Social Movements and Bridge Building: Religious and Sexual Identity Conflicts

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND

BRIDGE BUILDING: RELIGIOUS

AND SEXUAL IDENTITY

CONFLICTS

Jonathan S. Coley

ABSTRACT

Social movement scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the pro-cess of “bridge building” in social movements ! that is, the process bywhich activists attempt to resolve conflicts stemming from different col-lective identities. However, most scholars assume that social movementsprimarily attempt to resolve tensions among activists themselves, and thusthat bridge building is a means to other ends rather than a primary goalof social movement activism. In this chapter, I challenge these assump-tions through a case study of a “bridging organization” known as BridgeBuilders, which sought as its primary goal to “bridge the gap between theLGBT and Christian communities” at a Christian university in Nashville,Tennessee. I highlight the mechanisms by which Bridge Buildersattempted to facilitate bridge building at the university, and I argue thatBridge Builders succeeded in bridging (a) disparate institutional identi-ties at their university, (b) “structural holes” between LGBT- and

Intersectionality and Social ChangeResearch in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Volume 37, 125!151Copyright r 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing LimitedAll rights of reproduction in any form reservedISSN: 0163-786X/doi:10.1108/S0163-786X20140000037005

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religious-identified groups at their university, and (c) oppositional perso-nal identities among organizational members. As I discuss in the conclu-sion, the case of Bridge Builders has implications for literatures on bridgebuilding in social movements, cultural and biographical consequences ofsocial movements, and social movement strategy.

Keywords: Social movements; bridge building; collective identity;religion; sexuality; culture

How can the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) movementresolve ongoing tensions with conservative religious communities? In manyways, the LGBT movement has made rapid progress in the United States.An increasing number of states prohibit discrimination on the basis ofsexual orientation or gender identity and recognize same-sex marriages ordomestic partnerships (Human Rights Campaign, 2014). Furthermore,over 50% of Americans now support same-sex marriage, and this supportseems likely to rise over the next few years (Public Religion ResearchInstitute, 2014). Despite this progress, acceptance of homosexualityremains low among conservative religious groups. Conservative religioussects and denominations continue to label homosexuality as a “sin,” andconservative religious groups have actively mobilized to stop or overturnthe spread of LGBT rights (Bob, 2012; Fetner, 2008; Miceli, 2005b; thoughsee studies on LGBT religious activism by Fuist, Stoll, & Kniss, 2012;Kane, 2013b; and a study on LGBT-inclusive congregations by Adler,2012). Support for same-sex marriage among white evangelical Christiansalso stands much lower than the national average at just 27% (PublicReligion Research Institute, 2014).

This ongoing clash between LGBT and religious communities raisesimportant questions about how, and in what ways, tensions over sexualityand religion might be overcome or resolved. A small but growing literaturein social movement studies has examined social movements’ engagement in“bridging work” or “bridge building” ! that is, “efforts to overcome andnegotiate conflicts that result from different collective identities” (Roth,2003, p. 9). Similarly, scholars have examined “bridging organizations”that seek to negotiate divisions between social movement organizations(e.g., Brecher & Costello, 1990; Roth, 2003, 2008). While this literature hasbeen insightful, scholars have mostly assumed that bridge building is ameans to other ends and not (potentially) an ultimate goal of social

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movement activism. Furthermore, scholars have mostly examined bridgingorganizations that attempt to resolve conflicts among social movementactivists and organizations and have said little about their broader impacts.

In this study, I reconceptualize “bridge building” in the context of socialmovements as a primary end of social movement activism, involving theuse of collective action (including protests and other direct actions) toresolve conflicts or tensions stemming from different collective identities.Similarly, I redevelop the concept of “bridging organizations” in the con-text of social movements as organizations that pursue bridge building notonly among activists but also in their wider communities. I do this byfocusing on the case of a student group at Belmont University, a Christianuniversity in Nashville, Tennessee, known as Bridge Builders, which soughtto “bridge the gap between LGBT and Christian communities.”1 Beginningin late 2009, the group worked to establish dialogue groups about religionand homosexuality at the school. But in December 2010, after Belmontcontinually denied their organization official recognition, and after alesbian soccer coach mysteriously left the school, students comprising theBridge Builders group organized sit-ins, outside rallies, prayer walks,petition drives, letter-writing events, and media appearances to challengeperceived discrimination and bigotry against LGBT students, staff, andfaculty at the school.

As I argue, the protests succeeded in bridging significant divides overreligion and sexuality at the school. First, the protests resolved tensionsinherent in Belmont’s institutional identity, providing a way for Belmont tobridge its identity as a progressive, arts-oriented university (which placed itin a league of universities that generally embrace LGBT rights) and itsidentity as a religious university (which affiliated it with universities thatoften oppose LGBT rights). Second, the protests succeeded in bridging“structural holes” between LGBT- and religious-identified groups at theschool (Burt, 1992), including by leading the school’s University Ministriesto sponsor the Bridge Builders group and thus take on the goal of“bridging the gap between the LGBT and Christian communities.” Finally,the protests helped resolve tensions in participants’ own personal identities,leading some LGBT individuals and allies to join or change religions, andthus become members of churches that embraced sexual and gender iden-tity minorities, and leading other LGBT individuals and allies to reaffirmtheir religious beliefs. I elaborate on the impacts of Bridge Builders atBelmont later in the chapter, but first I review previous literature onbridging work and bridging organizations, discuss my data and analyticapproach, and provide further background on the Belmont case.

