Baptism Statement: Lorien Gaither

Tell us your faith story. 

When I was younger, I was raised in a large, non-denominational church which hosted my Sunday school, my homeschool group, and basically all of my social life as a preteen. I wouldn’t go as far to say it was a bad church, but as I got older, started asking questions, and started discovering that who I was and what I believed did not align with that church’s teachings, I grew disillusioned with it. To me, being “fake” or inauthentic is the worst thing someone can be. So when people around me pointed to people who thought like me and called them “fake Christians,” I decided I’d rather not be Christian at all if I was gonna be a fake one.

Even though I went to church and even attended a Christian university for two years, I wouldn’t have called myself a Christian (though I don’t think I ever truly left God). At that university, though, I met someone named Maury, who was the first person I’d ever met to both be unashamedly queer, and have a thriving relationship with God. He showed me that was an option—that what I was taught was not the only way to see these things, and this brought me back to Christ. Since then, it hasn’t been easy, and there’ve been several hurtful setbacks along the way, but I’ve grown in my faith, myself, and my belief system, and found a church that welcomes me as their own (thanks Pres House!). I don’t know what will happen after this, or even really what I hope will become of this, but I know that God will continue to guide me in interpreting God’s words and living the way Jesus demonstrated.

Why have you chosen to be baptized?

It was an equal mixture of God’s plan and impulsiveness. A few months ago I was praying, I don’t remember what about, and I felt God finally guiding me to take the step that I’d never allowed myself to before. Baptism, not as a peer-pressured obligation like the times offered before, but as a humble declaration of my intentions and a mutual promise of devotion. The concept of baptism kept popping up in my daily life, in my music, in my schoolwork, even memorably once in my true crime podcasts, so when Nii Addo mentioned the baptism service coming up, I kinda just shrugged my shoulders and went, “Okay God, why not?”

Christians use a variety of images and metaphors to describe the sacrament of baptism. Which is most meaningful to you, and why?

Nii Addo was kind enough to present me with a list of images and metaphors commonly used by the church about this so I could pick one, but if you know me well you know I couldn’t pick just one. At first I had a whole list, but I managed to painstakingly narrow it down to just two. I think of baptism both as a public proclamation of my commitment to Jesus —a promise that I’m here to stay this time— and a reminder of my identity. More specifically, a reminder of both my identity in Christ, and a reminder that all the other facets of my identity are given to me by Christ and called “very good” as I discover them. I am both Christian and Queer; those two things are not mutually exclusive nor interchangeable, and I don’t need to suppress one of them to be welcome at God’s table.

Lorien Gaither (they/them, xe/xem) is studying zoology and conservation biology (class of 2027).