groups as they were growing up. For some of them, the fear lingers in the form of guilt over what could be sinful. And yet, what also lingers is the capacity and desire to love. That much is clear for the queer Christians in our study. With whom is what makes it a struggle. Some of them believe that they can overcome same-sex attraction; others do not. But just the same, queer Christians are caught in a persistent dilemma, especially for those who believe that being in a homosexual relationship can also be “pure and serene,” in the words of Kevin.
Why me?
The pressures of living as a queer person in such spaces of unfreedom are enough to take a toll physically, mentally, and even spiritually (Cornelio and Dagle 2022). It is no surprise then that our interlocutors feel a sense of injustice over their fate as queer people, leading them to ask God, “Why me?”
RJ, a Mormon, uses “nagtatampo” to describe how he feels towards God. Nagtatampo, loosely translated, is Filipino for being disappointed with a person someone considers close. “Why did He let me become like this? Why can I not be like the others instead? Because if I could choose between being gay and being straight, I would choose to become straight. Because you know, they [referring to heterosexuals] seem to be freer; they do not experience discrimination,” he laments to us.
RJ is not alone. We have encountered others during our work who also had similar experiences. Yuejin, a member of the mainline Protestant denomination Iglesia Evangelical Metodista en las Islas Filipinas (IEMELIF), discloses the questions he often asks God: “Can’t we be happy? Can’t LGBT Christians be happy?” These questions reveal how Yuejin and his peers shuttle between hope, doubt, and disappointment. Asked if he already had an answer, Yuejin tells us that there is none thus far. But he immediately explains that he is not done yet: “Where would I end up if I quit? At the end of the day, I would always run back to God. I don’t care for an audible voice, but I believe that He is there. Yes, He is.”
Chester is another example. He grew up in an evangelical family. Even if he has never opened up about being bakla in his former church, its negative views of the LGBTQ+ individuals as “sinful [people] who would burn in hell” was enough to make him “anxious.” In fact, this was the reason he went into a crisis of faith. “I questioned God why of all the possible struggles, [being gay] was the one He chose to give me, which seems impossible to overcome…He could have made me a womanizer, which, you know, I feel can be easier to overcome. Why did it have to be this way? During that time, I felt that it was unfair.”
Such feelings of spiritual tampo or disappointment are thus rooted in the perceived unfairness of being made different—of being made to carry a heavier cross than straight people. This is evident in the deeply personal, albeit negative, terms our interlocutors use in relating and expressing themselves to God. Nevertheless, we see how spirituality continues to linger and even deepen by openly confronting their frustrations and disappointments. As the accounts above have shown, these experiences have led them to explore other religious spaces or believe God is still with them.
The spirituality of struggle
“Many people,” writes Filipino historian Richard Chu (2021, 418), “desire to do the ‘right’ thing or to be a ‘good’ Catholic, but for some reason fall short.” This is the resounding message in Chu’s autobiography as a gay Catholic growing up in the Philippines. Since his story resonates with the many others recounted above, he could have effectively been one of our interlocutors. Indeed, across all denominations, the queer young adults we spoke with are trying to be “good Christians.” They do so in relation to other people and in ways that give them validation. In a fundamental sense, this aspiration does resonate with spirituality as the pursuit of the “good life” (Drescher 2016, 248).
But doing so is not easy, if only because the conflict between faith and sexuality is simply undeniable for them. As we have argued at the outset, this is why the spirituality of struggle is an ongoing search for God’s will, a process our interlocutors undergo as they face the tensions between faith and sexuality. So, while the spirituality of struggle is a search for the divine, it is also a search for personal authenticity (Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Wixwat and Saucier 2021). Such, after all, is the nature of spirituality. But as we have also pointed out in an earlier section, queer spirituality involves struggle as an ongoing reality. Finding spirituality in the struggle is a means of constructing a meaningful life amid contradictions (Yip 2016; O’Brien 2004). In this last section, we turn to what the spirituality of struggle contributes to religion and gender in the Philippines, both as an emerging field of inquiry and a pastoral matter.
