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Eric Thomas oral history, 2019.
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Sonia Prescott [00:00:00] Hi, my name's Sonia Prescott and I'm here with Elizabeth Wittrig and we are interviewing Eric Thomas on November 11 for our oral history.
Sonia Prescott [00:00:14] So we'll start off with the first question. I noticed that you graduated from ITC, Interdenominational Theological Center. I'll just mention as an aside, I also went to the ITC. Went to Spelman.
Eric Thomas [00:00:27] Oh that's wonderful.
Sonia Prescott [00:00:29] I was going to ask you, you graduated from ITC in 2013. And my first official question, is how working with people from different denominations shaped your perspective on the movement for LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the PC(USA)?
Eric Thomas [00:00:53] I would say in general it's been very positive.
Eric Thomas [00:00:58] I think from the outside other denominations, think of the PC(USA) as being very progressive in terms of the movement for LGBTQIA inclusion. We were certainly very present in news and media when our Book of Order changed to allow openly gay and lesbian teaching elders to be ordained.
Eric Thomas [00:01:35] And also again, when our Book of Order was changed so that marriage is between two people as opposed to a man and a woman. And so from the outside, it seemed as if the PC(USA) was kind of a leader in that charge. From the inside, you know, I think that we still have some way, some ways to go. I think that, generally speaking, our vocabulary is expanding to be more inclusive. We're using terminology like Latinx, which also is signaling that there is more than the gender binary.
Eric Thomas [00:02:29] I know that there are conversations about, formulating a task force, LGBTQIA concerns kind of task force, and those conversations have actually been happening.
Eric Thomas [00:02:48] But to go back to your ecumenical kind of question, I think that it's been really it's been good. You know, mostly positive. I've experienced as you're asking about the ITC when we speak about the movement for LGBTQIA inclusion as it has to do with race and ethnicity though it seems as if the Presbyterian Church is somehow disqualified from the conversation about the traditional array of Black church denominations which are thought of to be Baptist, Christian, Methodist, Episcopal and the Church of God in Christ and other non-denominational out shoots of traditional Black denominations. And so that can sometimes be interesting depending on who is speaking about what.
Sonia Prescott [00:04:08] Could you also speak a little bit about your path to ordination or what that experience was like?
Eric Thomas [00:04:16] I always had a feeling that I would be doing some sort of work with the church. I grew up in a Baptist church in the Bronx, New York, and a pretty working middle class kind of Baptist church that was like, I don't want to call it a lightning rod, but it attracted a lot of people who lived in that community. It was pastored by how do we call him, like the charismatic leader, the charismatic leader who excites people in worship. Also has a social justice kind of leaning. His name was Nathaniel Tyler Lloyd. This was Trinity Baptist Church in the northwest section of the Bronx. And my family was a family that was very active in the music ministry. So my grandparents sang in the senior choir and my aunt sang in the gospel choir. My father plays the flute.
Eric Thomas [00:05:35] I grew up with piano lessons and singing and so forth.
Eric Thomas [00:05:39] And as I, you know, got my my spiritual formation in the church, my music took me to the High School of Music and Art. And so graduating as a tenor who sight reads, the world becomes a very welcoming kind of place. And so some of my ecumenical experiences, you know, began even there in going from high school and to college, being able to go to Methodist churches and the Episcopal churches, the kinds of churches that hired musicians to do things like the Messiah or the Dubois, Seven Last Words of Christ or the Christmas Cantatas or things like that.
Eric Thomas [00:06:34] So I was able to have a varying array of experiences and, you know, kind of reflect back on my understanding of my relationship to God. My status of salvation as a Black gay man in these different worshiping communities. And so life took me to Atlanta, Georgia.
Eric Thomas [00:07:11] And I was working with the National Black Arts Festival as their director of marketing. And that is where I encountered Rock Spring Presbyterian Church, which was a predominantly white church actually in midtown Atlanta.
Eric Thomas [00:07:33] And they I sang with them as their tenor soloist for a few years. And in the midst of that period, this was around 2006, 2007 or so I was asked, you know, what did I think about going to seminary?
Eric Thomas [00:07:55] Like, I always had this understanding that I would be singing or participating in the worship of the church, but I never saw myself on the other side of the sanctuary. So in other words, I you know, from childhood into my 30s, my geographical location in the sanctuary was where the choir was, where the musicians were.
Eric Thomas [00:08:23] And so even as a seminarian, it was a strange thing to be on the other side where they were at the pulpit where the preaching happens.
Eric Thomas [00:08:34] And so that was an interesting kind of growth spurt, if you will.
Eric Thomas [00:08:41] In many ways, and I grew into this articulation of call to be a minister of word and sacrament, to be a teaching elder, that there were there was lived experience that I had to offer as well as the academic experience that I got from the ITC, specifically Johnson C. Smith which was the Presbyterian Seminary in the complex that is the ITC, to say something to the world about an LGBT Christian experience.
