Don’t Wink at Sin
In the fall of 2009, I was a freshman at West Coast Baptist College. The college, the school, and the church all occupy the same property and are basically one and the same. Despite a more rigid daily schedule, it wasn’t too much of a shock going from the comforts of my homeschooled environment to that of a small Christian college.
The thick rulebook for West Coast clearly outlined what was expected of us. Men were to be clean shaven at all times; haircuts were to be conservative with sideburns no lower than the middle of the ear. Absolutely no earrings, and tattoos – if gotten before admission – were encouraged to be covered. A suit was required for men during all class hours, chapel, and all church services. Mondays and Tuesdays, however, we didn’t have to wear a suit jacket. At all other times, khakis and a polo were the typical “casual” attire for most men. Everyone looked so frumpy, and if you had any sense of style, you were probably considered a rebel, worldly, or a scorner.
Chapel services were held Monday through Friday. Non-attendance was not an option, otherwise one would incur a certain number of demerits. We were all given a campus ID card which we used to scan in for chapel. We used the same card to scan in for church services which were also required: Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening. We were allowed to miss only one service a week for work or illness.
Soulwinning was another required activity, at least once a week, if not more frequently. The more the better. I typically went on Tuesday night with friends. Tuesday nights were easy. We usually made one or two visits to people who had recently visited the church, and then called it a night. But the more pious students went on Saturday morning and went door knocking, accumulating many more reached people than I ever did.
At the end of the week, we were required to fill out our Focus Report: Which services did you attend? Did you go soulwinning? Who was/were your soulwinning partner(s)? How many doors did you knock on? How many salvations? How many visits to church? How many baptisms? These were just some of the questions that were asked. Not filling out your Focus Report resulted in fifteen demerits.
Hugging girls would warrant you a certain number of demerits. Going to the movies could possibly get you expelled. No earphones. We were subjected to random laptop searches for unapproved media, though, I never had to endure such an occurrence. For those who lived on campus, curfew was at 10:15 pm Sunday through Thursday nights, and 10:00 pm on Friday and Saturday nights. There were plenty of nights where I was rushing to get my friends back to the campus before they got demerits.
During the announcements in one non-particular chapel, my name was called to meet with the assistant dean, Reggie Williams. A group of us “Lancaster Brats” (what students from out of town called us) met him in his office for a lecture about the need to fill out our Focus Reports: “I know y’all are a bunch of fine young men. But we don’t wink at sin here at West Coast Baptist College. Make sure to fill out those focus reports.” I couldn’t help but laugh after leaving the meeting over the fact that not filling out a Focus Report was now considered a sin.
But the pastoral staff and the college administration had that power – the power to commission sin and the power to decommission it. Not filling out a Focus Report was considered a sin because you were in disobedience with your authorities. That was the typical answer for the reasoning behind most ridiculous rules. In fundamentalist culture, you can turn any amoral action into a sin under the all-encompassing umbrella of “disobedience to authority.” The implications of that topic are for another series of articles. I saw plenty of sins commissioned and decommissioned during my time there.
This culture of standards was an overflow from the church. Though there weren’t necessarily consequences, per se, many of these same “standards” were applied to the church members.
Keeping busy
I never had a girlfriend. It was never a priority in high school nor in college. By the time I was in my late teens, I was starting to come to a terrifying realization:
I didn’t like girls.
I never thought the words, but there was a conscious awareness within me that instead of being attracted to girls, I was attracted to other guys. I knew what that meant, and I knew the consequences of those attractions. According to what I believed, I was already saved, because I had already accepted Christ into my heart when I was four years old, right in front of the washer and dryer in the first house my parents owned. When I was eight, I was baptized. My entire life was given wholly to the church. But I knew there would be consequences if anyone ever found out I liked guys rather than girls.
I never believed those consequences would send me to hell. In a way, rather, the real consequences were worse – not being able to live a life in service to God.
