Other kinds of others: A Chapel Hill church redefines open and affirming
It was the congregation’s open and affirming stance that brought Robbyn Davis-Ellison to United Church of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but it was the commitment to racial justice that kept her there. Davis-Ellison, who is black and gay, grew up in a Pentecostal Holiness church in suburban Atlanta. By age nine she knew she was “different,” and after high school she stopped going to church.
“I had been brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is a sin, and we were going to go to hell, and I wasn’t going to be with my family when I passed away,” she said. “When you’re a little girl, that’s really scary.”
After college she found a gay-friendly church, but when work took her to California and New Jersey, she lost touch with her faith, which had always been a sense of comfort to her.
