Apostate

Miley Cyrus left her church when she witnessed it harming gay people

Popstar Miley Cyrus has gotten candid in a new interview, opening up about her own struggles with faith. The 27-year-old singer also revealed that she left her church over its treatment of LGBTQ Christians.

“I was also brought up in the church in Tennessee at a time in the 90s, so it was a less accepting time with all that,” Cyrus said on an Instagram live broadcast of Bright Minded March 20. “I had some gay friends in school. The reason why I left my church is that they weren’t being accepted. They were being sent to conversion therapies. And I had a really hard time with that and I had a hard time with me finding my sexuality too.” Cyrus identifies as pansexual, and has dated men and women in the past.

Related: Barely a month after their divorce, Miley Cyrus is already living with their new girlfriend

Cyrus also revealed that her reckoning over the treatment of queer people in the church led to her own spiritual awakening. “I think now you telling me that I’m allowed to redesign my relationship with God as an adult and make it how it feels most accepting to me would make me feel so less turned off by spirituality.”

Cyrus herself came out in 2015. She told Elle: “A big part of my pride and my identity is being a queer person. What I preach is: People fall in love with people, not gender, not looks, not whatever. What I’m in love with exists on almost a spiritual level.”

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