Editor’s note: The following first appeared at Good Faith Media on May 31, 2024, as a guide for churches wanting to show support for the LGBTQ+ community at pride festivals. Since it was first published, Good Faith Media launched its Faithful Pride Initiative to highlight stories of LGBTQ+ people of faith.
June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, honoring the 1969 Stonewall Uprising along with the many lives and movements that have fueled queer and trans liberation before and since. It is a time to celebrate LGBTQ+ lives and to show solidarity with queer and trans people whose rights and well-being are under attack at state and local levels all over the country.
If your church is planning to support your local Pride parade or festival this year, here are a few things to keep in mind that may help your presence be good news to Pride-goers and a beautiful expression of your church’s ministry of love and justice.
1. Be trauma-sensitive. Churches have been painful places for many LGBTQ+ people.
Some churches have been places of healing for LGBTQ+ people. For nearly all queer and trans people, church is complicated. (For a deeper dive into this subject, see this article.)
You don’t need to walk on eggshells. Just respect the level of engagement people want to have with you. If they don’t reciprocate your smiling greetings and walk in the other direction, there is no need to take offense. You don’t know what church represents for them.
If they approach you to unload some of their painful past with churches, don’t get defensive. This isn’t about you and your church. It is about someone’s real experience with church.
So be a listening presence. Say you’re sorry that happened to them and that it was wrong. If they don’t believe your messages of LGBTQ+ love and affirmation at first or seem skeptical about your presence, that is perfectly understandable. For many LGBTQ+ people, a truly affirming church is a new concept and may be hard to imagine given the larger reality of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments among churches.
Just be kind and answer any questions they may have. For many queer and trans people, your mere presence at Pride is going to be a beautiful expression of love.
2. Don’t use insider lingo. No one outside of your denomination knows what the coded language your denomination uses for expressing LGBTQ+ affirmation actually means.
So, forget “Open and Affirming,” or “More Light,” or “Reconciling in Christ.” This isn’t your denominational convention. Use language that everyone can understand: “celebrating LGBTQ+ lives,” “loving queer and trans people,” “standing for LGBTQ+ justice,” etc.
3. Don’t be vague. On the signage you carry in the parade, put on your booth or on your church swag that you give away, say something specific about LGBTQ+ people. “All are welcome,” “a safe space for everyone,” and a whole lot of other really nice sentiments are plastered on church signs all over the country.
Most of their “alls” and everyones” don’t mean queer people.
Churches have been very specific for a very long time in stating that LGBTQ+ people aren’t welcome—at least not unless we mutilate our souls. So, if you have a presence at Pride, be very specific about who you are addressing with your message of love, inclusion and justice: “LGBTQ+ lives are sacred,” “Trans lives are beautiful,” “We stand for justice with our LGBTQ+ siblings,” etc.
If you can’t be specific about your love for queer and trans people at Pride, then you probably don’t need to be there.
4. Be proud of who you are. It can feel a little awkward being with a church group at Pride. Churches have caused a lot of pain for queer and trans people.
But if you’re showing up at Pride because you love LGBTQ+ people and you stand with us in struggles toward justice and you are intentional about making space for LGBTQ+ lives to be lived in their fullness in your congregation, then be proud of that!
Don’t expect an award for it. But be proud to be a church that loves queer people!(And also know you stand in a long line of queer-affirming churches that queer people started.)
5. Don’t be pushy. Yes, be proud to be a queer-and-trans-loving-church. But not every LGBTQ+ person is ready to engage with a church (see #1 above). Don’t go around sticking flyers about your church in people’s hands. Don’t stand there with a clipboard to collect names and email addresses for the church newsletter.
Be present. Be friendly. If you don’t know what to say, “Happy Pride!” is a good start.
If you have a table at a Pride festival, have things on the table that people can pick up if they wish—things with your church’s name on them so that they can find you if they decide to.
6. Be clear about your intentions. Before your church group heads to Pride, it helps to have a conversation about your overall intentions and approach.
It is likely best to think about this as a time for your church to express its love for LGBTQ+ people and to celebrate queer and trans people made in the image of the Divine. It’s not the best time for membership recruitment.
People may find your church through Pride. Some may show up to church one Sunday because they saw your congregation represented there, but most won’t. What they will have experienced is an example of a church that genuinely loves them in the fullness of their being.
If you’re marching in the parade, have some really beautiful signs with uplifting and celebratory messages (see #2 and #3 for ideas) and carry a banner or wear t-shirts with your church’s name on them. If you’re tabling at a festival, make some nice signage.