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PREVIOUS LITERATURE

How do social movements resolve divisions along the lines of race, class,gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, political affiliation, religiousaffiliation, and other identities? Prodded by insights on intersectionality(see recent reviews and developments by Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013;Chun, Lipsitz, & Shin, 2013; Verloo, 2013), social movement scholars haveincreasingly sought to understand how activists negotiate overlappingpositional and cultural differences in the social world (e.g., Beamish &Luebbers, 2009; Braunstein, Fulton, & Wood, 2014; Brecher & Costello,1990; Gamson, 1997; Ghaziani, 2011; Lichterman, 1995, 2005; Longard,2013; Mayer, 2009; Nakano, 2013; Reger, Myers, & Einwohner, 2008;Roth, 2003, 2008; Smith, 2002; Snarr, 2009; Swarts, 2011; Wood, Fulton, &Partridge, 2012; Yukich, 2010). One way that social movement scholarshave attempted to address this question is through attention to “bridgingwork” or “bridge building” in social movements, which is a “form of socialmovement interaction that focuses explicitly on efforts to overcome andnegotiate conflicts that result from different collective identities,” usually ina way that takes into account the concerns of all actors involved (Roth,2003, p. 9; see also Beamish & Luebbers, 2009; Braunstein et al., 2014;Brecher & Costello, 1990; Ghaziani, 2011; Lichterman, 2005; Mayer, 2009;Roth, 2008; Smith, 2002; Snarr, 2009; Wood et al., 2012). Similarly, socialmovement scholars have begun to shed light on the role of “bridging orga-nizations” in social movements, or organizations that seek “to educatedifferent groups about each other, to reduce fear and hostility based onignorance by bringing individuals together, and to encourage the valuing ofcultural diversity” (Brecher & Costello, 1990, pp. 338!339).

This “bridging work” approach to collective identity can be contrastedwith “boundary work” related to collective identity (e.g., Gamson, 1997;Guenther, Mulligan, & Papp, 2013; Swarts, 2011; Taylor & Whittier, 1992;Yukich, 2010). Literature on collective identity has often assumed thatsocial movement organizations and communities actively define themselvesin opposition to their targets and other outside groups. For instance,Taylor and Whittier (1992) argued that a lesbian feminist communityconstructed its identity by drawing boundaries and thus by “highlightingdifferences between activists and the web of others in the contested socialworld” (p. 111). Similarly, Guenther et al. (2013) argued that the newatheist movement deployed an “us versus them” approach to collectiveidentity building, involving “the construction of religious people as a threat


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to the individual,” “the construction of religion and religious people as athreat to society,” “the polarization of religious and atheistic worldviews,”and “the construction of religious believers as inferior to atheists” (pp.457!458). Yet, Bernstein (1997) has pointed out that “many [lesbian andgay] activists underscore their similarities to, rather than differences from,the majority” (p. 531), and Ghaziani (2011) has recently argued that LGBT“activists today are motivated less by drawing boundaries against membersof the dominant group and more by building bridges toward them” (p. 99).Thus, bridge building in social movements would seem to deserve furtherattention from scholars.

Bridge building is important given that activists routinely encounterindividuals of different identities in their efforts to mobilize broad constitu-encies, form coalitions, neutralize or convert opponents, and transformattitudes toward marginalized social groups. So how is bridge buildingaccomplished? Much of this literature has highlighted micro-level, discur-sive processes by which activists address tensions related to collective iden-tity. For instance, in his analysis of church groups that seek to buildbridges between racial groups, Lichterman (2005) argues that groups thattalk self-critically about their social ties are more likely to “spiral outward”and thus build relationships with individuals outside the group (see alsoLongard, 2013). Similarly, Snarr’s (2009) research on economic justice coa-litions highlights the role of bridging organizations in ideology translation,in which activists “help those with different but relatively complementarybeliefs understand each other for improved collaboration” (p. 77).Braunstein et al. (2014) argue that certain prayer practices are effective inbridging racial and class-based divides among members of faith-based com-munity organizing coalitions because they resonate with individuals acrossracial and socioeconomic lines (see also Wood et al., 2012). Finally,Beamish and Luebbers’ (2009) research on an environmental justice coali-tion discusses the importance of developing shared stories of outrage thatfacilitate “co-development of cross-movement commitments” (p. 647).

The literature on bridge building in social movements has also high-lighted the role of organizational procedures related to bridge building. Forinstance, Ghaziani (2011) shows how LGBT organizations have slowlymoved from organizational names that highlight members’ opposition tothe outside world (e.g., Queers Undertaking Exquisite and SymbolicTransformation, or QUEST) and have instead adopted organizationalnames that signal groups’ openness to wide varieties of people (e.g., PrideAlliance). Furthermore, focusing on organizational membership, Snarr


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(2009) argues that effective bridging organizations practice inclusion moni-toring, identifying “who is and who is not at the table” in an effort to“encourage fair and productive collaborations among partners” (p. 82).

This existing literature on social movements and bridge building hasbeen very helpful in shedding light on the ways that social movementswork to negotiate conflicts among social groups represented within socialmovements. However, this literature can also be criticized for mostly con-sidering bridge building as a means to an end, rather than as an end in itself.This assumption, in turn, has ramifications for how scholars conceptualizebridging organizations, how scholars understand the process of bridgebuilding, and how scholars understand the potential outcomes of bridgebuilding (see Table 1). First, because most scholars view bridge building asa means to an end, scholars have focused on social movement organiza-tions and other civic organizations that primarily exist to achieve directbenefits for constituents or enact policy changes rather than organizationsthat primarily exist to resolve identity conflicts and thus build bridgesbetween social groups. It is true that there is some literature on bridgingorganizations that primarily exist to bridge disparate social movementorganizations (Brecher & Costello, 1990; Roth, 2003, 2008), but even thesebridging organizations bring together social movement organizations thatprimarily pursue other ends. In this way, the bridging organizations

Table 1. Reconceptualizing Bridge Building in Social Movements.

Previous Conceptualizations ofBridge Building

Revised Conceptualization ofBridge Building

Purpose of bridgebuilding

Means to other ends End in itself

Beneficiaries ofbridgingorganizations

Social movement activists andorganizations

Social movement activists,organizations, and their targets

Means of bridgebuilding

Internal processes (e.g., creating a“safe space” through variousdiscursive and organizationalpractices)

Internal processes (e.g., creating a“safe space” through variousdiscursive and organizationalpractices) and externalprocesses (e.g., engaging inprotests and other directactions)

Primary goals ofsocial movementspursuing bridgebuilding

Policy changes and/or distributivebenefits

Policy changes, distributivebenefits, cultural changes, and/or biographical changes


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discussed in previous literature are similar to coalitions (Van Dyke &McCammon, 2010). Second, because scholars generally assume that socialmovements pursue bridge building as a means to facilitate other goals,scholars have mostly focused on internal processes that facilitate bridgebuilding within a “safe space” rather than public tactics such as protests.Finally, because scholars assume that bridge building is a means to an end,they generally focus on the impacts of bridge building on movement parti-cipants or disparate movement organizations rather than groups in theirwider communities (though see Lichterman, 2005).

