Jonathan’s journey: Faith vs. sexuality
He would pray. Again. And again. And again. God heal me. Please heal me. Please heal me of these attractions to men and make me the man you want me to be.
Jonathan Bower so desperately wanted to be healed. He so desperately wanted God to take away his homosexuality. To make him not gay.
And so he would pray. After every thought. After every inkling of a feeling. He prayed and hoped that one day, God would listen.
Indeed, the extent to which Jonathan tried not to be gay is exhausting. And yet, just as powerful, just as enduring is his strength of determination to hold on to his faith. A faith that did not embrace him, as is. A faith that told him he was loved, but that being gay was wrong.
On Sunday, he will share his journey with faith, sexuality and all its complexities during a presentation of Oblivion, a staged reading he scripted when he was living in Calgary.
He co-founded the queer theatre company, Third Street Theatre, and when he moved to St. Catharines last year started a new company, Collective Oblivion.
Oblivion is a simple, bare-bones show with four actors. Semiautobiographical, it tells the story of Tim, a gay man struggling with the pain of faith and sexual identity. Afterwards, the audience shares in a conversation with Jonathan and the actors.
It’s being presented at Jubilee Fellowship, a Christian Reformed church that has made difficult questions part of its conversation.
Pastor Woodrow Dixon says he wants his congregation — and his community — to have honest, open discussions.
“A lot of damage has been done by the church’s inability to have healthy, human conversations,” he says.
After he saw a screening of Oblivion, he knew it would encourage a meaningful exchange.
“It was immediately compelling,” he says. “It doesn’t land someplace clear. It doesn’t force an answer about how you hold together the tension of faith and sexual identity struggles.
“It doesn’t present an answer to that.
“But it does force you into a place of digesting and processing a person’s experience. A really hard experience.
“And that forces questions on people.” Good questions. Indeed, the show does not vilify anyone. It’s not about hating the church. It is not religious. It’s not told with a gay bias.
“It’s my attempt to show the humanity of everyone involved,” says Jonathan, 32.
He understands that many people in the queer community left the church because they felt condemned by it. And that he’s asking them to return to a place of hurt, to watch his show.
But he wants it to open conversation. Not stop it.
This is his stage. His story. Jonathan found God at age six. The message that anchored his very being: God died for your sins and Jesus loves you.
He learned about heaven and hell. And hell scared him. He didn’t know much about church doctrines, but he was certain about one thing. He didn’t want to be “eternally separated from God and my family.”
At a Bible camp when he was 10 years old, he became enamoured with the idea of having a personal connection to God. “A God beyond my imagination,” he says. “A God who cared about every single hair on my head, and who wanted to walk with me in good times and bad.”
He felt something else at that camp, too. An attraction to boys.
In an all-boys cabin, he was drawn to one child in particular. They would cuddle. It was natural, pure. Two young boys, connected by faith and What: A staged reading by playwright Jonathan Brower. Oblivion is a semi-autobiographical story that portrays the complexities and pain around faith and sexual orientation. The show is based on Jonathan’s experiences growing up as both an evangelical Christian and closeted gay man. It takes place in two acts. The staged reading, followed by a conversation with the audience. When: Sunday at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Where: Jubilee Fellowship, 13 Wilholme Dr., St. Catharines. Tickets: By donation at the door. A $10 minimum suggested. The show is recommended for ages 12 and older. Details: Information on the performance can be found at http://thirdstreet.ca, and Jubilee Fellowship at http://jubileecrc.org the innocence of kid-love.
“Nothing felt wrong in the world,” he says. Shame would come later. Two years later, in fact. By the time he was 12, Jonathan knew he was different. He didn’t talk about girls the same way his guy friends did. And he knew that difference had to be hidden.
He doesn’t ever remember being told. He just knew. Somehow.
In church, he learned the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter. And the Bible was clear on this: men sleeping with men is wrong. And yet, there was a hope. People are flawed, he was told. “We can surrender it to God, and He will heal you.” He prayed a lot after that. “You keep a secret and pray that God will change you,” he says.
