A Missionary to his Hometown

I'd like to thank your Reverend, the honorable Beau Smith, for inviting me to speak at your beautiful church. And I want to thank you, the good people of Quinwood, for allowing me into this house of the Lord. I will try to hold myself to half an hour, if you can stand me for that long. But I have been known to meander.

As you likely know, we have a celebrity of far greater illustriousness than myself in attendance, right here in the front row, a state senator representing this district up in Atlanta. Senator William Weathers. Good day to you Senator. I don’t know how well you remember me, but we met a long time ago. And I hope you don’t mind having a cameo in my little speech.

But let me introduce myself. My name is James Wilson Hughs. I was born here in Quinwood, but I’ve been away a long time. You may have seen me around town these last few days. Maybe we’ve spoken. Maybe we’ve had a conversation where I mostly listened. I’ll be doing a lot of talking right now, but I assure you I prefer to listen.

I’ve served as a missionary for most of my life. I've been to Africa: to Monrovia, and Sudan, and half a dozen countries in between. I've lived in Myanmar, Bangladesh, and some of the big cities of east Asia. I've even been to some really strange and exotic locales, like New York and Los Angeles. I remember how afraid I was to leave this town, but I was ready to listen to what the world had to say.

I was so young then. And I must say I’m pleased to see a few young people in the congregation today. But there ain’t as many as before. Thirty years ago, my friends and I would all go to church together, this very church, and we’d all sit toward the front. Our parents thought we were adorable.

But the newest generation ain’t as pious as those past. Church attendance is at an all-time low in America. And that’s a trend going back a long way, to before my time. And if I had a nickel for every time some adult wondered aloud why kids were forsaking God, well, I'd have at least a dollar or so.

So what I want to talk about is how so many young people flee little towns like this one. They run off with big dreams of college, careers, art or movies, romance perhaps. And kids ain’t that different in Africa or Asia. So many of them leave to pursue what they see as a higher calling. 

In my travels I’ve met many young folk: other missionaries far from home, teenagers drawn to travel or city life… you know Sudan is practically a nation of children. And you might be surprised how much young people everywhere will tell you, if you’re willing to listen.

I was one of these young people. I was born here in Quinwood, raised here in Quinwood. I thought I might spend my life working in Quinwood, maybe work at the old farm supply factory that’s since fallen into disrepair. 

Instead I ran off to be a missionary. You probably knew my parents, they retired just a few months back, left for a beach town in Florida about fifty miles down I-95. Part of me wishes they were here right now, another part is glad they ain’t.

I’ve been gone, let’s see now, twenty-three years this past June. Left one year out of high school. And as I said, I’ve been all over: big cities, missionary housing, great rice patty farms… refugee camps. I’ve been to megachurches and huge national stadiums. I’ve seen the Great Eye of the Sahara and the wonders of Egypt that the Israelites escaped from. 

But I’ve always loved small towns the most. They have small towns everywhere you know. They got’em in west Africa. They got’em in Sudan, though when I lived there far too many were cleaned out. They got small towns in Myanmar and Bangladesh. Even big cities got small towns, though they usually call them boroughs, or wards, or some such.

So I’ve been asking myself a lot: why do young people flee small towns? Why did I flee my own small town? Cause I’ll tell you right now, those big cities aren’t better. Bigger, sure. More amenities perhaps. But not better. But if I loved small towns so much, if I loved Quinwood so much, why did I stay away so long?

I tried listening to my own heart, hoping for answers, but it wasn’t talkin’. So I asked other young folk, every one who’d give me any kind of answer. I’d ask my fellow missionaries, and city kids living on their own: young people in Freetown, Tokyo, Naypidaw and New York: “Why’d you leave your hometown?” and I’d sit back and just listen.

And more often than not they’d talk and talk without any further prompting. And I learned more about other people than I ever did in any classroom. And whatever their reasons for leaving, it was rare for any of them to say they hated their hometown. They may have hated things that were done to them. They may have hated the way they were treated. They may have said their lives were boring or uninteresting or they wished there were more types of people where they came from, but they always, always, had something they loved. Something they missed.

Within fifteen minutes of talking about their hometowns, most kids get to reminiscing about some little detail or other: How goats would come to the fence each time they passed by, or how they got a thrill when they saw the fairground going up each summer, or how some family friend always had a folksy sayin’ for every occasion, or how some small part of their little town was beautiful. 

