I’ve been a member of the United Methodist Church for 10 years, but in my heart I’m still a good Baptist (which may be why I keep teaching at Baptist seminaries!). I still remember my baptismal vows at the historically Black Baptist church of my youth. In them, I promised that if I were to leave that church, I would find another as soon as possible. Since then, I have always tried to keep that promise. And my family has held me accountable to it. When I moved to Miami at the age of 21 to attend graduate school, every phone call to my maternal grandmother would include her asking, “Did you join a church yet?”

The thing is, it is hard to be an African American woman with progressive theological, political, and social commitments and find a church. It is not just that there are elements of the worship experience that make me feel uncomfortable. I can deal with discomfort. In fact, I think that if worship doesn’t regularly stretch us beyond our comfort zone and force us to encounter God through the eyes of others, it’s not worship at all.

I’ve always been willing to make compromises. I can give up my preferences for music or preaching in a certain style if the teaching is theologically sound. I can deal with being one of few people of color in a congregation if the voices of women, young people, and LGBTQ persons are respected and empowered. I can tolerate a certain level of dysfunction in the leadership and organization if the commitment to intersectional justice is strong enough. And I can put up with a combination of those factors if my kid will have the chance to participate in a strong children’s ministry that is discipling him well.

But I cannot stay in churches that – whether in their music, prayer, teachings, polity, or practice – routinely make claims about God that I believe to be contrary to who God is and who God calls us to be. I am opposed to being in church that deny the imago Dei (image of God) within myself and others by forcing us to conform to their image of who we should be. And that has been the experience in almost every congregation that I’ve attended. Ultimately, the pressure to conform reveals itself in one way or another.

When I joined the leadership of this new church plant 18 months ago, I took it as a chance help build a new type of community from the ground up, a place where we would make a radical commitment to becoming beloved community, where people of diverse backgrounds would find themselves welcomed and empowered in the fullness of who they were. What I absolutely did not want was to create another “Benetton” type of multicultural congregation, one where the church was filled with people of different races/ethnicities but who were all culturally white. But eventually, it felt like that was precisely what we’d become.My repeated efforts to redirect us were not successful. It began to feel like I was Sisyphus, doomed to eternally push a boulder uphill by myself.

My freedom came one Friday afternoon when I began reflecting about my perpetual struggle of being a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. “What am I losing of myself each time that I shave off bits of myself to fit? And what if I simply stopped trying to fit into these spaces?” Even the thought of the second question was terrifying. It meant that I would have to let go of a lot, including this new church family that I had grown to love. Over the next two days, after continuous prayer and dialogue with my partner, I decided to take the leap.

So, church, I quitchu. I quitchu with no plan to return to you as you currently exist, because you are abusive. I quitchu along with my many Jesus-loving friends who have quitchu, along with those who are considering it.

I quitchu because you are incapable of loving me in all my complexity, because you are incapable of loving those whom God loves.

I quitchu because you are more concerned with preserving your own existence than being beloved community.

I quitchu because you quit me a long time ago. I quitchu because I need to heal from the pain and damage that you have caused me, and I cannot heal while being in relationship with my abuser.

I quitchu because I realize that I can love Jesus better and more freely beyond the confines of your concrete walls and your restrictive theology.

I quitchu, the institutional church, to join the church in the wild, the church in the catacombs.

Amen and Ashé.

Political conventions are weird. They’re a throwback to the days when delegates spent days traveling by horse, or later, train, to vet the men who were vying for their party’s nomination. In a matter of just a few days, they had to choose their nominee and whip up a frenzy of political excitement that the delegates would carry back to their home states as they campaigned for the next few months. The hats, the zany costumes, the boisterous yelling, the endless battering of the opponent – those were all part of the performance.

The part of me that likes history enjoys the pageantry, for a little while at least. After a few hours, it wears thin. It reminds me of the late eighties period of popular rap music: heavy on the bravado, light on substance. Most of the songs that made it to radio consisted of rappers praising their own greatness and dissing their competitors. When gangsta rap exploded in the early nineties, it filled a void with its narratives of poverty, racism, and crime. As much as I hated its overt misogyny, glamorization of crime, and obscene language, I was glad that rappers were finally saying something other than “I’m better than you.”

