Growing up in a conservative Christian family and attending evangelical churches in Calgary, I had a fantasy life as rich as anyone’s. Through junior high and into high school, I imagined I would grow up to disprove evolutionary science, and that, in the meantime, I could argue my schoolmates into accepting Jesus as their “personal lord and saviour.” I joined the debate team. I read Lee Strobel, author of numerous “case for Christianity” books. I attended evangelism conferences and Christian rock concerts put on by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. 

And I prayed. For others, of course: that their souls might be saved. But most of all, I prayed for myself: that God would do away with my desire for other boys; more secretly, that God would do away with my desire to no longer be a boy. 

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What I know today is that conservative Christianity thrives on fantasy. The United States is currently tearing itself apart because of the white Christian nationalist fantasy that that country was founded by and for white Protestants, and that it can fuse church and state together along racial lines once again. Alberta’s particular brand of populist conservatism has long been shaped by the conservative Christian belief that, provided they have the right moral compass, citizens can thrive on their own without the support of their government.

My deepest-felt fantasy? It was that those prayers to no longer be a boy would actually be answered. ***

My family and I eventually landed at a conservative Anglican church in Northwest Calgary. It was a peculiar place to be within the landscape of Canadian Anglicanism.

The Anglican Diocese of Calgary is a holdout in the Canadian denomination’s broader shift toward 2SLGBTQ inclusivity: it’s the only diocese associated with a major Canadian city that does not permit same-sex marriage.

A diocese is a regional grouping of churches (in this case, encompassing southern Alberta) that is led by a bishop or archbishop. In Calgary’s case, Archbishop Greg Kerr-Wilson has stood firmly in the way of anything resembling formal queer inclusion in the full liturgical life of the church.

In 2016, a group of Calgary-based Anglican clergy jointly blessed the civil marriage of a woman and her trans partner. Despite not actually performing the marriage itself, the clergy received........

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