Bringing Me Back to Me

By Matthew Drapper

Born into a Christian cult, Matthew was raised believing Satan is at war with Christians and God is at war with the Gays. Home-schooled with no sex-education, Matthew was terrified to discover he was attracted to men himself. The war had entered his own body.

For over ten years, Matthew tried everything to allow his God Side to destroy his Gay Side, culminating with an exorcism at St Thomas Philadelphia in a misguided attempt to remove the “demons associated with homosexuality.”

St Thomas Philadelphia church has always denied they performed dangerous exorcisms on gay people to turn them straight. Matthew Drapper throws open the church doors to reveal the scandalous secrets of spiritual abuse hidden behind enticing community, wild worship and devastating promises of miracles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780244277833

Book preview

Bringing Me Back to Me

Bringing Me Back to Me

by Matthew Drapper

Copyright

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2020

ISBN: 978-0-244-27783-3

Buxton, United Kingdom. Benson Frisbee Press.

www.bensonfrisbee.com

[e-mail]

Copyright © 2020 by Matthew Drapper

Publisher: Benson Frisbee Press

Cover photo by Tabi. Used by permission.

Author’s Notes

Trigger warnings: There is mention of physical abuse of children, talk about sexuality, reference to people using gay slurs, discussion of spiritual abuse including so-called exorcism and discussion of demons as though they are real entities. If you find the text triggers an unhelpful or painful response in you, please speak to someone you trust and seek relevant help where necessary.

A note about gender: I was raised using the male pronoun for God. I use the gender neutral pronoun they to refer to God for the most part, while at times in the text I refer to God as He or Him. When I speak about the elements of Purity Culture specifically, I use the language of male and female as this is the binary which Purity Culture attempts to create. It is not my intention to erase nonbinary gender.

A note about sexuality: Though I now think of sexuality as queer and attraction as a sliding scale, I have tended to use the more generic terms: gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual to reflect my thoughts at the time. I realise these are not rigid structures.

A note about marriage: During the period I am writing about, I tended to lean towards acceptability politics, where being ethically gay can be compared to being ethically straight as if one were the measuring-stick of the other, or as if there were a moral expectation to be something, rather than to simply exist and connect. Having a relationship is not the end goal of life for all people. There is far more to celebrate in life! For some a relationship is unwanted, unneeded or looks different to the expectations of others. Relationship was a primary goal for me at the time I’m writing about, so this is reflected in the text, but it is not my intention to put this upon other people.

A note about spirits/demons/angels: During the period I am writing about, I believed in spirits as tangible beings with agency. They are presented that way within the text, for example I may say, I saw an angel rather than, I believed I saw an angel. This does not always reflect my current beliefs.

A note about Glory, encountering God, etc: The world is an extremely mysterious place and I do not want to take away from that mystery by attempting to explain away every spiritual experience. During the period I am writing about, I believed that I could hear from God directly, encounter them in visions and experience their presence. This does not always reflect my current beliefs. Safeguarding is absolutely vital for any attempt to connect with things beyond our current understanding. Always take care.

A note about names/events: Some names have been changed and people have been merged. If I refer to people by their real name, these are the stories as I remember them and not necessarily as they were. Dialogue has been approximated. Teaching at the Prayer Team Evening has been merged from several teaching sessions, including a Form organised visit to the Catch the Fire International School of Ministry. However, the exorcism itself happened exactly as I have written it.

A note about Journals: Some Journal entries have been shortened, but otherwise are presented as they appear in my handwritten notebooks. Notes in (parenthesis) have sometimes been added to journal entries for explanation or commentary.

A note about Bible quotes: All Bible quotes are approximate, paraphrased. The theology I present within the book reflects my theology at the time, which was largely unaware of Jewish traditions regarding the Scriptures. Elements of supersessionism (the view that the Christian Church/Christ has any superiority to or completion of Judaism) may remain within the text. This does not reflect my current beliefs.

A note of my current beliefs: They cannot be simplified to a note. God is love, and the universe is mysterious. Love God and love your neighbour as yourself (which includes loving yourself!)

