In April 2013, I posted the first Wesley Bros Comic on a Tumblr site, imagining no one would read it. I was a 32 year old closeted gay man in a hetero marriage, with a toddler and another kid on the way. Though my childhood passion was to write comics, I had focused my career on the youth ministry, and hadn’t really written any comics since graduating college in 2003. At my core, I desire connection and peace for myself and everyone around me. But I had become highly anxious and secretly resentful, fearing I would lose everything and everyone I loved if any knew I was gay. Wesley Bros Comics was born out of a desire to return to a childhood passion of creating comics, and a desire to process and satirize problems I had with The Church (in general). At once, I wanted people to love it and also ignore it. Love it, because I wanted validation that my spiritual journey resonated with others. Ignore it, because I just wanted to escape through my art and not create ONE MORE space for people to judge me.
So I would wake up at 5:30 am with my crying child, sit in the play room with a cup of coffee, and escape into Bristol board, India ink, and theology books. I committed to post one comic every Tuesday for a year, more to discipline myself to create again. The posting online was more a form of accountability that hoping to build a following.
Before I knew it, 10 years passed. So much unanticipated life happened in that time, all of it inspiring my theological journey and the topics of my comics. Ferguson. Philando Castile. Syria. Marriage Equality. Trump. Increasing polarization of the church and society. So many deaths in my congregation. My own battles with depression. My own coming out journey, including hospitalization and divorce. COVID. George Floyd. Insurrection. Ukraine. The reversal of Roe v. Wade. Countless mass shootings. My children becoming used to lockdown drills in their elementary school. Pundits protecting guns and vilifying queer people.
In that same time frame, Wesley Bros opened doors for publishing, animation, and even traveling the country for speaking engagements. My babies grew into amazing young people. My family, friends, and church accepted and loved me for who I am, not who I pretended to be. My former spouse and I worked through our pain and have become better friends than we ever were. I met the love of my life, and he asked me to marry him. I transferred my clergy membership so I could safely continue in ministry without fear of punitive and political efforts by a bishop to strip me of my calling. I learned to be grateful for the journey, even if it included suffering.
Through it all, the Gospel has fiercely held me close. Death and resurrection makes sense to me more than ever before. God’s relentless pursuit for every soul feels more real. Forgiveness and redemption, compassion and hospitality, justice and mercy…that’s my jam. Where I get hung up is the overwhelming hypocrisy of religious bigotry. Where I get sad is the bitterness that fuels compassionless anger. Self-righteousness is just as damaging, whether it’s coming from the most devout Christian or the most snarky ex-vangelical. And yet, for all we’ve done to kill it with arrogance and genocide and white supremacy and nationalism, the Body of Christ just keeps resurrecting in unexpected gardens.
So I remain hopeful. Maybe it’s just because I’m an enneagram 9. But probably it’s because hope and beauty keep sprouting through the ash and concrete.
This weeks’ comic is a callback to the very first Wesley Bros. People either loved it, or thought was incredibly bad. Maybe that could go on my gravestone? I could live with that.
