Local congregations celebrate Pride with support throughout the year
Pride is in the air — and on the calendar this month — at Bering Memorial United Church of Christ in Montrose.
The congregation is preparing its Pride Sunday service for June 26 — and will also serve as host for the Interfaith Pride Service at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 23, sponsored by the Faith Leaders Coalition of Greater Houston.
A team from Bering will participate in the Pride Run and members will have a booth at the parade. Both events are part of the 44th annual Houston LGBT+ Pride Celebration, June 25 at City Hall, 901 Bagby.
“I believe that the Pride parade and festival is a way of praising God,” Bering’s pastor Diane McGehee said. “It’s saying, ‘Look at what God has made.’ Now, that is worth celebrating.”
Bering is not alone. A number of area congregations are joining in Pride festivities this month — and support the LGBTQ community year-round.
“We’re looking forward to being there and being a strong presence,” the Rev. Lisa Hunt of St. Stephen’s Episcopal said of the parade plans and activities with sister congregations. “We want to show up as Episcopal congregations in Houston.”
The parade float theme selected by participating Episcopalian churches is “This is my Body,” the words of Jesus Christ as he broke bread with the disciples. The congregations will also have a booth at Pride, hand out water and offer prayer, and a Eucharist ceremony is scheduled.
Members of Lutheran congregations across the city — including Kindred, Faith, Christ the King, Covenant, Salem, Celebration and Zion — will have a float in the parade and plan to toss beads to festivalgoers.
Amber Harbolt, ministry coordinator at Celebration, has attended Pride with the church in the past but said this is her first time to go as a seminarian.
Before the parade begins, she said, pastors and seminarians meet at the fountain to offer anointing and blessings to any Pride attendees interested.
Many people stop at the Lutheran congregations’ booth to ask where to find a welcoming and inclusive church, Harbolt said.
“We were also there to apologize to festivalgoers on behalf of the church,” she said.
For some people, Harbolt said, that interaction was the first time that a church person used the correct pronoun or name.
“Part of the reason that I’m here in ministry is to remind people that God loves them — and that exclusion does not come from God,” she said.
When churches join in pride festivities, Harbolt said they are “engaging in activities that shift structure and institutions and public perception about who belongs in church and what a pastor looks like.”
She added, “To do our part in God’s work to transform the world, it’s important for us to be vocal and active in our support of a more inclusive world — and against a world that excludes and objectifies.”
Pride all year
A statement is read at the start of each sermon at Celebration Lutheran Church in Cypress. It welcomes “people of every age and size, color and culture, gender identity, sexual orientation and marital status, ability, disability and challenge.”
“One of the reasons why we say it every Sunday is there are a whole host of people who have never heard those words spoken at a church before,” pastor Ryan Dockery said. “And it’s really important that we do.”
He and Harbolt are both part of the LGBTQIA Coalition of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The coalition provides leadership during Pride festivities, as well as throughout the year.
“Our work as a church isn’t focused on one month only,” he said. “It’s a yearlong journey.”
That includes advocacy and serving as a resource for other congregations interested in being open and affirming, Dockery said.
The work is active, he added. “We can preach inclusivity in language,” he said. “We’re not called just to advocate but to be prescient with all of God’s people, not just those who believe and act the same way we do.”
Members at St. Stephen’s Episcopal agree that Pride is not limited to June. The congregation is involved in advocacy, testifying during legislative sessions, as well as educational efforts. The church also recently launched a podcast called “Faith From the Margins,” focusing on race and sexuality.
“Reaching out to the queer community has been part of St. Stephen’s ministry for many years,” Hunt said. “The Episcopal church has a history of realizing the gifts and talents of all its members.”
Still, she sees a need for more justice.
“I’ve been a priest for 33 years, and I’ve always been amazed and so thankful for the faithfulness of the gay community,” she said. “They are a witness of forgiveness and perseverance.”
Too often, churches have hurt and pushed out members of the LGBTQ community, Hunt said.
“And yet they’ve never abandoned God and remain open to possibility,” she said.
The Rev. D. Scott Cooper, assistant minister of congregational life at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, has also listened as LGBTQ members recount how they have been wounded by other churches in the past.
“What’s worse is when they say, ‘I’ll never go to church again.’ They would never find out about us — a community that will love them,” Cooper said.
He, too, felt like an outsider at church while growing up, he said. Now, he is an openly gay and married minister.
“You’re never going to look in the face of someone and find someone not made in the image of God,” he said.