Sonia Prescott [00:09:34] So another question I had was how have you formed spiritual communities outside of the Presbyterian Church?
Eric Thomas [00:09:43] Oh, I mean, the interesting thing about being an Inquirer and a candidate in Atlanta is that Rock Spring was physically located, three traffic lights away from Division Church of Atlanta, which was, I would say like a Church of God in Christ, underpinned, affirming kind of church. So these were lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans ministers who were growing this congregation, like literally down the block from Rock Spring. And so I was able to have a very how shall we call it, a very cerebral kind of experience from like eleven o'clock to twelve and get in the car and be at the affirming church with the tambourines and the hand clapping and the drums and so forth bny twelve thirty. And so I was able to have both sides of that experience.
Eric Thomas [00:11:07] It was also a great opportunity to be able to synthesize the two experiences together in some cases.
Eric Thomas [00:11:20] I recognized someone's grandmother's COGIC church in gay face.
Eric Thomas [00:11:30] What I mean is that the only thing that really changed is the outward expression of sexual identity. But a lot of the covering of one's head and the lap cloths, a lot of the gendered kinds of things that you see in some more kind of like strict holiness kinds of traditions were still at work there. Some of the gendered things in terms of lots of men in leadership, lots of kind of like pushing to the side of trans women, femme men and masculine identifying lesbians. So you saw a lot of the same kinds of things that we wrestle with in quote unquote normative spaces happening in these gay spaces. And so that was interesting. That was interesting to me. It makes things like our Transgender Day of Remembrance that much more important to me. Now, even in this season, 2019 as World AIDS Day and the first Sunday of Advent happens on December 1st I'm creating at my church in Brooklyn testimonies of grace. And so it will be like a praise and worship and testimony kind of service set up for those who are living with HIV and AIDS in whatever way or shape that they identify as.
Eric Thomas [00:13:21] So it could be family members. It could be friends. It could be the sort of support system. So, I mean, I think that we're all in one way or another living with HIV and AIDS. But this becomes a way in, quote unquote, normative space to make normal. The fact that people have been surviving and thriving in spite of a lot of homophobia and transphobia and biphobia and kind of the spiritual silencing and erasing of the effects of the epidemic. And I'm using Revelation Chapter 12, verses 10 and 11 that says they conquered by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimonies. Right. So this idea of advent, what is coming right becomes this ability to conquer and survive and thrive because of this connection or connection to the salvational nature of the coming Christ.
Eric Thomas [00:14:48] And by being able to speak out of silence or out of shame or out of betrayals or out of the other kinds of stumbling blocks that well-meaning Christian people put in front of our gay and lesbian trans folks who are living with HIV and AIDS.
Sonia Prescott [00:15:18] I'm actually going off on that question. I was thinking how supportive had you found the community within your church in Brooklyn have you found them to be to kind of new initiatives or new directions? I know it's a historic congregation and sometimes that can help or hinder you know when you want to take a more progressive lean. So how has that been?
Eric Thomas [00:15:42] I have to say, I have been extremely blessed by the members of Siloam Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. They called and ordain me as their interim pastor as an openly gay, married teaching elder. So, I mean, from the first day that we walked through the door, like even in the when I was meeting with what what we call our pastor nominating committee of the church, I was very open with them because I have the kind of life experience of people having to hide who they are or hope that they don't get caught up or something like that. Right. There is a whole kind of culture that is perhaps the culture of the generation before mine where you just didn't say, you know, this is my roommate or this is my lifelong friend, but one didn't announce themselves as a lesbian or as a gay man or as and certainly not in a relationship. Right. But the the blessing of all of that is that just as I am, without one plea, the church called me to be their pastor. And I as this was my first call, I was trying to do everything that I could do kind of by the book, like, you know, running a session meeting in decency and order and having the sermon title to the secretary on the Tuesday before, doing all those things that you think that a pastor is supposed to do. And in the doing of that, I think that a trust developed so that I was not trying to change who they were and they weren't trying to change who I am. And so we got to be who we be, as it were, in the midst of all of that.
Sonia Prescott [00:18:05] So you are currently working or you've completed your PhD?
Eric Thomas [00:18:12] I'm finishing my PhD at Drew University in New Testament and Early Christianity.
Sonia Prescott [00:18:18] Could you talk a little bit about your research focus and how this impacts your ministry?
