The Faith is the Hands

By Betsy Sneller 6/8/25

I am in a super lucky position of having grown up in an affirming church. I'm from Holland, Michigan, which is a very conservative part of the state, and the Christian schools there are very conservative, and so I had this weird tension where I was getting the same faith messages from church and school, but the message of who was allowed to be included in the family of faith was different for the entire 12 years that I went to school.

My school was an inclusive learning school, which meant that there were kids with Down syndrome and autism and cerebral palsy and a range of conditions that would have caused them to not be part of other more traditional schools. I remember in second grade, we had a chapel where the speaker said something like, "When we get to heaven, are we all going to have perfect bodies?" And ended that talk on, "Maybe not. Maybe our bodies are perfect the way they are, and maybe what heaven is the community around us making it so that it's not an impediment.” The chapel speaker didn't say explicitly "Obviously, this also applies to trans people, and obviously this also applies to queer people," but that's how I interpreted it. Now as an adult, I see that it's not like that. The institution of Christianity has done and continues to do so much harm to people, but I still hold on to that vision of what heaven could be. Maybe it can be here now in a world where we, the community, create a space that everybody is allowed to be who they are and live their full life right now.

Disability and queerness have never been the problem, it’s that we didn't make an accessible world. I don't know what I actually believe about the afterlife. When people ask me about it the only thing that I know for sure is that we have the ability to create heaven here, so like let's try to do it.

I'm not obviously queer. I present very femme. I'm married to a man. People don't impose a queer label on me, and so that has also made my life easy because in spaces where people are not affirming, I can fly under the radar. Because I'm aware that I live in the body that I live in and in the family that I'm in I feel like I haven't had to experience most of the trauma that most other queer people have had to experience at some point in their life. I'm hesitant to claim the label of queer, just because it feels unearned to some degree even though I'm deeply agnostic about my gender. Because I present very mainstream, I think it's easier for mainstream people to hear me. I spent time in a bunch of different churches while they were going through the process of deciding if they wanted to be affirming or not. I was a camp counselor at a Lutheran summer camp at the same time that the ELCA was deciding whether or not they wanted to be affirming. I attended a Mennonite church and as soon as I started joining, we had to decide as a church whether or not we're gonna be okay with our pastor conducting same sex marriages because if she does, then she gets kicked out of the the synod or we get kicked out of the denomination as the congregation. We're talking about how people have their different roles and I think part of my role is to be a loud voice that can help people take the next step toward creating a safe community for everyone.

A conversation that I have regularly with new queer friends is explaining my faith to them, because I don't want them to worry if I’m a safe person to be around. That conversation usually goes something like, “My interpretation of the gospels is really clear about how important it is to be affirming and to build the beloved community, and that everybody is welcome to be a part of it.” I try to be very intentional about signaling that I'm a safe person and to be aware of my dimensions of privilege.

I don't believe that Christofascists are Christian. It sullies the label, and it makes people afraid and harmed, and that pisses me off. Religious institutions can be wielded by people in power with shitty goals. The Christian Church in particular has been doing that for the entire history of America. There are Christians who were pro-slavery, and I don't think that's actually Christian. There can be, especially in Evangelical circles, a big separation between church as trying to save your soul, and separate from what's happening in the world. One thing that I really appreciate about Quakers and Mennonites in particular is that separation, that bifurcation, is not there. The faith is the hands. The faith is the doing of it. I would love every church to be like that. For every church to not just focus on your own internal state of salvation, but also what's the mandate? Jesus says love people, so like how do you do that? How do you go out and make it happen on a tiny level and on a structural level? Go, do it.