God is niet zo : Een onderzoek naar het Godsbeeld van homoseksuele christenen

M. Houben

In this thesis there has been examined how the God Image of homosexual Christians relates to their dealings with sexuality. To do so, more than 200 surveys have been conducted, based on the VGB by Hanneke Schaap-Jonker, and nine in-depth interviews took place. Forecasts have been derived from extensive literature study investigating homosexual identity, religious identity, cognitive dissonance, social construction, coping, gender and the God Image. It has been found that sexuality is part of one?s identity and homosexual Christians experience a conflict between their sexual and religious identity which in some cases can lead to anxiety and depression. Remarkable is the amount of homosexual Christians that go through ecclesial change (45 per cent) compared to the national average in the Netherlands (4,5 per cent). Despite this no significant link has been found between whether or not to practice homosexuality and ecclesial change. An explanation for this extremely high ecclesial change percentage among homosexual Christians could be the previously mentioned conflict but further research will tell the validity of this explanation. Regarding the God Image it has become clear that fully against the odds the homosexual Christians who don?t practice their sexuality have a significant more positive God Image than homosexual Christians who do. This could be due to the interference of Christian organisations trying to pursue celibacy or healing by presenting an extremely positive God Image. The research also has shown that the part of the God Image concerning the actions of God is fully significant in relationship to whether or not to practice homosexuality: homosexual Christians not practicing their sexuality have a more active, more ascendant and less passive God Image than homosexual Christians who do practice their sexuality. This is remarkable as the ascendant God Image contains several negative and frightening practices which you would expect also to be seen in the data-analyses of the affective part of the God Image but that?s not the case. The most critical finding is that a narrow minority (49,7 per cent) of the homosexual Christians experience some level of fear in their God Image. This is together with all the other findings showing that homosexual Christians in the Netherlands are a vulnerable group that under adverse conditions will unnecessary have to deal with conflicts and fear. A group that might be influenced by that in their choice to organize his or her life in some way.