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God’s Dress is Gay

How a queer Pastor changed the Church

Autobiography

The moving testimony of an impressive life

I had just begun my studies when the director of studies told us: "If anyone here is homosexual, he might as well stop studying theology right now!" I didn't listen to him; after all, even though since puberty, I had only had sexual contact with men, I wasn't homosexual.

From the time I was 13 years old, I had only one goal: I wanted to be a pastor! When, at the age of 20, I left our small town in Hessen, a completely new and exciting world awaited me. No matter where my path led me, God was at my side: from my studies in Heidelberg, to my time as a pastoral intern in Wiesbaden and Cairo, or to the parsonage in Frankfurt. Time and again I felt a divine closeness because at some point, my soul had recognized that God made me wonderful.

Me, a gay Christian; a pastor in body and soul.

With his autobiography, Nulf Schade-James gives a moving testimony of his life path, which has been shaped by the struggle for acceptance as a Queer within the protestant church and society. He was one of the first pastors to give benedictions to homosexual couples and made a significant contribution to their enforcement nationwide. His courageous struggle for equal rights for homosexuals has changed much in the church, which he hopes will be a source of strength for others.

About the Author

Nulf A. Schade-James was born in 1958 in Gedern, Hessen. He studied in Frankfurt and Heidelberg before starting his pastoral internship in Wiesbaden and Kairo. A member of the group Homosexuality and Church, he has been campaigning for the rights of homosexual brothers and sisters of faith since the 1980s. For years he was admired on the cabaret stage as Greta Gallus, Dame of Sodom without Gomorrah. He plans further appearances during a reading tour for this book.

The press repeatedly picked up on Schade-James’ commitment, according to Spiegel and FAZ. In 2002 the gay magazine hinnerk listed him at #41 in the TOP 100 GAYS THAT ARE MOVING GERMANY. A detailed interview with him was published in 2014 in the book Stadtgesprache Frankfurt a.M. by Gmeiner Verlag.

Today Pastor Schade-James lives and works in Gallus, Frankfurt, together with his husband and his foster son. In 2015 he married his husband for the third time in New York, and in 2018, finally, in Germany.

Contents

About the Author

God gave us breath, so we can live

Childhood

First contact with the church

Early Youth

School Days

Children’s Choir leadership

The Final School Years

University

Kirchentage (Church Days)

Political Engagement

Israel

Cairo

Return to Germany

David

Church Politics

Church Blessing

Partnership

Epilogue

Attachment

Memorial hour

Address to the Synod in the Autumn of 2001

God gave us breath, so we can live

In the spring of 1958, just two years after my brother’s birth, I saw the light of day and God gave me breath. I start with this song “God gave us breath,” from the evangelical hymn book, because I am convinced that God gave me breath and set me on my life’s path. I believe that, like the many other men and women who live with and love people of the same sex, I am part of that wonderful creation of God that is colorful, and sometimes even dazzling. God gave me breath, so I can live.

Childhood

That same summer four months later, I was baptized - as it turned out, without a baptismal verse. Back then a baptismal verse wasn't that important. What was important was that there was a godfather, and I had the best godfather in the world. Later on, my friend Gloria gave me my "baptismal verse.” She said to me: "Speak and do not be silent, for God is with you and no one should dare to harm you." (Acts 18)

Not a bad choice - and looking back on my life, it was actually right on because, in everything I did, I felt that I was being led. The sense that I am God's child made me strong and sometimes really courageous. It gave me a sense of security, especially in those moments when I felt that I had been abandoned by the entire world.

After the birth of my brother, my parents bought our milk direct from the farmer. When my mother was expecting a second time – me - that farmer said to her, “This child,” pointing at her belly, “needs a godfather here in Gedern. I’ll be the godfather if it’s a boy.” How right he would be. I really needed a godfather to hold me, not just over the baptismal font, but especially when everyone found out I was gay. I know that my parents' choice of this godfather was one of the best decisions they ever made, not only for me but for our whole family. Pädder Werner and his wife Gerda stood by and treated us absolutely equally. Whether birthdays or Easter, for St. Nicholas Day or for our confirmations, Pädder Werner and Gothe Gerda nurtured us and lovingly accompanied our lives.

I was born into a small middle-class family. My father was busy building his professional career as a dentist, which meant he wasn't really at home much. He joined all sorts of clubs and got into local politics, becoming a city councilor for the SPD, a referee for the football club and forming a fife and drum corps for the volunteer fire department. Whoever wanted to get to know him could go hiking with my parents through the Vogelsberg Mountains once a month: membership in the Vogelsberger Mountain Club was a family tradition. Yes, my father was a hiker, just like my grandfather Ewald.

