Witnessing Our Unwelcome

by Rev. Irene Monroe 

Racism chokes the spiritual and political life out of a people and a movement.

The toll racism exacts up close and personal takes me back to the Witness Our Welcome (WOW) 2000 conference. WOW was a historic ecumenical gathering celebrating the nearly quarter century growth of the Welcoming Churches Movement, a movement of congregations and communities that have publicly declared they welcome persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities. To date there are over 1,500 Welcoming churches and ministries in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The conference was held at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb with nearly one thousand lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual religious activists in attendance. And I was excited to be there.

WOW had every intention of being welcoming. It had an impressive list of racially diverse speakers. It had just about every Christian denomination represented. And unlike an era of lesbian and gay politics that once viewed bisexuals as "fence-sitters" who were believed not to want to give up their heterosexual privilege and transgenders who were seen as weak links in the struggle for sexual equality, both were enthusiastically invited. And they came.

But WOW's intentions did not match its outcome. Two years later many of us are still reeling from its fallout. While the list of racially diverse speakers was impressive, the number of people of color in attendance at the conference was shockingly low. Was it because the number of people of color was so low that this racial event could happen?

On opening night the facilitator, Mary Hunt, a white lesbian, named all the oppressed groups included in WOW's celebration of diversity. When the facilitator concluded her list and asked what groups had been omitted, an African American woman yelled out "people of color." After several shouts from the African American woman, people of color and a few whites in the audience to get the facilitator's ear, several white men shouted in response, "What color?"

As a fractured group both politically and spiritually, African American LGBT people reside as resident aliens who too often live bifurcated existences in two communities. While our black skin ostensibly give us residence in our black communities, our sexual orientation, most times, evicts us from them. And while our sexual orientation gives us residence in the larger LGBT community, racism constantly thwarts any efforts for coalition building, which weakens the larger movement for sexual equality.

To be tangentially aligned to these communities dangles our lives precariously on a thin thread with the nagging feeling of marginalization, if not complete dispossession. For so long, African American LGBT people and other people of color have excoriated the white queer community for their flagrant forms of exclusion. But WOW purported to be different, and many African American LGBT people and other people of color came to WOW to be fully acknowledged.

How WOW handled the conflict was antithetical to its welcoming statement. "We know that at times our various traditions complement each other beautifully and at other times they crash against one another with great force. We acknowledge and ask God's blessing on both the challenges and gifts of this ecumenical gathering. In fact, we celebrate the opportunities the challenges and crashes will bring. In our openness we will know God's creative and renewing power..."

But the gifts and challenges people of color brought to WOW were dashed by the conference's inability to address the racial incident immediately. Too many days went by and too much struggle ensued to be heard on the issue. The Rev. John L. Selders, Jr., an African American bisexual man and founder of Amistad UCC in Hartford, Connecticut attended WOW 2000 and said that "WOW called us black folks and people of color together to not have to systematically deal with race and their own racism. When we show up to these kind of events they think they have done their job and they can just totally drop race off their map, and then they get surprised when we raise it."

WOW as a Welcoming Church Movement must include the varied spiritual expressions of the life of LGBT church people where we embrace the image of the sacred in ourselves, the image of the sacred as ourselves, and the image of the sacred in each other.

WOW must also embrace the various hues, sexual orientations, classes, denominations, and gender identities of the sacred to become a "unified plurality" where no one is left behind and every voice is lifted up. WOW must ask itself the question, "How do we," as Rev. Selders phrases it, "hold together our particularities in the holding of our commonality?"

WOW 2003 is coming up and will people of color return?

"I would go back to WOW but it must look within itself by giving up the fear of having to give up power. These white organizations create environments that mirror themselves and they must move out of their comfort zones," says Pam Selders, an African American heterosexual woman and Selders' wife.

For WOW 2003 to truly be an ecumenical conference, it must shift its paradigm of leadership by becoming racially responsible. In order for WOW 2003 to be racially responsible it must be committed to anti- racist work not just in some things it does, but rather, committed to anti-racist work in all things it will do in putting together the upcoming conference.

Who WOW says it is as a movement must be followed up by its actions in order to be taken seriously, in order to have its own self- respect, and in order to invite people other than themselves into the fold. It is not enough for WOW to say it is a justice-seeking movement, and not be a justice-doing movement. White people who are involved with WOW must know that anti-racist work is intrinsically tied to their personal freedom as individuals and it is intrinsically tied to their collective freedom as an LGBT Christian movement.

For WOW 2003 to be racially responsible it must ask itself these three questions:
1. What would be the theological and spiritual fall-out for WOW 2003 should it not engage in anti-racist work?
2. What might be the ways WOW 2003 can incorporate anti-racist work as a priority in all its developmental stages of the conference?
3. And, what spiritual practices or ritual or liturgies should WOW 2003 develop in order to strengthen its commitment in doing anti-racist work?

Racism in the movement will separate us in this Herculean struggle against heterosexism that cannot afford to underutilize any of its people. The racial divide between white and LGBT people of color that existed in WOW 2000 cannot continue and must stop because we must understand that we all carry multiple identities into the world. The belief acted out among some of us that one oppression, sexual oppression, is greater than another person's oppression only sets up a hierarchy of oppressions. This not only keeps us broken from one another, but it also keeps us fighting with one another.

We must also remember that as LGBT religious activists, our queerness is a prophetic call for justice not just in our home churches, but in Christian churches throughout the world. This calls us out at this specific time and place in history to unveil the parochial understanding of human sexuality. But it also calls us to challenge other structures and systems of domination by looking at the world from an involved, committed stance, in light of a faith that does justice. With this perspective, we must dismantle all discriminatory practices that truncate the full participation and livelihood of any people.

And our call, which we must take up for our own survival, is not self-appointed, but God given! As LGBT religious activists let us remember that the longing for God is also the longing for social justice. This moral and political imperative placed before us for WOW 2003 is to do anti-racist work. And consequently, this moral and political imperative will also show us that united we will stand as a prophetic movement or divided we will fall as a petty people.