Seven days in to the Republican and Democratic conventions, I felt pretty similar. The main message seemed to be: “Our candidate is great. The opponent is evil.” It was heavy on the bravado, light on substance. By the time President Obama spoke on the third day of the DNC convention, the void was there. I needed substance. Consistent with his prior convention speeches, his oratorical skills didn’t disappoint. Barack stepped up to the mic like Ice Cube and told us how today was a good day. He flawlessly pointed out the specific problems with Trump’s rhetoric and its inconsistencies with the basic principles of democratic government. He gave Bill Clinton a tutorial in how you make the case for your successor. He told folks what he did eight years ago, that we should never put our hope in a single person and that we need to get active at the local levels if we want our laws to change.

Of course, he also reinforced U.S. exceptionalism and militarism. That disappointed me, even though it did not surprise me. Jonathan Winthrop’s appropriation of Jesus’ teaching about a “city on a hill” (Matthew 5:14) is deeply ingrained into the U.S. ethos. So too is the myth of redemptive violence, what theologian Walter Wink calls our belief that we can end violence by being violent. Both beliefs are as American as apple pie. And they’ve long had the backing of the church to support them. To disbelieve them and actively work against them is probably not to be expected from anyone who wants to be president of this country.

I was surprised, however, by the false equivalency President Obama made between anti-Black police violence and violence against police. I was more than surprised; I was infuriated. Connecting the two has been very common since the fatal attacks on police in Dallas and Baton Rouge earlier this month. I lament those deaths as I mourn all needless death. But it is lazy thinking unworthy of a Harvard-trained constitutional law scholar to equate them.

Let me share something: I am a highly educated and religious African American woman who has never been in trouble with the law. I’ve only had one traffic violation: a speeding ticket back in 1994. Ironically, I earned that ticket minutes after an African American police officer visited my mother’s home in Stone Mountain. He had come to warn her that our White neighbors were not happy that a Black family had moved into the neighborhood and they were constantly looking for violations to report to the police and county officials. Five minutes later I left the house stewing and didn’t notice when I entered the school zone driving five mph over the speed limit.

I’m a bit of a goody two-shoes. Always have been. I’ve also always been afraid of the police. My body tenses up anytime that a police officer is in sight. If I’m driving and one pulls alongside me, I try to make brief eye contact and flash a smile to indicate that I’m a good citizen. Not too long on the eye contact or they might think I’m being aggressive. But I can’t look away too quickly because they might think I’m nervous and guilty of something. The truth is that I am nervous and guilty of something: being Black.

I fear police because I am Black. Even though I know that there are plenty of good cops like the one who came to my mom’s house that day to warn us, or the lieutenant whom I had the pleasure of teaching in two seminary courses and who walked me to my car at the end of our night class. I fear police because there are also plenty of those who have stopped me for no reason other than driving while Black.

I fear police because anytime that I have been in a car driven by a Black person that is stopped by police, they approach the car with their hands on their gun. And they leave their hands on their gun the entire time, even when they see the name badge that identifies the driver as the chaplain at the women’s prison a few blocks away from where they stopped us because they ran her tag and her insurance had expired. They keep their hands on their guns even as they make us get out of the car and tell us we have to walk back to work in the August heat. They keep their hands on their guns even while the insurance agent on the phone reassures them that it was a mistake resulting from the bank issuing a new debit card. I fear police because the only reason they ran the tag was that we were two Black women in a Mercedes. I fear police because Sandra Bland ended up arrested and in jail for three days for a minor encounter like that. She died in the custody of police for a minor encounter like that.

Somehow President Obama thinks that fear is the same as the fear that the police experience each and everyday. But it is not. Because being a police officer is a choice. Police are people who knowingly enter and remain in a profession that requires them to confront danger and risk. They could choose to do something else. They can leave at any time. They can take off the badge and uniform and voila, they are no longer targets because of the uniform. It is a dangerous profession, one that I’m deeply grateful people choose to do. That is, when I’m not being afraid that they will target me because of my race. I do not have a choice in being the target of racism. Racism happens all the time without my permission. I don’t get to choose the risk. I am – my Blackness is – the risk. It is not the same.

For Clementi, the shame must have been exponentially greater. Only one month into his first year of college, he may have feared the prospect of going through the next four years known on campus as “that guy.” And in an era when social networking blends one’s professional and personal existence for all the world to see, he may have worried how it would impact his future employment prospects. And then there’s the fact that Clementi was not just engaged in sex; he was having sex with another man. If Clementi was closeted, I can imagine that he saw no other way to resolve his anguish than to end his life.