I still think the edge of the swamp here in Quinwood is beautiful. I could sit by the water and listen to the frogs and herons all day. Even as I talk about it now, as I look into this sea of proud faces, I can’t believe I stayed away twenty-three years.

So what keeps these kids away? It was the hypocrites. Maybe that’s me reading between the lines, but that’s how I saw it. Young people these days may not always recognize God, but they recognize honesty.  They learn quick when you’re feeding them a load of bull, when you don’t even believe your own words. And then they’ll either copy you, or flee at the first chance they get. You either run from the hypocrites or you join them.

There’s a man I went to see on this subject, a man who knows more about hypocrisy than maybe anyone. His name is Carl Thacker. He was a reverend at a church far bigger than this one. Does anyone remember Reverend Carl Thacker? Anyone?

A few hands. Will anyone admit to having been a fan of his? One hand. Very brave of you ma’am. Still a fan? No, no of course not. But I can’t blame you for liking him back then, he was very charismatic, very compelling from the pulpit.

I’ll admit I was a fan as a young man. I loved Rev. Thacker’s bravado. I loved his big, baritone voice. I loved the way he joked, it made him sound not so angry. He had this one joke that always made the whole giant church laugh, he’d say “The people you can’t trust can be identified by their secret code: L… G… B… T… CDEFG... they think they can round up the whole alphabet to come get you!” As a child I barely knew what any of those letters meant, ‘cept that you didn’t want to be any of them.

I won’t go too much into this man’s sordid past, I see some of you cringing in pain already. I know that feeling, felt it when I walked to meet Carl Thacker at the federal penitentiary where he was held. Tax evasion was what got him, ten million worth. I won’t blame anyone for being sick of taxes, but if you’re making tens of millions why not just pay it, you’ll still have tens of millions?

But enough about that. Money is what sent him to prison, but it was hypocrisy what ruined his reputation. That man preached on many topics, some of them even positive. But he was known more than anything for going after gay folk, and then he turned out to be gay himself, and an enthusiastic practitioner at that. Not to get too salacious, but the phrase “a different escort every night” was thrown around in the media a lot.

I’m surprised he agreed to meet me, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. It must be hard to go from having millions hanging on every word and then have them all abandon you. And that man could still soliloquize. I barely even sat down before he went into a long speech.

He talked about being set up, about dirty prosecutors and lies and hellfire tarnation. I let him go on for a while, but visitation only lasted an hour and interjecting would have been like trying to stop a locomotive with a Honda. I had to act like I might leave to get his attention.

I said to him “I ain't here for this. If all you got is spin, I'm out. But if you want to say what's in your heart, I'll stay and listen and not say another word.”

He looked at me and smiled and said “the truth in my heart?” And he chuckled.

And I said “yes, the truth in your heart. I ain’t recording, and you’re cooked anyway. Why not just say why you did what you did?”

So he narrowed his eyes and got reflective. And he did talk, but slower than before, and his accent changed if you believe that, more homey if you know what I mean. And I can’t repeat everything he said, that would take the better part of an hour, but I’ll try to summarize, and I’ll let you decide if he was being honest.

What he said was that he’d had wicked urges for as long as he could remember. For a long time he resisted temptation. But as he gained fame and riches, possibilities opened such that he could resist no longer. 

He claimed he sat up one night, after his escort for the evening had left, and wondered how he could continue living in sin. A thought hit him as he stared at the clean white ceiling of some fancy hotel. The thought was this, and I’ll do my best to quote him exactly: “Maybe I can’t resist my own temptations. Maybe I’m weak. But if I can save others from the same fate, maybe that will be good enough in God’s eyes.”

That was Reverend Thacker’s explanation for why he demonized gay people with such fervor. He couldn’t resist his own temptations, so he punished others to make up for it. If this meant turning parents against their children, or turning siblings against one another, so be it. If it meant conversion therapy or indoctrination camps, that didn’t matter. He partook in whatever pleasure he wanted while punishing others, so many of them children, for wanting a little happiness of their own. “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Mark 7:6.

