Queer Reverend Finds God After Decades Of Feeling Rejected By Church

You can find Alex Reegan’s book, “What Needs To Be Said: Speak Your Truth, Release Shame, Find Oneness” at his website. You can see Alex give a liturgy here.

TRANSCRIPT

One Church Wasn’t Enough – Alex’s Calling

Alex Reegan grew up in a family of ultra-conservative Christians. His parents lived their faith inside and outside their church.

They were very into church Jesus, Christianity as a whole when I was growing up. So that was like a big focus of really who they were and who sort of our family really was, but very caring, very loving people who, you know, go out of their way often to help strangers and help people at church in need. And, you know, they've just they really they try to do a lot for people when they can.

All of this rubbed off on Alex.

I really loved going to church. I loved the community of it. I liked, you know, Sunday school. We were in New York City once and I, like, stopped and talked to a soapbox preacher for like 15 minutes on the side of the street corner. My mom said, I got in the car one day after, like vacation Bible school, which was like kind of this summer thing they sent kids to. And I was like, Jesus died for us, you know, like, I was like, so excited, you know, like, I don't even obviously know. I knew what that meant. I was like six, but I thought that was the coolest thing. And my mom was like, That was the best day of my life. At one point, I even went to like two churches at a time, you know, like I went to like two different youth groups. 

Laurel: One wasn't enough.

Alex: And one was not enough.

As he became a teenager he thought he’d like to be a youth leader and even thought about becoming a minister. 

I think as a little kid, I always felt some sort of calling to be a part of the church, to be a part of like spreading the gospel of Jesus.

This is a story about how Alex lost his religion then found a way to reclaim and even embrace his faith. This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

Miami Vice Makeover

Growing up Alex knew he was different. Assigned female at birth, he always felt like he was mistaken for a girl. He was a foot taller than most girls in his class, loved sports, and doing the opposite of what his parents thought he should be doing. One day when he was six years old it was too hot to play outside.

It was a whole bunch of us in the front yard, just decided to turn on the sprinkler, which was really just a milk jug that we shoved the hose down. And then water was like shooting out of the holes we had popped in it. And we just, you know, we just sort of all through our shirts off and toss them out of the way and just started running through the sprinkler. And everyone was sort of getting each other soaking wet. And I'm sure people were shooting each other with the hoseAnd it was just like this really playful and free… As if my mom had, like, you know, like, like eyes in the back of her head or something. And she was pretty upset and was like, you know, girls can't take their shirts off and run around in the yard. And I was just like, why you know, like, I don't understand.

Alex thought something must be wrong with his body because his mom wasn’t telling his brother to cover up. 

A couple years later it was picture day at school and Alex’s mom told him he could pick out his clothes.

Alex: I look like I was like, come out of the Miami Vice or something, which if you're around my age, you remember that show, you know, and. 

Laurel: Don Johnson. 

Alex: Exactly like I kind of had this fuchsia Hawaiian shirt, you know, like really bright pinks and blues like it was in the eighties. I found like a magenta tie and then this super bright blue, like, kind of jacket…I came out just like, Yeah, this is the most awesome outfit ever created!

But Alex’s mom wasn’t so thrilled. She always bought Alex dresses. Alex knew something about him was different from what those around him expected. 

It was a definite, stark shift from, like, the photos before … there was like a lot of, like, dresses and all that stuff. And then all of a sudden there's just this stark, like, my hair is real short, like a little bowl cut. And then I have this, like Miami Vice jacket and shirt on, and from then on, a stark change in sort of all of the photos as I grow older.

Spiritual Journey Thwarted - Alex Learned He Was ‘Evil’

When Alex was 12 his parents invited a friend and her son over for dinner. Before they arrived, Alex’s mom told them the young man was sick. His mother said he was very contagious with AIDS. In fact, he was dying. After dinner Alex’s brother ran out the front door to play with his friends and his dad, uniformed about this scary disease, left the table to wash the dishes with bleach.

They were never the kind of parents who sort of sent the kids away, you know, like we were always allowed to be around all the adults. And even if there was adult conversations, we were not really usually, like, excluded. But I remember her sort of sending me downstairs, like she's like, go downstairs and, you know, watch TV or do your homework or do something with yourself. And in that moment, I knew, like, this is something fishy here… I kind of just like went down to the bottom of the stairs and I think I maybe even went in and turned on the TV or did something to make it sound like I had gone down. And then I shut the light off at the bar on the stairs, and I just sat down on the stairs… So it's kind of like my Spidey senses had turned on …essentially my mom ended up telling him, how he was going to go to hell for being gay and that it was a sin … you know, like I remember her expressly saying, like, this was God's punishment for him and that's why he had gotten HIV. 

Alex said he started to shake. He felt sick and ashamed, ashamed of his mother. And at that time he didn’t understand why he had such an intense reaction.

There was part of me that wanted to just like, jump up and run up the stairs and just stop her. But I also know I would have gotten in trouble. He eventually just sort of broke down and he was crying and he was just like, ‘I don't want to die. I don't want to go to hell. I don't want to be punished.’ …And eventually he was just like, ‘I'm so sorry. … I won't I won't be gay anymore. I just want God to forgive me.’ 

A few weeks later Alex’s mom told him that the young man had died.

It wasn’t until later that Alex realized she might as well have been talking to him... 

I couldn't have described per say about myself or my sexuality or my gender or any of the things that I obviously now can put to words. I just knew they're talking about me. Like, I just knew ‘this is what they would say to me.’ 

The Void

After high school graduation Alex moved away to go to college. He was still hiding his sexuality from most people.

I was just like sick constantly, like I was constantly having stomach issues, digestion issues. I was like, missing a lot of work. I was missing school. Like, I was literally just like, taking like, Pepto-Bismol, like, multiple times a day. I was taking like tons of, like Tylenol and Ibuprofen because I was in a lot of physical pain. I was getting a lot of like these searing cramping pains in my jaw that I would literally because I was actually what I found out later, I was like grinding my teeth because I was so stressed…

Alex would grind his teeth so hard, he had constant headaches.

…So, you know, I finally just realized, like, if I don't tell them or if I don't just do this, like this is going to kill me. 

He was talking to a friend when he realized his body was trying to tell him something – that he had to be honest with his family.

I drove back home one night late, late in the night, like I went home to their house and got in at like one or two in the morning. And I just kind of quietly, you know, snuck in the house.

The following morning, surprised to see him, his family asked why he came home. Alex hadn’t exactly planned what he was going to say. He recalled a conversation he’d had with his mom just a few weeks prior.

I was driving somewhere with my mom and I was like sweating. My mom was just like, I don't know what's going on with you, but, I remember her saying, like, ‘there's nothing that you could ever do to, like, disappoint us.’  So finally I just sort of fumbled out I'm not attracted to men … And it was a very weird like at first it was just mostly my mom that was upset. And my mom was like, you know, you just haven't found the right guy. My dad, like, started to chime in and I thought there was this moment where I thought, oh, maybe this is like my dad's going to be just like, rational about this, because he hadn't seemed upset, he hadn't yelled... But then he was like, ‘oh, we can send you to our friends, you know, ex-gay, blah, blah, blah ministries’ Like, I think that's genuinely what they thought in their minds, that they thought, okay, I'm coming to them for help to help me not be gay kind of thing. And then in that moment, they realized, that's not why I'm telling you this. Like, I'm trying to tell you who I am. I think when that occurred to them, that's when that's when it really exploded. And then my mom got, you know, pretty angry and was yelling and my dad raised his voice. And then eventually my mom just sort of like you have ruined our lives and just stormed out.

Alex wasn’t sure he had done the right thing, especially when his brother reminded him who paid for school.

There was no way I was going to pay, you know, for my last tuition check that was due like, in a couple of weeks. If this goes down, like, I'm going to be left holding the bag with, like, you know, six months left of the school year from a degree. And, you know, so out of sort of self-preservation, you know, he kind of was like, ‘oh, maybe you should just tell them, you know, like, I'll try again. Like just, you know, just kind of like bide a little bit of time.’ 

So that’s what Alex did, the only thing he knew to do for pure survival.

For a while I was just sort of angry at the whole world. Anger at my whole family, angry at my solving or had like my whole community that was no longer my community … If I saw someone with like a fish on their car, which was like back then was like the sort of symbol you don't really see that much anymore. But it was like the symbol back then for like someone being a Christian. And when I would see that, I would get enraged. I mean, literally to the point that I was like flipping off strangers. It just it felt like it robbed me of of God in a way. And I think that's what left the biggest void in my life. 

When he wasn’t raging, he was upset. And more and more he didn’t go out or really engage with the world at all.

It's almost like I just couldn't face the world. Like, I just didn't know how to be. Like, I felt so many issues around, hopelessness and just depression and, like, I just didn't know what the purpose was or what the point of it all was. And I just, you know, kind of really closed down… I just lost some part of myself and I didn't know, like, what or who to be in the world anymore.

Finding His Way Back To God

One night Alex and his partner went to an Indigo Girls concert that rocked his world. He became transfixed by the opening band Girlyman.

And I remember just being like, ‘what is this band? This music is fantastic…’ And so I actually went out into the lobby and got in line with most of the rest of the audience who was there to get a CD and to like, get, you know, get it signed. 

That’s when he met Dorris, one of the band members. They quickly became friends.

The Dorris that I knew then was just a sort of like magical seeming creature to me…as we became friends, it’s just like I saw her as this person who saw the world in a totally unique and different way… she was so curious and creative and was always looking to create something new in this world. And she’s very right brained and I’m probably more left brained. We just felt like these catalysts for each other and, and in some ways she felt like a connection to God to me I had thought was really lost to me.

Dorris helped Alex realize that he could be queer and connect with God, that there were other ways to God than through a church.

I think there was just kind of this, you know, in my head like, oh, I didn’t even know that was an option, you know, kind of thing. Like, my brain was just kind of like, whoa, that’s cool. Like, I didn’t know that was allowed. 

She also planted a seed that maybe Alex wasn’t just queer but also trans.

She kind of just tossed that out there to me, like, don’t you want to go by he? And I was just kind of like, ‘oh, that would be the last straw for my momand dad…’ So I really kind of just didn’t even let myself think of it as a possibility. I kind of just, you know, dismissed out of hand right away. 

But that conversation unlocked a possibility that began to grow in the back of Alex’s mind. It wasn’t until many years later that he could face that truth.

It’s not like today where we have so much like media and you can Google anything and all of that stuff. Like there just there wasn’t the access back then.

By the late 2000s Alex was struggling. He had found weed, which had helped him better cope with his pain and anxiety. He said he couldn’t get enough – not enough food, not enough weed, not enough attention – so he kept seeking more. At the same time Alex and Dorris were fighting a lot.

She was just like, ‘I can’t I can’t do this anymore. You know, I don’t think I can be friends with you.’ And I had lost so many people in my life that I just I remember just being like, are you kidding me? Like, again?

Alex Gets Sober

His life of excess came to a head when he needed dental surgery. He had an infected tooth that was so excruciating one night he passed out from the pain. No pain killer or weed could ease his suffering. So he went to see a dentist who The told him if they didn’t pull it, the infection could spread into his bloodstream. So he scheduled his surgery and as he read through the post surgery instructions, he discovered he wasn’t allowed to smoke weed for the next two weeks. That prompted Alex to get sober.

I guess I just like, kept going inwards and I realized that I had to find my own connection to God. When I lost God that first time, like, that was the most heart wrenching, painful thing of all of it, in a way. And so there was this part of me was like, I'm not going to do this again. I'm not going to like, let myself lose that connection.

He tried all different types of therapy – cognitive behavioral therapy, art therapy, EMDR, acupuncture. He even went to see a shaman. She would ask Alex to lay down on a couch and she would start drumming.

And it just really helps you to get into this very meditative, sort of almost like trance like state… We did a lot of work where we would sort of go in these visualizations back to like a lot of these childhood situations. The six year old me, the me at the bottom of the stairs when I was 12, listening to my mom, you know, say that that the boy was going to burn in hell. Like, we went back to those situations to kind of like, do some healing work around them. And at the end of one of the sessions, she said to me, I don't know if you realize that you're doing this, but when you're talking about yourself in the past tense, you're using like he pronouns.[00:45:42]that all kind of boop, just like a light bulb went on. 