And don’t just include your church sign, but also messages communicating your love for and solidarity with LGBTQ+ people. Be clear about what you want people to experience with your congregation in the brief time they visually engage you.
7. Have some swag…no one wants a church bulletin. It doesn’t have to be fancy but have something at your table folks can walk away with.
My former congregation tabled at a Youth Pride resource fair one year and I was astounded that the thing that attracted the most youth to our table was a simple bucket of candy. We also gave away reusable grocery bags with our church’s logo and an abbreviated version of Micah 6:8 on the side which, incidentally, became a huge hit.
Most of the youth didn’t bring anything to carry all the swag they were collecting from the other hundred or so tables at the fair, so our church grocery bags could be seen everywhere as the go-to tote for all of their amassed trinkets and treasures.
8. Get creative. Aside from giveaways, come up with ways of engaging people at your festival table. You might invent a quirky game that people can play to win a prize.
You might have an “ask a pastor” booth (just be ready). Perhaps a drag Bible story time if you have a drag performer in your church’s orbit. Pin the tail on the devil?
I don’t know…get quirky and creative. Pride in many cities has become so corporate, so something a little homespun is nice.
9. Get serious. As an alternative to the quirky and fun, you may also consider a more meaningful offering. One of the best I’ve encountered is a queer student group at a seminary that set up a “reverse confessional” at their Pride booth. People would sit down in front of one of the seminarians or ministers who would confess to them the ways churches have harmed LGBTQ+ people.
The confession would end with a statement like, “We are so sorry for the ways we have failed you and the ways we have lied to you and about you.” My friend who participated in this said that the day was filled with laughter and tears.
10. Don’t exclude yourself. If you’re straight and/or cisgender, you may feel like you don’t belong at Pride. But if you love queer and trans people, of course you do! Your presence matters there. Maybe you think you’re too old and Pride is a youthful event. Not at all! Pride is for everyone…grandmothers are beloved at a Pride festival.
Come. Be you. Love queer people.
11. Walk around and make connections. This is the one place in your city or region where the most LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations will be concentrated during the entire year.I had a seminary student once who staffed her church’s booth at a pride festival. She took the opportunity to walk around to all the other booths at the festival and collect business cards. She realized there were a dozen or more churches there!
The next week, she emailed each of those churches’ pastors and invited them to meet to discuss their LGBTQ+ ministries. That began an informal organization in her city of churches that regularly met to strategize and plan initiatives for the well-being of LGBTQ+ people in their area.
Send an ambassador or two out from your congregation’s booth to make connections with other LGBTQ+ organizations and follow up where potential relationships can develop.
12. Don’t underestimate your impact. One year, my congregation tabled at our city’s LGBTQ+ Youth Pride resource fair. Throughout the festival, youth would walk up to the church’s table and see our big Baptist banner on the front with a rainbow flag and other signs that read “LGBTQIA Lives are Sacred” and “Trans Lives are Beautiful.”
They would stand there in front of our table, momentarily stunned. Dozens of youth throughout the day came to the table and said, “Thank you for being here. It’s so awesome seeing a church here. It really means a lot.”Twice during the day, conversations grew a bit heavier when two different mothers approached the table while their teens were elsewhere. Each time, the women were in tears.
They came up to me and each independently told me their different but similar stories: They had a child who came out as gay, lesbian, bi, or trans. They love their child. They embraced their child’s news with warmth and affirmation. But they knew their churches wouldn’t. So they left.
These mothers didn’t leave because their children had been damaged by their faith communities, but because they knew enough about their churches to know their children would be harmed by messages of sin and condemnation for LGBTQ+ people. So they walked away for the sake of their children. It was a heartbreaking story to hear as one after the other told me their story.
When they saw our booth and realized we were a church that loved LGBTQ+ people, they broke down in tears. They had no idea churches like ours even existed.
They never knew there were churches they could go to with their child by their side and rest assured that they wouldn’t hear a message of condemnation placed on the lips of God.
They cried because we were there, because they saw our signs of love for their kids, because we showed up and embodied a story of love for LGBTQ+ people.
Happy Pride!
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Cody J. Sanders, PhD, is a Baptist minister serving as associate professor of congregational and community care leadership at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Previously a parish pastor and higher education chaplain at Harvard and MIT, he is the author of several books on religion, ministry, and LGBTQ+ concerns.
