Last year, while attending an international conference on EMDR Therapy, a modality I practice and teach, a group called “Christian EMDR Therapists” formed on the conference app.

Knowing that certain members of the EMDR Therapy community previously used their rights as Christians to condone the use of therapy to promote sexual orientation and change efforts, I decided to ask an important question: How are you defining Christian? I got a variety of responses, some thoughtful, yet most of them wrote me off as a smart ass.

In modern America, asking people for their operational definition of Christianity is an important practice. Because there are various folks who identify in one way or another as Christians, I need to know if I am safe enough to be myself in interacting with you.

Some Christians believe that being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or otherwise different from the cisgender heteronormative mold is a sin and that practicing such a sin jeopardizes one’s eternal salvation. There are many more of us who identify as LGBTQ+ and as practicing Christians, even though many struggle with using that C-word because of the hateful and discriminatory associations it brings up for people in our community. 

I grew up in Ohio with two forms of conservative Christianity– a Pentecostal Evangelical father and a Catholic mother. Even within my home, since my parents did not separate after my father’s conversion when I was five, my father introduced the notion that he was a “real” Christian. My mother was not.

At the Catholic school and church where I attended, they, along with my mother, assured me that Catholics are Christians. But the Evangelicals seemed to have a more rigid bar for being saved and thus, calling yourself a Christian.

My process of healing from the mixed messages and deconstructing my faith prompted me, once I left their home, to explore many different world religions and spiritual practices. In my thirties, I ended up studying yoga and going to ashrams and on pilgrimages in India, learning that the concept of certain yogis labeling themselves and their lineages more “authentic” than others was a thing, too.

This ecumenical exploration was vital to my recovery process from addictive and dissociative disorders. And even though I value the various ways that people find the Divine, believing that all truly spiritual paths meet in the middle, my identity remains rooted in the Catholic expression of Christianity. 

Sometimes, I say that I keep one foot rooted in Catholicism because I believe in the Incarnation of Christ and his positionality as a Jewish mystic and social radical who showed us that the world can be a different place. I specifically align with Catholicism because of my ancestral connection to the faith as a Croatian-American.

However, I certainly share friendlier fellowship with Protestants who identify as progressive Christians, i.e., those who support the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals in the church, uphold the values of reproductive justice, and fight for women’s equality.

Do I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins? Not really. I believe God’s mercy covers me, and I also believe that Jesus can mean different things to different Christians. 

I can already hear most people I grew up with calling me a blasphemer who denounces the “God of the Bible” and is thus leading others to hell by spouting this woke, liberal Jesus nonsense. They are entitled to their opinion of me and how I practice Christianity.

That does not make me any less of a Christian.

I could easily flip the tables on you as Jesus did in the New Testament and call you out on many of your professed, conservative political beliefs that go against Jesus’ teachings in scripture. I’m not going to do that, though, not now anyway. 

I’m certainly not going to condemn you as being an “unreal” Christian. Because it’s really none of my business how you interpret your faith.

It becomes my business, though, when the resulting hatred gets in the way of me and many people like me having full rights and protections in the United States. 

Because of this, I will continue to be skeptical when people in the United States or anywhere else around the world lead with “I’m a Christian” instead of showing me through their lives and behaviors that they follow the teachings of Christ.

When people mention the C-word in relation to anything, I will ask for their operational definition.