In this chapter, I argue that social movements sometimes pursue bridgebuilding as an end in itself and thus advance the literature on social move-ments and bridge building in three ways (see Table 1). First, I redefine “brid-ging organizations” as organizations that primarily exist to resolve tensionsstemming from different collective identities and thus promote dialogue,understanding, and inclusion in their wider communities. Specifically,I focus on an organization named Bridge Builders, which had as its primarygoal to “bridge the gap between the LGBT and Christian communities” at aChristian university. Second, while acknowledging the internal processesthat facilitate bridge building, I similarly reconceptualize “bridging work”in the context of social movements to highlight how bridge building can befacilitated by the more visible protest tactics traditionally associated withsocial movements. As I discuss in this chapter, Bridge Builders organizedrallies, sit-ins, and other direct actions to pressure Belmont University to bemore inclusive of disparate social groups. Finally, I argue that bridgingorganizations bring about policy changes, cultural changes, and biographi-cal changes both in their wider communities and among their participants.Specifically, the Bridge Builders group succeeded not only in transformingtheir university’s policies on sexual identity, but also in bridging (a) dispa-rate institutional identities at their university, (b) “structural holes” betweenLGBT and Christian groups at their university, and (c) oppositional perso-nal identities among organizational members.

DATA AND METHODS

To understand the work and impact of a bridging organization, I con-ducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 26 people who partici-pated in Bridge Builders at Belmont University from 2009 to 2011(including 18 Belmont students, 5 Belmont faculty and staff members, and3 community members who participated in the protests). The interviewees


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are roughly evenly divided in terms of sexual identity (LGB or straight)and gender (female or male), and reflecting the racial composition of boththe protest participants and the Belmont student body, all but one of theinterviewees were white. I preserve the anonymity of my respondents byremoving individuals’ names from the interview excerpts. The exception iswhen I incorporate public statements made by highly public individuals,such as the president of the University.

I identified these interview respondents through purposive and thensnowballing sampling ! specifically, I sought out all of the leaders of theBridge Builders group for interviews, and I asked each of these individualsfor the names of other students or faculty who were involved in BridgeBuilders. Individuals were generally very eager to discuss the BridgeBuilders group, as all but three of the individuals I contacted agreed to beinterviewed. The interviews lasted from forty-five minutes to one-and-a-half hours and covered topics such as the extent of and motivation for therespondents’ participation; what Belmont was like before, during, and afterthe protests; and the impact of the protests on the respondents themselves.The interviews took place during the summer and fall of 2011, usuallyin-person, but occasionally over the phone when respondents were nowliving out of state.

After conducting the interviews, I transcribed them and then analyzedthem using a grounded theory approach. Specifically, I assigned codesbased on an inductive analysis of these transcripts rather than readings ofpreexisting theories, and I drew on these codes to identify common themes.The language of “bridge building” (and similar language regarding reconci-liation and the creation of a welcoming, inclusive community) permeatednearly every interview, and participants commonly applied such languageto divides among the student body and tensions in their own or others’personal identities.

Interviews have limitations ! for instance, respondents were sometimesnot able to recall the exact timelines for events, information about groupmeetings, names of individuals involved with the group, etc. Furthermore,these interviews did not include “elites” involved in administrative decisionsregarding the nondiscrimination policy and the Bridge Builders group.Thus, for additional data about the protests at Belmont, I consulted myown field notes from two of the protest events that I attended (as aparticipant-observer) for details on the size and composition of the rallies,signs held at the rallies, and so on. These field notes allowed me to verifyinformation from the interviews about the protests and grasp the overall“bridge-building” tone of the protests. I also consulted media reports, press


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releases, and meeting notes that were either available online or provided tome by respondents. These additional documents were useful not only forverifying facts, but also for tracking statements made by administratorsduring the time of the protests about Belmont’s institutional identity.

BELMONT BEFORE BRIDGE BUILDERS

Bridging organizations, as conceptualized in this chapter, seek to resolvetensions stemming from different collective identities not only amongactivists but also in their wider communities. Thus, before examining theimpacts of Bridge Builders at Belmont, it is first necessary to establish thatidentity-related tensions and divisions indeed existed prior to the emergenceof Bridge Builders. Below, I discuss tensions over religion and sexualitythat were inherent in Belmont’s institutional identity, among Belmont’sstudent body, and in the eventual Bridge Builders members’ own religiousand sexual identities.

Belmont as a Historically Baptist University

Belmont University is a historically Baptist university that was affiliatedwith the conservative Tennessee Baptist Convention (hereafter, TBC) from1951 to 2006. During these years, the TBC bound Belmont to strict rulesregarding the structure and operation of the school. First, the TBCrequired that any person who joined the Board of Trustees be an activemember of and leader in a Baptist church (Baptist Press, 2006). In practice,this meant that the Board of Trustees consisted mostly of conservativewhite men. Second, the TBC required that all faculty and staff identify asChristians, actively participate in local churches, and live up to certain“Biblical standards” such as marital fidelity. This requirement continues tobe included in the faculty handbook, which also states that “a personalalignment with the institutional mission is an important condition ofongoing employment” (Belmont University, 2013, p. 22). Finally, the TBCpressured Belmont to maintain a prohibition on “homosexual behavior” inboth its student and faculty handbooks (Selden, 2009). According to inter-views, if Belmont had allowed an LGBT group to form on campus whileit was affiliated with the TBC, it would have almost certainly forfeitedfunding from the TBC.