I was constantly afraid that my voice would betray me. The fact that I was so immersed in music and never played sports was also problematic. I was definitely perceived as too effeminate. I hung out with the girls and felt completely comfortable with them. I didn’t like most things that guys typically liked. But if I kept myself busy volunteering, soulwinning, playing in the church orchestra, helping in Vacation Bible School, working in elementary Sunday school classes, attending Saturday men’s prayer, no one would question me. Right? So many things counted against me that I had to have enough things to count for me. With every responsibility, every kind comment on a job well done, I turned them into bricks to guard the innermost secrets of my life.
It was sometime during my late high school years that I finally thought the words “I’m gay.” There isn’t much you can do to prepare yourself for a self-realization such as that. It was something I had always been aware of, but never thought. And when eventually the whispered words left my lips while facing myself in the mirror, it terrified me.
It had become real, and it had become a problem.
Divine Providence
I continued to keep myself busy throughout my academic career at West Coast Baptist College. The church and the college are essentially one and the same, both having been started by Paul Chappell. I continued to immerse myself into music and genealogy, keeping myself too busy to date. Now that I had finally admitted to myself that I might be
gay, I knew I really needed to pursue dating. I chose who I thought were the attainable girls in the college to pursue as potential life partners. But nothing ever panned out. It was an ugly combination of looks and self-confidence that hindered me. However, there were two girls who I grew up with that I came very close to dating: Marie Leon and Stephanie James.
One evening at church, while I was helping with the livestreaming ministry, it was pointed out to both Stephanie and I that we were wearing the same color. Something clicked with us, and from then on, we both started spending more time with each other, and eventually one night she came over to watch a movie. My sister Allison also invited her then-crush, Jason. While the four of us sat on the couch, my mind was drifting toward Jason, who also happened to be a crush of mine. Little did my sister know how much we had in common.
Stagnantly, things continued with Stephanie. People were asking me “Are you two dating?” “Have you asked her father’s permission to date yet?” That was the next step. Ask Bro. James (all men in the church were referred to as “brother”) permission to date his daughter.
On a non-particular Wednesday evening, I finally mustered up the courage to approach Bro. James – an ex-Marine, masculine type of man, the opposite-of-me-type of man – and ask him if I could date his daughter. Only, he wasn’t there that evening. I decided this was reason enough not to pursue a relationship. Looking back now, it was probably Divine Providence. Things continued to not go anywhere, and eventually it all fizzled out, not only ending whatever could have been, but hurting our friendship for many years following.
Marie and I had always been very close friends. We went to all the banquets that the college held, hung out at the church, and ran in the same circle of friends. She played the flute in church orchestra which meant we spent even more time together.
I was perplexed. We had such a great time with each other, but there was no attraction to her on my part. I loved her, but only as I loved a best friend. I could tell she liked me, and I knew for a fact that her family loved me. Everyone kept pushing me to ask her to be my girlfriend. But, as with Stephanie, things went nowhere. I could tell I had hurt her too. But I had no idea how to rectify either situation without outing myself to everyone. There’s so much I regret about both situations.
Birds of a feather…
Tommy Garcia was my first best friend. Prior to that, I honestly had no friends my age. I remember crying myself to sleep a lot when I was younger, asking God to give me a friend – much how I would pray to God to take away the feelings I had toward other guys. Zach and Lance were also good friends. The four of us spent a lot of time together, but you could tell that Tommy and I were not like the other guys.
Toward the end of my high school years, I struck up a conversation with a guy on Youtube who was asking about a particular male soloist in one of the church’s videos. After responding to him, we began a conversation that lasts to this day. We quickly exchanged email addresses, and then moved over to having one to two hour long phone conversations nearly every day. The fact that we both had Sprint as our cell phone carriers was what saved us from the wrath of our parents when the phone bills came in. We both had the same interests in music, church, and all things atypical for most guys our age, such as the Prairie Home Companion and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, among the plethora of others. Joseph Charles went to West Coast as a freshman the same year that I did. We were just about inseparable.
