It’s been a long time since I’ve stepped inside a Southern Baptist Church.  In fact, its been a long time since I’ve been inside any church, that institutional space where “God comes close.”  Leaving Texas for graduate school meant that I was also leaving the place and space that had formed me from a very young age:  Texas Baptist Churches.  Arriving in Chicago for graduate school in 2002 became a journey of exploring so many things that are important to me:  religion, “spirituality,” and  the compulsion to follow the ways of Jesus.  I grew tired of stepping inside churches while living in Chicago.  I stepped inside so many:  American Baptist, Episcopal, Federated, AnaBaptist/Mennonite.  I grew tired of these visitations, found myself utterly empty when I was in these spaces, and finally left the church.  Not only did I leave the church but I also stopped identifying as a “person of faith.”  The Christian identity no longer held meaning for me, and therefore, I was no longer going to use this term to situate myself.  After all, the word Christian has this whole history of being part of the empire and as a mixed raced person (of Mexican and Anglo heritage(s) ), I did not want to be close to the empire.  It was during this time that I embraced the position of the Agnostic.  Today, I identify as a Christian Agnostic as a way to honor my history and practice of Christianity and also a way to honor my own sense of the limits of knowledge when it comes to belief.

Moving to Chicago also prompted me to ask the questions of community and I began, as part of my journey, the task in finding community.  And, I needed a particular community:  queer positive, inclined to think critically, and justice oriented.  I found some of these things while living in Chicago.  I met incredible people, many of whom are religious folks and committed to their way of belief and practice.  But, it didn’t necessarily feel like community to me.  I grew to have pockets of people who were very interesting, but never a community.  My time in Chicago was incredibly formative, but what was missing was the component of community.

I moved to Denver August 2009 to begin a Ph.D. program.  I was here a while before I asked about churches.  I seemed to still be curious about this space and place that has played such a central role in my life.  I was recommended several places here in Denver.  I visited not one!  Then, as I was strolling along the FaceBook, I saw a thread about La Comunidad Liberación.  It caught my attention.  I wondered what exactly is this thing called The Liberated Community?  I came to find out that its a church of the United Church of Christ variety.  This was new to me!  Never been to a UCC church before!  So, I inquired and maintained a healthy bit of skepticism about “going to church.”  I learned that this group meets in an Art Gallery and that it is primarily a community designed to meet the needs of the migrant community, many of whom are from Latin America.  I returned to La Comunidad after visiting my first time.  I enjoyed the conversations they had and the fact that people came from all different walks of life.  My agnosticism was welcome there, radically so, and I came to understand community differently and more meaningfully.  My move to Denver was significant in that I grew to have a sense of community that was particularly located in the idea of Church.  This was a surprise!  Yet, I tend to call La Comunidad the “Unchurch Church.”  It is a place where formation is taken seriously, where walks of life are honored, and where we begin at the place of difference for relating.  It is a place where I have come to belong, where I have come to want to be, and where I look forward to becoming more of who I am:  a queer person of color.

La Comunidad–The Unchurch Church–has become my primary way of understanding how I am to be in this world.  Perhaps how I am called to be in the world?  That, my call and vocation to think critically as a Scholar actually matters and might actually put food on people’s tables, and the community which gathers at La Comunidad is one where I am called to be truly and radically me in order that I can be radically present with the task of thinking.  It is in my becoming within The Unchurch Church that I am formed in ways which ground me in a better sense of being a queermestizo.  And, the task in being a queermestizo, in being me, is not disconnected from community.  I am becoming because I am part of a community which takes people’s lives seriously.

If you’re ever in Denver, come visit the “Unchurch Church:”  La Comunidad Liberación!