1.

My journals do not tell all my secrets, because I was afraid that the devil would read them.

Where I grew up, in a stone-built Georgian farmhouse in Dorset, we believed in angels and demons, strong spiritual forces we should contend with throughout our lives. We, the Drapper family, were a chosen people and we would be integral in turning the tide of humanism and immorality that was sweeping the country.

Where some fathers dreamed of their kids joining the football team, my dad was building an army. We were expected to say not just Yes, but Yes Sir and switched with a cane if we did not. In the future, we would be leading a rebel resistance against a world government run by the Antichrist and his followers who would be tattooed with the numbers 666, the mark of the beast (though at other times, the number of the beast was going to be programmed into credit cards, and others it appeared as the last three digits on barcodes. It was hard to keep up, let’s be honest.)

Hi, my name is Matthew Drapper and I am taking a look back over my life, having gathered up a full box of notebooks and journals in every shade and colour, some with fluffy exteriors and googly eyes, another a simple flipbook, one with a message emblazoned across the cover declaring Love Lifts Up! above a rustic drawing of a balloon and a bird flying upwards. I have a Muppet Show notebook stuffed full of notes from sermons that told me God hates the gays and that we have to work our ass off to gain God’s approval. Every journal begins full of hope with an announcement of, New Notebook, New Me! and is swiftly followed by coffee stains (and tear stains).

I will attempt to fill in the blanks where I have left out events, where entries were written in FAITH rather than reality, or where I wasn’t aware of everything else was going on in the world while I lived in my Christian bubble.

In 2013, I thought I was the only person fighting with gay attraction and later for gay rights, little knowing that in reality I owed my life to the actions of gay liberation activists before I was born.

In 1977, ten years before I was born, activist Thom Higgins pushed a fruit pie into the face of anti-gay organiser Anita Bryant. By the time my wide shoulders got stuck during birth on the 15th November, 1987, and I was pulled into the world by a midwife at Bournemouth Hospital, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans activists (particularly black and Latinx trans activists) in New York and around the world were already hard at work. They organised protests with the AIDS awareness group ACT UP and threw balloons filled with fake blood at medical conventions to gain the attention of politicians who restricted access to HIV medication. For hundreds of years, queer families had welcomed homeless teens into their homes and built houses that stuck together, actively fighting against anyone who would see us all dead or hidden forever.

Born in southwest England to conservative Christian parents, I was starkly unaware of this pantheon of queer saints who had gone before.

***

27-03-12: Journal Entry: Have you ever seen a miracle? (No.)

If you define a miracle as instantaneous, supernatural, physical event, then I never would, either.

If a miracle can be seen as any courageous act of survival: I was about to.

01-08-13: Journal Entry: I’m gay. (I was.)

***

In August 2013, I sat on the edge of my bed in a house I shared with seven other people in Buxton, Derbyshire, and clicked open my internet browser to refresh my emails.

I had sent out five emails with the header, Important Information About Me to my family back down south. Mom and Dad’s were sent together, another went to my dad’s dad, one to my older sister Bex, and one each to the two eldest of the nine younger siblings who had followed me into existence.

I already knew how my older sister would react, that she would say she had always known and congratulations and how pleased she was to see that I was finally coming away from the dangerous influence of the controlling family she had protected herself and her own children from by cutting our parents off completely when she divorced the husband she had married aged nineteen as a chance to escape from our Christian extremist family.

It was the reaction of the Christian extremists that I was worried about.

***

13-12-11: Journal Entry: Nice date 13 12 11. I wish I had no desire for closeness with a human being. Lilly told me at the weekend that a problem shared was a problem solved, but in my experience a problem shared can as easily be a problem doubled! (Lilly, a friend from work, had not grown up in a Christian extremist cult and didn’t get it even though she tried. She would be the first person I told in real life.)