My poor mother, who had lived and worked in a big city as a postal clerk, had no choice but to quit her profession and devote herself to raising her two children, more or less alone. While she dealt with us kids, father was out on some soccer field almost every Sunday, or taking part in various important meetings during the week. Last but not least, he was also very successful as a “female” comic satirist at Carnival time - the time leading up to Lent. The “Büttenredner” is a mostly-comic political and social satirist. Back then, there were no female carnival Büttenredners - that wasn't respectable. So the role was played by a man. There were no female pastors either: the world at that time, the world of fools and the church, was exclusively in the hands of men.

To be honest, I didn't really miss my father: our mother's love and care made up for his absence. She was there for us and almost always available. This was a great blessing for my brother and me, especially in the first years of my life. I later wished she would leave us alone more often, but in our early years, it was wonderful. She played and sang with us, told us fascinating stories and exciting fairytales. Because of her, I memorized almost every children's song. And I loved the moments when, just before sleep, she came to our room, sat down on our bed, read us a bedtime story and sang. I particularly liked the song "Little brother, come dance with me" from Hansel and Gretel. We not only sang it – we acted it out as well. She would take my hands and dance with me back and forth through the little kitchen. And she went for walks with us almost every day, at first with the baby carriage and later holding our hands. The playground near the old castle in Gedern was a paradise garden for us - here we were allowed to play freely and at ease. Here we made new friends. Mother always sat on the bench while we slid down the big slide, or we animated each other to see who could swing the highest.

Even though my mother later complained from time to time about how difficult it was for her at first in Gedern, my father's “clubbiness” turned out to be a good thing. Because of his activities, it took just a few years for us to be known and to become a part of the local community, which was wonderful for us kids. Whenever possible, we took part in club activities. One of my favorite memories is of “roasting potatoes.” We would go out to some meadow with blankets and picnic baskets; the men would have prepared a fire early in the morning. Later on, we would put the delicious potatoes in the hot embers. While we waited for them to cook, we played together with the grownups; games like “Blink” and circle games, like "the fox is walking around", dodgeball or soccer. I didn't like soccer, and for that preferred to be a spectator. I really just wanted to see the men, who often took off their shirts and then spent the rest of the day in the summer heat bare-chested. Even back then, that sight gave me a pleasant feeling.

For the first few years, my brother and I were brought up together. We had a neighbor, Aunt Lemy, who loved us very much and whose hair salon, along with the Protestant Church and a bakery, was close by. I’ve always had a connection to older women. This has been so my entire life: there have always been women who have been a support to me. Mother, surrogate mothers, the ironing woman, the preschool or the kindergarten teacher, the children's worship leader, the piano teacher and the neighbor.

We were allowed to call Aunt Lemy “Aunt” even though we weren't related at all. She was always very well coifed and her lips glowed red. My mother hardly used any make-up, but Aunt Lemy, who was a hairdresser, was always very smartly made up. For me she was somehow special because she had such a different life from that of my mother. She was not just a housewife and mother: above all, she was a businesswoman. When I think back on her today, she was like a Woman of the World to me. I watched TV for the first time in her house, "Little Peter’s moon trip", and there you could eat pasta with cherries and bread crumbs, which was completely frowned upon at my home - you could even eat salty pasta or, even better, pasta with ketchup.

Our small family had a very special relationship with Aunt Lemy and her husband, who of course we called Uncle Lemy. They weren't just our neighbors, but also the lucky owners of our little house. And because the adjoining garden was not really a garden, but rather a very small dusty back yard, we were allowed to use the large garden behind their house. There was a “Gängelchen” (sweet little path) between the houses that had an iron gate opening onto to the street and at the other end, opened to the garden. My brother and I often played on this path where people would greet us as they walked by.

Our children’s bedroom was also a shower, or rather, a bathroom. The little room was long and narrow. A coal stove was at the entrance, a wardrobe was opposite the stove and next came the bunk beds. I was afraid of falling and had so I the lower bunk. My brother Hartmut was the braver of us. There was also a small window looking out on the bakery and Aunt Lemy’s garden. The entry to the shower was opposite the beds. It wasn't really a children's bedroom, let alone a playroom, but it didn’t matter: we played outside most of the time anyway.