Paying attention to the spirituality of struggle recognizes, first and foremost, that queer religious identities are not always stable. Often, as recounted by our interlocutors, working through being queer and being Christian is a negotiated, ambivalent act—ongoing and perhaps never completed (Avishai 2020). This is why the spirituality of struggle, as we have pointed out above, extends the extant literature on religion on sexuality. It acknowledges that for some queer Christians, compartmentalization, reconciliation, or privileging faith over sexuality (or vice versa) are not the only options available. To be in this ongoing spirituality of struggle is in itself an attempt to construct a meaningful life (Yip 2016). This, of course, does not deny the possibility of identity reconciliation, which comes usually after a long process. This is well established in the literature (Hinman and Lacefield 2020). In such cases, reconciliation happens as a result of deep theological engagements in the context of supportive communities, fellow queer activists, or even progressive congregations (Van Klinken 2019; Fuist 2017).
But our interlocutors find themselves in a somewhat different context, where their gender identities and expressions are consistently questioned. Instead of abandoning religion, however, queer Christians are fostering a spirituality without denying the tension. This is an important point to reiterate about the spirituality of struggle; its ambivalence is generative (Avishai 2020). In many cases, the tension results from the theologies they hear from the pulpit. In other cases, it is the condemnation they receive from other people. Amid that struggle is the pursuit to be “good Christians.” Thus, it makes sense why, for Jason, to be a gay Christian is a blessing. “We’re not doing anything wrong, and we’re not hurting anyone. We continue to serve and thank God.” These Filipino queer Christians, in a way, are not unique. They echo those who came ahead of them in other contexts. Drawing on her ethnographic work among lesbian and gay Christians, O’Brien (2004, 189) shows that the “struggle” has made them “better Christians…In other words, the struggle is the crucible in which their character is forged.”
What this goes to show is that religious spaces—whether the devout family, the local congregation, or the Christian school—are active sites for struggle. These sites are where institutional religion and the everyday life of queer Christians lock horns (Chater 2000). But what it also shows is that these spaces do not necessarily render queer Christians helpless. What may have originated as a source of tension (personal struggle) becomes the very space for contestation (to struggle). Far from alienating, religious spaces may become fertile ground for contestations and novel expressions of what it means to be a good Christian. Such emotional encounters with rejection in their families and faith communities may become a starting point for LGBTQ+ Christians’ spiritual journeys (Fielder and Ezzy 2018). In the context of this study, looking for one’s purpose, embracing life as a journey, and acknowledging personal disappointments all became possible because of the tensions our interlocutors encountered. In this light, the spirituality of struggle is a potent explanation for why many queer Filipinos continue to inhabit religious spaces. Without reconciling these tensions, they may even be at the forefront of ministry, volunteer work, and religious activities. This point is evident in other studies. No wonder the well-known Tay Augus in Kalibo spent his entire life performing in drag at every Ati-atihan festival (Pino, Largo, and Diaz 2017). But he did so in every way for the Santo Niño (Child Jesus). By doing so, locals in his community did not consider his performance offensive. On the contrary, they considered him a “loyal parishioner” (Alcedo 2007, 115). In their own ways, the interlocutors in our present study, despite what others may have said about them, are also loyal parishioners.
Second, paying attention to the spirituality of struggle is an empirical counterpoint to homophobic, militant Christianity in the Philippines. We need to explain what we mean by this. Elsewhere, Jayeel Cornelio (2020b) has argued that the dominant character of Christianity in the Philippines is militant: fundamentalist in theology and invested in politics (Brillantes, Lorenzo, and Sin 2020). This is the case even if different Christian churches might be emerging around the country. Although evangelical churches, restorationist movements, and other sectarian groups might differ from each other in terms of their basic doctrines (and thus may compete with one another), they maintain in varying degrees a fundamentalist reading of the scriptures, especially with respect to gender, sexuality, and marriage. Validating this point is a recent survey conducted by local psychologists. It shows that an increasing number of religious Filipinos (in terms of belief and practice) embrace more homonegative attitudes (Reyes et al. 2019).