26-07-13: Life begins afresh every day and every day you have new choices and new challenges. Your history stays but only you can choose whether that history will define you or is simply a part of you. I’m hoping this summer will make a difference in my life but I know that can’t happen without causing someone pain, either myself or my family or my friends or all of the above. I’m at Oliver’s (takeaway chicken shop) for a burger since Grant (my fireman friend) is staying in and Julie (work friend) hasn’t text back to say if Tesco is open this late and I’m hungry and have £50 to spend in tips! I miss Nadia (best friend, moved away) but…

28-07-13: …my last entry was interrupted by the arrival of my chicken burger! Sorry Nadia. Today it’s Sunday and I’ve set a date for my coming out to the family. Thursday. That’s four days from now. I hope I survive it. I feel like there’s a meteor headed for earth and I’m the only one who knows.

29-07-13: The countdown is on. I can feel it. Lots to do, most of all pray and prepare. I’ve started thinking of my suffering as a handicap. And I feel like people will be telling me, ‘Grow a leg by faith!’ and I’ll only be able to say, ‘I can’t. I don’t have enough faith!’ But what I’ll be thinking is, ‘Surely it takes more faith to go through life WITHOUT a leg?’

***

Hitting send on those emails to my family, I assumed I would never see my kid brothers and sisters again. My dad had made it clear early on in our lives that if we disgraced the family with our personal sins, he would be forced to resign any public Christian commitments he had. My older sister, Bex, had briefly dated a non-Christian guy from the Sea Cadets she attended in the seaside town we grew up close to. When my parents found out, Dad threatened to quit his job as a Church Pastor if she dated someone who was not saved. Years later, when she got a divorce from the Christian husband she had married too young, too quickly, and before she had a chance to learn about her own self, Dad resigned his job as an evangelist (Christian training and outreach leader), they could no longer pay the bills on our giant farmhouse and the family were forced to move to a smaller home where five of the boys shared one room, and three girls shared another. How would these people react to my coming out? Surely this would be seen as a crime against decency ten times worse than going on a date with the fit non-Christian soldier boy in training.

Growing up, I remember my dad had a book about (presumably) Gay Nazi’s entitled the Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party. The X in Sexuality was replaced with a stylised swastika. (Yes, really.) I was creeped out by it and didn’t dare touch or read it, knowing it described me and my deeply evil inner self. I had spent my whole life being told inadvertently through overheard conversations that the gay movement was a dangerous propaganda run by big government to undermine God. (Can God be undermined?)

Coming out was a sign of a massive failure to deal with my issues myself. Coming out would be embarrassing to the family brand. Coming out doubled up the sin because it was sinning and being PROUD of the sin.

I hadn’t always felt that way.

***

The Story So Far: From a Blog Post written in 2015:

Age 13ish, too young to know better. I'm scared. I don't know what relationships are really but I know I don't want to have the same story as my parents. I love them, but it's not MY story. I feel trapped, looking at my future and their past and the Bible and the concept of FAMILY and RELATIONSHIP and worst of all RESPONSIBILITY and COMMITMENT. Uuuuch… No. Not for me that. And frankly I don't really know how it all works plumbing-wise but putting THAT in there to produce those? I'm already a germaphobe! Let's not even talk about genitalia. I've seen the movies and it all seems a sweaty, messy affair and whatever that is it's not worth the ten kids it seems to suddenly spawn. Girls? No. I'm Peter Pan. I'll stay forever young. I'll be forever free.

A little sex education would have gone a long way.

Our Christian, American, (Extremist), home-schooling curriculum described procreation just one time in the biology text books and the writers were too embarrassed to use the human form and illustrated with a picture of a chicken and an egg to describe how it works. (Which came first?)

Known as Accelerated Christian Education (stylised as ACE), this system of workbooks had been launched in the 1970s and used rote learning (pages of text, and pages of questions) with almost as much Bible content as actual teaching. One workbook said horrifyingly: People mistakenly believe that an individual is born homosexual and his attraction to those of the same sex is normal...THE BIBLE teaches that homosexuality is sin…God commanded that homosexuals be put to death.