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In 2007, Belmont severed its ties with the TBC after a few religious yetnon-Baptist donors asked to join its Board of Trustees and promised thatthey could bring in new funding for the school (Baptist Press, 2006). What didthis decision mean for LGBT students, faculty, and staff at the school? On theone hand, Belmont maintained strong commitments to its Christian identity(with the strong implication of a more conservative brand of Christianity);indeed, most of Belmont’s trustees were still Baptists, and the school contin-ued to receive funding from individual Baptist churches. As late as 2009, justone year before the protests, Belmont maintained the prohibition on ambigu-ously defined “homosexual behavior” in its student handbook (Selden, 2009).And, as students began to pressure the school to allow an LGBT studentorganization to form, school officials continually invoked the “history” of theschool in explaining why they were denying their applications. On the otherhand, there were also signs that Belmont was rapidly establishing itself as amore progressive, nationally recognized university: the school had nearlydoubled in size in just a decade, grown its high-profile music business school,and leaped onto the national stage with a 2008 Presidential debate betweenBarack Obama and John McCain (Robertson, 2010).

Thus, in the years leading up to the protest, Belmont was increasinglytorn between its identity as a growing, nationally recognized university witha highly visible music business school, which placed it in a league of privateuniversities that generally embraced LGBT students, and its identity as aChristian university in the south, which placed it in a group of universitiesthat generally discriminated against LGBT students. As Robertson (2010)framed the “identity crisis” in the New York Times: “Some see a continuingidentity crisis ! on the one hand, the university has a long reputation as con-servative and Christian; on the other hand, Belmont has aggressively earneda reputation as a progressive, artsy place to study the music business.”Similarly, Nashville’s alternative weekly newspaper, the Nashville Scene,asked in one headline, “Can Belmont Be Both a Progressive University anda Fundamentalist Scold?” (Caress, 2010), and an influential donor atBelmont named Mike Curb stated simply, “Belmont has to decide whetherthey want to be a national, recognized university, particularly with theirschool of music business, or they want to be a church” (Robertson, 2010).

Belmont as a Religiously Conservative Community

Given Belmont’s history as a conservative Baptist university, it is not sur-prising that most students and faculty members whom I interviewed


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initially described Belmont as an isolating environment for sexual minori-ties. Students, faculty, and staff generally shied away from open discussionsabout gender and sexuality at the school, and when individuals attemptedto start these discussions, they were usually met with hostility. One facultymember described a hostile reaction by the administration toward a studentwho wanted to do research on sexuality at the school. Another facultymember told me about receiving an e-mail from one of the many “incred-ibly vocal, evangelical, the-Bible-is-the-direct-word-of-God” students oncampus when LGBT and allied students were first trying to establishBridge Builders. Among other things, the student told the faculty memberthat Bridge Builders was “building a bridge to sin.” Finally, one student,who ultimately became a leader in the Bridge Builders group and protestsat the school, described the reaction she received when she asked whetherthe school had a Gay-Straight Alliance during her freshman orientation:

I have this very long involvement with searching for LGBT rights at Belmont, startingfrom the first time I ever set foot on orientation. I went to an orientation session andasked if there was a Gay-Straight Alliance or anything like that. I got completely shotdown ! they told me, there will never be anything like that at Belmont, that is comple-tely against our Christian morals. I was like, okay, a little bit shellshocked.

When discussions about sexuality were held, they were usually from aconservative perspective. For instance, the school’s University Ministriesoccasionally brought in speakers that preached abstinence before marriagefor heterosexual students and the sinfulness of all non-heterosexual beha-viors. All of this created an isolating environment for LGBT students atthe school. Indeed, many of the students in Bridge Builders had beenpersonally discriminated against or harassed by their peers at the school,with some students relating situations in which their roommates switchedrooms after finding out they were gay, and with other students reportingbeing called names such as “dyke” or “fag” by their peers. Studentsreported that they longed for greater dialogue on LGBT and religiousissues on campus, especially with the increasing number of openly LGBTstudents on campus. As one student summarized the environment atBelmont before the protests, and his desire for change:

I felt like before the protests [homosexuality] was not talked about a lot in the generalBelmont community. Religious people claim we don’t have that “problem” here,whereas in reality there are tons of people who have that “problem” here … My #1goal with the protests was to promote a discussion about these issues, about LGBTpeople and Christianity. And whether or not people were going around campus saying“oh my gosh, I hate those Bridge Builders” ! they will still be talking about us, andhopefully that will promote discussion with other students.


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Belmont Protest Participants as Religiously Apathetic

While Belmont in general had a conservative religious atmosphere, the stu-dents in the Bridge Builders group came from a range of faith backgrounds.While I discuss evolutions in a few of the individual students’ biographicalnarratives later, it is worth noting several commonalities in the students’biographical trajectories here. A first group of students, the “formerlyreligious,” described themselves as coming from conservative religious back-grounds. However, by the time of the protests, these students were generallynot church attenders and would not describe themselves as particularlyreligious. Some students had been turned off from religion because of theisolation, discrimination, and harassment they had experienced from theirreligious peers. Other students had experienced difficulty in finding a churchthat matched their evolving religious and political views and often experi-enced difficulty in reconciling their religious and sexual identities.

A second group of students, the “consistently non-religious,” had notcome from particularly religious households and came to Belmont forreasons other than the school’s religious reputation. For instance, somestudents had been attracted to Belmont’s nationally recognized music busi-ness school, and other students had been attracted to Belmont because ofits proximity to their home and relative affordability. Given the hostilitytoward LGBT students on campus, they had not been motivated to pursuereligious faith while at college. Thus, at the time of the protests, they toodid not identify with a particular religious faith.

A final group of students, the “consistently religious,” came to Belmontwith religious beliefs and continued to hold on to those religious beliefs bythe time of the protests, although they sometimes also expressed misgivingsor uncertainties about their faith given perceived tensions between religionand sexuality. This group of students was mostly comprised of straight,allied students but also included LGBT Christian students who were parti-cularly motivated to promote discussion about LGBT issues withinthe Christian community. These students would play a major role in thereligious transformations of some of the students discussed above.

THE EMERGENCE OF BRIDGE BUILDERSAT BELMONT

Existing research on bridge building in social movements suggests thatactivists attempt to resolve conflicts related to collective identity mainly in


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an attempt to achieve other ends. However, in response to conflicts overreligion and sexual identity at Belmont, LGBT-identified and religious-oriented students began to work to establish a bridging organization calledBridge Builders, which stated that its primary mission was to “bridge thegap between the LGBT and Christian communities.” As I discuss below,while the students in Bridge Builders worked to facilitate bridge buildingwithin a private “safe space,” the students also attempted to facilitatebridge building by deploying the kinds of protest tactics traditionally asso-ciated with social movements.

