Haley Lepp and Travis Richardson

00:03 My name is Travis Richardson. I'm 24 years old today is the 22nd of April 2017. We are in Washington DC at Georgetown University and I'm with my friend from University Haley.

00:17 Hi, I'm Haley Lepp. I'm also 24 is still April 22nd 2017, and I'm sitting here at Georgetown in Washington DC with my friend Travis.

00:30 So I I saw that the storycorps was looking for people to talk about their face last night and was thinking who do I know who has a really interesting to say the story? Of course Travis. I was thinking if he's around a little bit about sort of your background especially before coming to Georgetown see before I buy it kind of like you my faith has, you know gone through different Transformations or not, especially with my familial backgrounds when I was growing up. I was in like a mix Faith household as well my dad before I was born with a Southern Baptist preacher of all things, right and he had his falling out with the church before I was born and we never spoke about it. So I don't know exactly what happened there, but he wasn't practicing by the time I came about

01:30 My mom was a Catholic Roman Catholic who had also fun way from the church in her early twenties due to numerous reasons sort of thing. So,

01:42 When my brother and I were born it was time for us to be baptized. My mom's like how you got to get baptized these children cuz even though she wasn't practicing she still felt like, you know the tradition in like, you know, you children need to be baptized. I was just like ingrained in her kind of thing and my dad was like no. Well, that's dumb. And even if that were the thing like he's as a child you don't baptize children because the baptize babies are so they wouldn't you know it back and forth like that and finally my dad capitulate is like finding to be baptized but just not Roman Catholic cuz my dad did not like Catholics. He's like a good old traditional Southern Baptists person who had yeah his prejudices against them. So little happy medium of you know, processing ISM and Catholicism, you know, I was baptized into the Lutheran tradition, but then did absolutely nothing wrong with it for the next 11 years. Like it would celebrate Christmas in the home, but I was basically

02:42 My daily are yearly dose of Jesus was just so Christmas. Okay, never done and it was until my dad died when I was eleven that my mom and I started to think that religion ought to play a larger role in our lives than what it was at the time and so coincidentally like at 11. That's when the Lutheran church starts their confirmation process, which is the 3-year long process of going from you know, this nation little form laying in the religion to being an adult within the religion. And so that's when I started confirmation which is fortunate cuz I was three years of classes, which is good cuz I knew absolutely nothing about their religion I was baptized in but I was also like the three years of very formative like Middle School Later Elementary Middle School experience that was coming into my own like who

03:40 Who I was to my identities were and then now Christianity specifically through Lutheranism with starting to be a much more prominent role and how I identified with myself, but then also during this time is like the first time I noticed that you know, that guy he's cute over there or you know, like I was interested in guys, but then I also had this like Nation religious upbringing coming on too. So is definitely a very interesting sectionality and how it all started off but I'm interested in the boat about you your family background. You're also interesting me too. Cuz when I remember meeting you like when I first came to Georgetown I transfer it so I came here later and I remember meeting you and people like oh, this is Travis he wants to be a priest and so I was thinking this is this is a very it like religious gentleman and I'm thinking, you know, I had no idea that this was your background and it's funny because I almost feel like mine's kind of been with

04:40 Also was born to an Interfaith family.

04:45 My mom is Catholic raised Catholic went to Catholic school Catholic University. Her aunt was Uncle was a priest Catholic at University. She met my father. He's Jewish when we moved when I was very young. We moved to California. My dad worked in Silicon Valley and working very hard was not.

05:11 Around probably enough to be super active in our religious upbringing and his family aggressively wanted us to be raised Jewish aggressive and that my mom and my parents laugh now and they said they tell stories that like they would bring us as babies to my dad's house and they like play Jewish music and like you act like really religious even though they probably like weren't quite so I really just feel my Grandma's not listening. I think it was also, you know a really big and there's tension between my mother and her in-laws. I I don't know that they weren't up to her for a long time and cheated them.

05:54 And sew in in California and then she was interested in maybe trying to to raise us Jewish but she's like without my dad around to know how to do that me Catholic kind of she promise made to his grandparents. This is the story. I know I might not be true. She promised. She wouldn't baptize us when I was about six years old. We had a secret baptism because she decided she didn't want it back to me and my five-year-old sister, you know, my my grandma called him was like what's going on and it didn't last very long and that, you know launched into more, you know family issues for sure, but there is I think that that tension was always there but we were pretty Catholic until I was about 11 years old.

