This June, cities all over the country have hosted a multitude of Pride events: parades, lip-syncing competitions, concerts, and educational experiences, just to name a few.
While the list may not be surprising given that it’s Pride month, the venue of some of these events–churches–may seem counterintuitive.
Across the country, churches are building floats for Pride parades, providing Communion for All at festivals, and decorating their sanctuaries with Pride-themed vestments. Some are even hosting queer artists like drag queen Flamy Grant to perform concerts.
While one might expect concerts to be a regular form of drag entertainment, Drag Brunch is one of the more unique drag events that has taken the country by storm. It contains many components of a concert, with the added benefit of good food and drinks.
Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia, is hosting a drag brunch this Pride Month. Rather than making it an evening event, they are using it as their Sunday morning worship service. The service is entitled “I’m Still Here: A Gospel Drag Brunch,” inspired by the gospel song “I’m Still Here” by Albertina Walker.
For Pastors Ashley Robinson and Melanie Vaughn-Colwell, hosting a Gospel Drag Brunch for Sunday morning worship is a no-brainer. “At Oakhurst, we recognize the diversity of the kin-dom of God by creating different worship experiences,” Rev. Robinson said. “On any given Sunday, we might use a Bach cantata, an Indigo Girls song, Taize, and gospel music in the same service.”
She continued, “Sacred doesn’t need to equal stagnant. We are a community that embraces the movement of the spirit through creative and changing worship experiences. We are also intentional about ‘sharing the mic’ by inviting voices of color into our pulpit. Creating space for a Gospel Drag Brunch seems to naturally line up with the ethos of worship at Oakhurst Baptist.”
While Atlanta’s Pride festivities take place in October to coincide with National Coming Out Day, Oakhurst Baptist Church felt that doing the Gospel Drag Brunch during June was important, as June Pride events commemorate the Stonewall Uprising.
“Knowing that drag queens were at the forefront of the Stonewall uprising and that they often get left out of the narrative, we want to celebrate the contributions of drag queens by asking them to lead worship,” Rev. Robinson said. “Much of the current anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the country is focused on singling out drag queens, so we want to intentionally amplify the voices who are being silenced. And drag is joyful. Joy, like existence, is an act of resistance.”
As news has spread about the event, the church has received a pleasant surprise— from shock that the event is happening at a Baptist church to a desire to attend. Some have even commented that they might return to church if churches hosted events like these more frequently.
“I think those responses speak to the deep healing that still needs to happen in the church,” Rev. Robinson shared. “We are honored to be a space for that healing to begin for some and a space for others to continue their journey of reconciliation. The most hopeful thing about all of this is what I think is the best part of my job–we get to tell people in a million different ways that God loves and celebrates them. That is the kind of hope that sustains me on hard days.”
Oakhurst Baptist’s Gospel Drag Brunch will be on Sunday, June 30th at 11 am. People interested in finding affirming churches near them can check resources like ChurchClarity.org, the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (AWAB), or GayChurch.org
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A bivocational pastor, writer and spiritual director based in Williamsburg, Virginia, she currently works as a Spiritual Director at Reclamation Theology. Cawthon-Freels is the author of Reclamation: A Queer Pastor’s Guide to Finding Spiritual Growth in the Passages Used to Harm Us (Nurturing Faith Books), and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