Establishing Safe Space at Belmont

To address the often chilly climate for sexual minorities at their school, agroup of students sought the formation of a religious LGBT organizationthat would promote dialogue about religion and sexuality at their school.Yet, an application to establish the student organization was denied by theschool’s administration by the beginning of the spring semester in 2010.The administration instead proposed a compromise group known as“Difficult Dialogues” that began to meet in March 2010. The group wasnot open to the entire university community ! rather, only students, staff,and faculty who were invited could attend. Furthermore, any materials thegroup discussed had to be approved by the administration, with the goal ofproviding a “balanced perspective” on homosexuality. This approach wasin part inspired by a Christian author whom the school brought in to helpadvise the group efforts. But, as one student complained:

We were talking about how we wanted to show videos, and [the author] was like, if youshow anything that’s pro-gay you have to show an anti-gay movie. And we were like,no, uh uh, no. Our BSA [Black Student Alliance] doesn’t have to show pro-white supre-macy movies, that’s not how it works. So … I voiced my concern about it and said,that doesn’t make sense. We were trying to make a welcoming and safe environmentfor people who otherwise might feel alienated in this community. And doing that justfurthers the alienation.

Although the “Difficult Dialogues” meetings would continue throughthe fall semester of 2010, most members gradually dropped out of thegroup, frustrated by these shortcomings. Instead, many of the BridgeBuilders students began to meet off-campus during the summer of 2010and fall of 2010. It was during these meetings that the current form ofthe group began to emerge. At the beginning of these meetings, one of thestudents would generally give a welcome speech or a prayer before


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the students engaged in an “ice breaker” so that they could get to knoweach other better. Then, according to documents provided by the group, anew student each week agreed to lead a discussion over topics that included“GLBT History,” “Biology of Gender/Homosexuality,” “How to Be aGood Ally,” “Heteronormativity/Bullying in Schools,” “AIDS and ItsImpact in the GLBT Community,” “Deconstructing the Binary,” “MediaRepresentation of the LGBTIQA Community,” “Deconstructing Trans-phobia,” “Reclaiming Words,” “Recognizing and Addressing RelationshipViolence,” “Famous Gays & Allies,” “International Rights,” and “Drag,Camp, and Gender.” Finally, at a separate time during the week, one ofthe more religious students volunteered to lead Bible studies for the BridgeBuilders students. According to the student, he did not focus the Biblestudy on sexuality; rather:

I think I talked about Isaiah [a book in the Old Testament] because I love Isaiah.I mean ! it was a normal Bible study, but it was intended for students who were gay[and] who had been rejected by their churches to come and just be Christians and nothave to focus solely on their sexual orientation. I wanted to show the people who camethat they could be people of faith. I wanted to provide a space at Belmont where peoplewere comfortable with exploring that. Not everyone is comfortable coming into thechurch especially if in your mind it represents a space of discrimination. And soI wanted to start the process of bridging that divide for some people.

Overall, then, many of the “best practices” for bridge building, asrevealed in previous literature, were implemented by the Bridge Buildersgroup. Self-reflexive dialogue was a major component of the group meet-ings (Lichterman, 2005; Longard, 2013), and there was a concerted attemptto translate LGBT issues for religious audiences (e.g., through weekly semi-nars) and to expose LGBT audiences to religious messages (e.g., throughthe Bible study) (Snarr, 2009). Furthermore, unlike the “DifficultDialogues” group, the Bridge Builders group was open to anyone whowanted to join (Snarr, 2009). Ultimately, however, the Bridge Buildersgroup could not be effective in bringing the wider LGBT and religiouscommunities together through the “underground” group meetings alone;instead, the Bridge Builders group turned to protest tactics as a way tofacilitate bridge building.

Engaging in Collective Action at Belmont

In an attempt to pressure school administrators to approve the BridgeBuilders group at Belmont, students began to organize petition drives in


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the fall of 2010. Specifically, the students set up tables around the school’sevent center and circulated petitions in their classrooms. While some stu-dents agreed to sign the petitions, many others politely declined, often una-ware of the organization and its cause. A few students hurled insults at thegroup.

The students began to look for another way to draw attention to theircause, and an opportunity arose near the end of the fall semester of 2010when a soccer coach, who had just revealed to her soccer team that she andher same-sex partner were having a baby, suddenly left the school.2 TheBridge Builders students believed the school had forced out the soccercoach because of her sexual orientation, and they organized several protestsand events that they hoped would also draw attention to the BridgeBuilders cause during the final week of the school year in December 2010.

These protests included a first outside rally drawing around 40 studentsand alumni on Sunday, December 5, 2010; a sit-in outside the school presi-dent’s office drawing around 50 students on Monday, December 6, 2010;and a second outside rally and prayer walk drawing around 100 students,alumni, and community members on Wednesday, December 8, 2010.Thanks to letter-writing campaigns and media availabilities organized bythe students, the protests were well-covered by local and national mediaoutlets. Illustrative of the group’s bridge-building character, protest signswere notable for their use of religious language, including “WWJD?”(What Would Jesus Do?), “Jesus Loves [The Coach],” “God is Love, 1John 4:8,” “Belmont, Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself,” “Jesus Had 2 Dadsand He Turned Out Just Fine,” “Jesus Was Born to a NontraditionalMother, Would Belmont Fire Her Too?,” “All I Want for Christmas isEquality,” and “CHRIST=LOVE.”

The students were joined in their opposition to the school’s actions byothers in the Belmont community. For instance, over 400 individuals sente-mails to the school’s president, nearly all opposing the dismissal of thesoccer coach (Belmont University, 2010). The school’s faculty senate passeda unanimous resolution encouraging the school to have an open dialogueon issues surrounding religion and sexuality, though it tabled a morestrongly worded resolution (Caress, 2010). Most significantly, a majorBelmont donor and former trustee named Mike Curb, who founded therecord label Curb Records, released a public statement saying, “It’s timefor Belmont to change” (Robertson, 2010); “I promise you, if the matter isnot resolved, I will continue speaking out about this the rest of my life”(Nashville Scene Staff, 2011). These actions by the wider Belmont commu-nity, combined with the kinds of direct action tactics that previous


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literature on bridge building has generally ignored, played a significantrole in bridging divides over religion and sexuality at the school, whichI describe below.

