June 3, 2020

Dearly beloved Galileo co-conspirators and friends,

Grace and peace to you from God our Arbiter of justice who hears every cry for peace, and our Lord Jesus Christ who was not afraid to disturb the peace; to you, Christ’s followers, who live every day of your baptized life in vindication of his murder at the hands of a corrupt government in the name of law and order.

This is quite the Pride month. Galileo marches in a Pride parade every October because that is when Tarrant County Pride does it. And every June we celebrate Pride with the rest of the world, including last year with Trinity Pride, #firsttime. In 2019 we debuted Pride month in worship with Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” video, complete with the Fab Five and famous drag queens. In 2016 we commissioned a cake to celebrate the first birthday of marriage equality.

2020 is different, as we have known it would be since the pandemic came to us in March. In the wake of police brutality and civil unrest, this June is even more different than we imagined. It does not feel like the time for joyous revelry, even if we could safely meet in large groups. We know that our none of us are liberated until all of us are liberated, and these last few days have reminded us just how many of us are not yet liberated.

The protests and riots in every major city across our nation have reminded us of how Pride started with riots at Stonewall (read more here). Over time, Pride parades have celebrated how far we have come. We have the support and protection of law enforcement and endorsements by major corporations. Even as much as that “rainbow capitalism” makes us throw up in our mouths a little bit, we recognize the privilege of it.

We see that there are not similar Black Pride parades in February; and we suspect that if there were, police presence would escalate them into riots. We recognize that the hecklers at Pride and the occasional “straight pride” parades we endure do not compare in significance to the tear gas, rubber bullets, and white supremacy marches our Black and Brown siblings endure, and their significant and rational fear of physical danger.

There is still much to do in the way of justice for LGBTQ+ people. So much. If there was not, we would not continue listing it as a missional priority. However, this Pride month feels like the time to leverage our privilege as a mostly white and culturally white church, and shift our justice focus for now.

We want Black Pride parades to have the same safety and joy as our celebrations of queer love every year. We remember our shared history at Stonewall, and our inherited legacy of resistance. We recognize that our country tolerated rainbow culture as it became whiter. Five years ago, the White House was lit up in rainbow by a Black president who celebrated our victory with us (a gesture that feels especially kind when we remember how the gay rights movement intentionally left behind the black trans women at Stonewall in order to make our image more palatable). This year, in recognition of Black Lives Matter protests outside its gates, the White House has shut its outdoor lights off — a middle finger to the voices all across our nation crying out for justice. We want to return the solidarity that an earlier administration extended to us, seeing that this June is a moment for Black justice. We need to come back for the siblings of color we left behind.

This is going to require much more prayer, conversation, discernment, and action in seasons to come. We don’t know exactly what that will look like in the life of Galileo Church – a shift in missional priorities? a shift in how we use our resources? (We actually have resources to shift now. Imagine that.) This letter announces our intention to begin building on conversations we’ve begun many times before.

For the sake of building on a theologically sound foundation, we are asking our Lead Evangelist to make a change to the post-Pentecost worship series she had planned. We want to spend time in worship learning the Christian practice of lament, the wisdom our ancestors in faith offer us about speaking truth to power, and the discipline of confession as we must confess our white supremacy and fragility. We want to practice all of these with and for our Black siblings – not for a quick fix of “virtue signaling” but in an earnest effort to let God transform us and thus get more of what God wants.

We trust Katie and Steph to plan liturgies of lament that will not leave us feeling more discouraged every Sunday, but that will help us learn to practice lament, prophecy, and confession. Katie will not be ignoring Pride, but celebrating it by listening to what the queer people in Galileo’s leadership are asking of her. And we, the queer people in leadership, are not giving up Pride month. We are leveraging it, for Christ’s sake, and for the sake of the world God still loves.

If you have questions or comments about this letter, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We hope to worship with you for the next five weeks in our series called “Pride, Protest, and the Language of Lament.” May God add a blessing to our highest hopes and best intentions.

--Remi Shores, for the collective members of and especially the queer members of the Missional Logistics Team, the Spiritual Care Team the Pastoral Staff of Galileo Church