On June 12, 2025, the Williamsburg Chapter of Virginia Organizing called a meeting for anyone interested in discussing the potential for creating a Williamsburg Area Pride event. The meeting was called in response to the absence of any local Pride event happening that year.
According to its website:
“Virginia Organizing is a non-partisan statewide grassroots organization dedicated to challenging injustice by empowering people in local communities to address issues that affect the quality of their lives. Virginia Organizing especially encourages the participation of those who have traditionally had little or no voice in our society. By building relationships with individuals and groups throughout the state, Virginia Organizing strives to get them to work together, democratically and non-violently, for change.”
Planning
Creating a local Pride festival at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under attack is one way they felt they could help foster community engagement. They gathered in a room at Williamsburg Baptist Church and waited for folks to arrive. Outside of their own staff members, the room filled with folks from the Historic Area Religions Together (HART) multifaith clergy group and other individuals representing their faith communities.
That’s not typically the assortment of people one assumes would plan such an event, especially in a small town in the South. But by the end of the meeting, the group reached a consensus: it was time to make a full-scale Pride happen for their community. They left that meeting with a commitment to meet at least monthly to make it happen.
As they continued to meet each month, the group’s consistent makeup included staff members from Virginia Organizing, clergy, and lay people representing their faith communities. When asked what it was like collaborating with faith communities for a Pride Festival, Virginia Organizing Fellow Raegan Collier said that it cultivated a “warm” feeling to see so many faith communities involved in making the event happen.
“It’s been so great seeing so many people in communities—queer and straight—who jumped at the opportunity to help,” she said. “Everyone was very motivated to be there for someone, and there was a lot of shared joy in that.”
Pride
Saturday, June 27, all that planning was put to the test as the coalition turned Jamestown Beach Event Park into a Pride Festival and awaited the first attendees. Virginia Organizing reports that this inaugural, family-friendly Williamsburg-Area festival drew more than 1,500 people, significantly exceeding the anticipated crowd.
Festival-goers enjoyed more than 35 local vendors, including artists, bookstores, face painting, food trucks, the local Free Mom Hugs chapter, a DJ, and even a “craft grove” where kids could play dress-up and make art with their families. Later that evening, attendees had the opportunity to attend an after-party at Virginia Beer Company, a local brewery.
As attendees learned that faith communities (many of which hosted vendor
booths themselves) had a huge part in putting the event together, they mentioned how hope-giving and healing it was to see such a large number of religious groups supporting the event. One attendee, who wishes to remain unnamed, said, “I’m not religious anymore, and I don’t intend to be, but it’s deeply inspiring and reassuring to see so many faith communities here.”
In prior years, a few groups in Williamsburg had hosted occasional smaller Pride Con events, and the theme park Busch Gardens hosts Pride Days every year. But the Williamsburg area had never had a large-scale Pride festival. LGBTQ+ residents typically had to go to Virginia Beach, Hampton, Richmond, or even Washington, D.C. to attend Pride festivals.
Long-Awaited Celebration
A common theme among festival attendees was gratitude for not having to leave their own community to find a Pride event. They could stay in the town they love.
James City County Board of Supervisors member Jim Icenhour commented that he was “tickled” that the first-ever Williamsburg-Area Pride festival was being hosted in James City County, and felt that the number of faith communities participating in the event was “such a reassuring message to all the people in the community.”
HART Co-convener Rabbi David Katz of Temple Beth El Williamsburg said that he was “struck” by how many clergy people were at the festival in support of the queer community, commenting on “how much it clearly means for all of us to come here, to be a part of this, to support this, and to have helped make it happen.”
He continued, saying that, among the clergy, there was “such a nice sense of pride and accomplishment that this actually happened, and that it’s successful. People have a place where they can come and celebrate being themselves, and I think that’s wonderful.”
The festival was followed the next day by HART’s first-ever multifaith Pride service, wherein people of faith from across religious traditions celebrated the diversity of God’s creation as evidenced by the LGBTQ+ community. The service was held at Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists and included worship leadership from Jews, Buddhists, Christians and more.
HART was formed in 2018 in response to the “Unite the Right” White Supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to generate a united front in Williamsburg against White Supremacy and Christian Nationalism. Since its inception, HART has championed multifaith cooperation in the areas of social justice, antibullying, and the cultivation of understanding across religious differences.
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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.