Reclaiming the spirit: The journeys of gay men and lesbian women toward integration

Abstract

The goal of this study is to understand and describe the way gay men and lesbian women see and interpret their spiritual journeys. Its intent is to open up the variety of experiences that gay men and lesbians encounter and is, therefore, not based on a single religious tradition or path, such as through crisis or AIDS. The findings included a model which interweaves the coming INTRODUCTIONIn a society where most religious institutions are lined up against them, how do gay men and lesbian women discover and define spirituality? What are the processes they undertake to construct their spiritual identities? How do their identifications with often conflicting communities come together for them as they evolve and change?In this article, I discuss the stories that twenty-six gay and lesbian individuals have shared with me, in which they explain and interpret their spiritual lives. In addition, I explore the implications these stories have for our understanding of how, for gay men and lesbian women, self-definition as gay and spiritual are interwoven and inseparable. This discussion isThe research discussed in this report was supported in part by the University Research Council, DePaul University. Direct correspondence to David Shallenberger, School for New Learning, DePaul University, 243 S. Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60604. 196Shallenberger framed by an acknowledgment that contemporary society frequently finds being gay and spiritually-committed contradictory.At the heart of this research is a desire to honor the voices of the participants, allowing them to tell their stories in their own words. Mainstream culture often loses sight of the lives and experience of those who find themselves marginalized within our society. Such is certainly the case with respect to gay men and lesbian women who frequently feel they have been silenced and made invisible in our society, and particularly in connection with religion and spirituality. This central focus on respecting the voice of participants had a significant impact on the study: for example, it was my goal to enter the study informed, but not directed, by previous research, in order to avoid any attempts to "force-fit" a participant's experience into a preconceived framework. Even the use of terms such as "spirituality" and "spiritual journey" was driven by participants' own definitions, rather than one constructed out of the literature. That is, I left it to them to identify and define an experience as spiritual. Naturally, the choice of research methodology was crucial, for it needed to allow these individual perspectives, interpretations, and values to emerge.As a general theoretical backdrop, there are three interwoven threads, grounded in a symbolic interactionist perspective, that I would like to highlight as a way of opening this discussion: (1) the personal (i.e., "coming out") development of gay men and lesbian women; (2) the spiritual development of individuals who are gay and lesbian; and (3) the approach of new paradigm or naturalistic research as a tool ...

At the Intersection of Church and Gay: A Review of the Psychological Research on Gay and Lesbian Christians

“…Some of the extrinsic causes are strict adherence to established Christian tenets, usually those promoted by the conservative Christian religious right (Birken, 1997;Grant & Epp, 1998;Rodriguez & Ouellette, 2000a), acceptance of anti-gay Christian doctrine (Yip, 1997b), acceptance of other gay's and lesbian's negative outlooks and experiences (Rodriguez & Ouellette, 2000a;Shallenberger, 1996Shallenberger, , 1998, and contradiction with the religious beliefs of family members and friends (Mahaffy, 1996;Rodriguez, 1997).…”

“…I now turn my focus to theoretical constructs not as well known in the literature that can push the psychological study of gay and lesbian Christians into the future. Specifically, I am referring to Shallenberger's (1996Shallenberger's ( , 1998 notion of identity integration as a process, and Rappaport's theory of empowerment. Shallenberger's research focused specifically on gay and lesbian people of faith, but has not yet been picked up by any other researchers doing work in this area as social scientists studying gay and lesbian Christians appear to be conducting their work in isolation from one another.…”

“…In Shallenberger's (1996Shallenberger's ( , 1998 work, he referred to the process of identity integration as a spiritual journey. Other researchers (e.g., Barret & Barzan, 1996;Spencer, 1994;Struzzo, 1989) have utilized the term "faith journey."…”

“…For the purposes of this article, no distinction is made between these two synonymous phrases as both deal with the religious and homosexual life stories of gay men and lesbians. In his narrative study of the spiritual journeys of 26 gay and lesbian people of various faiths, Shallenberger (1996) explored the intersection of community and identity and its impact on their sexual and religious lives. During the course of his exploratory study, he attempted to address such issues as how gay men and lesbians discover and define their spirituality, what processes lead to the construction of their spiritual identities, and how they evolve and change as gay and lesbian people of faith during the course of their spiritual journeys.…”

“…Here, I conduct detailed discussions illustrating the psychological theories currently in use in the field; the focus being on Goffman's (1963) work on stigma, Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory, and Baumeister, Shapiro, and Tice's (1985) theory of identity conflict. I then introduce two concepts that are underrepresented (or not represented at all) in the current literature: Shallenberger's (1996Shallenberger's ( , 1998 notion of integration as a process and Rappaport's (1991Rappaport's ( , 1984Rappaport's ( , 1995Rappaport's ( , 2000 theory of empowerment. In between the works of Shallenberger and Rappaport, I present research on gay-friendly and gaypositive Christian denominations in the United States not only to better illustrate the process of identity integration, but to better lead into the discussion of empowerment theory as well.…”