We must remain true to mission
San Franciscans know Glide as more than a church. It’s a welcoming community, a refuge of hope for people living on the edge, a friend to the poor, disadvantaged and oppressed. Glide is a foundation that not only holds a church but more importantly provides critical services and nonjudgmental support for thousands of in-need families and individuals, including the most abandoned and brutalized people in our city. Glide is a mission of love and a movement for change.
When we took the cross off our wall in 1967, it was an act of imagination and vision, to open up the doors for everyone to enter. Ever since then we’ve been a radically inclusive, just and loving community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycle of poverty and marginalization. You don’t have to be sober, clean, or religious to be part of Glide. Come as you are.
At Glide, our Sunday celebrations are where a true cross section of the world comes together as equals to celebrate. For 50 years, the Glide foundation has built an innovative array of programs by listening directly to the needs of the people as they have expressed them.
When Glide was founded by Lizzie Glide 90 years ago, it was a donation to the United Methodist Church and she communicated her desire that Glide become “a house of prayer for all people.” Today the church is run by a foundation. The Glide board of trustees controls the foundation’s resources, of which 95 percent support social programming, and 5 percent go toward church activities. The United Methodist Church bishop for this region controls pastoral appointments and can reassign pastors as he or she sees fit, but the board has fiduciary responsibility over the entire budget.
Today Glide provides education, recovery support, access to primary and mental health care, job training, child care, shelter access and help with permanent housing, HIV and hepatitis C testing and harm reduction outreach services to thousands of the poorest San Franciscans. Our kitchen serves 750,000 free meals annually with the help of 12,000 volunteers. In this collective effort, we are privileged to have the leadership of our foundation president and CEO, Karen Hanrahan.
Yet today the things we’ve worked hardest for are under threat. The United Methodist Church is attempting to make Glide more traditional and conservative. It is our concern that this would undermine the radically inclusive nature of our community and divert resources from our progressive mission and social services, and many other vital programs. We are determined to stay the course.
We feel Glide is a model for real community in San Francisco. It’s why we’ve repeatedly been referred to as “the conscience of the city,” because we fight for social justice for all people. San Francisco, and the whole country, is going through a crisis of divisiveness and despair stoked by levels of inequality not seen before in our lifetimes. You can see it in every neighborhood in San Francisco. Glide is needed now more than ever.
Our mission of love, radical inclusivity and care are the ingredients that make Glide a bridge between people of all backgrounds and perspectives, expanding compassion, understanding and respect for one another.
San Francisco needs Glide, and Glide needs your support. Join us at 11 a.m., Thursday, on the City Hall steps at a rally to save Glide as a safe space for all San Franciscans. We are calling on our community of all colors, faiths, and walks of life to show the world how we come together, shine and move forward together as a people. That’s #GLIDEunconditionally.