Our house was right on the main street and stood between the bakery and hairdressing salon. Opposite our house was the old school along with the school yard, neither of which were in use. There was a bakery, farm yards, a carpentry shop and a large old brick house which sheltered many people under its roof. Between the old carpentry shop and the brick house was the storage facility of a building yard. There were mountains of sand and gravel into which we would jump from the roof of an old shed. Wooden crates and shacks, one of which was an old furniture store with an old man who lived in the attic above - all of that was our playground. It was here, where we met up with our friends - we were a real little gang. Whenever we got together to play, we were always happy and completely exhausted by evening.

Most of all I liked to play hide and seek, and the large area opposite our small house was the best place for this game. I can still remember the excitement of sitting somewhere behind a pile of wood, crouched down so no one could see me, and then, when the coast was clear, to reach home-base unnoticed – going from wall to wall, from door to door, always careful not to be seen. Whoever was found last had to be the seeker next.

Those childhood years were truly carefree and happy - exciting for all of us. Of course I had a best friend: Paul, the second youngest in the family with nine siblings. He was just a month older than me. Together with Robert, the boy from the neighboring farm, we formed our very own bond of friendship. Of course, these two boys were invited to my birthday parties. Birthdays were always prepared and celebrated with a lot of love in my family. My father even took time off for birthdays, and closed his practice early so he could show my guests and me animated films. He owned a “film projection apparatus” very early on - that's what we called the projector. It was a very special thing for me to share; something that none of my friends had in their homes. Even before the first television moved into our house, my father showed us these funny cartoons on our birthdays – great little stories of an evil witch who turned children to stone and ended up falling into the cauldron, or Donald Duck, struggling with a deck chair. The last film was the highlight: Charlie Chaplin in the department store. For the first few years I didn't really understand this film, but I always laughed at the funny-looking guy who moved so strangely and was terribly afraid of the department store boss with the long beard. In the evening, the birthday table was richly set. Birthdays were really very special days in my young life.

As far as I know, Paul was the first boy I fell in love with, without knowing exactly what "fell in love" meant. His life was very different from mine; his home was completely different from my more-or-less middle-class home. He lived in a large brick house with his nine siblings, his father and mother. I lived in a small house with four rooms and a toilet right next to the kitchen, built in the winter garden. At Paul’s home there were two rooms and the large kitchen with a cellar that could only be entered through a trap door. I was always afraid to step through this wooden door and I would never have gone down the steep stairs to the basement. I felt very comfortable in his kitchen. It often smelled of burnt wood, because the kitchen stove was still wood-fired. I liked being with Paul, so much so that, one day I announced to my mother that I would rather live with Paul and his family. She actually packed my suitcase. At the front door, however, I turned back and went into her arms. Anyway, at Paul's house, both the front and back doors were always open.

Both of Paul's parents had to work and, unlike my mother, often neither were at home. At Paul’s, we could roast bread in the pan with margarine any time we wanted. At home we only had "good" butter. My parents would never have bought margarine: my father always said derogatorily, "Margarine - that's monkey fat!” When the bread was the right dark color, we would put it on a plate and sprinkled sugar on it. Eating “sugar bread,” was Heaven; in our home even Nutella was forbidden.

Every Saturday at the same time, Paul had to go home for a bath. We could be deeply immersed in some game, but no matter how much fun we were having, when the call rang out across the schoolyard, he deserted us and I was left alone - usually everyone went home then. My friend from this big and permissive family always obediently went home at bath time, otherwise he would have gotten it with the wooden spoon. The bath oven was only heated on Saturday; by then we already had a water heater… of course, we also had a wooden spoon.

It was with my friend Paul that, when I was nine, I was intimate for the first time. To be honest, Paul was the one who explained things to me – explained very differently than my parents had.

Paul was straightforward and blunt. He also knew those „other words“ that we definitely weren’t supposed to say. I think that, because of the closeness within his family and the many older siblings who already had families themselves, Paul had learned early on about the sexual things that adults do.

At some point Paul's parents built a house and moved away from the center of the small town. We met for the first time at his new house in a strange and curious way. We were alone together. I don't remember exactly how it happened, only that, hidden next to the bed in his parents’ bedroom, we cautiously touched each other. We were both excited, and we both had the same desire to touch, but the fear of doing something forbidden and the fear of being discovered made us quickly pull up our pants. Then it was already over. We were together in this situation only once. We never talked about it again; it remained our secret. We pretended it never happened.

Our meetings became increasingly rare due to the move and the change of schools that went with it. After going to elementary school together, he went to the vocational school and I to the academic high school, so we only saw each other sporadically. Paul did an apprenticeship as a retail salesman and was very popular everywhere. My father was happy and pleased that he had become such an exemplary young man. He often made that comment to us at the dinner table.

