Free Mom Hugs began in 2015 when Sara Cunningham attended the Oklahoma City Pride parade with a homemade button that offered marchers and attendees a motherly embrace. She knew many in the LGBTQ+ community had been rejected by their parents and longed for a physical connection with a protective, nurturing person.
She knew because, for years, she had rejected her own son’s sexuality.
That one act of kindness sparked a revolution with Free Mom Hugs chapters in every state. In addition to attending Pride festivals to offer love to the LGBTQ+ community, the organization supports parents seeking to support their children and those who have been abandoned by their own parents.
Last weekend in Grapevine, Texas, Free Mom Hugs held its second “Love Revolution” national conference, which inspired and educated around 250 attendees on becoming better allies to the queer community. Although Free Mom Hugs is not a faith-based organization, the topic of religious faith permeated the conference as attendees worked through the damage harmful theology has inflicted on LGBTQ+ individuals.
In her opening keynote address, author Jen Hatmaker noted that the issue of faith is relevant to all attendees, regardless of their religious background or lack thereof.
“The way in which faith in America operates affects all of us,” she said. “It affects our kids. It affects legislation. It affects the conversation nationally. It is in the zeitgeist. Some of our very powerful [faith leaders] have found a way to be near the powerful people. And so, one way or another, this matters.”
Hatmaker shared her journey toward full affirmation and inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals, but not before offering an apology to the room full of advocates.
She described how she was once popular within evangelical circles, a “fun poster girl” for that community, and the fear that caused her to come out as a straight ally.
Hatmaker said, “I want to say moms and dads and wives, husbands and partners and allies and teachers who love the LGBTQIA community, who are the LGBTQIA community: I am so sorry that I chose self-preservation.” She added, “I wasn’t fast enough, and I left the community in pain, and it’ll go down as one of my biggest regrets my whole life.”
Hatmaker described how the “tip of the spear” for her in changing her theology on sexuality was the image Jesus gave his followers in Matthew 7:18: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” For her, “bad fruit” and “good fruit” are “stable data points” that Jesus gave his followers to help them determine what to believe about what is right and wrong. When she looked at the tree of non-LGBTQ+-affirming theology, she saw its “bad fruit.”
She said, “[When I look at that tree], I am looking at suicide [rates] seven times that of the natural average. I am looking at broken bodies. I am looking at broken families. I am looking at broken hearts. I am looking at a self-hatred that has grown so deep inside the hearts of the LGBTQIA community. I am looking at people who have never tried harder or more sincerely in their life to become straight with all their might.”
This created cognitive dissonance for her, because if that tree were “good,” it wouldn’t bear such “bad fruit.”
But when she looked at the “tree” of affirming faith spaces, she saw “flourishing … healthy, healed minds, hearts and bodies … [and people] living their lives in the full capacity of their gifts and their intelligence and their personhood in loving relationships and building beautiful families.”
In a breakout session titled “Liberated Faith,” Kali Cawthon-Freels, invited attendees into her story of coming out as gay and deconstructing harmful biblical interpretations that she had received in church and at her Baptist college.
In addition to her work consulting Good Faith Media with its Faithful Pride Initiative, Cawthon-Freels also serves as a pastoral resident at Williamsburg Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. She told the audience that her entire ministry has been as an “out” pastor, and that “despite the challenges, being queer is the best gift God’s given me.”
Cawthon-Freels described an aspect of Celtic spirituality that “teaches us that within each of us resides our inner wisdom, an inner knowing that already knows what is true if we can only quiet ourselves to hear it.”
She added: “For much of my life, I was too surrounded by the noise of what evangelicalism told me it meant to be a good daughter or a good student or a good Christian or a good missionary to hear the calm truths my inner wisdom has known all along. But in those moments when my inner wisdom broke through and challenged my beliefs, they were simultaneously the most terrifying and lightbulb-inducing moments of my life.”
Cawthon-Freels then invited participants to reflect on when they felt most grounded, what were the most sacred moments of their lives, and how queerness–whether their own or that of others–has elevated the divinity within them.
In another keynote address, Kathy Baldock offered a crash course into her research uncovering the dubious history of the use of the word “homosexual” in biblical translations. Baldock’s work was the basis for the 2022 documentary, “1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted a Culture.”
Conference attendees came from various faith backgrounds, including those who have never had or have left their religious traditions behind. Regardless, many of them left having been nurtured in the spirit of a benediction that Rev. Cawthon-Freels left them with after her session:
“You, child of God, have been fed. May the food of this table be a healing balm for your weary soul. May you receive the love God has for you, just as you are. As you’ve been fed, now feed others with this same love. May it be a blessing to them in the same way it’s been a blessing to you. As you revisit this feast, may your cup run over with the blessing God has prepared for you. The table is prepared, and there’s always a place with your name.”
More information on the work of Free Mom Hugs, including how to find a local chapter, can be found here.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.