I feel my heart breaking each time that I think of Clementi and the many gay youth who commit suicide each year, and the many more who attempt to end their lives. As a Christian, I feel responsible for each loss of precious life. I feel responsible for every hateful look, word, or deed that drives my LGBT brothers and sisters to such despair, especially those acts of hatred lobbed at them by people who proclaim to be followers of the merciful and loving Christ.

I feel responsible because I once threw the insults. Raised in the South in a conservative Christian family and church, I believed that homosexuality was a sin worthy of eternal of damnation. Oh yeah, I also thought it was a trick of the white man designed to annihilate the descendants of Mother Africa (look, it was the resurgence of black nationalism, okay?). Like many of the people I knew (none of whom were gay or lesbian, conveniently), I thought that homosexuality was learned behavior, a product of a sick society that was moving further and further away from God. And as long as I stayed around heterosexual, conservative Christians, there was no one to argue otherwise. I could and did join in the chorus of “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” without witnessing the impact that the spiritual assault had upon the lives of homosexual men and women.

But living on a college campus made it impossible to keep the emotional distance necessary to maintain my ignorance. Away from the watchful eyes of their parents, same-gender-loving peers were much freer to express their affection publicly. So too were the Bible thumpers, the emotionally immature, and the sexually insecure (who often were the same people). After a few university-newspaper headline-mkaing incidents of heterosexist harassment, it dawned on me: “Who in their right minds would choose this life?”

Gradually, I became convinced that sexual orientation, at least for the overwhelming majority of the population, was not a matter of conditioning or choice. It was innate and largely out of one’s control. Still, I thought it was a deviancy, a biological mutation that could and should be cured, sort of like diabetes or nearsightedness. And while my resolve was weakening, I still thought it was sinful, just no more sinful than any other behavior that the Church doesn’t like. I was a softer, gentler heterosexist. At least, I was until Susan and Gloria happened.

Susan and Gloria were clients in the substance abuse treatment program at which I worked part-time during my second year of graduate school. The program was intensive – six months in a residential facility with limited outside contact. The women were nearly all long-time drug users who had tried and failed in other treatment programs. Our program was often their last hope.

Susan and Gloria had entered the program within less than two weeks of each other and were in the final month of treatment. During their stay, they had become close. Really close. Now close friendships among the women were common, but this one was different. And everyone noticed. Other clients openly accused them of being lovers. They were adamant in their denial, but admitted that their love for one another had grown beyond friendship. “We don’t know what we are, ” Gloria once said resignedly.

The staff was less confrontational. The general consensus seemed to be that if we ignored it, it would disappear. Maybe it was that head-in-the-sand mentality that prevailed during the women’s last few weeks of treatment, when the the administration decided to issue twelve-hour passes to both on the same day so that they could begin searching for jobs and housing in preparation of their transition back into society.

I came to work the day after they had gone out on their passes. Panic was in the air. “They didn’t come back, ” one of the women said softly. The normally boisterous group was quiet. For the entire day, they sat just outside my office, jumping expectedly every time a door opened or the phone rang. With this group, failing to show up after a day pass meant only one thing – relapse. And for women who had managed to accrue almost six months clean after decades of addiction, that was a fate akin to death.

Finally, with just two hours left on my shift, the pair returned. They explained that after registering Susan’s daughter in school and finding Gloria a new apartment, they were overcome with excitement about their impending graduation. “We couldn’t help it, ” Susan said, her eyes focused on the floor of my tiny office. “We did it.”

“You did what?”, I asked, praying that she would not say the dreaded R-word. “We were together, ” was all that she could muster. Guilt weighed heavy in her voice. “Together how?”, I queried, putting to use the clinical skills I was learning in my psychology program. I knew exactly what she meant, but I wanted her to say it. Like everyone else, I had seen the love that had grown between the two women. I wanted them to own the moment in which they had consummated their love, rather than hiding behind ambiguities. “We made love, ” one finally said. Before I could utter the cliched “And how did you feel about that?”, Susan continued, “Then we figured that since we’re going to hell anyway, we might as well go all the way.” And just like that, they went out, bought some crack, and threw away six months of hard recovery work.

