WASHINGTON (RNS) — The Rev. Don Abram stood outside the U.S. Capitol surrounded by a diverse group of clergy, some wearing rainbow-accented stoles and others holding signs calling for justice.
He joined them in what he saw as a double-pronged act of advocacy: opposing the Trump administration’s recent executive orders on gender and calling on Christian churches to become more inclusive of LGBTQ+ people.
Abram sees both approaches as necessary — and connected. The founder and CEO of Pride in the Pews, a group that trains Black congregational leaders to welcome LGBTQ+ people in their sanctuaries, hopes to see Black churches engage in public advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights in the same ways he’s seen those churches lend their voice to other social issues.
“The Black church has never just been about what’s in the four walls of the church,” he said in an interview before the rally held on the Monday (April 14) of Holy Week. “It has always leveraged a prophetic voice and banner in the public square. Our question is, why doesn’t that extend to LGBTQ+ rights as well?”
The Rev. Don Abram addresses the Harvard Affinity Celebration in May 2024. (Photo by Steve Lipofsky)
Abram, who describes himself as “a queer church boy from the south side of Chicago,” was one of several people at the rally with his 4-year-old organization. But Pride in the Pews was the only one of more than half a dozen groups at the rally, organized by the Collective of Queer Christian Leaders, whose focus was on the Black church.
While there has been growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ people among Black Protestants broadly — up more than 20 percentage points in two decades, according to Pew Research Center — the institutions of the Black church remain mostly either opposed or silent on the issue of same-sex marriage. None of the major historically Black denominations have taken an official stance affirming LGBTQ+ people.
In August, the African Methodist Episcopal Church rescinded a bill that would have removed a ban on same-sex marriage. Its rule book states “unions of any kind between persons of the same sex or gender are contrary to the will of God.”
Bishop Reginald Jackson, leader of the AME district that includes mid-Atlantic churches, said “our ban specifically addresses the issue of clergy” performing or participating in such weddings, and there’s nothing in the church’s rules that prevent participation of LGBTQ+ people, including married same-sex couples, within the denomination.
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“Historically, the Black church has always been considered on some issues conservative, but I think to be accurate, I think most of the major Black denominations, in terms of its membership, is divided,” said Jackson in an interview. “It’s split, which is one of the reasons why no definitive position has been taken. I’m not sure how much longer that can continue, but that’s where we are now.”
The Rev. Jennifer Leath. (Courtesy photo)
When the AME Council of Bishops critiqued some early executive orders of the new Trump administration but not the ones on gender, the Rev. Jennifer Leath, an AME minister and associate professor of Black religion at Queen’s College in Ontario, observed what she saw as an inconsistency in its statement. Their response was “conveniently silent on Trump’s executive order ‘creating a policy recognizing only two genders,’” said Leath, who describes herself as “quare,” referring to both her sexual identity and her focus on being a “Black queer womanist” scholar. She expressed her views in a commentary in the AME Church’s The Christian Recorder.
Jackson acknowledged that Leath, who supported the creation of the denomination’s Sexual Ethics Discernment Committee in 2021, was correct about the omission but said the AME bishops could continue to discuss such matters at upcoming meetings.
The Rev. Darryl Gray, director general of social justice for the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the historically Black denomination with which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was affiliated, said his religious group does not discriminate but has not taken an affirmative position about LGBTQ+ people.
“It is not an issue that has come to the floor in any of our regions or our national convention, and because it hasn’t come to the floor, it’s an issue that has not been discussed openly,” he said.
Pew Research Center found the percentage of Black Protestants who say homosexuality should be accepted in society shifted from 39% in 2007 to 51% in 2014 to 61% in 2023-24. Their support for same-sex marriage has increased from 40% in 2014 to 56% in 2023-24. University of Texas at Arlington scholar Jason Shelton credits President Obama’s 2012 endorsement of same-sex marriage as a catalyst for some of the greater openness to LGBTQ+ people by Black Christians.
