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Escaping God's Closet: The Revelations of a Queer Priest
He survived a turbulent childhood in war-torn London, earned degrees with honors from Cambridge University, was ordained in the Church of England, became an Anglican worker-priest, and emigrated to the United States.
He has been a prolific broadcaster for the BBC, helped organize the Public Broadcasting System in America, was a founding chairman of National Public Radio, and became a senior management consultant for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
He designed and directed the first system of suicide and crisis counseling centers in California (a model for later centers nationwide) and helped found the Parsonage, an Episcopalian ministry on behalf of gay rights in the Castro section of San Francisco. And all the while, Bernard Duncan Mayes struggled to reconcile his views on sexuality--and his experience as a gay man--with his theological and cultural beliefs.
In an entirely honest and engaging voice, Mayes offers considerably more than autobiographical recollections of his life as priest, journalist, university teacher and administrator, and gay rights activist. Throughout Escaping God's Closet, Bernard Mayes recounts how social and doctrinal oppression posed fundamental challenges to his own belief system, but led him to revelations about sexuality, Christianity, and the nature of human existence itself.
He has been a prolific broadcaster for the BBC, helped organize the Public Broadcasting System in America, was a founding chairman of National Public Radio, and became a senior management consultant for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
He designed and directed the first system of suicide and crisis counseling centers in California (a model for later centers nationwide) and helped found the Parsonage, an Episcopalian ministry on behalf of gay rights in the Castro section of San Francisco. And all the while, Bernard Duncan Mayes struggled to reconcile his views on sexuality--and his experience as a gay man--with his theological and cultural beliefs.
In an entirely honest and engaging voice, Mayes offers considerably more than autobiographical recollections of his life as priest, journalist, university teacher and administrator, and gay rights activist. Throughout Escaping God's Closet, Bernard Mayes recounts how social and doctrinal oppression posed fundamental challenges to his own belief system, but led him to revelations about sexuality, Christianity, and the nature of human existence itself.
301 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2001
28 people want to read
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January 8, 2018
I enjoyed many parts of this book, particularly the history of the start of the crisis line, but parts just seemed to drag.
July 3, 2024
THE ACCOUNT OF AN ANGLICAN PRIEST WHO LATER FOUND HIS REAL “CALLING”
Anthony Bernard Duncan Mayes (1929-2014) was a British broadcaster, university dean and author who founded America's first suicide prevention hotline. He was ordained as an Anglican priest, and later emigrated to the United States in 1958 and became an Episcopal worker-priest and director of a student house, eventually moving to the Diocese of California where he held a parish near San Francisco.
In 1992 he renounced the priesthood and religion, embracing a philosophy that he called ‘Soupism’—the belief that everything in the universe is interdependent. He published this book in 2001.
He wrote, “Since I was twelve I had loved, and with such devotion that to be ashamed of it would shame me as betrayal of a truth. It was, if anything ever was or is, a sacred, holy feeling about other humans and I resolved never to deny it… Even sexual acts themselves, their physical ecstasy, are drawn from the love which inspires them and are, for me at least, and however passionate, as sacred as anything I know.” (Pg. 26)
He recalls, “Although I did not, even then, fully accept the idea of redemption and salvation, the elemental teachings of Jesus made more sense to me than did those of any other teacher I had come across… The problem of which devotional structure I would adopt was easily solved. Raised in the established Church of England, I saw no reason not to remain there… So although my renewed faith was thus a compromise as much intellectual as it was emotional, I accepted my [lover’] offer of a spiritual adviser…” (Pg. 46)
He continues, “I was aware that priestly vocation is often subject to hypocrisy… I also knew that it was my love for another that had prompted my decision to be as near him as I could manage. I sacrificed myself on his altar… And if, after much agonized thought, I could find no better answer than that offered by Christianity, then Christianity … became a requirement, and the priesthood an inevitable profession, whether I was sure about it or not.” (Pg. 47)
He notes, “So I celebrated communion each Sunday with less and less enthusiasm. On Saturday nights, like any heterosexual married priest who enjoyed his sex life, I would try to meet other gay men whose warmth and affection made up for the coming Sunday ice… The necessary furtiveness of such temporary liaisons angered me. Only the frisson of risk made them tolerable and helped to counteract the aggressive heterosexuality of my parishioners.” (Pg. 125)
He admits, “Clearly, my devotion to religious tradition was beginning to wear thin. Drag attempted to subvert structures … established by authorities themselves considered divine. Jewish and Christian priesthood forbade such practices as idolatrous… a prohibition strictly reinforced by later Puritan traditions of simplicity. As a result, the Western male---though in other centuries he has dressed himself colorfully and once wore wigs---still brushes his hair but leaves … high heels and makeup to the female and does not permit confusion of gender without penalty.” (Pg. 163)
He observes, “My experiences in San Francisco were initiating me into a whole new train of thought that could no longer be denied… the eventual conclusion was inevitable. The restoration of the body… seemed suddenly insistent, ineluctable… The principle of unity is nowhere better expressed than in the passions of sexual intercourse… [It] expresses in localized way a search for unity similar to that proposed … in Plato’s ‘Symposium.’” (Pg. 180)
He summarizes, “I now found myself free of what I could only conceive to be a parochial, self-absorbed, and cruelly exclusive clique devoted to something which in fact did not exist… Did I now immediately and officially declare myself apostate? I did not. Such a momentous step required as much time as I could afford to give. I had not thoughtlessly become a priest. Nor had I struggled all this way against my rising distaste merely to walk out overnight… Many of my friends, gay as well as straight, had… dispensed with religion long ago, instinctively and without a second’s thought. I wished I could do the same.” (Pg. 251) Later, he adds, “I decided to abandon Christianity, to let it stew in its own juice. But in 1987, before I could take such a momentous step, John and I prepared to join the largest demonstration that homosexual people had ever conducted.” (Pg. 271)
He concludes, “Christianity, and for that matter religion as we have known it, is, it now seems to me, a dying thing, soon to be buried… Eternity is the great fact of existence; it has no cause, it needs no explanation; and time is the measure of its endless exchange… Nothing stands in its way, nothing can withstand its mighty force. Nothing is omitted and all take part. This is what religion has so far found indigestible.” (Pg. 285-286)
Mayes is not the most “sympathetic” ex-priest out there; but his later work was quite admirable, and this account will be of some interest to readers.