As I delivered the director’s decision that they were both ejected from the program, I wept with them. And I felt responsible. I knew that it was the rhetoric of folks like me that made them believe that their lovemaking was an unforgiveable sin, as opposed to an act of beauty. I knew that Susan and Gloria had confirmed what I was beginning to suspect for many of the program’s clients – that their substance abuse was an attempt to mask their struggles over their sexual orientation. On that day, I realized that my position had to change. I made a conscious effort to get to know to stories of people who identify as gay and lesbian. As I heard their pain – the many ways that they tried to deny their sexuality, their unanswered prayers to God to “fix” them, their stories of depression, substance use, and suicidality – my heart opened up. So did my mind.

At some point, I realized that I could no longer consider homosexuality sinful. I could no more imagine God punishing someone for a sexuality that they could not change than I could imagine God sending someone to hell for being born blind or deaf. I became convinced that the real sin was the hurt inflicted by so-called “people of faith” unto our homosexual sisters and brothers.

It is a theological risk, to be sure. I am fully aware that I could be wrong. But I accept that risk, prayerful that if I am wrong, God will forgive my error as one born out of my desire to emulate Christ’s love and compassion for the “least of these.”

But it is not enough. In the fifteen years since saying goodbye to Gloria and Susan, I have been too invisible an ally, especially when revealing my stance would risk the rejection and condemnation of those who I hold most dear – my family. I have been silent too often when heterosexist comments have been made by people whom I love. And my silence may have made the Tyler Clementi’s of the world feel that they are alone. Enough.

I am heterosexual. I am Christian. I am an LGBT ally. And I will be silent no longer.

I am going to write. I have deadlines to make. I am not going to think about #SandraBland. I am not going to think about how a 28-year-old African American woman left her suburban Chicago home to start a new job in Texas and was found hanging in a jail cell a few days later. I am not going to think about how someone who openly spoke against police violence was stopped for a routine traffic violation and was incarcerated. I am not going to think about how her death was proclaimed to be a suicide before an autopsy could have possibly been done. I am not going to think about how my 20 years of clinical experience is telling me that this doesn’t add up.

I am going to write. I am not going to think about how I just emailed one of my dearest friends and told her that we need to find a nice spot midway between Memphis and Atlanta to get together at least twice a year. I am not going to think about how terrified I am to drive alone on southern highways. I am not going to think about how I automatically scan homes and cars for Confederate flags. I am not going to think about the panic induced just last week when I realized my African American husband had entered a country store full of White men with a Confederate flag on the front counter. I am not going to think about how I had to give my 7-year-old a quick lesson on the stars and bars…how he immediately told me, “Tell Daddy to come out of there.”

I am going to write. I am not going to think about how White Christians seem utterly oblivious to this reality, how we were in that town for a Christian social justice conference. I am not going to think about how the organizers mentioned the Confederate flag hanging high at the entrance to the highway to town and how they had been working to get it down, but they didn’t acknowledge the terror of riding 45 miles along a rural road littered with those flags and where there’s no cellphone signal. I am not going to think about the number of Christian conferences and meetings where the organizers inform us of the town’s racial “history” and advise people of color not to wander off alone. I am not going to think about the fear that shadows my entire conference experience and the anger that White Christians keep planning these events in places that aren’t safe for us…for me.

I am going to write. I am not going to think about the time that I preached about racial reconciliation at my favorite country church’s homecoming service a few years back and that one man–whom I hadn’t seen before–glared at me the entire time. I am not going to think about how nervous I was to preach that sermon in an all-White congregation, even one filled with folks who I knew loved me, and how my memory of their receptivity is marred by the memory of that angry stare, the repulsion that I felt in that limp handshake in the narthex afterward.

I am going to write. I am not going to think about how my progressive congregation preaches justice while feeding white supremacy with all those stained glass windows of White Jesus. I am not going to think about how my beautiful brown-skinned boy once told me that he thought that God only liked White skin because God is White. I am not going to think about how many Sunday services we’ve missed now because I just can’t bear the thought of the cultural assault coming from those windows.

I am going to write. I have deadlines to make. And no one wants to hear that I missed them because my soul was paralyzed with lament for a 28-year-old woman whom I don’t know. No one cares or they’d do something…they’d say something…they’d do something. My White Christian friends would do something to make sure that the next time it’s not me hanging in a jail cell.