THE IMPACTS OF BRIDGE BUILDERS AT BELMONT

Existing literature on bridge building and social movements assumes thatbridging organizations primarily attempt to smooth over differences amongactivists such that they might more effectively achieve policy goals. TheBridge Builders group did successfully pressure Belmont to change its poli-cies on sexual orientation. On Wednesday, December 8, 2010, immediatelyafter students held their second rally outside the school, Belmont’sPresident, Bob Fisher, held a press conference at which he announced anew nondiscrimination statement inclusive of sexual orientation (BelmontUniversity, 2010), which was officially approved by the Board of Trusteesin January 2011 (Belmont University, 2011).3 Yet, the impacts of theBridge Builders group at Belmont were broader than these. As I discussbelow, the protests led by Bridge Builders helped bridge (a) Belmont’s see-mingly disparate institutional identities, (b) “structural holes” betweenLGBT- and religious-identified groups at the university, and (c) the partici-pants’ seemingly oppositional personal identities.

Bridging Disparate Institutional Identities

One of the most significant ways that Bridge Builders bridged divides overreligion and sexuality at Belmont was by facilitating a redefinition of whatit meant to be a Christian university, and thereby bridging Belmont’s see-mingly disparate institutional identities. As previously discussed, in theyears leading up to the protest, Belmont had been increasingly tornbetween its “reputation as conservative and Christian” on the one hand,which implied opposition to LGBT rights, and its “reputation as a progres-sive, artsy place to study the music business” on the other hand, which con-noted acceptance of LGBT rights (Robertson, 2010).

After the soccer coach left the school but before the protests began, theBelmont administration gave strong indications that Belmont would hewto a conservative understanding of its Christian identity and thus alignitself with those universities that discriminate against sexual minorities. For


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instance, on Sunday, March 5, 2010, The Tennessean ran the followingstory, which quoted the chair of the Board of Trustees, Marty Dickens:

Belmont University may not be Baptist-affiliated anymore, but it’s still Christian. Sofaculty and staff must do what the Good Book tells them to do. And at Belmont it’stelling them no sex outside of marriage.

“We do adhere to our values as Christ-centered, and we don’t want to makeapologies for that,” said Marty Dickens, chairman of Belmont’s board of trustees.(Smietana, 2010)

The story then continued:

[Belmont has] retained a written policy for students, faculty, and staff that forbids anysexual relations outside of marriage. Dickens said the expectations for faculty are clear,so [the soccer coach] needed to leave. He said some will disagree with that decision, butBelmont won’t apologize for its Christian values.

“We expect people to commit themselves to high moral and ethical standards within aChristian context,” he said. “That includes members of the board, faculty, and adminis-tration.” (Smietana, 2010)

In other words, directly before the protests began, Belmont’s leadershipinterpreted its “Christ-centered” values and Christian moral and ethicalstandards as necessitating the exit of a lesbian soccer coach from the schooland the continued discrimination against individuals who were unable tomarry.4

Yet, directly after the second student rally on Wednesday, December 8,2010, Belmont’s president held a press conference in which he outlined avery different interpretation of the school’s Christian identity, one thatwould allow the university to accept sexual minorities. As he stated,“Because of Belmont’s aspirations to demonstrate Christian character, it isa safe and welcoming place for all. The Belmont family, like any largefamily, comprises a rich and diverse mix of people” (Belmont University,2010). Furthermore, after the Board of Trustees officially voted to add sex-ual orientation to the school’s nondiscrimination statement in January2011, Belmont’s president released the following statement on behalf of theBoard:

Today our Board of Trustees met and affirmed officially who we are and who we willcontinue to be. We are a Christian community that is welcoming, loving, and inclusiveof everyone. To reflect the unique character of Belmont University, the Board added apreamble to our existing non-discrimination statement. The language in this preamblewas inspired by our existing mission statement and our current employment hand-books. It states that Belmont is a Christian community, and the university’s faculty,


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administration and staff uphold Jesus as the Christ and as the measure of all things. Inaddition, the Board voted today to amend the university’s written anti-discriminationpolicy to reflect our long-standing practice of non-discrimination as it relates to sexualorientation. (Belmont University, 2011)

In other words, directly after the protests, Belmont’s president invoked thesame Christian values as necessitating a very different stance toward sexualminorities ! a stance that required it to be a “welcoming, loving, and inclu-sive of everyone.” It seems, then, that the Bridge Builders protests facilitateda redefinition of what it meant to be a Christian community, moving theschool from a Christian identity based on differences from the outside worldto a Christian identity based on shared similarities. The effect of this newunderstanding of Belmont’s Christian identity was to bridge the school’sseemingly disparate identities as a progressive, arts-oriented university andas a Christian university in the south, allowing the school to embrace bothsexual minorities (along with other progressive universities) and itsChristian identity (alongside many other religious schools in the south).

Bridging Structural Holes

A second way that Bridge Builders resolved divides over religion and sexu-ality at Belmont was by bringing students, faculty, staff, and administratorstogether to discuss issues about religion and sexuality in new ways, therebybridging significant “structural holes” (i.e., the absence of social and/ororganizational ties) between LGBT- and religious-identified groups at theuniversity (Burt, 1992). Discussions about gender and sexuality were onceshied away from at Belmont, with the school going so far as to take downfliers that advertised events on gender and sexuality. Even when the schoolsanctioned a “Difficult Dialogues” group in 2010, the group was invitation-only and thus closed off to most of the Belmont community, providinglittle opportunity for genuine bridge building among the wider Belmontcommunity.