At the same time, these influential Christian churches are engaged in politics by endorsing candidates or fielding their own. In their own ways, they insist and even celebrate that the Philippines is “the only Christian nation in Asia” (Cornelio 2020a, 149). Not only is this statement empirically mistaken; it is also discursively influential as to what constitutes “Christian,” with normative consequences on family life. A decade ago, the Catholic Church, for example, rejected the reproductive health bill for fostering a “culture of death” given its support for artificial contraception (Bautista 2010, 29). Similarly, legislative moves in support of gender equality and the LGBTQ+ have suffered resistance from fundamentalist Christians in Congress. In 2008, one representative, a Baptist pastor himself, characterized the anti-discrimination bill, designed to protect the LGBTQ+ community, as inviting “the wrath of God upon ourselves and our God-loving nation” (Cornelio and Dagle, 2019, 78). As recounted by some of our interlocutors, the churches they inhabit are fundamentalist and militant. As such, their communities have rejected the anti-discrimination bill and its later incarnation, the SOGIE (sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression) equality bill, which, to date, has yet to be passed in Congress.
In scholarship, highlighting the spirituality of struggle among queer Christians is one step in recognizing their presence in religious spaces and the wider society (Joaquin 2014). Doing so problematizes discursive heteronormativity in Christian circles and may inaugurate conversations about the place of queer Christians in Philippine religious life. In line with Bronwyn Fielder and Douglas Ezzy’s (2018) engaged scholarship about queer Christianity, these erasures need to be repaired. Ultimately, doing so can engender pastoral interventions that value the spirituality of queer Christians. On the one hand, this can be in the form of innovations in counseling, preaching, ministry, and even the very training of ministers.
On the other hand, these can also be more activist in orientation, echoing the aspirations of liberation theology (Schneider and Roncolato 2012). This is how we heed Sharon Bong’s (2020, 424) “epistemology of the sacred body.” To her, this is about privileging those in the margins and paying attention to the different ways in which being queer and being spiritual come together.
Conclusion
In the context of the Philippines, how do young adult queer Christians navigate the tensions they experience between faith and sexuality? The answer, based on our fieldwork, is the spirituality of struggle. We have defined this spirituality to be the ongoing process that queer individuals undergo in search of God’s will with respect to their faith and sexuality. This is in keeping with our earlier observation that struggle as a theme permeates the extensive work on queer spirituality (Yip and Page 2016).
However, we also want to be clear that our study does not preclude the possibility of reconciliation or denial in due course. Instead, we point to the reality of struggle that many queer Filipinos experience in which they also find spiritual encounters and deepening. That to us is possibly one key to making sense of the endurance of religious life among queer Filipinos. Echoing the broader literature on spirituality, the spirituality of struggle, in effect, is a search for the divine as much as personal authenticity (Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Wixwat and Saucier 2021). We have articulated this spirituality through three questions taken from our interlocutors’ reflections:
The first is “Who am I?” This concerns how our interlocutors make sense of their identities as queer Christians. For some, there may be an acknowledgment of both identities, yet this is done with the caveat that they ought to be good Christians. Queer Christians embedded in progressive spaces consider the struggle for identity not just as a personal struggle but one that is tied to the larger struggle of the LGBTQ+ community in their church and society. “Whom can I love?” is the second question. It captures the tensions between the queer longing for intimacy and “God’s will” for them, usually characterized as the prevailing heteronormative morality. Discerning God’s will in their lives entails questioning, rationalizing, and even bargaining. The third is “Why me?” Expressions of spiritual tampo or disappointment are rooted in the perceived unfairness of being made to carry a heavier cross than straight people. In fact, one can see how their tampo echoes Jesus’s cry of discontent on the cross—“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me!” And yet, these personal sighs of disappointment have not been debilitating. Instead, they have opened possibilities to nurture, deepen, or reorient their faith.