Welcoming the LGBTQ community is part of the creed of Unitarian Universalists, he said. The denomination has a Welcoming Congregation program, a quarterly newsletter dedicated to sharing LGBTQ voices and a gathering called “UPLIFT” for trans and nonbinary members.
“We very much value the inherent worth and dignity of everyone,” Cooper said. “We don’t gather in community under the pretense that we all believe the same thing. Instead, it’s about how we treat each other and the world.”
In front of the church, three solidarity flags currently wave: Ukraine, Black Lives Matter and Pride.
“Your religion should be your spirituality plus your community,” Cooper said. “This is where you come to find your tribe, your people. We’re not here to tell you what to believe in or to try to change you. We’re here to give you a community, a place where you have a spiritual home.”
A history of Pride
Laura Mayo serves as senior minister of Covenant Church, an ecumenical liberal Baptist congregation in the Museum District.
“One of our founding members was a gay man,” she said of the congregation established in 1965. “So it was never a question. We’ve always been welcoming, affirming and fully inclusive.”
There are photos of the congregation joining in the Pride parade dating back to the 1980s — and Mayo said their participation may date back further. Usually, the church has a float, but COVID placed the tradition temporarily on hold.
Instead, this year, members will march in their Pride Tshirts. “We’re all going together to show our support and love and to join in the festivities,” Mayo said.
She looks forward to marching in the parade with her church each year — and says that often, someone on the sidelines waves a sign with words of hate claiming to speak for God.
“That’s not the same God I know,” Mayo said. “The Bible, over and over, tells about love, welcome and inclusion. If you read the Bible, the overwhelming sense is that we’re to love each other.”
In fact, she continued, Jesus’ greatest commandment is to love. “That does not include telling someone they are hated or an abomination,” Mayo said. “No matter what you’ve been told, you’re loved by God exactly as you are.”
Bering Memorial United Church of Christ also has a history steeped in Pride. Pastor McGehee explained how the congregation responded during the AIDS epidemic, establishing a support group for those who were HIV positive or affected by a diagnosis. The church also started an adult day care center and dental clinic for people with HIV.
“Part of our DNA is standing with the LGBTQ community,” McGehee said.
Church members are either members of that community — or allies.
McGehee wants those who have been outcast from church to know, “The message that you’ve been given that you’re incompatible with Christian teaching, that’s not true. This is a safe place for you. Not only will you be accepted, but you will be celebrated.”
Pride as part of faith
Rabbi Joshua Fixler of Congregation Emanu El also serves as president of the Faith Leaders Coalition of Greater Houston, sponsor of the Interfaith Pride service at Bering.
“It’s an opportunity to celebrate and an opportunity to offer solidarity with the LGBTQ community,” he said.
Fixler added that congregations are not simply offering support. “Our members are part of the LGBTQ community,” he said. “We stand in affirmation and in celebration with our members.”
There is thinking that religion is mutually exclusive with Pride. “We need to debunk the myth,” the rabbi said. “I support LGBTQ equality not in spite of my faith — but because of it. We are all created in the image of God.”
Faith communities standing in support of the LGBTQ community can make a world of difference, said the Rev. Mak Kneebone, pastor of Plymouth United Church in Spring.
He was also was the first transgender president of the Open and Affirming Coalition of the United Church of Christ.
Before becoming clergy, Kneebone attended a Pride parade in Chicago and recalled seeing a number of churches in attendance as allies. “To see people with all those signs, with all those church names, from all of those denominations made a difference to me,” he said.
At the time, Kneebone was not sure if he would ever find a church that fit.
“As a Christian, I didn’t have role models,” he said. “I didn’t know if I had to give up my faith.”
Then, he saw all the churches “making a statement and not being apologetic, saying, ‘We celebrate you. We don’t love you in spite of anything. This isn’t about how lucky you are that we’re including you. We’re so lucky to have you as part of us.’ ”
For Pride month, the worship team at Plymouth has decked out the congregation with rainbows. The church also joins the Pride celebration in The Woodlands in October.
“When churches are involved in Pride, it shifts the conversation,” Kneebone said. “It invites people to experience the God of the Christian faith in a space where they do not have to worry about being their authentic selves. They can start to imagine how to engage in their spirituality again.”
The more churches get involved that are inclusive, the better, he added.
“We need to have as many role models out there expressing faith, letting people know there are places to go, to find themselves and find God,” Kneebone said. “Unconditional love, that’s the whole point.”
“The message that you’ve been given that you’re incompatible with Christian teaching, that’s not true. This is a safe place for you. Not only will you be accepted, but you will be celebrated.”
The Rev. Diane McGehee, Bering Memorial United Church of Christ