However, not only did the Bridge Builders protests spark a significantamount of discussions about gender and sexuality at the campus, but theprotests also moved the school’s president to approve Bridge Builders as anofficial student organization. Significantly, the school’s UniversityMinistries agreed to officially sponsor the organization and thus take on, aspart of its official, university-sanctioned mission, the goal of “bridging thegap between the LGBT and religious communities.” While the decision byUniversity Ministries to sponsor the group raised some fears of co-optation,


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the decision meant that the new organization would not simply be anisolated group of LGBT-identified students and allies who remained walledoff from religious-identified students on campus. Instead, the BridgeBuilders group began to draw a diverse mix of LGBT- and religious-identified students to its meetings. In the spirit of bridge building, the orga-nization continued to hold meetings devoted to discussing the intersectionof faith and sexuality. University Ministries also assigned one of its suppor-tive, full-time ministers as its official adviser, and he would serve as a liaisonon issues of faith and sexuality to the broader campus community.

As an official University Ministries organization, Bridge Builders wasable to hold major events on campus promoting dialogue on issues of faithand sexuality. Whereas University Ministries once promoted talks criticalof homosexuality, by the spring of 2012 University Ministries organizeda “Sex & Soul” week that featured talks on “Open and AffirmingCongregations” by local ministers supportive of the LGBT community.Such events provided “convocation credits” that students were required toaccumulate before their graduation and thus drew a diverse group ofstudents.

There is early evidence that the Bridge Builders protests, meetings, andevents have succeeded in facilitating dialogue and building communityamong previously separate and even hostile LGBT- and religious-identifiedstudents in the wider Belmont community. One sign of the changed atmo-sphere at Belmont came from students’ positive reception to the BridgeBuilders students’ continued activism. In late 2010 and early 2011, after theprotests but while negotiations for the approval of Bridge Builders werestill ongoing, students held new petition drives to support the official recog-nition of Bridge Builders. Several students noted that students seemedmuch more receptive to the petition drive after the protests and that theBridge Builders students received far fewer insults or rejections. Increasedtolerance and acceptance of LGBT students on campus was also evident infocus groups that Belmont held in 2011 to gauge the Belmont community’sreaction to the official approval of the Bridge Builders organization oncampus. Students I talked to reported that, at nearly every focus group(which numbered around five, with 20!25 individuals each), even the moreconservative religious attendees unanimously voiced support for the BridgeBuilders organization. The exception is a focus group in which two peoplevoiced their disapproval. As one student put it, “everyone was overwhel-mingly supportive of Bridge Builders and adding sexual orientation tothe nondiscrimination clause, even this old pastor from rural Georgia.”While there were no focus groups prior to Bridge Builders’ activism to


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serve as a comparative baseline, it is perhaps notable that any focus groupswere held at all given the lack of conversation on LGBT issues prior toBridge Builders.

Bridging Oppositional Personal Identities

A final way that Bridge Builders helped bridge divides over religion andsexuality at Belmont was by helping many of the Bridge Builders partici-pants make sense of their own seemingly oppositional identities. TheBridge Builders students certainly took notice of the improved atmospherefor LGBT students at the school. Many students who became active inBridge Builders, ranging from the “consistently religious” to the “formerlyreligious” to the “consistently non-religious,” came out as gay, lesbian, orbisexual during or after the protests, once they realized how many othersexual minorities were at the school and once they perceived the Belmontcommunity to be more welcoming. (Although I did not interview any indi-viduals who identified as transgender, a few respondents told me that twoor three transgender students had also started to become involved in thegroup.) Others felt more emboldened to bring up issues surroundingreligion and sexuality in their classes.

However, the most striking “biographical consequences” of the BridgeBuilders group occurred for many of those “formerly religious” studentswho had turned away from religion prior to their participation in BridgeBuilders but began to renew their religious convictions as a result of theirparticipation in Bridge Builders. For example, one woman, who began herparticipation in Bridge Builders as a student and then continued as analumna, had attended a more conservative church in Nashville because shewas paid to sing there. Yet, she had begun to pull away from religionbecause she found it to be an unsupportive environment, and was broughtback to religion through her involvement in Bridge Builders:

At the time [of the protests] I was working for [blinded] Presbyterian Church. I do sortof ! I’m a paid singer at various churches, for extra money on top of my job. Theywere a pretty gay-negative group. And while I loved them very much, I realized that Iwasn’t going to be able to stay there very much longer if I was to be comfortable withmyself and deal with my own religious issues surrounding sexuality. So I put in mynotice there and got a job at [blinded] United Methodist Church … And the Methodistchurch has been a lot better for me than ! I was raised Southern Baptist, and theywere very gay-negative. They just don’t deal with that at all. There were kids I grew upwith who I found out later had killed themselves just because their families were


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seminary people who were pastors or whatever and kicked them out of the family, etc.So it did make me move around a little bit and in doing so I was able to get over someof my own personal issues with religion. Basically, I had pulled back from religionbecause of being in an unsupportive and hurtful environment, and Bridge Buildersbrought me back.

When I asked what about the protests brought her back to religion, shecontinued:

Well, there were a lot of allies involved, as well as ! one of the women in BridgeBuilders … is a religion major and she is very passionate about the fact that it was okayfor her to be a pastor and to be gay, and that was totally fine, and that everyone shouldjust get the fuck over it. And she is one of the most religious and theological and spiri-tual people that I’ve ever known. So in just talking to her, in getting to knowher … sort of made me feel like there didn’t have to be this divide, I didn’t have to stickwith the views that had been espoused to me since I was a child about gay people inreligion.

She went on to say that she then told others in the Bridge Builders groupabout welcoming churches in town, and some of them started attendingthose churches.

Another student described a similar and common story of havingattended a conservative church most of her life and having begun to souron religion but coming to understand alternative religious perspectives onhomosexuality through her participation in the Bridge Builders group:

I think there were some really strong spiritual leaders that were part of Bridge Builders.And that still are. Many of these people felt like someone needed to pray over our meet-ings, and they did. I learned that ! my home church is very exclusive and not veryopen and every week I’d hear at least one homophobic or racist statement made.Generally unintentionally racist and intentionally homophobic. And there were a lot ofreally sexist statements too ! I stopped counting those a couple years ago. And I knewdeep down that wasn’t right, but I didn’t know anything else, so I just kind of sat there,and I had begun to pull away from religion. But after seeing these people that firmlyheld this conviction that homosexuality was okay and having someone sit down andteach me and showed me in the Bible where it talks about it and how it talks about itand the verbiage that’s used, having someone sit down with me and teach me was veryhelpful. So I think I’ve become stronger in my faith.