By the time he was a teenager, he wondered if God was listening. And he was more confused than ever.
He asked: “God, I’m giving you this, but you’re not taking it away. What’s the deal?”
He repressed his sexuality, and channelled his energy into excelling at school. He was in band. He participated in leadership initiatives. He was in musical theatre. And all the while, he went to church up to four times a week.
Eventually, he had to tell someone. He came out to his pastor when he was in his mid-teens.
His pastor “reacted with love,” says Jonathan.
And then assured him he could be healed.
Jonathan was scared. He imagined going to the hell he’d been fearing since he was six, if he couldn’t be changed. And he didn’t feel worthy of God’s love.
“My sexuality became a wall between me and God, that was getting higher and higher,” he says.
It was a wall of glass bricks, built by church and society. Maybe even himself. “I could still see God through that wall,” he says. “I could see him mouth the words, ‘I love you.’ But I couldn’t hear him.”
The wall was rock-solid, on a foundation of shame.
Jonathan could neither knock it down, or walk away. He needed both. Faith. And his sexuality.
In his first year of university, separated by the geographical distance of provinces, he came out. He tested relationships. Tried on an open, gay identity.
“It felt like I was telling people: I’ve been lying to you for so long, and finally I’m telling you the truth.”
The euphoria, the relief of opening up, did not last long. He felt more like an outsider than ever.
In the gay community, there was no room for his faith. And in the faith community, there was no room for his sexuality. “I felt super lost,” he says. He quit university, came home and went back into the closet.
And for the next few years he immersed himself into an exhaustive journey to achieve the healing that all his life he’d been told was possible.
He tried Bible college. He tried a missionary school in France and Mongolia, to deepen his understanding of the Bible. He returned to Canada, and threw his hopes into a Christian program to help him heal. The title of one of his textbooks: Pursuing Sexual Wholeness, How Jesus Heals the Homosexual. He tried dating girls. He began pastoral training. And he denied how he felt inside. “But when you stuff something down long enough, it eventually squeaks out,” he says.
A pastor had been monitoring his Internet use, with Jonathan’s permission, to keep him accountable. He saw that Jonathan had watched videos of men kissing, and called him into his office.
The solution: Jonathan moved into the basement of a heterosexual couple who had children. “To witness a healthy relationship,” he says.
It felt awkward for everyone. And Jonathan became more depressed. Still, he did not give up. “I still wanted to heal. I still believed I was broken,” he says.
He moved out, dated another girl, and started working for the church.
He rationalized: “Maybe I have 60 years left on earth, but there’s an eternity after that.
“Do I not act on my sexuality for 60 years, and then have an eternity with God? Or do I be gay for 60 years, and forfeit my eternity?”
If there is a turning point, a place in his journey where faith and sexuality start comparing notes, it happened when Jonathan took on a leadership role in the same program that had tried to heal his sexual struggles.
He listened to other gay Christian men, consumed in a crisis of faith and sexuality. And from them, he heard his own story.
“I heard the self-loathing from someone else’s life,” he says. “When I heard it out loud, I thought, this is so f----d up. “In a way, I saw it on stage.” And yet, still he tried. Once more. He participated in a type of conversion therapy with another gay Christian man, which involved the pair hugging and talking, without sexual intimacy. It was purported as a way to help gay people overcome same-sex attractions. It did the opposite. “That was the most alive I had ever felt,” says Jonathan. “It showed me what I had been missing.” And there was no going back. He started asking questions. Good, healthy questions, he says.
After that, there was a period of his life, when he walked away from the church. Abandoned his faith altogether. That’s when he wrote Oblivion.
Perhaps ironically, it was through participating in the conversations created by his own play that he found faith again. He listened to the opinions expressed during the conversations he’d have with the audience after the show, and he “saw the beauty of other people and their complexities.
“When I left, I had silenced something important in my life,” he says.
He started again. From the beginning, with a new sense of belonging. A new voice.
It reacquainted him with humanity.
He found faith in others. And ultimately, in himself.