Glide stripped of its pastors, and congregants aren’t happy
To most San Franciscans, it’s just Glide — the iconic institution at Ellis and Taylor streets in the Tenderloin that feeds the hungry, cares for the sick and hosts some of the most rollicking, joyful church services in the city.
But technically, the name is Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. And it’s the middle part of the name that led to unforeseen heartache over the weekend and could result in a split from the national United Methodist Church altogether.
On Saturday night, Kaye Foster, the chair of Glide’s board of trustees, received an email with startling news. Minerva Carcaño, the bishop overseeing United Methodist churches in California and Nevada, will remove Glide’s two associate pastors on July 1, with no immediate plans to replace them.
She’ll send the Rev. Theon Johnson III to Downs Memorial United Methodist Church in Oakland and the Rev. Angela Brown to serve as a minister of community engagement, advocacy and justice in Carcaño’s administration.
That leaves Glide with no reverend to lead church services and without the church hierarchy’s permission to find one.
“Please know that Bishop Carcaño does not intend to appoint any pastoral leadership to Glide until we can get to a better place organizationally with the church and the foundation,” the Rev. Staci Current, a district superintendent for the church and one of Carcaño’s deputies, wrote in the email to Foster. “You are not free to hire any pastor(s) to assume leadership over the church.
“It continues to be our hope for Glide to have an effective foundation to provide for the needs of the community,” Current wrote. “It is also of the utmost importance to have a vital, functioning United Methodist Church.”
Glide has already weathered a tumultuous few months. The Rev. Jay Williams left the church pastor position in April after less than a year. He had succeeded the Rev. Cecil Williams, the 88-year-old force behind Glide, who retired but remains active in the church. The two men are not related.
That left Johnson and Brown to take turns preaching, but now they’ll be gone, too.
Current’s email to Foster did not explain what the bishop believes isn’t functioning at Glide, and the bishop’s spokesman on Monday said there would be “no comment at this time.” But Glide’s leadership is pretty sure they know.
In short: too much emphasis on social services and not enough on church.
“They believe that the influence of the church is what’s really missing,” Foster said. “Our focus is on saving lives and not saving souls.”
That’s been the mission of Glide for more than a halfcentury. The church was the creation of Lizzie Glide, a Methodist philanthropist who bought the plot of land in 1929 and opened the church two years later.
In 1963, the Methodist Church made a move of a different sort: It sent the Rev. Cecil Williams, a native of Texas, to San Francisco to lead the tiny, struggling congregation. He quickly turned it into a thriving, super-liberal, super-inclusive
“They believe that the influence of the church is what’s really missing. Our focus is on saving lives and not saving souls.” Kaye Foster, chair, Glide board of trustees
church where everybody from prostitutes to drug addicts to high society and Hollywood stars was welcome.
He removed the cross, altar and hymnals from the church and helped create the famous choir and band. He presided over same-sex weddings decades before they were legal.
Meanwhile, the church’s foundation blossomed. It serves more than 700,000 meals every year and runs programs for the homeless, people living with HIV, abused women and others.
Apparently, Glide’s unique approach hasn’t jibed with the more conservative, traditional style of Bishop Carcaño. Glide’s leadership believes the move reflects the wider crisis within the United Methodist Church of whether to remain one entity or to split, with one of the primary dividing lines being whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry in the church and whether gays and lesbians should be ordained.
“We believe that schism is reflective in the way things are playing out here at Glide,” said Karen Hanrahan, CEO of Glide. “This bishop brings a much more conservative philosophy and approach that is inconsistent with Glide’s more progressive and radically inclusive values.”
Current announced the changes during church service at Glide on Sunday morning. And it didn’t go well.
As shown in videos posted on Facebook, members of the congregation booed and shouted, “Oh my God!” and “Where’s the bishop? She’s too coward to come here!”
“I have shared my announcement with you,” Current continued. “I’m sorry that you have responded in this way.”
Johnson, the associate pastor being reassigned to Oakland, tried to quiet the crowd by talking about how “sunsets are proof that even an ending can be beautiful, too” and how sunsets are accompanied by sunrises.
But the crowd wasn’t having it. “We don’t care about sunrises!” one person shouted.
Cecil Williams was sitting in a wheelchair at the front and tried to talk to the congregation, but his voice is too quiet to be heard on the video.
Poet Janice Mirikitani, Williams’ wife and co-founder of the modern-day Glide, then rose to speak, and there was no trouble hearing her. She recalled that when she and her husband took over the church, some members left, “but thousands more walked in.”
“We’ve been hit by trains before, but guess what?” she said. “We have a choice to get off the damn track and take control of our lives, take control of this church.”
Finally, the crowd was on board with a speaker, standing and clapping.
“The church is not a denomination,” she continued. “The church is the people.”
And that’s where this train appears to be headed. Asked whether Glide might split from the United Methodist Church, Hanrahan said, “We’re not talking about that at this point.”
But Foster said the board’s main responsibility is to ensure the stability of Glide — not just its church, but its social services, too.
“We would have to consider that as an option,” she said of severing ties with the United Methodist Church. “Our services for so many people in this city are a safety net, and for many others, it’s the hope that they have one place they can come and truly be unconditionally heard, represented and served.
“At the end of the day, that is what we stand for,” she said. “We’ve stood for that for decades.”