As Pride Month unfolds, the Southern Baptist Convention has once again made headlines by reaffirming its opposition to women serving as pastors. At nearly the same moment, recent Department of Defense actions affecting the recognition of several religious traditions raised broader questions about whose faith and leadership are considered legitimate in public life.
For many of us who live at the margins of church and society, neither development was particularly surprising.
Angela Yarber
We’ve spent decades watching institutions debate our callings, scrutinize our credentials, question our identities and determine whether we belong. We’ve watched preachers and politicians alike treat our lives as talking points, our ministries as controversies and our very existence as a matter for public debate.
Yet while institutions continue debating who can lead, the very spiritual leaders they are debating already are leading.
We’re preaching in pulpits, organizing communities, publishing books, offering spiritual care, marching in protests, teaching in classrooms, officiating weddings, accompanying the dying, mentoring young people and building movements for justice.
For the past several years, I’ve had the privilege of gathering with hundreds of queer, BIPOC, disabled and female spiritual leaders through Ministry from the Margins Books. What began as a publishing initiative to provide more spiritual books written by queer, BIPOC and female spiritual leaders became a front-row seat to a simple truth: Those most often excluded from positions of power are frequently doing some of the most transformative leadership in the church today. Cracking open their books is just a glimpse into the revolutionary ways their manuscripts have created movements for social change, transforming the church and the world.
I think of an ordained Methodist woman tracing The United Methodist Church’s long pilgrimage toward racial justice. A Black queer woman and New Thought minister proposing radical accountability as a path toward collective liberation. A bisexual pastor in the South interviewing queer congregants and clergy to create a larger table where everyone belongs. A nonbinary pastor courageously naming the rampant sexual abuse too often hidden within church walls. A queer Presbyterian minister and chaplain reminding us that faithful spiritual care must always be trauma informed.
I think of a nonbinary pastor reimagining the very biblical texts used to condemn them by queering the Psalms. A Unitarian Universalist poet standing in the freezing Minneapolis snow protesting ICE because she believes her calling is to transform poetry into protest. A queer, nonbinary Hindu officiant taking the TEDx stage to speak about belonging. A Black queer woman reclaiming peace itself as a radical teaching practice at a Mennonite college.
I open my own books and look into the mirror to see a queer woman ordained by a Baptist church — no matter what the SBC has to say about it — who gathers revolutionary writers from around the globe to write a new world into being.
“We are priests and pastors, poets and prophets, wedding officiants and chaplains, professors and preachers, community organizers and spiritual directors.”
These leaders are not waiting for permission.
We are priests and pastors, poets and prophets, wedding officiants and chaplains, professors and preachers, community organizers and spiritual directors. We already are doing the work. We already are transforming congregations, classrooms and communities.
Nothing the SBC declares changes that reality.
Nothing the Department of Defense recognizes or fails to recognize changes that reality.
And frankly, neither do the countless other denominational statements, political proclamations or institutional debates that continue to question whether certain people are called, qualified or worthy.
When Pride Month ends June 30, we will still be leading.
When the rainbow logos disappear, we will still be preaching, organizing, teaching, writing, healing, advocating and imagining new possibilities for faith communities.
As I write this, the final summer cohort of Ministry from the Margins Books is preparing to gather. Not because institutions suddenly became more welcoming, but because spiritual leaders marginalized by these very institutions continue finding one another, supporting one another and strengthening one another for the work ahead.
The lesson I keep learning is surprisingly simple: Institutions often spend their energy deciding who belongs. Queer, BIPOC, women and disabled spiritual leaders — the very people the institution debates — spend ours building the communities, ministries and movements that make belonging possible.
We’ll keep doing what we’ve always done with authenticity and integrity, grace and prophetic imagination, courage and radical belonging.
The SBC may continue debating who can lead. The DOD may continue debating our legitimacy.
The spiritual leaders they’ve been debating will continue leading anyway.
Angela Yarber is the award-winning author of 10 books and founder of Tehom Center Publishing where she facilitates two annual cohorts of Ministry from the Margins Books.