My parents and dad’s dad have long fought against substantial sex education being provided in schools, writing letters to governments and church organisations, demanding Sanity and decency please! in email headings as petitions are sent around at least once a year. Their attempts to prevent sex education would seem more sincere if my dad’s dad was not known to have consistently abused vulnerable women in his position as a pastor.

Without decent sex education, children may not have the language they need to explain that they are being abused or treated badly at home or in a public space. Learning your body is your own, about your biology and that enthusiastic consent is vital to sex enables people to see themselves as individuals with agency within relationships. Particularly for women, this gives them options beyond becoming the expectation of some extreme Christians, traditional guardians of the home. This is one reason extremist Christians, like my granddad, organise against comprehensive sex education being provided.

Because I knew so little about the process of sex, I was terrified that if I went to the toilet and touched anything that I would (even having scrubbed my hands red raw) accidentally carry some speck of sperm on my hands. What if I then held hands with one of my sisters and they went to the toilet and wiped their hoohas? What if I somehow I got them pregnant???

When I was maybe five or six I got into a cycle of hand washing anxiety. I had learnt about GERMS and was convinced I could feel them on my hands and see them as green splodges that followed me, turning everything I touched into a mouldy growing mildew. No sooner had I scrubbed my palms raw than I'd touch the bathroom door handle and begin to feel a doorknob sized circle of germs crawling over my skin. Back to the sink, wash, turn off the tap with elbows, don't touch the towel, dry hands with rapid shaking and get out of there! Phew, safe at last in the hall, down the stairs (don't touch the rail) and into the safe zone that is the living room (the kitchen being a germ pit in and of itself). Luckily, my mom took this in hand and didn't let it explode into a life affecting anxiety. She told me about germs and dirt and good and bad microbes and how everyone should eat a peck of dirt before you die anyway. She once blew up at me in a fit of frustration as I was washing my hands for the seventh time in a row. She warned me that if I was ever going to get married and have sex then I was going to need to get over my fear of things being dirty, because sex is dirty, and things aren't always hygienic, and you have to touch genitals and there is mess and goo.

As I said, a little sex education wouldn’t have gone amiss.

***

The Story So Far: From 2015:

"Age 15ish, a room of my own. I know some would think it's pretty late for this, but I am discovering myself at the age of fifteen. The only sex-education I've had comes from Proverbs (the book of the Bible filled with ‘wisdom’). Avoid the adulterous woman! Pursue wisdom. Blow on my garden that my spices may flow out. (Don’t ask, something from the Bible!!!?) I accidentally discover masturbation without the presence of porn or even a fantasy (I was jiggling my legs together under my desk in my room, bopping to a song by the Donut Man, a Christian kids’ song writer, when a tingle went through me and I liked it!) For a few weeks it’s just a sensation that floats, looking for connection. I found something sticky one night in my pyjamas and my dad explained that sometimes happens.

"My mind knows this is supposed to connect to ‘relationship’ in some way, but masturbating also zings with a warning of ‘SIN’ too. (In youth group, a teen with dyed red hair asked our youth pastor, ‘Did Jesus masturbate??’ and I jumped in with no hesitation, interrupting the hot young pastor who led our group and whose face burnt red with embarrassment for me, ‘Of course Jesus didn’t masturbate,’ I insisted, ‘He was never married!’) No one's discussing it, and Google in its earliest stages before even the Google Doodle has very little to say except on some sites, ‘Masturbation is sin!’ and others, ‘Your body is your own! Masturbation is freedom!’

"The Bible has a vague story about some guy whose seed spills on the floor and he dies, but I can't really make that apply in this case. Lust, I know, is wrong though. So it's all a very messy, guilty affair that feels right and wrong at the same time, with some clumsily pasted together images that swirl from faceless marriage fantasies, to steamy scenes from the Star Trek Universe novels, to a story I read in a Christian magazine of trafficked boys who were forced to have sex (that can’t be a sinful fantasy, if even in the fantasy there isn’t a lust choice, just sex, right?)

"I take showers (after) and feel Jesus