Why did it take so long? I discovered I was gay and bit by bit my world began to fall apart. I struggled to change, begging God to “fix” me. For years, I tried, unwittingly causing more violence to myself than anyone else had ever done to me. Until my early thirties, I knew few places of peace. I functioned in society but just enough to get by. Finally, on a sunny day in New York City, following a failed final attempt at reconciliation with a leader of the church — I was done. On the sidewalk close to 34th Street and Broadway, I left the church of my upbringing and began a new journey toward a God that had never left me for a moment.
Over time, I came to know God again, in a different way. Not as a punishing, vengeful God, but as a loving God who had created me — and others like me — to be as full and whole as any other member of God’s creation. I needed the time away, in the desert, so to speak, to let God sort things out in my life. When it was time, things started to change, and quickly. After two decades in sales, I returned to school to become a high school special education teacher. I was forty and figured I had made it! So much for my “figuring.”
A few years later I attended a school conference held at the Stony Point Conference Center in New York. “Chance” encounters from that conference led me directly into the path of leaders, such as Janie Adams Spahr, a Presbyterian pastor working for inclusion of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender folk in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I was amazed. I had no idea church could be anything other than what I had known. I took the suggestion of Bill Palmer, one of the coordinators at the center, and attended worship at South Church in Dobbs Ferry, New York. It was the first time I had felt “home” in many years.
Soon, I was a member South and active again in the life of a church. I served as an elder for six years and as a deacon. Then it happened. It occurred to me that this might be the place where I could follow my early dream. With the guidance of the church’s ministers, Joe Gilmore and Susan DeGeorge, I began seminary and the process for ordination in the Presbytery of Hudson River. In so doing, I found myself directly in the middle of the church’s struggle over fully welcoming its sisters and brothers who were LGBT.
God defined my path then as God does now. Midpoint through seminary, I realized that my call was not about becoming ordained as minister of Word and Sacrament. It was about staying on the path as an openly gay candidate for ministry, using the voice I had been given to speak for those who were unable to speak for themselves. The rest would be left in God’s hands.
In 2005, two years after graduation, I was called by Palisades Church in Palisades, New York, to serve as their interim minister. I knew this was way beyond my doing and just the beginning of what would follow. Still ahead was my examination by presbytery, possible ordination, and any charges that might follow. I had made it clear throughout the process that, as a matter of conscience, I would not abide by G-6.0106b.
The questioning and my replies at the examination went on for nearly an hour. There were many who spoke, including one who asked me to discuss my relationship status. Even though I felt such a question was being asked only because I was gay, I chose to answer it in the spirit of openness and transparency. It may be that because I was not in a relationship that some felt I was not in violation of the constitution. I have no way of knowing that. However, I clearly stated that if I were to enter into a committed relationship that I would intend for it to be as full and intimate as any such heterosexual union.
After I left, the discussion that followed lasted even longer. When I returned, I was greeted with applause and an affirmative vote of 88-9-1. I was humbled and grateful. I was also hurting for the ten members in the minority. I did not want to cause division; I had hoped to help others understand how such divisions were unnecessary.
Still, today, more than one thousand calls, examinations, and ordinations of ministers of the Word and Sacrament later, we are still divided. Sadly, this would be the last ordination of an openly gay man in the PC(USA) up until this writing.
I began serving Palisades Church in October of 2005, finishing my interim service after three years of the most Spirit-filled time of my life. Now, as Palisades welcomes their new minister, I await my next call.
In the meantime, I continue to teach high school and work for ratification of Amendment 08-B, the recommended alternative of GA218 to replace G-6.0106b. Like many others, I believe that the ratification of 08-B is as important as any of the recent rulings on the AI of the 2006 General Assembly and removal of any AI’s based on the 1978 Definitive Guidance. There can be no remnant of G-6.0106b in its current form in our Constitution if we really wish to be a welcoming and witnessing church.
The path I have been given to follow was one I never asked for, except perhaps in my favorite of prayers: “Thy will, not mine, be done.” Whatever may be next, I pray it will be in a PC(USA) ever more faithful to God’s radical and wildly inclusive love.
Raymond J. Bagnuolo is a Minister of Word and Sacrament and schoolteacher living in White Plains, New York.