Anthony Bernard Duncan Mayes (1929-2014) was a British broadcaster, university dean and author who founded America's first suicide prevention hotline. He was ordained as an Anglican priest, and later emigrated to the United States in 1958 and became an Episcopal worker-priest and director of a student house, eventually moving to the Diocese of California where he held a parish near San Francisco.
In 1992 he renounced the priesthood and religion, embracing a philosophy that he called ‘Soupism’—the belief that everything in the universe is interdependent. He published this book in 2001.
He wrote, “Since I was twelve I had loved, and with such devotion that to be ashamed of it would shame me as betrayal of a truth. It was, if anything ever was or is, a sacred, holy feeling about other humans and I resolved never to deny it… Even sexual acts themselves, their physical ecstasy, are drawn from the love which inspires them and are, for me at least, and however passionate, as sacred as anything I know.” (Pg. 26)
He recalls, “Although I did not, even then, fully accept the idea of redemption and salvation, the elemental teachings of Jesus made more sense to me than did those of any other teacher I had come across… The problem of which devotional structure I would adopt was easily solved. Raised in the established Church of England, I saw no reason not to remain there… So although my renewed faith was thus a compromise as much intellectual as it was emotional, I accepted my [lover’] offer of a spiritual adviser…” (Pg. 46)
He continues, “I was aware that priestly vocation is often subject to hypocrisy… I also knew that it was my love for another that had prompted my decision to be as near him as I could manage. I sacrificed myself on his altar… And if, after much agonized thought, I could find no better answer than that offered by Christianity, then Christianity … became a requirement, and the priesthood an inevitable profession, whether I was sure about it or not.” (Pg. 47)
He notes, “So I celebrated communion each Sunday with less and less enthusiasm. On Saturday nights, like any heterosexual married priest who enjoyed his sex life, I would try to meet other gay men whose warmth and affection made up for the coming Sunday ice… The necessary furtiveness of such temporary liaisons angered me. Only the frisson of risk made them tolerable and helped to counteract the aggressive heterosexuality of my parishioners.” (Pg. 125)
He admits, “Clearly, my devotion to religious tradition was beginning to wear thin. Drag attempted to subvert structures … established by authorities themselves considered divine. Jewish and Christian priesthood forbade such practices as idolatrous… a prohibition strictly reinforced by later Puritan traditions of simplicity. As a result, the Western male---though in other centuries he has dressed himself colorfully and once wore wigs---still brushes his hair but leaves … high heels and makeup to the female and does not permit confusion of gender without penalty.” (Pg. 163)
He observes, “My experiences in San Francisco were initiating me into a whole new train of thought that could no longer be denied… the eventual conclusion was inevitable. The restoration of the body… seemed suddenly insistent, ineluctable… The principle of unity is nowhere better expressed than in the passions of sexual intercourse… [It] expresses in localized way a search for unity similar to that proposed … in Plato’s ‘Symposium.’” (Pg. 180)
He summarizes, “I now found myself free of what I could only conceive to be a parochial, self-absorbed, and cruelly exclusive clique devoted to something which in fact did not exist… Did I now immediately and officially declare myself apostate? I did not. Such a momentous step required as much time as I could afford to give. I had not thoughtlessly become a priest. Nor had I struggled all this way against my rising distaste merely to walk out overnight… Many of my friends, gay as well as straight, had… dispensed with religion long ago, instinctively and without a second’s thought. I wished I could do the same.” (Pg. 251) Later, he adds, “I decided to abandon Christianity, to let it stew in its own juice. But in 1987, before I could take such a momentous step, John and I prepared to join the largest demonstration that homosexual people had ever conducted.” (Pg. 271)
He concludes, “Christianity, and for that matter religion as we have known it, is, it now seems to me, a dying thing, soon to be buried… Eternity is the great fact of existence; it has no cause, it needs no explanation; and time is the measure of its endless exchange… Nothing stands in its way, nothing can withstand its mighty force. Nothing is omitted and all take part. This is what religion has so far found indigestible.” (Pg. 285-286)
Mayes is not the most “sympathetic” ex-priest out there; but his later work was quite admirable, and this account will be of some interest to readers.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews