Today, religious identity within the LBGT community is not solely focused on religious participation as much as it is about crafting one’s own spiritual experience, according to Jonathan Mathias Lassiter, assistant professor of clinical psychology at Muhlenberg College. Lassiter researches the intersections of faith, sexuality, and race/ethnicity. From having researched several studies and co-edited a book with Lourdes D. Follins in 2017 titled, “Black LGBT Health in the United States: The Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation,” Lassiter is a leading scholar on the experiences of religious and spiritual LGBT people in the United States.

According to Lassiter, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Christian presidential candidate in our country’s history, demonstrates that one can be both a sexual minority publicly and a person of faith, “Mayor Pete exemplifies critical engagement with text. He talks about his favorite scriptures, highlighting being growth-oriented. He represents a segment of the community that has been shunned though being a religious person, the two can coexist.”

Lassiter explained in a recent presentation at Muhlenberg College that sexual minority men who report being religious face more rejection from the church and community. “Religion is seen as punitive towards sexual minorities, like pathologies.” In a national study conducted in 2017 entitled, “Spirituality and Multiple Dimensions of Religion Are Associated With Mental Health in Gay and Bisexual Men: Results From the One Thousand Strong Cohort” analyzing data from 1,071 racially diverse gay and bisexual men in the United States over the age of 18, Lassiter found that 81.7 percent of these men reported attending a form of religious service as children. Further, 73.1 percent of these gay and bisexual men attended Christian churches as children. The numbers of gay and bisexual men reporting religious participation decreases to 40.3 percent when these men grow older. Lassiter conveyed that this study draws to a larger message that sexual minority men are choosing to be spiritually focused as opposed to religiously oriented.

“Spirituality and religion are distinct constructs. Spirituality has more beneficial health. Spirituality is a sense of peace, connection, and one is beyond themselves. It is a transcendent relationship rather than a ritual. It is all about meaning making,” Lassiter said. Further, Lassiter said, “Religious and more end up thinking, this isn’t for me anymore, and craft their own sort of spirituality.”

Lassiter’s research found differences in rating the importance of one’s religious and spiritual beliefs by race and ethnicity. Specifically, within communities of color, black and Latino men place more value on being spiritual and religious compared to men of other races and ethnicities. Thus, sexual minority men from communities of color internalize homonegative messages received through scriptures and the church environment, which can result in depression through internalized stigmatization.

In his most recent book, Lassiter and the other authors focus on health within the black LGBT community. Lassiter noted that what is unique about this book is how it capitalizes on both the risk and resilience and gives a voice to the black LGBT community in the United States.

In future studies, Lassiter hopes to research more about spirituality, as religion and spirituality are different forms of faith. Overall, Lassiter is critical of religion and sexuality. “There is a one-sidedness in literature which represents the real gap that spirituality can be protected and that there are health risks.”

Lassiter said there is also a materialistic perspective ingrained in religious settings. “God’s love is a material possession, not focused on the community. There are religious organizations that are the front lines of social justice and there are religious organizations that are more conservative, which does not speak to the desires of the congregation.”

Follow Jonathan Lassiter’s twitter @matjl