A Church with Aids

Episode 3

Bob Crocker (left) and Jim Mitulski (right) in MCC San Francisco sanctuary. Date unknown. Courtesy of MCC San Francisco Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

In the late 80s, two MCC San Francisco ministers wrote an article called “We Are the Church Alive, the Church with AIDS.” We wanted to know how a gay/lesbian church came to call itself “a church with AIDS.” The answers lie in the years before our audio archive begins. So we started asking people. We explore two stories in what’s likely a more complicated shift. One story is about a pair of religion geeks who learned to make queer church in New York during the early years of the AIDS crisis and then came to San Francisco to lead MCCSF. And the other is how an Easter Sunday ritual made the Christian hope of life through death viscerally real.

Jim Mitulski protesting at St. Patrick’s Church, New York, 1978. Courtesy of Jim Mitulski.

Jim Mitulski (left) and Bob Crocker (right) a few years post-meet cute. New York circa early 1980s. Courtesy of Jim Mitulski.

Bob Crocker (standing) and Jim Mitulski (seated) type the weekly bulletin for MCC New York. Photograph by Steve Carson. Courtesy of Steve Carson, Personal Collection.

Harry Harkness in his Easter bonnet. Date unknown. Courtesy of MCC San Francisco Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

Jim Mitulski (left) and Bob Crocker (right) at MCC San Francisco. Date unknown. Courtesy of MCC San Francisco Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

Bob Crocker (left) and Jim Mitulski (right) at MCC San Francisco. Date unknown. Courtesy of MCC San Francisco Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

Easter lily bonnet. Person unknown. Date unknown. Courtesy of MCC San Francisco Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

Harry Harkness (left) and unknown man in Easter bonnets. Date unknown. Courtesy of MCC San Francisco Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

Easter bonnet. Person unknown. Date unknown. Courtesy of MCC San Francisco Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

NOTES:

“We Are the Church Alive, the Church with AIDS,” by Kittredge Cherry and Jamies Mitulski was published in the Christian Century on January 27, 1988.

Emily Suzanne Johnson writes about Tammy Faye Bakker, and her interview with Steve Pieters in This is Our Message: Women’s Leadership in the New Christian Right (Oxford, 2019).

To hear more about the epic journey to pass New York’s gay/lesbian civil rights bill, check out “A History of the Struggle to Pass NYC’s 1986 Gay Rights Bill.” The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC, June 21, 2024.

Mark D. Jordan recounts the story of the first communion at MCC in Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk About Homosexuality (Chicago, 2011).

On how LGBTQ+ clergy who went through AIDS — including Steve Pieters, got through Covid see “For Clergy Who Ministered Through the AIDS Crisis, Covid is Both Eerily Familiar and Puzzlingly Different.” Lynne Gerber, Religion Dispatches, December 21, 2020.

There are many, many accounts of the 1987 National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights. It was a watershed event. One academic account is Amin Ghaziani’s The Dividents of Dissent: How Conflict and Culture Work in Lesbian and Gay Marches on Washington (Chicago, 2008). It talks about it in the context of the four historian national LGBTQ+ marches in Washington. You can see video of the unveiling of the AIDS quilt at the 1987 March here.

Music:

“We See You God” is a variation on the anonymously written hymn “We See the Lord.”

The soloist in “I Lift Mine Eyes Up” is Bob Crocker. It’s by Antonin Dvorak, Biblical Songs, Op. 99, no. 9 on Psalm 121.

“Hush, Hush. Somebody’s Calling My Name” is a traditional African American spiritual.

Resources:

The Interactive AIDS Quilt

Transcript:

Coming soon.