Our Stories Project

I was born into the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. As my parents told the story, my mother gave birth in a clinic in Whitney, Texas, on a Friday night, and I was in the church pew Sunday morning. My mother’s father, Rev. Roy Shelton, was a CP minister. He had nine children. Four of the five girls married ministers, and two of the four boys became ministers. A third of his sons became a church organist. One of my uncles, Dr. Robert M. Shelton, served as Dean of Austin Seminary.

My father was reared in the CP Church in Dallas, as his mother’s family members were long-term members of the CP Church in Marshall, Texas. As a young man, my father, Rev. Robert “Bob” Hull, heard his call from God to preach the Word. From a poor family, he was blessed to be able to attend Bethel College, where he met my mother, Kathy Shelton Hull. They were married in the First CP Church in McKenzie, Tennessee. My grandfather officiated. Both of my parents were devoted to the CP Church.

My mother attended CPYC as a youth and was the camp music director for many years. She directed the choir in every church where we were members. After serving churches in Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, my father worked for the Board of Stewardship. He went on to be pastor at Lawrenceburg CP Church, Murfreesboro CP church, Faith CP church in Metairie, LA, First CP Church in McKenzie, and Gleason CP Church. One of his proudest achievements was being elected the Moderator of the General Assembly.

Besides my parents and grandparents, Uncle John Smith, Uncle Jimmy Knight, Uncle Robert Shelton, cousins Jim & Maribeth McGuire, cousin Geoff Knight, cousins Susan & Matt Gore have all given their entire careers to the church. And we considered most of the clergy of my parents’ generation to be family—our extended church family. There are far too many to name, from Japan to Colombia to Texas to Tennessee to Illinois to Alabama. Throughout our lives, they have expressed their love for me and my two brothers.

I mention all of this background not as a way of simply stating my pedigree. But I mention my ancestry and heritage as an introduction to my confession of faith. Not only is my every memory rooted in the church, my entire being swirls from these roots. In my adolescence, as I was developing my identity, my father received the call to serve Lawrenceburg CP Church, in rural Middle Tennessee. I was nurtured by Miss Lurlene, Jane Crowder, Strib McLean, Hazel Kraus, Minnie Fae Morrison, Joe & Clara Baxter, Miss Anna Mae Springer, Clifton & Janie Philpot, and many other faithful CP church members. My parents and all of the loving people around me probably assumed that I was gay. I was bright, talented, cheerful, and prissy. I knew God loved me, and I felt Jesus’ embrace from all of those around me.

At CPYC the year after my senior year in high school, I was elected Moderator of CPYC. The following year, I started school at Northwestern University in Illinois. On February 2, 1975, I met my lover at the university chapel. He was preaching in the pulpit, and I was singing with the chapel choir in the choir loft. The family tradition continued. The following summer, I returned to Lawrenceburg for the summer and CPYC. It was very important for me that I reconcile my religious beliefs with my sexuality. I shared my thoughts with our good friend, Rev. Roy Blakeburn, and he lovingly supported me. Many years later, he told me that my trusting him enough to talk about my sexuality was one of the richest gifts he had ever received.

My coming out to my parents was textbook. After Sunday dinner, my parents always took a nap on Sunday afternoons— a clergy couple tradition. One Sunday, I found my mother resting in the living room. She sheepishly asked if we could talk. Mother confessed that she had “accidentally” read one of Robert’s letters to me. She wanted me to explain if we were boyfriends. I shared my thoughts and feelings and experiences of the previous year at college. I have never doubted my parents’ unfaltering love for me and my brothers. We cried together. She held me. I held her. My father joined us.

When people ask me what it means to be a Christian and accept myself as a homosexual, I find it simple. I explain that the core principal, which I was taught by my parents and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, is GRACE. The Grace of God knows no bounds. We are all saved only through Grace. (As an aside, our church in Whitehaven, Tennessee, was Grace CP Church.) I heard my father preach many sermons, pronouncing that the redemptive Grace of Jesus is not tolerance, is not an excuse, is not an apology. The depth of God’s Grace is unfathomable. It exists from the beginning of time and endures to the end of the ages. God’s Grace is all knowing. Grace is a part of our creation and our entire beings. Without the understanding of Grace, we cannot understand the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.

In that belief, I have lived a healthy life as a homosexual son of God. Robert went on to attend seminary at the Episcopal Divinity School and was ordained as an Episcopal priest, 37 years ago. We adopted our son, Sean Patrick, in 1990. He is the joy of our lives. Mother’s biggest disappointment in learning that I am gay was that I might not be able to be a parent. She adored Sean Patrick and proudly showed him off to all of her friends.

I became a social worker—my secular ministry—and have worked in community mental health, child protective services, criminal and civil court. For the past twenty years, I have supervised an adult probation office, helping people in the criminal justice system. I try to share the message of God’s Love to all of my clients. I give anti-racism workshops, where I proudly tell about my father and his colleagues from the CP Center marching heroically with Dr. Martin Luther King and the Memphis sanitation workers in 1968.

I am still in the church choir every Sunday, and Robert is in the pulpit and at the altar. The family myth is that my grandfather told my mother, “Kathy, don’t go off to Bethel and marry a preacher.” But no one told me not to marry a preacher. After 34 years together, Robert and I were able to legally marry. We celebrated 45 years together this February with Sean Patrick and our precious granddaughter, Olivia.

My father was injured while pumping his car with gas, on his way to preach at Gleason CP Church, and died the following week. That parish family and the Bethel College community were around to support us. His funeral service was at the old First CP Church in McKenzie, where my parents had been married 59 years earlier. A vast gathering of CP leaders worshiped with us that day. I moved my mother to live with us in New York, where she continued to praise God with her beautiful soprano voice—truly an instrument of God. She died in my home, after Sunday pot roast dinner. She, too, was buried from the church where she had been married and where my father had served as a pastor. Bob and Kathy Hull are buried at Shiloh CP Church, among some of their closest CP clergy leaders and friends.

Their epitaph is from the hymn What Wondrous Love, “When from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.”

I am saddened that the church of my ancestors is struggling with fully accepting God’s gay and lesbian children and ordaining LGBTQ clergy. I know that my Redeemer lives in God’s church. My father participated in the discernment and ordination of many CP pastors. Along with his fellow clergy and presbyters, he laid hands on many men and women. He did not know or judge the nature of their sins. I have lived the faith of my mothers and fathers. I profess the redemptive Love of Jesus in all of our lives.

In spite of my family background, I do not pretend to be a theologian. However, I am a believer is Jesus, and I am grounded in God’s church community. I ask all of us to pray and meditate on these few excerpts from our CP Confession of Faith.

4.22 As believers continue to partake of God’s covenant of grace, to live in the covenant community, and to serve God in the world, they are able to grow in grace and the knowledge
of Jesus Christ as Lord. Believers never achieve sinless perfection in this life, but through the ministry of the Holy Spirit they can be progressively conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, thereby growing in faith, hope, love, and other gifts of the Spirit.

4.23 The struggle with sin continues, for believers are still imperfect in knowledge and the power to do God’s will. Their freedom to trust, love, and serve God and neighbors is
compromised sometimes by distrust, hate and selfishness. This inner struggle drives them again and again to rely on God’s power to conform them to the image of the new person in Jesus Christ.

6.15 God created the family as the primary community in which persons experience love, companionship, support, protection, discipline, encouragement, and other blessings.

In God’s Abiding Love,
Michael Hull