Idumea by Casper Orr

It’s hard to explain my relationship with religion. It’s a past that I inexplicably fail to escape and a truth that follows wherever I go. The thing with religious trauma is that you don’t just leave the church; there is always a little steeple living in your chest, each corner of the Lord’s House digging into the softness of your flesh. Forever, a little church lives within your body, and it either sings or it howls condemnations. For over a decade, the parish of my body seethed in rage, scouring and itching the emotional wounds of my past. The most insulting part is, when you live in so much pain, you feel so vindicated by the rage, like it’s the only thing that can protect you. 

But pain lies. Pain rakes you over the coals of your childhood. Pain carries out the job of the pastor who looks you in the eyes and tells you that all of your friends are going to hell. Don’t you want to get out while you can? Pain tells you you’re healing while it reopens all of the wounds that you’ve grown desensitized to; that have slowly grown necrotic. 

My relationship with queerness and religion are inextricably entangled together. It’s less of a relationship and more of an unholy, mountainous dam. This dam–this church–inside of me was weathering the storm of repression, blocking out entire oceans of being. Blocking out an entire world of existence.

But this past May, I travelled to New Orleans. It had always called to me; had felt like a dream or some place out of a movie. I won’t lie though; I was nervous. New Orleans, for all of its wonders, is trapped right in the middle of the bible belt. Despite my excitement, the church planted deep within my chest screamed and howled leading up to this trip.

New Orleans was a culture shock in a way. Although I had been expecting more religious imagery than I was used to seeing in public spaces, I wasn’t expecting so much queer iconography scattered parallel the religious throughout the French Quarter. I’d never seen what seemed like an entire community unite religion with queer identity. It didn't take long before it was more surprising to see a church without a pride flag outside it’s front door than with one in downtown. I hadn’t known it was such a queer city, one of the queerest cities in America. I felt lied to, like someone kept a secret from me my entire life and told me only a half truth.

Since that visit to New Orleans, I can’t help but wonder who I would have been if I’d grown up in a church more like the ones with the pride flags flying outside their main entrances. Now that I’ve seen myself where I've been told I don’t belong and heard my story in the voices of dozens of different queer people, I’m forced to consider a reality in which queerness and religion coexist. A reality I never had the pleasure of knowing.

This other, separate reality scares me because I cannot unlive my own. I abhor the concept of organized religion and, even moreso, I am terrified of the ways that religion can be used as a weapon against me. But at the same time, I hold a creeping envy in my heart for the believer for the sole fact that they can believe in anything like that. There are days, brief moments in time, where I feel the possibility to believe in something other than myself, other than the world around me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be healed enough to enter a church again. I’m unsure if the closest I can ever come to believing is ‘maybe’. But I do know that the terror, the pumping blood, has stopped ringing in my ears like church bells every time someone says “God Bless you.” I’m sure that there is a conversation that I belong to. I’m certain that the church that resides within my chest no longer condemns my every decision; is no longer full of such rage. 

I am reminded of the term Idumea, also Edom, a biblical word that appears in the book of Psalms. In Hebrew, it translates to silence or death; “Let the wicked be put to shame, let them be silent in Sheol.” I’m not sure if I can qualify the border that I’m teetering on as death, but I do know that now the church isn’t screaming. I can finally hear the choir singing.

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Casper Orr (he/him) is a trans disabled writer and artist radically accepting his residence in New Jersey. He’s a Senior Editor and Nonfiction Section Editor for Fruitslice while he studies literature and creative writing. He has previously contributed to Fruitslice, Noise Made By, Gypsophila, Bitter Melon Review, Clementine Journal, and more. He has work forthcoming in The Bitchin’ Kitsch.

Instagram: @androqurrr