Eric Thomas [00:18:23] Yes, my research focus is on a queer of color biblical criticism. And queer of color critique comes from a moment in time in about the early 2000s. It's a response by theorists to the fact that in racial ethnic communities the queer or the LGBT tends to be erased. So, for example, you could say the Black church or the African-American community with an assumption that everybody in the Black church and everybody in the in the African-American community is straight. On the one hand, and on the other hand, it raises the participation of racial ethnic people in LGBTQ spaces. So when you say the gay liberation movement, when you say the gay community, when you say that LGBTQ history project, one could assume that you're talking about white people.So this queer of color kind of movement speaks to racial, ethnic, queer people in both racial, ethnic and LGBT spaces.
Eric Thomas [00:20:01] So an example of that might be that we cannot talk about the history of Stonewall without talking about Sylvia Rivera, without talking about Marsha P. Johnson, because we could talk about this history in this kind of way that a bunch of people who looked like the village, the YMCA village people decided that they were going to fight back. And here's the Stonewall rebellion. Right. But it's really people of color. It's really kind of like the marginalized folks who were hanging out at the Stonewall Inn, along with the with the white gay and lesbian folks who are also activists at the time.
Eric Thomas [00:20:47] But this is this is an interruption of multiplicity. It's an interruption of multiplicity. Another example of that is that when we talk about the African American church or the Civil Rights Movement, we will hear all about Martin Luther King and we won't hear that Bayard Rustin helped to organize the march on Washington in 1963. We think about gospel music and we don't see if we don't know how to look at the number of gay men, lesbian women who make up these choirs, who make up the composers of the music, who in many ways, when you look at queer performances, help to shape the static of what the choir director does or what the soloist does and things like that, those things get erased. Right. And so the question is, how do we bring those things to bear? And when we talk about a contextualized biblical interpretation so we say contextualized biblical interpretation, an example of that might be feminist hermeneutics in biblical interpretation. So, for example, a feminist, her hermeneutic looks at the presence or the absence of women in the text. What are they doing? What do they want? How are they participating in the story? Right. And so a queer of color hermeneutic of biblical interpretation looks at that overlap that intersection between queerness and racial ethnic identity.
Eric Thomas [00:22:49] So, for example, the man who had the legions in Mark 5. So we see this this this man who has the metaphor is as many demons as there are soldiers in the Roman army and Jesus casts out these demons and the man we know the man because he cuts himself with stones and they try to change him, but he breaks his chains. And when Jesus comes and intervenes on his behalf, when he is clothed and in his right mind, that's when the people are afraid. That's when the people are afraid and they want Jesus and the man to go, right. And when we think about the numbers of homeless youth who have been shut away from their communities, right. To be living people in dead spaces like the dead space that we find the man in Mark 5, we can see how that happens to a lot of a lot of Black and Latinx folks.
Eric Thomas [00:24:09] And so those demons are demons of shame and demons of homophobia and demons of respectability politics and demons of all of those things that separate us from community, that separate us from hospitality, that separate us from safety, that separate us from love of community. And there's some way that the society is normativised devised by that person's dysfunction. Everything is fine. The pigs are fine. The people are fine. The tombs are fine. Everything is fine as long as this person is cutting themselves with stones. And how do we see that manifest in some of our, like, everyday kinds of experiences? And how does race and ethnicity factor into that? But then when the man with the legion is released from the demons clothed and in their right mind, the man asks to go with Jesus, and Jesus says, nope, you go into the capital as you go into the cities. And so I what I get from that is that there are ministries that those we think of as marginalized have. To put it another way, people who have been in the rough places and spaces are more likely to be able to make a difference in those places than any of the three of us who have never been in those places. So we all have a call. We all have a ministry. But we can look at the story of Mark 5, the 1 through 20 as a way that many folks in the LGBTQ community find themselves in. So that's an example.
Sonia Prescott [00:26:19] Next, I just wanted to ask when did you become involved in the movement for LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the Presbyterian Church? Was there a particular moment or catalyst that brought you into this movement?
Eric Thomas [00:26:37] I am trying to remember if it was the General Assembly in Minneapolis. I'm sorry. I like I can, I can I can kind of go back into the database and actually tell you what's for real, but I was a theological student advisory delegate for the General Assembly that was in Minneapolis. You can find out what year that was. That was when Landon Whitsitt became the vice moderator with which Bruce Reyes-Chow. Was that like a 2011? 2010? Somewhere around there? It was Minneapolis. I was a TSAD but I was also at that time a part of at the time it was called Presbyterian Welcome, which was led by the wonderful Mieke Vandersall who organized these retreats for inquirers and candidates who were gay and lesbian bisexual. I don't remember any of us who were trans at the time, but very. But there are I mean, Presbyterian Welcome would be the gamut of the gendered and sexual identities. So I was already kind of plugged into like the secret society, if you will, of kind of this protected class of inquires and candidates and my proximity to the assembly because I was a TSAD plus my affinity with the Presbyterian Welcome group allowed me to meet some of the leaders of the movement at the time. I'm thinking about me Lisa Larges, I'm thinking about Ray Bagnuolo, I'm thinking about Michael Adee of More Light Presbyterian. I kind of found a home with More Light Presbyterians and I think it started as early as that General Assembly. And since then, I've become a board member. I've served and rolled off of the board of More Light and have been active ever since.