While a sophomore in college, I started the first handbell ensemble on campus and directed it for several years. I carefully curated the right musicians and formed a very tight-knit family. Two of my best decisions were to add Kevin and Sam. Kevin and I became inseparable and is still among my closest friends. Sam and I would also spend a lot of time with each other, and had some of the best times in college.
Later, I would realize that birds of a feather flock together, as the saying goes.
One non-particular morning in November, I saw Joseph on my way to chapel looking quite tired and disheveled. He was on his way to vice-president Dr. Rasmussen’s office. He didn’t seem to know why he was being called up there. What I said to him next still haunts me to this day: “well, if things go well, I’ll see you in chapel. If they don’t, then I guess I won’t.” We laughed, and I continued toward the auditorium.
I didn’t see him the rest of that day.
The next evening, before orchestra rehearsal, I got a call from Joseph. I heard sobbing on the other end.
“I got kicked out. They found out that I’m gay. Can you ever forgive me? I understand if you don’t want to be friends anymore.”
My heart was beating furiously. My vision was blurred with tears. So many thoughts and emotions shot through my body all at once.
How could I hate him? I’m gay. There’s absolutely nothing to forgive. If they found out about Joseph, will they find out about me? What will they do?
“Of course I’ll still be your friend. There’s nothing even to forgive.” Though I didn’t have all the right words to say, I was absolutely certain when I said that to him.
We chatted for a while. He told me how he was called into the office, how a student, John, asked to borrow his laptop, violated his privacy by looking through emails, discovered the secret relationship that Joseph had started, and finally turned it all over to the administration. When Joseph arrived in Mark Rasmussen’s office, he had a stack of printed emails waiting for him. They called his mother at work and outed Joseph to her. He was kicked out, presented with no other option but to return home, and told not to seek the help of the church at which he was interning in Newport Beach. “Go home and seek the counsel of your pastor” was basically what he was told. Fortunately, he didn’t do that. He stayed in California and rebuilt his life.
The Royal Wedding
A few days after the world was abuzz with the excitement over the royal wedding, Bro. and Mrs. Hicks (she a professor at West Coast, and he a deacon in the church) invited some of us college students to their house for a time of fellowship. It was suggested that we watch something on TV since the “on-campus” college students had no access to one. It was between some type of sports game and the royal wedding. Having no desire to watch any type of sports, I was happy when it was decided that we’d watch the wedding.
Kate’s dress was gorgeous. Her bridal gown flowed behind her as she walked down the nave of Westminster Abbey, accompanied by the choir singing Parry’s “I Was Glad.” The music was amazing. It was the primary reason why I wanted to watch it. Paul Mealor’s “Ubi Caritas” and Rutter’s “This Is the Day” were the highlights for me. But a quote that Richard Chartres, the then Bishop of London, used in his sermon buried itself deep within me, and I had no idea why:
“Be who God meant you to be, and you’ll set the world on fire”
… a quote by St. Catherine of Sienna. There was no way that I could know the impact those words would later have on me.
Maundy Thursday
I’ve always been intrigued by things that are atypical for a Baptist boy – things like handbells. In addition to learning how to play the organ from Mrs. Zimmerman, she began teaching me how to play handbells in the summer of 2010. Soon, she had me playing with her church ensemble, the Oliver Handbell Choir. The group is a close-knit family of church and community members, all primarily several years my senior.
Taking the techniques that I had learned, I formed a handchime choir that fall semester at the college. Shortly after starting this group, the college acquired its own three octave handbell set, and I had quite deliberately started the first handbell choir at West Coast Baptist College. Culture was severely lacking in the college, and I saw this as my small way of bringing just a little more diversity to the campus. I was ridiculed for a while. People thought it was a joke, or that it was an effeminate activity. But for me, it was such a great source of pride and happiness, and, eventually, the group gained some level of respect. Our handbell groups were like families. We did a lot of wonderful things together, and I will always look back on those times with great fondness.