At some point Paul left our little town. It was said that he had to go to Frankfurt for further training. When we were adults, we met by chance on the street at a church consecration festival. He was standing in front of me in a fur coat, a little embarrassed and yet overjoyed: "Yes, I'm fine, I got married, I have a child and, as you can see, have otherwise been very fortunate."

I later learned that he had become addicted to drugs and worked as a male prostitute in Frankfurt. He had no wife or child, but he did have men who provided him with enough money to get through life. A few days before his death, after they found him in the train station toilet with a heroin needle in his vein, I visited him at home. His mother asked me to come over. We saw each other through the glass pane, but he didn't open the front door. I stood completely helpless before him. Maybe he sensed that and for that reason didn't open the door. What could I have done other than talk to him and ask him to change his life - I, of all people, who was just in the process of trying to find a viable way through my own life? I was on the verge of graduating from high school and was totally unable to deal with Paul and his drug addiction. The little I knew from his “new” life I only knew from his mother's stories. Our two lives were miles apart: what his eyes had already seen and his ears already heard, what dangers and human depths he had encountered… No, I couldn't have saved him. I pray for him to this day.

Paul was homosexual, but he didn't stand a chance. As a homosexual in the country back then, you had to get away. Only the big city offered you enough anonymity to be able to somehow live as a gay man.

The big city was, first of all, freedom from suspicion, freedom from the fear of being discovered. In the country, if you hadn't found a “girlfriend for life” at the age of 18, you were somehow different; you were suspicious. In my school it was often rumored that I was “the other way around” – queer - which I could always refute with the presence of girlfriends at my side. In the big city, you didn't need alibi girlfriends as long as you lived for yourself. The city offered you what was practically non-existent in the country: sex in abundance, anonymously and for sale. But who of us country gays was ready and able to live in a big city like Frankfurt? My friend Paul certainly wasn’t. Of course, just like me, he had a deep longing for love and recognition, not as a gay man but as a person. Unfortunately, he came across men who exploited and abused him. This realization is bitter; drugs sweetened this bitterness and killed him in the process.

Until we meet again... I'll never forget him.

First contact with the church

I got to know the children's worship service through Paul. Everyone went there on Sundays - children's service was a change from everyday life. There were exciting stories and songs that would be with me for a lifetime. At the conclusion, we always sang “God bless our going” – accompanied by the organ, of course. The children's service was an immersion in a completely new world. My own parents didn't have much to do with the church, although my father came from a Protestant family and his sister, who lived in England, was married to an Anglican pastor. My mother came from a mixed marriage: Grandma Elfriede was Protestant, Grandpa Felix, who was originally Catholic, was excommunicated, left the church and until his dying day, was a great critic of the Catholic Church and its teachings. We were brought up in a Christian way without any real church connection. It was part of Christian education that we prayed together every evening, but that was enough God in my parents' life. And naturally, I imagined “dear God” as a kind old man with white hair and beard who saw everything and knew everything, and to whom I could say everything without knowing exactly what he really wanted from me.

The children's service was also an opportunity to meet friends on a Sunday. Otherwise, Sunday belonged to the family and we weren't allowed to see other people. Sundays were either for hiking or visiting relatives in Würzburg and along the Mosel River. Actually I would have rather been with my friends, but after worship, family life was the only thing on the program.

Most of the time, I let myself be persuaded to go along - my mother didn't like it when I "acted up,” at least that's what she called my pitiful attempts not to take part. Sometimes they lured me with candy and good food.

Now, when I think back on these hikes together, I feel happy and grateful. After all, every step I took back then was very good for me, not only physically but also mentally. Most of the time I walked along, holding hands with either my mother or Aunt Inge, or with a neighbor who always called me her "little oven" because my hands were always warm. I changed the hands I was holding so I could listen to the different adults telling their stories, and could also try to land a piece or two of candy from each. Back then I learned a lot about the world of the grownups and the exciting adventures that life had in store for us. I also got to know every tree and every bush, every flower and every insect along the way - and I learned to respect them all.

It was the village community that filled me with a good sense of security and at the same time educated me, along with what our parents taught us. Of course, our Aunts gave everything we encountered along the way a connection with God, because God created the flowers, bees and trees, exactly like he created me. Through the Aunts, I was convinced that I am a child of God.

"Go out, my heart and search for joy" was not just a song, but was really tangible. And when everyone sang, I sang along. Virtues such as courtesy, gratitude and kindness, respect for life, respect for the elderly were no strangers to my parents. And yet there were differences in our upbringing compared to the village community. Thus I was allowed to play with dolls while my brother loved the electric train. Of course, our parents taught us about sexuality and let us know that the sex education atlas was freely accessible. Nudity was not an issue; we were among the first to swim naked in Lake Gedern and even made the headlines of the local press. "American soldiers looked with envy at the little naked ones ..."

