(Un)Holy Hauntings: The Experiences of LGBTQ+ People Who Have Disaffiliated From Non-Affirming Protestant Churches in Canada

Abstract

This dissertation explores how Canadian LGBTQ+ people make sense of their experiences after leaving the non-affirming Protestant church. Drawing on 23 semi-structured interviews with participants from across Canada, I trace the multiple impacts of the non-affirming church on LGBTQ+ disaffiliates as they reimagine their lives outside of and in resistance to the cisheteronormative structure of the church. Shaped by a queer theoretical lens and bringing together the insights of trauma theory and affect theory, I reveal how participants continue to feel the teachings of the church in deeply embodied and emotional ways. I demonstrate how church discourses around gender and sexuality invisibilise possibilities for LGBTQ+ disaffiliates concerning who they can be and how they can envision their lives, producing and reinforcing distrust and shame in their bodies, feelings, and intuition. I further explore how the morals, values, and beliefs of LGBTQ+ disaffiliates come into conflict with the teachings of the church in a way that compels them to leave, reassess their faith, and evaluate the redeemability and benefit of the church in broader society, especially as they have become more aware of the church’s colonial legacies. Following and expanding upon Espen Gilsvik’s (2023a) concept of phantoms of faith, I argue that LGBTQ+ people carry with them the (un)holy hauntings of the church in their post-disaffiliation everyday lives. These hauntings are most pronounced in the moments of fracture where they diverge from the church’s teachings that have been ingrained within them.