“Beth-” I hesitated for half a second-“Moore.” He reached out his hand to me and, in a louder whisper, introduced himself as the rector. He had on a white robe overlaid with a green stole bearing a grapevine pattern.
A man around our age with a gentle face and warm, genuine smile was among them. We were looking to slip subtly into a pew, but a whole handful of people were huddled at the door. When we entered the foyer, the double doors to the sanctuary were 20 feet ahead of us and wide open. “They know,” Keith said under his breath, reveling a bit in my rare onset of social awkwardness. “Morning,” I said, avoiding eye contact, my volume trailing off with a mumble. As I replay the scene in my imagination, I’m all but wearing a white stick-on name tag with red letters: Hello, I’m a Southern Baptist.Ī man wearing a real clip-on name tag with his picture and the church logo on it greeted us at the door. I grabbed it and we started for the entryway. Keith walked around the car and held his hand out to me. We pulled into the parking lot at five minutes till. “This one right here.” I tapped the screen with my fingernail. “None of them are anywhere near us,” I quipped. Keith was at his wit’s end with me and my church drama and knew we were going to have to get off the beaten path to find a place we were less controversial. Google Anglican churches in Houston,” he said, bossy-like.
“God, help me, woman, you’d exasperate the pope. One Saturday evening, Keith said out of a concoction of compassion and frustration, “Elizabeth Moore, pick up your cellphone right now.” And make no mistake, we were starting over. Sometimes we humans are simply too known in a particular environment to have the luxury of starting over. It’s to say we came with baggage and triggered reactions and opinions. We had nowhere we belonged.Īs multiple churches reopened their doors following the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we visited several denominations closest to our tradition, but each time we were faced with an undeniable reality: Our presence was loaded. The yearning to belong is woven into the human fabric. No place nor people of faith we could call our own. To Keith, this meant we were footloose, and what could be better than footloose? To me, this meant we were legless. In March 2021, I made public my departure from the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination I’d loved all my life and served since I was 12.įor the first time in my life, I didn’t have a home church.
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