"I feel for the gay community of Nashville, and for every person who trusted Kurek enough to flirt with him, hang out with him, and confide in him about their lives," wrote Amy Lieberman on the blog Feministing. "If I were in that community, I would feel so betrayed right now."

In a Huffington Post blog post titled "Pretending To Be Gay Isn't The Answer," Emily Timbol, a religion blogger, expressed a similar opinion: "What's sad is that every interaction Timothy had during his year pretending was fake."

"He was welcomed under false pretenses, acting like someone who understood the struggle that his LGBT friends faced," she wrote. "He did not."

But Kurek says that that was not his aim. "This isn't a book about being gay, I could not write that book, I am not qualified," he writes. "What this is about is the label of gay and how that label affected me personally."

Throughout the book, Kurek emphasizes that distinction. While much of "The Cross in the Closet" is about the struggle to understand the gay community, which he tries to address by enlisting a friend to act as his boyfriend, much of it addresses how his former church's community -- and family -- reacted to his new lifestyle.

"I am actually not friends or in contact at all with 99.99% of the people that I grew up with or the churches that I grew up with," Kurek says.

Kurek says he isn't opposed to interacting with people from his "former" life. When he has run into members of his old church, he said he generally has quick, cordial conversations and moves on.

But some of the new distance is by choice. When Kurek's mother told a friend in her church that her son was gay, the person said Kurek's sexuality could jeopardize his mother's standing in the church.

The evangelical community has remained fairly mum throughout much of the reaction; most responses have come from Christians who are in some way connected to the LGBT community.

The change

Though Kurek goes to church less now, primarily because he has yet to find one that feels like "home," he says he feels more religious "in the biblical definition of religion." He still considers himself a Christian, although no longer evangelical, and says he is interested in attending the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in the future.

Kurek quotes James 1:27 from the New Testament: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

There's no mention of organized religion in passages like that, and Kurek says it's the institutions of religion that worry him most today. He talks about his once robust church life as a distant memory.

Living as a gay man jaded him to religion, he says, though he has not surrendered all of his former beliefs. Yes, Kurek says, he is struggling with certain points of his theology, but he has been looking for the right church. "I am trying to figure out what place in the body of Christ I fit in," he said.

As for his original goal, to radically change who he was, Kurek says mission accomplished. He says he has conquered his prejudices of the LGBT community and is happy with the person he has become.

"If anybody had told me back then who I would be or what I would believe now," Kurek said, "I would have thought they were completely insane."

For example, Kurek now thinks homosexuality is completely acceptable.

His family is happy to know that he is not gay, says Kurek. He has a new set of friends. And he lives in Portland, Oregon, where he moved shortly after finishing his experimental year.

The author plans to donate part of the proceeds from his book to help LGBT homeless youth who have been rejected by their families.

He is now at work on a book proposal for a follow-up to "The Cross in the Closet." The book will be about the years after his experiment, transitioning back to honest living while continuing to engage the LGBT community.

"I want to tell more stories," he says "and humanize the people who Christians always want to look at as labels."