06:50 Did first communion did all of that and we moved to Seattle went to a new church, which I think was significantly more conservative. I don't know like how that works, but it was more conservative and I was in Sunday school with my sister. Nina is a year younger and

07:09 The priest who was teaching Sunday school and I don't remember this comment exit like word for it is over 10 years ago, but said something along the lines of you know, if you believe in homosexuality, you're not Catholic and I kind of looked at my sister and was like, I guess we're not Catholics then and we left and yeah, I know I was in a reply 11 year old but I told my mom about it and I think she was questioning her face at the time as well and was she was sort of like

07:44 Sure, like will be done will be done in this was right around the time. They were a lot of sort of accusations more, you know, looking into the Catholic church. And so kind of in the opposite way I found myself.

07:59 In my teenage years there was no religion around really at all. And so by the time I got to Georgetown University Schlage, obviously a Catholic institution. The Jesuits have been here since its initiation, but you can really make it that religion that is as big of a part of your campus life is he wanted to be right? So if you come from a background where you know, you didn't have any religious affiliation growing up, it's not like here they they hit you over the head with it. They talk they have their buzzwords if I care of personality. I send like the Jesuits this attachments that which is very true.

08:43 Yeah, but now that's that's really interesting looking at lgbtq rights looking at on this especially this sort of slave history and how that you know intersects with the Catholic face. It's it's an interesting time. I think to be at the University as like the lgbtq resource center here is really great. And it was definitely a resource that I took advantage of throughout my four years here and it's like very much a thing of Pride that this Catholic University was the very first Catholic Affiliated University in the world have a fully funded and staffed LGBT Resource Center and it's funny to hear you say that cuz when I came here I was thinking cuz it's not it's how old is it?

09:43 Only there for years old or three years old look at us we're doing it and I'm thinking why didn't you do this long time ago saying it's like that you don't really hear about the center as well as that the center's founding came after almost a decade long legal battle by LGBT students suing the university saying they have the right to also be tended to like their needs are LGBT needs to be addressed on campus. And it only took that almost like I said dick is on legal battle for the center to come about. How do you feel that? You sort of grew in your face during your time here?

10:33 But yeah, so first I had to become Catholic right? Cuz I was Lutheran for all those years and it was from like 11 to 16. I was like, you're very devout Lutheran happy-go-lucky go to youth group enjoyed everything and I think once you get your teenage years a lot of people go through I feel what I went through of questioning the faith, you know, this was like four for me. The first thing that started off was all of this is the tradition that I was baptized into that, you know, after this my father we kind of just got placed into and then went on from there. Is it something I'm really choosing for myself. Do I own this identity basically and then that went into a study of different religions, so I read the Quran I read the Quran I read the rig-veda is I've read, you know, the entirety of the Bible just do comparisons contrast that sort of thing and then I've also at the same time red, Stephen Hawk

11:33 On the Origin of Species cuz like I wanted it to be a very holistic understanding of religion including like it different ideas of creationism vs. Evolution or the idea of atheism vs. Theism like really reflecting on the different Notions there and this was like a two-year spans in late is a mid early High School to Leigh High School where I was Lutheran, but then I was also stepping outside of that comfort zone that I grown into and looking at different religions looking outside the box and do you know my own little logical deductions or whatever I went from 80s and at the exam from polytheism to monotheism and blah blah blah and then I decided that I don't just like Christian identity not because I was like something that I had simply chosen or is this something that was born into if it's something that now after researching everything else. I'm like, yes, I can say that this is what I believe in.

12:33 Cuz I've done the research and like I choose to believe in it. So the thing and so then I was content again for a while.

12:40 But then growing up like hearing stories about my mom from Catholicism finding like the different traditions of like sayings and you know, the pageantry almost like as a young gay man. I love pageant. So like the candles in the processions in the beautiful stained-glass and everything was really fascinating to me and since my mom worked as a flight attendant growing up we could fly to Europe than just everywhere really easily. So taking vacations over to Europe and going into the grant Cathedrals and just being like enthralled of what I saw there. I got me interested in Catholicism and I started researching like the theological differences between like my prostate background with Catholicism and sing at the different ways that you know, the communion of Saints or handled or like how reconciliation confession is done. What would sort of like sends there are to confess. I began really liking Catholicism a lot. I like the fact that it was hierarchical and I like being able to trace

13:41 Exactly, like a religious teaching from one person down throughout the others like having authority over that he hasn't protestantism in my own opinion. It's so much like one preacher can choose to preach about one thing one day and then everything the next day or just like so we monopolize on a single topic and just have their Church Beast centered around that one topic like Westboro Baptist Church, you know anything like that. Where is in Catholicism? It's centralized exactly. That is something that I was attracted to.

14:18 So after like attending mass in secret cuz my mom was like Barry Auntie Catholic growing up in like having a bad experience in this other thing. I start attending like Matt secretly and then like inside of my Catholic but I wouldn't like tell anybody else that right but funnily enough. Actually. It was my junior year of high school where the ELCA the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America was deciding on whether or not to allow pastors or to ordain people into the ministry who were in monogamous same-sex relationships, whether to extend marriage to these people or it were not so that was a very contentious issue. There was a vote on in my church that all they confirmed adult got to got to vote on what their say was and you know contingent upon with the decision the outcome was where they should leave the church or not.