“The laity began to move before that, but it took some jumps with President Obama’s declaration, but clergy have not moved nearly the same way since,” Shelton, author of “The Contemporary Black Church: The New Dynamics of African American Religion,” told Religion News Service.
As acceptance has begun to grow with laity, there have been new attitudes and actions in Black church circles over the last decade.
The Rev. Willie Dwayne Francois III, president of the Black Church Center for Justice and Equality, said Black churches have diverse points of view on these issues, but his organization is encouraging them to consider concerns about diversity, equity and inclusion as a way to fight for civil rights for all, including “queer/trans siblings.”
The Rev. Danielle Dufoe preaches at Riverside Baptist Church on March 30, 2025, during the closing worship service of the Alliance of Baptists’ annual gathering in Washington, D.C. (RNS photo/Adelle M. Banks)
Francois was one of a group of Black pastors that in 2023 ordained the Rev. Danielle Dufoe, who has been hailed as the first transgender woman to graduate from a historically Black theological institution, at the church he was leading at the time in New Jersey.
Francois said his denomination, the PNBC, did not make a statement at the time: “It was basically perceived as a local pastor doing the work in the local context.” Abram, of Pride in the Pews, said some Baptist denominations “do not require churches affiliated with them to adopt similar positions” to national stances.
Dufoe, who is a minister to homeless youth in New Jersey, said in an interview that she appreciates the welcome she has received from some, even as she learns of instances where trans people have been kicked out of congregations or where churches required them to be buried in clothing they would not have chosen.
“Historically lesbian and gay folks have been able to enjoy a certain amount of anonymity,” she said of people inside and outside of the church. “Trans folks tend to be very noticeable, and because they are more noticeable, tend to be castigated in public.”
Tre’vell Anderson. (Photo by Ray Love Jr.)
She points to the Rev. Brandon Thomas Crowley, author of “Queering Black Churches: Dismantling Heteronormativity in African American Congregations,” as an “exceptional” example of someone who has supported trans people in his work as pastor of Myrtle Street Baptist Church outside Boston.
Crowley, a Black queer man, told RNS in an interview of how he supported “one of our members who was assigned female at birth” through the process of claiming his transgender status. The pastor prayed for him as he went through transition-related procedures, rebaptized him “to affirm his name and who he was,” and bought him a new suit.
Other LGBTQ+ people have felt the need to find their spiritual spaces outside the walls of Black churches they considered to be judgmental.
When gospel musician Kirk Franklin came through Los Angeles on tour a couple of years ago, podcaster Tre’vell Anderson, a Black trans person who describes themselves as “Christian-ish,” decided to split the cost of a private suite with 20 mostly LGBTQ+ friends rather than join the general audience.
“I want to be able to relish in the wondrousness that is this music, without having to potentially worry about a church mother mad at the way I’m giving my praise,” he told RNS. “We were able to have this wonderful time where we could listen to this music that we all grew up on.”
Even as some Black LGBTQ+ Christians have drifted away from traditional Black churches, there are clergy who are being trained to try to prevent such departures. Abram said Pride in the Pews is trying to move congregations from antagonism against LGBTQ+ people through the “murky middle” to advocacy.
People attend a Gospel Drag Brunch hosted by Pride in the Pews at Bronzeville Winery on July 7, 2024, in Chicago. (Photo courtesy Pride in the Pews)
The Rev. Anika Wilson-Brown, lead pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., said her congregation has become more intentional about its stance affirming LGBTQ+ members. Her church, which is independent after previously being affiliated with a historically Black Baptist denomination, has received a grant from Pride in the Pews that helped it assess the needs of those congregants and launch ministries to support them.
She used a sermon to apologize to those who were hurt by other clergy, who may have heard in churches that “their very existence is an abomination” — and received messages since from some who said her words “healed something within them.”
And some members marched in a Pride parade last month.
“We’ve even done workshops and classes with leaders in talking about the differences between your sexual identity, your gender, your orientation, your sexual interests,” she said. “So breaking down that information and being able to teach and provide that real-time instruction and also put spirituality and religion alongside that has made us evolve greatly.”
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