Alex Sees His Future

Dorris and Alex took time apart from their friendship. During this period someone close to Alex was dying, so he went to visit her.

The last couple of weeks of her life, really. I think that also reminded me what was important and things like really like, you know, I mean, she told us, like love is love is what matters. 

It was after her funeral that Alex and his wife divorced and Alex reconnected with Dorris, moved to be with her.

During this new chapter in Alex’s life, his shamanic teacher had taught him how to meditate. It was during one of these meditations, he had a vision of the person he could become.

One day I was doing a journey and I had asked I had asked my guides to take me. I had done work with another shamanic teacher as well, and he had taught me this practice of going to what he called something like the library in the sky. And then I asked my guides. I said, you know, I had heard up at other points and other people had told me to like that I was going to write a book. And so I just went, okay. So I said, You know, I asked my guides, Can you show me the book, you know, in the library?...then there was one that was facing the wrong direction, you know, the like the spine was in. And so I grabbed that book and as I opened it, it was kind of like I was transported through like in a fantasy movie, you know, there's through the book, through a sort of space and time. And I sort of popped out on the other side and it was like a big, you know, like an event. Clearly, it was like kind of in a big in a ballroom or some convention center or something. And there was all kinds of people and everybody standing. And and I was like, What's going on? And so I began to walk towards the stage further and further up towards the front. And eventually I got close enough and up on the screens, you know, I saw and it said Reverend Alex Regan. And that was this kind of this moment of like, I see the future, you know, like what is going on. 

It was at that moment Alex realized he had to apply for seminary school.

I began to feel more of a calling of like the sense of like, I want to do something with my life that has to do with this type of work. And when I saw the Reverend Alex Regan thing, there was a part of me that was just like, Is that even allowed would like someone to accept who I am, like this trans guy who's like sometimes an atheist and sometimes agnostic and sometimes believes in God, like is that even going to be out there?

One of his assignments at seminary was to create a ceremony. So Alex decided to honor the young man who died of AIDS when Alex was 12.

At that point, it had been, you know, almost 30 years and I had carried it with me that whole time. You know, I had carried it with me as if it was my fault, like I should have stepped in and saved him from my own mother. I had carried it with me as an indictment on me. And almost in a way, it was like doing a eulogy for maybe my own funeral and like for who I was to them… They would have changed everything about the story and they would have told their own story and what they wanted to tell. You know, I mean, even today, I have to tell all of my friends, if something happens to me and I die and like Dorris is not available or she passed to like you guys have to stop them from, you know, like the funeral would look a totally different way, you know, and what they would say about me, what they would call me, everything would be to their liking and to their story, and it wouldn't be about me. I think in a way, it was like, you know, writing that for myself and also just writing to heal, hopefully some part of him. 

Today Alex is an interfaith minister and frequently speaks to crowds of people like the one he envisioned.

VIDEO OF ALEX GIVING THE LITURGY

After he speaks, he frequently hears from people who like him didn’t know they were allowed to be queer and connect with God. And every time he shares his story, he feels another part of himself has healed.

Oh, oh, it's like I guess in some part it always like heals a little part of me, you know, like a little part of those younger versions of me that maybe, you know, never thought this would be possible or that I could even still be here by now. You know, sometimes I am surprised to be in my mid-forties and that I've made it this far …I didn't even always know if I was going to make it that far. And so it does feel like it heals a part of me.

Alex has written a book “What Needs To Be Said: Speak Your Truth, Release Shame, Find Oneness.” It’s both memoir and self help. His hope for the reader is they will learn to get back in touch with their own guidance system.

We're sort of completely discouraged from following our own knowing. All of these kinds of things are so woven into us that I think sort of convince us of what is or isn't allowed... that's still a facet of my experience and still part of the like and sort of like. Unmasking the full religious trauma. I've never been without it. And so for me, this is always about reconnecting with who I really am, like on a deeper level and sort of going beyond what this version of me is or believes that it is. And that's that might be my lifelong work.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.