Come out and say it
It’s National Coming Out Day, on which the LGBTQ community and its allies celebrate the courage of those who publicly claim their gender and sexual identities despite the risks involved.
To mark the occasion, the Spiritual Office at the University of Chicago hosted Jennifer Knapp for a series of programs. The singer-songwriter was a sensation in the Christian music industry until she went on hiatus and returned with a new album and an announcement: she’s a lesbian in a committed relationship. Since then, she’s been working on a project called “Inside/Out Faith” and speaking on spirituality and sexuality. It’s been a wonderful gift to our campus to hear Knapp sing and watch her interact with students and share her stories. She’s brave and gracious.
One personal highlight was hearing how Knapp explains her shifting understanding of faith to people from the conservative community to which she used to belong. People have asked her, “Don’t you believe in the Bible?” Over time, she’s come to embrace the Wesleyan quadrilateral: we understand God and the world through scripture, but also through tradition and reason and experience. Unlike the biblical hermeneutic of her past, the quadrilateral allows her to continue in her faith and her exploration of the Bible but in conversation with her experiences and in light of her need to be treated with dignity.