My mother sometimes worried about my so-called "cheekiness" – meaning my tendency to answer without being asked and to always comment on everything. She often had a hard time explaining my behavior, which sometimes earned me a good beating.

Back then it was certainly not easy for my parents. They tried to the best of their knowledge and belief to put me on a good path in life.

Potato harvest was a particularly beautiful time. Then we would drive to the field together with Pedder Werner on his tractor. These days were full of community life: everyone, from grandmother to the youngest helped out. Of course, my mother took part too, and sometimes even my father, when he didn't have any patients. My father had a camera, with which he captured important moments in our lives. Later, as an adult, I rediscovered my father's old films. One can see the joy we children had, holding up the potatoes we had collected from our baskets and showing them off. During the breaks, everyone met in the shade of the trailer and, sitting on the blankets they had brought with them, they ate bread and drank coffee with a lot of milk from the lid of a milk can.

Pedder and Gothe’s house was open to anyone who wanted something to eat. Once a year they invited everyone to the slaughter festival. It was a big and exciting event for me. Together; working, stirring blood, cooking sausages, setting the table, distributing the soup and then eating and drinking was the finest of togetherness. Later, they sent us children to the neighbors to distribute the sausage soup in milk churns, with warm regards from the slaughter festival. A banquet like this shouldn’t just be a blessing for one’s own house, but also for others: the neighbors, who should share in the blessing. These slaughter festivals were so important to me that once I actually walked from my school in the old castle to my godfather’s house with a broken foot so I could participate. I suppressed the pain, pretending it wasn’t so bad, so that the school wouldn’t call home; and then I limped to the party. It was only when everyone had eaten their fill that I let myself be taken to the hospital, where I was X-rayed and got a cast. My mother said later, I did it for only one reason: the food. Actually that’s only half the truth. The other half is the abiding love I felt, and still feel, when I think of my godparents. I was so happy to be in their house and garden, in the pigsty and in the hen house, in the living room, and especially in their kitchen.

My parents, like many other parents, tried to be fair in raising their children. The rules for the one applied to the other. Our gifts were always similar in value: whatever one got, the other got something of equivalent worth. We even looked like twins: we had the same haircut, the same lederhosen, the same shirts and cardigans. Whoever saw us from a distance couldn’t tell us apart. No matter how we looked on the outside, we were very different on the inside. We dealt very differently with what life had to offer. My brother Hartmut was calm - I was the spotlight; he was deliberate. I was spontaneous; he was technical and agile. But I had two left hands, at least when it came to working or building. I learned to play guitar and cook early on. I loved baking cookies with mother or helping her in the kitchen. We sang or she told us stories. There were no secrets between my mother and me, at least not yet.

While my brother was reading all the Karl May books, I stood in front of the mirror and, with my counterpart image, acted out the fairy tales and stories I had heard. I stood before the mirror for hours with Mother’s golden scarf over my head, her hat atop the scarf, and I was transformed into the princess who was waiting with longing for her prince, or I had just been seduced by the evil stepmother to eat the poisoned apple. When I was ten, I knew all of my parents' records by heart. I waited with the singer Lale Andersen on the quay of Piraeus for the ship that would come, or moved with Freddy Quinn into the wide, wide world. When I got a little older I discovered, through my father, even the hits of a bygone era. Zarah Leander hung next to an oversized picture of Christ in oil. "The world does not end with this" and "Who will cry for love?"

Just like the stories, I took the songs into my life and partly lived through them. And just as I used to be the “Bunny in the rabbit-hole” or the “Little boy at the pond,” when I reached puberty, I dreamed of the “strange man who lived right across the street” and whom I could never reach. I asked with Chris Roberts "Why is that all? I just want to love". And I would cry to "Oh head full of blood and wounds" until I would lose my voice.

My brother couldn't relate to all of this. It was probably not easy for him to live with such an eccentric brother. But siblings, like parents, cannot be chosen. In our childhood we were very close, partly due to the size of our little house. When we got older, we often quarreled. Today we appreciate and love each other, precisely because of our differences.

Early Youth

In September of 1966 we moved out of the “city center,” leaving the little house that was torn down shortly afterwards - Aunt Lemy needed space to expand her hair salon. We moved up the mountain to a house that my parents had

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 17.05.2021
ISBN: 978-3-7487-8304-6

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