A few years ago, I had a chance to travel to Washington, D.C. I visited a church in the city and made a new acquaintance, a D.C. native and fellow Episcopalian. We were happily sharing common ground, but the conversation took a turn when it became clear that she assumed I was making plans to get out of the South.
“Surely you can find a job somewhere soon,” she said. She then dug in with a few remarks about how backward Tennessee is. Finally, I interjected that our family lives there on purpose, and with joy. We moved to Tennessee so that I could serve a small, vibrant and progressive parish with a deep commitment to service and welcome. She was shocked. Is such a thing possible?
Well, yes — and at the same time, these stereotypes and assumptions aren’t entirely wrong. Tennessee is a socially and politically conservative state, and one of the most gerrymandered in the union. We rank low in many social wellness measures and are notorious for harmful legislation against LGBTQ+ citizens.
This place can be difficult for inclusive ministry, and it is unusual for a Christian church to be progressive in the rural South. There are countless heartbreaking stories of alienation, deprivation and violence in the rural South, often falsely rendered in the name of Christ.
There are also countless communities dotting the landscape with a vision of Christian life that resists nationalism, bigotry and homophobia. I have had the privilege of hearing these stories from across the rural South through my research with the Louisville Institute Pastoral Study Project.
Through calls and in visits, I have heard tales of transformation and inclusion from church members and clergy in affirming communities in unlikely places. These churches choose welcome and diversity and hold beautiful continuity between Southern, rural values and LGBTQ+ inclusivity. In their wider communities, political opposition is firm, representation can be sparse, and queer-specific gathering places require an urban pilgrimage.
Hospitality in an affirming congregation is a source of social belonging and spiritual balm for LGBTQ+ residents. Even in so-called “purple congregations,” churches whose members have a blend of conservative and liberal social/political views, Southern welcome and small-town proximity can thwart the tendency toward tribalism. Community belonging wins the day.
One member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Winchester, Tennessee, reflected on her Appalachian family’s response to a member coming out: “They never would have said they’re on board for gay rights, but you’d better not mess with her, because she’s our lesbian.” With a distinctly Southern cultural flair, these churches have developed three main habits that enable them to navigate diverse welcome: storytelling, curiosity and broadening welcome to include LGBTQ+ folks.
Storytelling
For some congregations, the practicality of welcome is embedded in denominational identity. Formalized positions on honoring gender and sexual diversity can make known to the larger community that these churches are welcoming.
Oneonta United Methodist Community Church in North Alabama is a remnant congregation founded on the principles of unity and openness after the larger local Methodist church disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church over human sexuality. This congregation’s very existence is a proclamation of welcome.
To LGBTQ+ members or seekers, these formal commitments to inclusion can be important. But more significant by far are the personal and clear messages articulated by community members telling their own stories of welcome.
These conversational, written and preached narratives reinforce openness as a core identity. Storytellers hold both formal and informal leadership, and frequently repeat tales of welcome, change and the surprising new developments of broadened belonging.
Rural churches across the Southeast have found that becoming officially affirming is an extension of who the community is at heart; they tell the stories of welcome as proof. Long-term members tell how they welcomed others, and recent attendees from all walks of life tell joyful tales of how they were welcomed.
These aren’t the welcome stories of big churches with lobby lattes and slick take-home packets. These are stories of being walked to coffee hour or recognized in the grocery store: personal, small and bolstered by ongoing relationships.
Curiosity
Another cultivated practice of welcome among these churches is the commitment to learn and self-evaluate. This curiosity takes shape officially in church programming for formation, such as the Rev. Allison Caudill’s intentional preaching and teaching about gender and sexuality in her congregation in southwest Virginia, Grace Episcopal Church, Massies Mill. She faced some skepticism, but mostly resonance and interest in the book studies and conversations she introduced.
The habit of curiosity also looks like congregants at Church of the Nativity in Water Valley, Mississippi, warmly saying, “Tell us about yourselves!” to the two young men who were visiting the church for the first time and clearly a couple, and nonjudgmentally acknowledging their marriage as part of the introduction and story.
Learning is a self-propelling habit, and continued practices of formal and informal study can imbue a church culture with an attitude of open curiosity. Seen as a spiritual practice, curiosity moves within rural Southern culture from the suspicious “You aren’t from around here, are you?” toward the kind “Well, it takes all sorts.”
Broadening welcome
At the church I serve, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Athens, Tennessee, a sign above the door says, “All Are Welcome.” This became the prompt for our storytelling and curiosity when church leaders started to use the phrase as a challenge: “If all are welcome, do we mean it? Who all is ‘all’?”
This ever-broadening horizon of welcome has led us not only to celebrating our first same-sex wedding and welcoming a trans/nonbinary seminary intern, but also toward building renovations for greater disability access and more diverse building use partnerships in the community. To many of my parishioners, LGBTQ+ welcome is part of a larger, intersecting identity as welcomers.
The Lakeshore Collective, an affirming Methodist worshipping community in western North Carolina, started gathering in bars to welcome in folks who won’t darken a church door. Starkville Presbyterian Church in Starkville, Mississippi, and Montevallo Presbyterian Church, Montevallo, Alabama, have been shaped by generations of experience welcoming college students.
Long before these congregations made clear commitments to affirm LGBTQ+ persons, they developed the muscle memory of welcome. They don’t assume they’ve arrived. Again and again, these congregations look around their neighborhoods and offer to pull up a chair at God’s welcoming table.
To be an open and affirming church is to be a church where people can be a part of worship, discipleship and congregational life with their whole selves, nothing more or less. Such congregations in the rural South are small, far flung and facing challenges in the dominant culture around them.
But their cultural wisdom and deep commitment to the wideness of God’s love are transforming their communities and offering insight far beyond the towns, fields and hollers where they gather.
