In my upcoming novel, one of the main characters meets weekly with folks who left the church, either by choice or by coercion. They casually refer to themselves as Prism Fellowship.

I've compiled a few of his narratives that explain who they are, how they came together, what they endured, as well as how they coped.
I call it "Refugees from the Religion of our Past."

On the surface, we might not appear to have much in common, but our shared thread is the treatment we received from our spiritual communities of faith. We were raised in, or involved in, a theologically conservative church. The signs on the front of the building differed—Baptist, or Methodist, or Church of Christ, or Catholic, or many varieties of Charismatic and Pentecostal.
The styles of worship within our congregations were distinct.
They would disagree on many doctrinal and organizational details.
But they all had a similar attitude when it came to people like us.

While our Creeds might state, “all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God,” it was clear our sin fell into a separate designation.
Divorce was awful, dancing was forbidden, gambling was shocking, fornication was shameful…but we were an abomination.

Any sin could be framed with the promise of grace, mercy, and forgiveness…except this one. It was implied…or expressed outright…that our sin was more dangerous, more deadly than all others. This temptation brought out the wrathful Old Testament God of vengeance rather than the loving God of the New Covenant, exemplified by Jesus.
It may be true that “God is love,” but apparently, that love has limits; it doesn’t extend to us.
We were taught from kindergarten, “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight,” but we found God’s love of basic skin tone didn’t include stuff beneath the surface.

There were horrible accounts of ridicule, abuse, cruelty, emotional torture, and expulsion. Always demeaning, with soul-crushing, long-lasting results.
Without permission, we were assailed with Bible verses or prophecies or accusations from those “led by the Spirit” to warn us of the dire consequences of our “heinous” sin. We were humiliated by public “moral interventions” and “exorcism” services to cast out demons of perverted desires. We received anonymous, nasty letters—full of derogatory slurs and filthy words about sex acts and body parts—written by those who insisted they were acting out of “Christian concern.”

Jesus would be so proud!

Whether it came from stoic priests in flashy robes, or soft-spoken Sunday school teachers, or red-faced preachers hollering from the pulpit, or someone frantically speaking in tongues at us, the message was explicit: our “differences” could not…would not…be ignored, excused, or tolerated. Our “desires of the flesh” invoked divine retribution in this life, as well as eternal hellfire and damnation in the afterlife.

“During a revival service,” one young man shared, “this woman came over to me and said she had a ‘word from God’ for me. She laid her hands on my head, and began screaming, condemning me for my lasciviousness and ungodly actions, proclaiming I was possessed by unclean demons, and warning that if I didn’t repent…in front of God’s holy people, I could be condemning my entire family to sickness and poverty.”
Later that week, his parents kicked him out of the house.

“Yes, I saw the side glances, or the blatant leers,” a transgender teen related to us. “I could hear the murmurs and the giggles. All the rumors got back to me. Or my parents. It was impossible not to feel sad and lonely because of their intentional avoidance. The final straw was when a church elder asked if I had miraculously grown a dick.”

Growing up in the deep-fried, “bless your heart” Southern Culture, notions of gender expressions are as rigid as our stone-carved Confederate monuments. The person we knew ourselves to be didn’t correspond to who they expected us to be.
In a community that prefers uniformity, we were unusual. Different. Odd.

In short, we didn’t fit in, so we were labeled.
Tomboy. Sissy. Sensitive. Bookish. Mama’s Boy.
We were harassed.
Faggot. Dyke. Muff Diver. Fudge Packer. Queer.

Now we’re told…by our faith family…that God has turned his back on us, so of course, God’s people had to shun us. Like we’re a contagion to be isolated.
That kind of renunciation, veneered in righteous terminology, cuts to the core.

Internally, there was a constant barrage of questions, doubt, guilt, and shame. And the persistent plea, begging God to remove these vile attractions.

We left our churches, by choice or by coercion.
Not unscathed. Not without lasting damage.

“I was seventeen when I was voted out of my Baptist church,” a now-adult lesbian recounted, “I spit on the All Are Welcome sign on the front lawn as I walked to my car.”

Many might have preferred to stay for the acceptance and affirmation it would have provided. However, the ingrained dogma of the church was usually too powerful. The sacrosanct traditions of the institutional hive-mind prevailed over the “sinful lifestyle” of a lone, unrepentant individual.

Some reverted to alternative, more inclusive forms of faith—pantheism, progressive churches, philosophy, new age practices, Buddhism. Even hedonism can morph into a form of religious practice, with the worship of and devotion to physical pleasure.

Others, sadly, turned their internal struggle into self-loathing, embarking on a quest to change their sinful orientation in hopes of pleasing the God who’d abandoned them, who threatened them with everlasting punishment. If they could just overcome this weakness, maybe their family of origin and their family of faith would embrace them. Maybe they could be “normal” and love themselves.

Then there were the ones who repressed their own “tendencies,” and engaged in a rigid, scathing crusade against the sins of others, hypocritically pointing accusing fingers as a way to divert attention. “Look at that awful sinner!”

Separation from the spiritual family often resulted in rejection from biological families, who chose church over their sons or daughters. We felt unwelcome at home, presented with non-negotiable demands for Biblical obedience and observance of cultural norms, often accompanied with ultimatum edicts that included some version of “as long as you live under my roof.”

We were discarded. Or disowned.

To differing degrees, whether conscious or unconscious, we absorbed those harmful beliefs imposed by our religious community. That message of condemnation integrated within us, superimposed itself on our sense of worth, and value. There was no escaping what we’d been told, how we’d been treated, the way it made us feel.

To survive—not everyone did—emotional detachment became an armor.
Abandoned, we coped and healed, tending the wounds these razor-sharp, narrow doctrines inflicted on our soul. We compensated for the pain. Or over-compensated. We turned inward, and we turned outward. In positive ways as well as negative.
We mediated our pain.
Or we medicated it.

Our sense of self was shattered at the deepest level; reassembly takes time. Laborious. Triggers are plentiful. At any given moment we can be victim or survivor or indifferent or belligerent or crusader or adversary. Out of necessity, a new identity emerges, though metamorphosis can take years.

We are not the same…because of and in spite of that church trauma.

We connected with others who’d gone through similar ordeals of sacred scorn, fused and fueled by our mutual experience of ecclesiastical exclusion.

And here we are.
Red, yellow, Black, and white.
Also gay, lesbian, transgender, nelly, butch, thin, burly…
The whole rainbow come together as this band of refugees from the religion of our past.