Cathedral of Hope isn’t a typical church in conservative North Texas. One large stained-glass window features the Spanish word “esperanza,” or “hope,” and below it, two conjoined Mars gender symbols and two conjoined Venus symbols. Rainbow flags fly high on the front lawn, and hundreds of gay marriages have been performed since the Supreme Court ruling in June.
The Dallas church, which is a member of the United Church of Christ (UCC), loudly and proudly supports the LGBT community. It is one of hundreds of LGBT-affirming churches throughout the country, churches that were born out of oppression and marginalization, a history similar to black churches, says the Rev. Jeff Hood, minister of social justice at the cathedral’s Center of Hope for Peace and Justice.
“The LGBT liberation experience is unique in some ways,” says Hood. “LGBT churches, in my opinion, exist to help people understand that sexuality exists on a spectrum, gender exists on a spectrum, and I think that by doing that they help us to go even further … I think these LGBT inclusive spaces help us to come together in a very particular way.”
Cathedral of Hope claims to be the largest LGBT-affirming church in the United States. According to Hood, of the more than 2,000 church members, some 90 percent identify as gay or transgender.
For staff at LGBT-affirming churches, the message is simple: God loves all equally.
One of those in agreement is Alberto Magaña, who leads the church’s Spanish-speaking service.
In order to pursue his dream of becoming a pastor, Magaña often had to hide that he was gay. He is originally from Mexico, where he said he was continuously harassed while attending seminary because of his sexual orientation. That struggle brought him to a seminary in Oregon and eventually to a church in San Francisco, where his bishop told him he would have to hide his sexuality in order to be a priest at the church, leading to depression, self-hatred, and a year of therapy.
“Everything makes sense. I had to suffer all of those struggles and feel the abandonment and the rejection and judgment because now it’s easier for me to have more compassion for others who are going through the same,” says Magaña.
Magaña’s time in therapy helped him decide to become public about his sexual orientation. He refused to stay closeted, which led him to Dallas eight years ago, where he found Cathedral of Hope. Magaña has been a pastor for three years at the church and leads the Sunday Spanish services.
Hood thinks it makes perfect sense that Magaña would be forced to leave a liberal city like San Francisco, and be welcomed by a conservative city in Texas.
“I always tell them that other cities aren’t religious enough,” he says. “Dallas is the perfect mix of secularity and religiosity. Dallas is a hybrid that can create a space like CoH.”
Hood credits the Metropolitan Community Church for the growth of LGBT-affirming churches throughout the United States. MCC opened its doors in 1968 as an LGBT sanctuary and has since grown to about 300 churches in 22 countries. MCC is the first church group to develop a ministry with the primary goal of LGBT inclusivity.
“MCC was often the only safe place people could turn to,” said the Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson, the global moderator at MCC. “We learned that our struggle for equality is similar to other struggles, and we grew quickly because of that.”
MCC churches are located throughout the entire world, in large cities and in small towns and have grown out of the need to provide a haven for people who may have limited access to resources, says Wilson.
Cathedral of Hope opened in 1970 as an LGBT-affirming church with MCC, but later became a member of the UCC. Hood believes that many religious groups are starting to welcome the LGBT community more than ever before as awareness continues to grow.
Desert Heritage Church, a United Church of Christ affiliate in Mesa, Arizona, transitioned to LGBT-affirming in 2008. Its pastor, Paul Whitlock, says about a dozen of the church’s 80 members are gay or transgender.
Whitlock helped oversee the transition, which he says was worrisome but necessary considering the church is located in what the Pew Research Center considers the most conservative large city in America.
“Mesa is very conservative, both theologically and politically,” says Whitlock. “We lost some church members when we became an all- inclusive church, but we did welcome many more.”
“A church of all places needs to be a safe place where people can be who God created them to be,” he says.
Although the church does receive some hate mail occasionally from people around the country who found them on a gay church website, Whitlock says the rest of Mesa pretty much leaves the DHC alone.
At Cathedral of Hope, things are different. Church members often see protesters outside who disagree with the church’s inclusive philosophy.
Juan Lara, a Cathedral of Hope member who is gay, says the protesters don’t concern him.
“I don’t think it’s their fault,” says Lara in Spanish. “I just hope that one day they stop and question whether what they believe right now is truly what they believe in their hearts, or if it’s just what they’ve been told to believe from the generations that came before them.”
Magaña found his home at Cathedral of Hope. His voice gets louder and excited when he talks about discovering the church.
“In this church, you can be who you are and you can celebrate who you are because you are a gift, you are a blessing,” he says. “We don’t have to lie to anyone. This is who we are.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.