Finally, while those “consistently religious” students who had enteredthe Bridge Builders group already claiming a strong religious identity didnot change their views as a result of their participation in the group, theydid say that their religious views and practices had been reaffirmed. Forinstance, one student had just recently begun to attend church when hebecame active in Bridge Builders, and when he saw other members of


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his church become active in the protests, his decision to rejoin a religiouscommunity was reaffirmed:

I think [the protests] made me that much more grateful for a church community,because my church community was present throughout that entire process. It reaffirmedfor me my decision to return to church. Because I had basically given up on churchbefore I started going to [blinded] Baptist Church, and through the process of the pro-tests, seeing the members of my church, some of whom were employed by Belmont,being present throughout that whole process, just reaffirmed for me the importance ofgenuine church community.

In sum, then, the Bridge Builders group helped many participants makesense of their own personal identities, moving from an understanding oftheir sexual identity and religious convictions as oppositional or contradic-tory to an understanding of their sexual identity and religious beliefs ascompatible.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have analyzed the role of Bridge Builders in bridgingdivides over religion and sexuality at Belmont University. I argue that thisstudy holds significant implications for existing conceptualizations of“bridge building” and “bridging organizations” in social movements.Previous scholarship has generally assumed that social movements pursuebridge building as a means toward other movement ends rather than anend in itself. Similarly, previous scholarship has mostly assumed that brid-ging organizations negotiate divides among disparate social movementorganizations rather than in society more broadly (e.g., Brecher & Costello,1990; Roth, 2003, 2008). The case of Bridge Builders extends previousunderstandings of bridge building and bridging organizations to showthat activists sometimes deploy protest tactics to bridge differences notonly among activists or activist organizations but also in their widercommunities.

This reconceptualization of bridge building and bridging organizations,in turn, opens up new lines of scholarship in social movement studies. Forinstance, we still know little about the factors that influence the emergenceof bridging organizations across society. Certainly, many other such orga-nizations exist ! in many ways, this chapter is a case in point of the thou-sands of Gay-Straight Alliances being established across high schools,colleges, and universities across the United States (Fetner & Kush, 2008;


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Kane, 2013a; Miceli, 2005a). Bridging organizations devoted to issues offaith (e.g., interfaith organizations) and race (e.g., racial reconciliationorganizations) are also quite common (Wood et al., 2012). Future researchmight address why social movement and other civic groups adopt an orga-nizational identity devoted to bridge building.

This study also raises important questions about the effectiveness ofbridge-building tactics, specifically, the conditions under which bridgingorganizations succeed in resolving conflicts related to collective identity.This case study suggests some initial hypotheses. For instance, BridgeBuilders benefited from rapid advances in political opportunities for sexualminorities: while only a third of Americans expressed support for rightssuch as same-sex marriage a decade ago, a majority of Americans reportthat they approve of same-sex marriage now (Public Religion ResearchInstitute, 2014). Similarly, Bridge Builders benefited from structural oppor-tunities that benefited the advancement of LGBT rights at Belmont, espe-cially Belmont’s break from the anti-LGBT TBC. Bridge Builders alsobenefited from having influential donors on its side and from the lack ofany visible countermovement at the school. Finally, the religious framingand identity of the group, which seemed to resonate with both students andadministrators, likely played a major role in the group’s success.5 Ofcourse, one should not draw overly optimistic conclusions about the poten-tial role for religion in social movements from this one “successful case”(Mirola, 2003): for instance, it remains an open question whether BridgeBuilders’ affiliation with University Ministries will preclude the organiza-tion from engaging in contentious protest tactics in the future, and onecould argue that the emphasis on reconciliation between LGBT- andreligious-identified communities draws the group away from activism thataddresses inequalities shaped by social structures. Altogether, however,each of these factors likely contributed to the success of Bridge Builders atBelmont, and future research employing comparative research designsmight assess the relative importance of these factors.

Finally, this study raises questions about the kinds of changes thatbridging organizations produce throughout society, especially cultural andbiographical changes. Research on cultural and biographical consequencesof social movements has often been overshadowed by research on politicalor policy consequences of social movements. When scholars have identifiedcultural and biographical impacts of social movements, these are generallyconsidered “unintended” impacts of social movements (Earl, 2004; Giugni,2004; though see recent theorizing by Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008).However, this study suggests that a focus on organizations that pursue


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bridge building as a primary goal (rather than as a means to achieve policygoals) would be a fruitful sight for exploration of social movement-inducedcultural and biographical change. Indeed, this study produced the rela-tively novel findings that social movements can transform institutionalidentities (see Nagel, 1995, and Bernstein & De La Cruz, 2009, for otherexamples of social movement-induced identity change) and that socialmovements can influence participants’ religious biographies (see Demerath,Marwell, & Aiken, 1971; McAdam, 1988; and Sherkat & Blocker, 1997,for other examples, though these scholars generally link social movementactivism with a gradual alienation from religion). Research on organi-zations working to bridge other types of social divides would likely yieldmore insights into cultural and biographical consequences of socialmovements.

NOTES

1. In interviews, respondents also reported variations of this mission statement,including “bridging the gap between homosexuality and Christianity.”2. Both Belmont and the soccer coach, citing an exit agreement, have refused to

comment on why she left and whether she was fired, asked to resign, or resignedvoluntarily.3. Fisher continued to deny that any discrimination on the basis of sexual orien-

tation took place. Activists viewed this as a legal maneuver to protect the schoolagainst future lawsuits, especially as faculty and staff besides the soccer coach hadrecently come forward to claim the school discriminated against them on the basisof their sexual orientation (Caress, 2010).4. Most of the activists involved in the protests believed that enforcing a pro-

hibition on sex outside of marriage was a way of discriminating against lesbianand gay individuals without actually acknowledging discrimination against lesbianand gay individuals, since same-sex marriage is not currently recognized inTennessee.5. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising several of these points.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter was presented at the annual meeting of the AmericanSociological Association, August 2013, New York, NY. The author thanksLarry Isaac, Shaul Kelner, Quan Mai, Mariano Sana, the editor, andanonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlierversions of this chapter.


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Social Movements and Bridge Building: Religious and Sexual Identity Conflicts

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