15:16 And the ELCA struck this kind of odd compromise where they decided to ordain people who are monogamous same-sex relationships in the ministry, but they wouldn't offer marriage for them. Which me as a young gay man that fell very odd and my choir you like it there in a monogamous relationship. Why are you extending marriage to them you're going toward an abandoned married and for my mother who didn't like gay people as well, you know, that was just the final straw for her to she's like, no, they're going to ordain these people know absolutely not so then she decided to leave Lutheran church and we became Catholic again in a nutshell.

15:58 But it was out of that like homophobia that we became Catholic it's so interesting cuz it was that homophobia that had a sleeve and honestly though.

16:13 That

16:16 Then started like a really dark time for me because then I came out to my mother and my senior year of high school. And then that led to like down in Georgia. You can still do conversion therapy. It's legalized. It's legal there. And so I went through conversion therapy for like my entire senior year of high school as well. Yeah. It wasn't Catholic it was promising baseball still is like that that identity there, you know.

16:48 And trying to tie this back into like Faith life and everything though. It wasn't until my my freshman year at Georgetown being really enthralled by the Jesuits being unhappy with the reason that I came to this University versus like politics in international relations and studying those things that being completely turned off by what I was studying is like I was attending Mass almost daily here. I was enthralled by like I found myself like hearing the readings and during the sermon picturing like what I would say if I give him those readings and I had to give a sermon in our how many of it that's where I came from totally like being in love with the center for social justice here and being like I want to make social justice or the fight for that like Central in my life, you know, I want to serve God I'm going to make that Central in my life. And then one day I was like reading and international relations textbook over some dull boring and try to saying I literally just explain the book and I

17:48 Types of science like screw this I'm becoming a Jesuit. Like I don't want to be a politician or anything like that anymore, but it wasn't until I made that decision that I wanted to be a Jesuit that my mother backed off my sexuality cuz like it was through that that conversion therapy after a year. I didn't tell her that I would still gay. I was like, oh, yes, it's a phase like, oh, yes. I'm I'm cured I'm done kind of thing, but you would still after that you like. So, how are you feeling or so, are you still struggling with this kind of thing and it wasn't until I told her that yeah, I'm going to be a priest. I am going to be celibate man that are it is at that it kind of

18:31 Itsfunneh brought up the center for social justice, cuz that's really where we started to get to know each other as we both worked at the csj. And I almost it's funny that you say you saw it as serving God because I saw it as sort of a Haven from all the religion at Georgetown is so managed to somehow involved with any of this religion, but I do want to make positive change in my community and I think yeah, it was a that the group of students who has worked. We Works their eunos came from just totally different totally diverse frames of mind and I think that that's something I really appreciate about Georgetown cuz growing up in the interface Community ain't me? I'm going to for kids and me and my sister and my sisters and I

19:26 We got really good at being kind of like chameleons. So instead of like

19:31 You know, it's her picking one and going with it. We would you know, our parents would take us to you know, Christmas dinner and then pass over and we would sort of like

19:43 We would be who people around us wanted us to be and I never really changed Ives last week. I went to a Catholic funeral. I spent time with some cousins were Christian fundamentalists. They broke off from the church and then went to a Passover seder and one day or two days, but

20:03 My sister is actually went different ways. One of my sister is actually win in converted to Catholicism. I told her I was doing this and she died. She actually she's in Europe right now, And she said how come you going to do that? You're not religious you're not here and I've watched other family members who are also an interface the children of interface parents actually pursue in and become more religious overtime of their own accord. So when you and you chose to be to become a priest, that's obviously that was you doing out of your own volition. Did you I mean, is that still a goal for you?

20:47 It's

20:49 It's still formulating in the back of my mind and it says the sermon thing and I was gung-ho about it and then went to last year. My mother died as a while and then I really said well, I need to put a pause on this and make sure that this discernment is is true. I need to like take time to process my feelings over the death of my mom before I make any sort of life-changing permanent decisions, like entering the priesthood would be your they continuing those studies.

21:24 And at first I was worried like back freshman year of University when I first decided to be a priest that I was going to make that decision because I knew it would please my mom.

