Cognitive Dissonance: Love and Damnation, Fellowship and Isolation
Community — or, to borrow the Christian parlance, fellowship — is undeniably essential for the strengthening and maintained security of the queer community. The strides taken towards political equality for LGBTQ+ people in the past century have only been possible through the alliance of those striving for a better future. With this in mind, it should not be surprising that many queer people longing for this type of community find the messaging of the Christian faith appealing. Christianity advertises its message of love and grace as being for all people. These Christian fellowship groups can be very tight-knit and members are welcome to share their emotional, complicated testimonies with one another. Tears and laughter can be shared along with warm embraces. The appeal may also arise from collective experience, an opportunity for communal transformation where participants build something greater than the sum of their parts. This transformative effect could arise in conversation, deeply intimate times of prayer, or singing in harmony. These attributes are attractive to many who may feel downcast and alone, particularly those of minoritized experiences like the queer community.44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts (Acts 2:44-46 NRSVue)
8 in a fiery flame, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9)
Leah Wasacz ‘16, as an incoming first-year, was not publicly out as trans and longing for community. She joined “a ton of clubs”, one of which was the Lafayette DiscipleMakers Christian Fellowship, or the LDCF. While not the only Christian group on campus – the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the remain active – the LDCF is by far the most prominent and have been active since 2011. The group is not student run but instead the college’s branch of the larger, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, DiscipleMakers Campus Ministry organization which oversees ministries on twenty-five campuses in Pennsylvania. The LDCF advertises itself as being open to all students, especially those with doubts or questions regarding Christianity. Their website’s About Us page states, “We welcome the questions, objections, and struggles of people honestly searching for the truth. We are committed to responding with honesty and compassion rather than hostility and condescension. Skeptics, seekers, and the curious are all welcome.”¹
Wasacz joined the group to join some friends who were already members and ended up becoming “very involved” [0:30:34] with the LDCF. At the end of her first year, Wasacz attended the LDCF’s spring retreat in the Poconos for a full week of Bible study and worship. In her oral history interview, Wasacz shared that she was startled at how quickly the group’s welcoming tone would dissipate when diving into theological matters.
Wasacz's story demonstrates a pattern of experience among queer people seeking out a spiritual community. All too often, the Christian fellowship will open the doors with hospitality and warm acceptance only to reveal the rigidity of their doctrine. What was presented as an invitation of unconditional love has become a test of conformity. Wasacz’s example raises the question: what can she comfortably share with those she considered friends, spiritual family, especially when their theology denies or condemns a part of who she might become? How does one make sense of this all too common cognitive dissonance? While these Christian groups like LDCF may offer some respite from the outside world to queer students lacking support, they stop short of affirmation due to the institutional beliefs and doctrines ingrained in the community. Many, like myself, were brought up with the pithy mantra of “hate the sin, love the sinner”, which could be intended to be compassionate but hardly ever offers real comfort. The saying asks the queer person to separate their true identity into the part which is loved and that which is damned. It is fraudulent to offer tolerance when selling unconditional love. For Wasacz, this Poconos retreat marked a turning point – a moment when the dissonance became too much to bear. Her community was not to be found here.“[0:31:20] And there was a workshop there about sexual sin, where, basically the pastor started talking about the morality of gayness in not so bright of a light. And after that -- that just pissed me off so much, at the time, even though I didn’t identify like that, that I kind of stopped getting involved with that stuff. I don’t know if being involved with that did any damage to -- I mean, it [0:32:00] definitely did damage to my self-esteem when it came to stuff like that… And I think that did affect me a little bit, being so deeply involved with that stuff. I would say that was maybe the biggest experience with those different institutions and forces that ended up affecting me, on campus.”
At sixteen years old, Phil James ‘82 came out as gay to his pastor. He would make this decision long before revealing his identity to his parents as it became clear to him that his home Church congregation was not providing what he needed as a gay man. James attempted to explain to his pastor that he needed to move to a church which was fully affirming of his identity but was met with the response: “Well, I’m a big church person. We can accommodate everybody [19:41].” This reply would not sit well with James. He had rightly recognized the dissonance of Biblical love and mere accommodation and sought an affirming community – one he would eventually find in the Lehigh Valley Metropolitan Community Church.
Stacey-Ann Pearson ’15, raised in a strict Seventh-Day Adventist household, arrived at Lafayette already carrying deep-rooted questions and quiet doubts about her faith. Still, longing for connection and perhaps hoping to reconcile belief with identity, she joined the Lafayette Christian Fellowship (LCF), the same group known elsewhere on campus as the LDCF. She remained involved for two years. “I was surrounded by it every single day,” Pearson recalled. And yet, even in this environment of supposed love and fellowship, she was haunted by contradiction. “It is so jarring,” she explained in her oral history interview, “to hear the message of love — and then to hear the message of — you’re going to hell.”
The conflict between the promise of divine love and the threat of eternal damnation left its mark on Pearson in deeply personal ways. She described vivid, terrifying dreams: “I used to have those dreams… about waking up, burning in hell. How do you care for people on one hand, and then explicitly tell them that they’re going to burn in hell?” Professor Mary Armstrong, responded with a striking assessment: “That’s a deep psychological terrorism — that feels like terror — you sense it’s operating on terror and fear.” Pearson agreed. This “terror” shaped the way she moved through campus, internalizing religious teachings that cast her identity as something condemnable, even while she sat shoulder to shoulder with people claiming to love her.
Though homophobia on campus wasn’t always explicitly religious, it echoed the doctrine she had been steeped in. “A lot of language. ‘Those gays.’ ‘I don’t want to change around them,’” she recalled. “I’m sitting there looking like, ah-hah, really?” She laughed softly before continuing: “No, but I’m sitting there — I can’t — because I’m still in that space where I’m hiding, so I’m internalizing every single word that is coming out of their mouths. So I wasn’t even in a space to say get over yourself.” Pearson’s story, like those of Leah Wasacz and Phil James before her, reveals the enduring toll that doctrinal dissonance and exclusionary theologies can take on queer students seeking spiritual connection. Beneath the warmth and fellowship of campus Christian groups often lies a demand for silence, suppression, or self-division. The theology of love becomes a tool of fear, and the promise of belonging is made conditional on denial of the self.