I see lots of thoughtful faces in this congregation, and that heartens me. This is a tough subject, and I don’t claim a monopoly on truth. I don’t blame you if you’re skeptical. But I also note that not a single soul has left, and admit to being surprised at that. Y'all might be apprehensive of what I’ll say next. You might be uncomfortable, but you’re listening.

So now let’s circle back, talk more about what drove a lot of young people away from their homes, away from small towns. A lot of what they told me feels small to hear, but grows bigger if it happens to you. 

They’d talk about parents who watched cable all day telling them to put their cell phones away. Or churches spent lavishly on renovations. Or fathers who treated their families different based on how the Seminoles or Bulldogs did the previous Saturday. Or pastors that preached about drugs while having their own secret stash. So often it came down to hypocrisy.

But I never said why I left Quinwood, what was the hypocrisy that drove me away? If you knew me back then, twenty or thirty years ago, maybe you thought I was the most pious kid in town. But I wasn’t. And this is where I must address you, senator. I’m surprised, you appeared so serene, almost uninterested this whole time, because my image of you from those decades ago was akin to a hawk, always vigilant. 

Your wife Barbra I think has a better idea, she’s been shooting you looks. Now I know It’s not considered polite to confront a man on a Sunday. But I made a promise I’d say what I had to say, whether you were here or not.

Now, if you knew me as a young man, as the senator did, or if you’ve been listening closely to what I’ve been saying, you may have guessed my dark secret. I am in that big, silly alphabet. I am of the G. I am a gay man. Celibate, but I have been tempted many times. This has been a source of some great fear and shame all my life.

There were so many times as a young person, when I realized how sinful my thoughts were, and I recoiled in fear. For a long while, every time I had to interact with another boy, the fear that I might be attracted to him took hold of me so tight. 

And that’s where our state senator came in-

Now senator Weathers, I hope you won’t make a scene. You don’t even know what I’m about to say. Alright. Alright. Obviously you’re free to leave. I’d have preferred to speak to you first but you wouldn’t return my calls. Well, it is a long walk from the front pew to the exit now isn’t it?

Where was I? Oh yes, I was a young man of fifteen, and the senator was a fresh-faced youth pastor of twenty-five who must have seen how scared I got in certain situations. Don’t worry, this isn’t going exactly where you’re thinking. 

William Weathers recognized my fear and used that fear against me. I’ll never forget his words when he walked up to me, smiling all bright: “You look like a boy who could use some work for his idle hands.” It was like he could see inside me, see how small my heart and soul were, and how easily he could cast his shadow over them. 

He recognized I would do anything to keep my secret. And so he called upon me for every forsaken job he could think of. So I cleaned gutters, shingled roofs, polished toilets, in this very church and at his family’s ranch. I appeared as the most devoted young servant in all God’s flock. But I was simply afraid of earthly punishments.

I've spoken with many of you, yesterday and today. And several of you recognized me, though the years have not been kind to my baby face or my hairline. And in one way or another, many of you intimated similar use, or abuse, at the hands of our good senator, or his parents from which he learned these skills of manipulation. They are masters at seeing into the hearts of people and using their fears against them.

Their list of sins, major sins, are so long and so well-known that you might think them foolish. But they ain’t. They revel in getting away with it. They revel in pushing people around, in how easily they can intimidate a whole town.

I won’t out anyone else’s shame here, but I think the fact that you’ve let me speak this long says something about how all of you feel. I do not feel brave at this moment. I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I’m some bastion of integrity.

Because I didn’t become a missionary out of piety, but because it seemed like the only way out. I didn’t ask all those kids why they left home because I’m some thoughtful person, I did it because I was searching for an answer to my own shame. I didn’t interview Rev. Thacker because I wanted a deeper understanding of sin, I interviewed him hoping to find a way to free myself from my own guilt.

I waited to return ‘til my parents moved out because I’m not sure if I could have handled their faces, sayin’ all this in public. I’m a coward. I’m a sinner. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to tar and feather me. The hypocrisy that drove me away from this town, and kept me away, was my own.

I’ve always been a believer in “Love the sinner. Hate the sin.” I will never stop hating my own sins. But I hope to get better at identifying what’s a sin and what ain’t.

In a minute I’m going to step down, return to my pew, join you in listening to the good Rev. Smith finish this holy mass. That’s where I feel most comfortable, silent and listening.