21:37 But then really thinking about it. I knew that that wasn't so much the case and is like it. Like I said I wanted to do something that would be pleasing to God. I wanted to do something that would allow me to travel in like engage with different social issues of the day from poverty to in equality and its various norms and like being with a gay man and a Catholic. I wanted to be a bridge between those two communities. That's so often are pitted against each other via different different people or the media or claim to be to completely diametrically opposed things but really aren't like trying to mend the Gap in like pastoring to the needs of LGBT people regardless of what they're Catholic or not. Like just being that religious voice of assurance for them with something that was really strongly

22:30 Considering and it wasn't until I place myself within that identity within that context that I could open up to my mother about my own true identity cuz that you know throughout this whole discernment time. I was very open to her like I want to work with LGBT people once I into the priesthood

22:49 And that really like opened up a lot of conversations that I will couldn't have if you know, I will had hadn't been Discerning this this path with her is like come to find out she was a flight attendant during the AIDS epidemic and every gay person. She worked with that. She knew literally died of AIDS and she was afraid like in her mind to it equated.

23:13 Gay equals diabetes and so when I add come out to her

23:19 She equated Travis will die of AIDS kind of thing and it wasn't until I stepped into this like celibate couldn't load. I want to be this this priest role that I could speak to her about those sort of identities and like trying to change those Notions and I think thankfully by the time that she passed away. She she really had mellowed out a lot on

23:46 On her stances, whatever they were. So interesting when you talk about both of us talk about our sort of background in religion. We talked a lot about politics, which is fitting were at your dad talked about those those dichotomy is probably the lgbtq community happening right now and I think Georgetown probably many of the Jesuits here would would probably be offended if you suggested the science was incompatible with

24:27 But we haven't talked all that much about like spirituality really this in this whole conversation last year. I spent a year living in Jordan, which is a majority Muslim country, but actually has very diverse space population was working with refugees, you know people of all Twitches Refugee service, but with no people of all different backgrounds Muslim or Christians,

24:56 Assyrians people from Darfur who practice this like mix of as I understand it like tribal religions and then also

25:07 Islam or Christianity and you know people from all over Somalia and watching

25:15 Yes there's politics in each face but watching people sort of share that intense spirituality I think it was definitely very binding and that that was somewhere where I felt I had a really hard time feeling like I belong in in society in the community because that was the one thing that I last was was actually the spirituality and that was something I felt a little bit at Georgetown as well I don't know that really struck me about what you were talking about earlier when you said that you were a chameleon or your family Where Are chameleons you would attend you know Jewish Seder and then I kind of like Matt and Easter the same time

25:59 And I feel like in a situation like that either with Georgetown in a very Cosmopolitan City with people from various backgrounds are with you and Jordan working with refugees from all over carrying their own face backgrounds with them. I feel like being that chameleons and having that background allows you to interact with people on a more intimate level and like gives you I know I thought I feel like it would give somebody like a better understanding to come in like you recognize the importance of a higher power or another belief system with in somebody's life regardless of what you profess or not and then working with people seeing how that's manifested in different ways for different people and seeing how you manifest in your own life by working for a greater good or working with people that is a spirituality and its own way. I would say it's like regardless of if you profess, you know, a Creed in any sort of outer being you're actively living out your own stir.

26:59 Validate your own understanding of how you want to operate in the world cuz that's what religion is to me. It's like how do I what do I want to do to serve something greater that I put value in and that's and those are like the decisions I make in my life. Like what would God want me to do? How can I better serve God, how can I serve God by serving other people and that's my spirituality. I feel like your spirituality as well as like something very similar.

27:36 But yeah, I just spirituality. It doesn't necessarily have to be codified within certain rules of do or do not do like spirituality. I feel like is a way of life and how you live and then as long as you're you have a greater goal in mind or you have a greater purpose and you're actively working for that tangibly then I think you're living it up.

28:01 You know, I hope so. Yeah, and I think that's something that yeah just time back to the interface and you looking at

28:11 I think I'm talking to my mom sheet for a long time till that religion really drove apart her family her her Catholic family and my dad's Jewish Family despite living very near each other. I don't think really ever became close and you know, not just that mean that you've been with him. My mom's family are there was a group of people who branched off and the reality is something I really admire about almost everyone in my family. Is this incredible Devotion to service and to you making the world better? I look at my my Jewish grandmother who is retired and works like she works a full-time job tutoring kids with Inter-Community trying to keep literacy rates up and you know what my grandfather who is served his community as a lawyer and

29:06 It just didn't throughout France and my sister who is you know, Embrace Joshua values and converted to Catholicism cuz she's so devoted to service that service element for sure. Yeah, like religion offers that conduit for people to get out and and really make something or or feel like they're being a part of something Greater by giving back to the community. Like you said earlier this Center for social justice here. There's lots of people who want that that is like where they find that that's a settlement there. There's a lot of students who don't have any religious affiliation that flock to the csj because they want to give back in their own way. I feel like religious or not that service aspect is that thing that ties us together cuz we're all here we all have problems and we all need to work together to we all need to work together kind of thing to it to work through but I think that's great. That's Georgetown strategy of keeping a diverse Community clothes.

30:06 Treats

30:09 Thanks. Thank God. I was talking about religion soon.