Sonia Prescott [00:29:41] And could you speak a little more about your experience with More Light and what that experience has been like?
Eric Thomas [00:29:50] The More Light experience is an amazing experience. These are passionate, knowledgeable individuals who organize congregations throughout the country into this of the abundance of God, that God's abundance holds all of our identities. Right. That the social hierarchy that says normal equals white male, middle class, able bodied, employed, born in the United States kind of thing, is not the only is not the only state of being for us. It includes the leadership and the wisdom of women. It includes the leadership and wisdom of femmes. It includes the leadership and wisdom of indigenous people and trans people and racial ethnic people who are all insistent on being and living as members of the body of Christ. And I'm thinking about that, that I Corinthians 12 Body of Christ, where the hand does not say to the foot, I don't have use for you because you're not acting like a hand, but that the body of Christ needs hands and feet and head and heart in order to function in wholeness. And even as I say that, I'm I'm reminding myself about our people who are differently abled. Right. But I talk about the body of Christ in terms of this idea that the different parts of us are what unites us. Right. It's not to say it's not to prescribe this kind of able bodiedness of the body of Christ. As a matter of fact the ways in which the body of Christ is not able bodied actually means that the parts have to work harder to function together in a certain kind of way.
Sonia Prescott [00:32:53] Also related to More Light, how was More Light's mission changed since the passing of Amendment 10-A and 14-F?
Eric Thomas [00:33:04] Well, I think that beats being there in the midst of all of that I think that all of the LGBTQIA affirming organizations like More Light, like Covenant Network, like That All May Freely Serve, I'm not sure if I'm leaving any of the other ones out. When the Book of Order changed everyone had to reassess. So now who are we? So now what does that mean? I suggested at the time this kind of queer of color understanding that even as the PC(USA) was starting to talk about immigration issues, as we're talking about racism as America's original sin, as we're talking about the new Jim Crow and mass incarceration, all of those big issues have implications for LGBT folks of color. Right. All of those issues have class implications for LGBTQIA people of all races, right? That even some of the things in gay liberation politics that we celebrate, like marriage equality, like the ability to serve in the military, like the changes that are happening in some places around accessibility to bathrooms. Right. In many cases, don't even touch the lives of poor, homeless, unemployed people without ID card LGBTQ people. Right. And so there is there is a gap there. On the one hand, in the scholarship, we call it homonormativity that there is this way that the politics of again, this white male, able bodied, middle class gay subject becomes like the overarching norm for the entire spectrum of LGBTQ. But when you read in a lot of the the trans and transgender studies materials, things like the ability to get an I.D. card in the identity of one's heart is a difficult, debilitating, homeless creating circumstance. Right. And so I think that those are the frontiers that we can move into and toward. Certainly the horror of the stories that come from our borders with Mexico, the children in cages. The mother is separated from children. The trans people and the gender nonconforming people who are sent back are probably being sent back to their deaths. They are sent back to bodily violence and loss of life. And that becomes an LGBTQ issue.
Elizabeth Wittrig [00:37:26] Yeah, I mean, I just have you on to talk a little bit more about the retreats that you went on with Presbyterian Welcome.
Eric Thomas [00:37:33] The retreats for many of us, if not most of us, were life saving, life affirming experiences. They enabled us to understand that we were not alone. They enabled us to understand that we serve a God and follow a savior who loves and affirms who we are, that we love a church that is sometimes unloving toward us, and that in our particular experience is to gain the strength and the stamina and the imagination to love them anyway. Right. And all of that happened as we are reflecting upon well, what is this call? What does this mean? How does my organizing experience manifest in these challenges? How does my love of preaching manifest in these challenges? How does my excitement for working with children and young people manifest against amid these challenges? Because we are I mean, as followers of the living Christ, we have to be the light that shines in the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome. Even when the darkness looks like our churches, even when the darkness looks like our polity or our rules of discipline. I have a dear colleague who is abundantly blessed with all kinds of gifts for ministry who is being taken up on charges and called incompatible with the teachings of Christ and Hope.
Eric Thomas [00:40:09] And you have to almost laugh at the people who would use like the systems of discipline, the systems of poverty, the ability to bring charges and spend those hundreds and thousands of dollars to prove a case which could be purchasing food, which could be purchasing, establishing shelter and things of that nature. And so the retreats have allowed us to to encourage each other. The retreats have allowed us to love upon and laugh with each other. The retreats have enabled us to even at a time where we're not meeting physically to have electronic means with which to reach one another. It has been an amazing and amazing blessing to all of us. I am so sure that I speak for many when I say that.
