The last time you heard from me, I was lamenting about being a queer, liberal reverend trying to date on the apps. “Can I be all three in one profile?” I wondered in the last line of that column in a November 2022 issue of the Scene. Let’s fast-forward to a few months after I wrote that story.
I paused my dating profile and had begun going on dates with a woman who slid into my DMs on Instagram. But I was falling for one of my close friends — let’s call him Alex. Alex is six years younger than me, doesn’t identify as Christian and is an … astrophysicist. I had written off the possibility of us getting together because of our age gap and the difference in our careers. Science and religion usually don’t mix well.
Still, I found myself thinking more about him than the woman I was dating, and one morning in early September, we confronted our feelings. I was giddy but hesitant. “I’m a lot older than you, you know. I don’t want to risk our friendship. And … I’m a minister. Which is weird.”
“I know all that,” he said, “but I think this thing could have legs, and I think what you do is neat. You’re kind of like a community organizer.”
“Well,” I thought, “that’ll change once you see me preach and pray in front of hundreds of people.”
I didn’t believe someone with his leftist political beliefs and scientific interests would be able to accept all of me. To my surprise, he did.
I have always kept my romantic relationships separate from work. I do this to maintain strong boundaries between myself and my congregants. After a few months, though, it became clear Alex was special and wasn’t going anywhere.
Alex began sneaking into worship services most Sundays. He’d sit near the back, sporting his flannel shirts and long hair and leave after the service. Gradually, I began to share with the rest of the staff and congregation that I had a boyfriend.
There is a lot of pressure on the partner of a minister to not only attend church but get involved, too. (That’s a whole other article.) I didn’t want Alex to feel pressured to do any of that, because historically, no one I’d dated did. Yet he was the one who offered to chaperone youth trips, play in the churchwide basketball fundraiser and attend weekly gatherings with the young adults. At Bible studies, he mostly listened and observed. He’d pick up my latest theological reading and skim a few chapters. He asked thoughtful questions. While I tried to wrap my head around quasars and supermassive black holes, he tried to make sense of my faith.
Despite the fact that his intellectual curiosity was comforting and his involvement in my work life reassuring, I still didn’t know how to share my more personal spiritual life with him. Until one night.
I was particularly upset about the death of a family member. “I want to pray out loud,” I whispered in bed, “but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“Go for it,” he said. I prayed for a while, and when I opened my eyes and looked at him, I saw tears in his eyes too. This isn’t a “he came to Jesus” anecdote, but proof that I could open up to him without him turning away.
Six months into our relationship, I said goodbye to my congregation and began working at a new church. This time, I didn’t ease Alex into my church life: I threw him in head-first.
The congregation embraced him with open arms. We began sharing meals with my parishioners together. He started dropping into my weekly Sunday school class, attending youth events and doing homeless outreach with me. When he had knee surgery, people in the church wrote cards, brought soup and prayed for a swift recovery.
Alex does not identify as a Christian. He probably never will. It’s not necessarily because he studies black holes; it’s just not something to which he subscribes.
He finds my faith beautiful and enjoys my sermons. He sees the importance of intergenerational community, how touching it is when a church wraps its arms around someone in crisis, and how the life of Jesus is compelling, regardless of whether or not he is God. His acceptance of my calling? It means everything.
It means that I can pray in front of a group of people and it doesn’t scare him. I can wear a robe and a stole and he doesn’t panic. And it means that I have someone by my side who embraces my identity as a queer, liberal reverend.
I don’t think I would have swiped right on Alex. Yet here we are, two people who think deeply about existence and how to live, even if we ask these questions with seemingly opposite approaches. I realize now that my selection process on the apps was more limiting than freeing. Life and/or love does not always follow our perfect list. What’s more important than Alex and my similarities is our willingness to listen, to embrace each other’s differences and to show up for each other, whether at church or at the observatory. I mean it when I say, thank God.
From dating as a reverend to surviving in a post-dating-app society and picking the right spot for a first date