Recognizing this spirituality of struggle offers significant contributions to religion and gender in the Philippines, both as an emerging field of inquiry and as a pastoral matter. First, it recognizes that queer religious identities are not stable. Rather, being queer and Christian is a negotiated act steeped in ambivalence. Such ambivalence, however, generates possibilities for new articulations of what it means to be Christian. Second, the spirituality of struggle serves as an empirical counterpoint to militant Christianity in the Philippines. Paying attention to queer Christians’ lived realities and expressions of faith does not only testify to the diversity of Christianity in the Philippines. It also contests dominant perceptions of Christianity informed by fundamentalist theological interpretations (Medina and Cornelio 2021). In a manner of speaking, this spirituality of struggle aligns with the tradition of liberation theology and inspires innovative ways to do ministry today (Schneider and Roncolato 2012). The spirituality of struggle thus articulates both the sighs and aspirations of God’s queer children cast aside by patriarchal and homophobic faith communities.
We pose three major implications from these findings. First, we recognize how certain articulations of the spirituality of struggle may reproduce inequality (Sumerau 2017). We see this possibility in the very assertion that queer Christians can also be good Christians. The rhetoric potentially reinforces the notion that queer people need to prove their worth to be truly accepted by society and not simply because of their humanity. Another is in the discourse surrounding sex and marriage. Some of our interlocutors have expressed their opposition to homosexual acts and same-sex marriage for they are “not proper” and that they violate the sacredness of the body and the church. These views only reiterate how queer Christians should stay in their place and not overstep the limits set by heteronormativity.
Second, the spirituality of struggle is symptomatic of religious change happening in the Philippines in which queer Christians are finding their voice. While same-sex marriage and gender equality are still facing legislative obstacles, there are indicators that Filipinos are now more tolerant than they used to be of the LGBTQ+ community (Cornelio and Dagle 2022). There is, too, the rise of LGBTQ+ advocacies among different sectors, including youth, media, religious communities, and the academe. The young adults we interviewed for this study are caught in a generational shift that, while still generally conservative, might be beginning to welcome the LGBTQ+ as a reality.
Third, the spirituality of struggle poses critical pastoral implications. Apart from fostering safe spaces, religious organizations can make a difference by encouraging the LGBTQ+ in their midst to name the sources and experiences of shame and oppression. As Filipino psychologists have shown, naming the religious teachings and other forms of ostracism as “oppression” can go a long way in helping the LGBTQ+ deal with religious trauma (Evangelista et al. 2016). But the theological dimension has to be confronted, too. For queer Christians, shame is tied to sin and is thus a tool to silence them and their legitimacy in non-affirming religious spaces. Therefore, the emancipation of queer Christians lies in naming these sources of shame as “heteronormative systems that police gendered bodies” (Campos et al. 2022). Emerging theological and pastoral work in the Philippines is reframing shame (or hiya) in this manner.
Given our limitations as scholars, we trust that some of the ideas presented here would spark conversations and inspire practical applications about how they are best addressed in specific faith communities. Our findings invite theologians, religious leaders, and faith communities to pay more serious attention to the lived realities of queer people and their expressions of faith. Our study has shown that queer Filipinos still find meaning and are continuously carving out spaces within the bounds of institutional religion. Notable is the work of affirming churches such as the Manila-based Open Table MCC during their weekly Sunday worship. They also have their regular “Community Connect” gatherings online, which tackle issues relevant to the LGBTQ+ community.
In the final analysis, we propose the following three questions: Who am I? Whom can I love? And why me?—are also supplications. Prayer, as Linda Woodhead (2015, 225) points out, “articulate[s] fears and anxieties.” What we have heard from our interlocutors is their way of externalizing their often hidden and silent struggles through faith and spirituality—at the very least, to a God who may be quiet but listens. These are—borrowing from its Latin origin precarius—earnest requests from a precarious and marginalized group. The broader task of the faith community is to acknowledge these prayers. These prayers, in effect, call for an “enlarged sympathy” (Woodhead 2015, 226) among other Christians for the queer community. In other words, that queer Christians are discovering spirituality in their struggle calls into question the validity of binary thinking in non-affirming religious spaces. Often, the stipulation in religious circles is that “one must either be a ‘faithful Christian’ or ‘unfaithful deviant’” (Gohat 2020, 186). The big caveat, of course, is whether Christian churches are indeed willing to suspend this binary thinking and, in a manner of speaking—queer their understanding of what it means to be a good Christian.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University Malay; and the School of Arts and Sciences, Monash University Malaysia; SALIKHA Creative Grants; Internal Research Grant Project No. 211.
