Sexual-minority Christians: A typology of identity outcomes and tension resolution

Faith (or religious) and sexual identities are explored in this paper. A review of the literature demonstrates that there are multiple pathways and multiple tension-resolution outcomes of one's religious and sexual identities. A typology is proposed that individuates these identity outcomes into eight types. Additionally, an investigation was conducted utilizing a web-based questionnaire to determine if these eight types of outcomes do in fact exist in a population of sexual-minority persons who have at some point in time considered themselves to be Christian. Discovering how people ultimately identify themselves with regard to their Christian faith and their sexual identity is the concern of this study; this investigation is not about the mutability of orientation. Participants were solicited for an Internet-based survey of the relationship between sexuality and religious beliefs. Nonparametric statistics and a combined Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Grounded Theory qualitative methodology were used to analyze participants' ( n = 177) responses. An additional category was evident in the responses of some participants that was not accounted for in the a priori identity types. This exploratory study gives limited support for the proposed typology as evidenced by a chi-square goodness of fit test and nonparametric analyses with qualitative themes. No predictive factors for the typology were found by way of a Multinomial Logistic Regression in terms of religious or sexual identity statuses. However, the qualitative themes that emerged through stringent content analyses point to different emphases for persons in each identity outcome, suggesting the existence of either the typology postulated or one similar.