I didn’t stop playing with Mrs. Zimmerman’s handbell group. I played with them for several years, subbing for special services and occasions. One such service was in April 2012, for their Maundy Thursday service. The word sounded funny to me, but I knew it had something to do with Holy Week. As Baptists, we ignored most of church history that didn’t include other Baptists and never used the liturgical calendar. That would have been too “Catholic.” Each year at Lancaster Baptist, we would perform an Easter musical, once on Saturday night and a reprise on Sunday evening. That was our Easter tradition.
I had no idea what a “Maundy Thursday” service was. But as soon as it started, I knew it was going to be something like I had never experienced before. It was my spiritual renaissance. It was my awakening to Christian traditions I had never known. It awoke something in me that I never knew was asleep. It was one of the first times in my life, to that point, that I felt I had truly experienced the presence of God.
The prayers, the music of Taizé, and the sense of community all created something I had never sensed before, something that I could always feel was lacking at my own church. But what moved me most was communion. I had never taken communion outside of my own church. It was really frowned upon. Lancaster Baptist has a closed policy for communion, meaning that only members in good standing were eligible to partake in the Lord’s table. I was always skeptical of the logic behind that position. Looking back, it was probably done more as another way to keep control over the congregation than for any Scriptural reasoning.
I don’t think I fully realized why I was so moved that evening. Looking back now, I know the reason is because I was finally called by my name.
In the twenty-plus years that I attended Lancaster Baptist, never once did I hear the man that I called “pastor” call me by name. I’m convinced that he never actually knew it. But that evening, Pastor Terry walked up to me as I stood waiting for the elements, took a piece of break, placed it in my hand, and, with a deep, sincere look in his eyes, said: “Anthony, the body of Christ is broken for you.”
“Amen.”
Something happened in me that evening. I realized in that moment that Terry Van Hook was more of a pastor to me than Paul Chappell. The realization was irrevocable and started me down a path that would lead me into desires for deeper worship and to have a pastor who truly cared about me.
Carefully crafted words
I was shaken to my core after the incident with Joseph. Fortunately, that was not where his story ended. He enrolled at California Baptist University, finished his bachelor’s in composition, and is now one of the strongest people that I know. I always knew that I could confide in him if the time ever came when I would need to. But I never planned on it; I never had any intention of revealing the secrets behind the brick wall. Never.
Admitting to yourself that you’re gay is one thing – especially when it’s only in thought and never spoken – but to admit to someone else that you have attractions to other men is completely different.
In December 2012, the Crystal Cathedral had their last performance of Messiah before they relinquished the properties to the Catholic Diocese of Orange. Joseph and I knew we needed to take advantage of this opportunity. The plan to get to Garden Grove was fairly round-about. My friend Sofia and I would leave Palmdale, pick up Joseph and his friend at Cal Baptist in Riverside, and then head to Garden Grove. It was an incredible evening, and we even got to meet the well-known southern California conductor Don Neuen. Also in attendance were some other Independent Fundamental Baptists, our then-head of the music department at the college, and some other friends. Seeing them in the Crystal Cathedral felt quite odd. Paul Chappell preached hard against their ministry and their watered-down version of Christianity. But we were all music people who wanted to see the last performance.
After dropping off Joseph and his friend, Sofia and I made the trek back to Palmdale. Right at the Cajon Junction, I could tell she wanted to ask me something. Sofia and I had been friends for a while. We both grew up at the church, but Sofia was “normal.” She wasn’t one of the crazy ones that would turn you in for something “bad” like going to the movies. We had a level of trust that made me feel comfortable with her. When I could tell she wanted to ask me something, I knew exactly what it was. She initially shied away, but I – surprisingly – prodded her to ask me.
“Anthony, are you gay?”
Dreading, knowing, waiting for this moment to actually happen someday, I had carefully crafted what words I was going to say well before then: “I’m attracted to guys, but I know acting on it is a sin, and I will never do that.” At the time, those truly were my beliefs. I wasn’t lying, and it was a safe and sufficient answer. After a five minute conversation, some questions and answers, we changed the subject.
In that moment, she was the only person to ever know what was on the other side of those bricks.
A PDF version of the essay can be downloaded here.
Sporadic Wanderlust 
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