Nehemiah Luckett
My name is Nehemiah Luckett. I was born on Sunday, May 2, 1982 in Jackson, Mississippi. Rumor has it that I was in church the following Sunday and rain, sleet, or snow, most Sundays for the next 18 years. Options are limited when your father is the pastor and your mother the Sunday school teacher. At an early age, church was filled with good memories of people laughing and crying together. It seemed to me that this was where life happened.
At age 13 I began accompanying the choir and I assumed the duties of the music director. It was around the same time that I came out to my friends in high school, who were supportive and accepted me as I am.
Unfortunately, this was not the same atmosphere at church. With gay rights issues in the news, my father spoke about maintaining traditional family values and stopping gay people from adopting children or corrupting our society and I sat on the piano bench – seething. I wanted to jump and scream! But, my only form of protest was to quietly leave during what I experienced as hate speech and wonder to myself – ‘Must I leave my father and my church or live a life of lies? What did I do to deserve this?’
As I grew to accept my sexuality, I could no longer hide as the church demanded. I was done with that part of my life and for years that meant being done with church.
It wasn’t until a professor at Sarah Lawrence College asked me to sing in her church choir that I even gave church a second thought. I walked into a sanctuary that was very different from the ones I grew up with in Mississippi, yet still familiar. The service was exactly as I expected until the pastor got up to speak. He spoke about becoming a “welcoming congregation” and what this would mean for the church. I was floored. Here was someone telling me that I could be myself and still be a part of the church. It felt like not only finding a home – but, finding myself.