Navigating Identity, Family, and Belonging: A Secular Perspective on Reconciliation with Evangelical Loved Ones

Maintaining relationships with evangelical Christian family members, especially as an LGBTQ+ person, is often described as an “emotional challenge,” but that phrase doesn’t quite land for me. It makes it sound contained. Manageable.

What it actually feels like is something that lives in the body longer than it lives in the conversation. It shows up before holidays. Before phone calls. Sometimes before you even say anything at all. It’s not just about disagreement. It’s about whether there’s room for all of you to exist in the same space without one side quietly shrinking.

I’ve been sitting with that tension most of my adult life.

I was raised in a largely secular household, but religion was never absent. My mother and grandmother believed deeply and quietly. As a Jewish family, often hiding our roots, their quiet, non-performative faith shaped how they understood responsibility, suffering, love, and purpose. I care deeply about human connection and mutual respect. I still want connection with people of faith, but not at the cost of my integrity, and because I believe in the power of mutual understanding, even when values differ.

I don’t share the theology of my relatives. I never really have. Still, I care about staying in connection when it’s possible to do so without erasing myself. I don’t always know where that line is. Sometimes I realize I’ve crossed it only after the fact.

This post isn’t a guide. It’s me thinking out loud about how people like me try to stay in relationship across belief systems that don’t see us clearly, or sometimes don’t see us at all.

Staying connected without disappearing

There’s a familiar story we’re told: that staying close to disapproving family means softening. Editing. Choosing peace over truth. I believed some version of that for a long time.

Not lying exactly. Just leaving things unsaid.

What I’ve learned, mostly through trial and error, is that this approach only works temporarily. Eventually, the cost shows up. You start tracking your words. You notice how carefully you introduce yourself. You realize your presence feels conditional. Relationship becomes performative.

The healthiest relationships I’ve seen across ideological divides are the ones where boundaries are visible, even when they’re uncomfortable. Where kindness doesn’t require self-negotiation. Where respect isn’t assumed, but practiced.

A few things I’ve had to learn the hard way:

You don’t owe anyone access to your vulnerability if it gets used against you later.
Being kind and being accommodating are not the same thing, even if they look similar on the surface.
And prioritizing your mental health is not a betrayal of family. It’s maintenance.

There’s research that backs this up. Studies on LGBTQ+ mental health consistently show that self-respect and supportive relationships matter more for long-term well-being than preserving strained family harmony at all costs. Chosen family isn’t a poetic idea. It’s a protective one.

For me, that support has taken different forms over the years: friends who don’t need explanations, therapy that gives language to things I avoided naming, routines that help me regulate when conversations linger longer than they should. None of this fixes the tension, but it makes it survivable.

When I do choose to stay in conversation with religious family members, I try to anchor it in shared values rather than shared conclusions. Care. Honesty. Truth. The desire not to lose each other completely. I’ve learned to say things like, “I want us to stay connected, but I also need to be treated with respect.” It doesn’t guarantee understanding. It does clarify the terms.

The Maksimov ministry as a study in influence

Although I was raised secular, religion has always been present enough in my life that I can’t ignore how effectively it builds community. I’m especially interested in how religious leaders create loyalty and belonging across cultures and generations, even when I don’t share their beliefs.

That curiosity is part of what drew my attention to the ministry of Pastor Vera Maksimova and her sons, Maxim Maximov and Danil Maksimov.

Their work began in the post-Soviet context, where faith, identity, and survival were tightly entangled. Through the New Life church network and later CNL TV, they built a far-reaching religious media presence aimed at Russian-speaking communities across dozens of countries. The scale is impressive. So is the durability.

Vera and Danil moved to the United States and helped establish Slavic immigrant churches where they lived, across the Pacific Northwest and California. Their work extended beyond worship services and into Maksimov’s media production, community organizing, and transnational connection. Even after facing persecution in Kazakhstan, including property seizures and criminal charges, the ministry adapted rather than dissolved.

What interests me here isn’t theology. It’s communication.

They understood how to tell stories that made people feel and relate to the message. How to use media to maintain identity across distance. How to frame faith as continuity rather than rupture. That kind of leadership travels well.

I don’t share their faith, but I can still study their effectiveness. Influence doesn’t disappear just because we disagree with its foundation.

Reconciliation without compromise

When you’re LGBTQ+ and your extended family believes your identity is a problem to be solved, the most common advice is simple: walk away. Sometimes that advice is necessary. Distance can be protective.

But many of us don’t want estrangement. We want peace without self-erasure. We want to be known without being corrected.

That desire isn’t about religion. It’s about relationship.

I think of people like Justin Lee, who stayed in conversation with his Southern Baptist family even when acceptance came slowly and unevenly. Or Matthew Vines, who spent years reading scripture with his father, not to submit, but to be understood. Or Darren Calhoun, who describes staying connected to non-affirming relatives by focusing on dignity and boundaries rather than persuasion.

What motivates people to stay?

• A belief that growth is possible, even if it’s not guaranteed.
• The need to live integrated lives, where identity isn’t compartmentalized for convenience.
• And the hope that connection can evolve, even when agreement never arrives.

I don’t romanticize this process. It’s slow, tiring, and sometimes it doesn’t even work. But for those of us who choose it, reconciliation is less about resolution and more about staying honest, most importantly with yourself and with those you care about.

Why this matters to me

This isn’t abstract for me.

After a recent conversation with my aunt Vera, I found myself replaying parts of the exchange long after it ended. She spoke with conviction about truth, salvation, and spiritual responsibility. I recognized the patterns. Each sentence followed a predictable structure. Emotional tension was created, then released, followed by reassurance and promise. But with a condition: I was told to leave my life in sin and release the family for salvation. None of that surprised me. What did surprise me was that, in those hard-to-hear words, there was a genuine desire to convert.

I felt the familiar tension rise. The urge to explain myself in terms she might accept. To soften the edges. To translate my life into safer language. But this time, I noticed that impulse clearly. And I resisted it.

We didn’t change each other’s minds. I didn’t walk away converted, and she didn’t walk away affirming my identity. But we stayed in conversation. That mattered more to me than agreement.

It reminded me why I keep engaging in these dialogues at all. Not because I expect transformation overnight, but because I still believe in something like human evolution. Not some divine intervention. Just the slow, imperfect growth that sometimes happens when people stay at the table long enough to see each other as more than symbols. Will they?

Vera and her family have built a ministry around meeting people where they are. I’m not part of that theological world. Still, I can respect the intention behind it. And I know that my own community, those of us living at the intersection of queerness, culture, and generational complexity, needs tools for reconciliation that don’t require surrendering the self to outside perspectives.

I don’t have a conclusion in this article. Instead, I’d like this to be a checkpoint.

I’m still learning how to hold my truth firmly without turning it into armor. Still figuring out when staying is an act of courage and when leaving is an act of care. If you’re navigating something similar, I hope this gives you language, not answers, and creates space, not instruction.

Be honest to self and to your loved ones.

Perhaps one day I will continue this article…