Friends in the fire

Episode 4

Rev. Jim Mitulski and Linda Rochelle in the sanctuary of MCC San Francisco. June 1987. Courtesy of Rev. Jim Mitulski, personal collection.

As MCC grew as a denomination, they tried to figure out if and how to relate to other churches. Would anyone befriend a queer church? And if so, would that friendship help other churches shift their perspective on homosexuality? These questions got harder as AIDS numbers grew—it made people more afraid yet friendship more vital. But sometimes friendship emerges in the most unlikely of places, like when a children’s choir visited an AIDS ward in San Francisco and sang for an MCC member there. That connection started a partnership between their churches that changed them both. 

NOTES:

On MCC and Double Rock

  • “Churches Find AIDS Ministry a Tie That Binds,” Gretchen Kell, Sacramento Bee, July 20, 1987. 

On religious responses to HIV/AIDS in the United States

On the complexities of the National Council of Churches

Music:

“Who Kept Us” is by Dr. Margaret Douroux

  • Margaret’s daughter, Mardy Coates, told us that this song had particular significance to Rev. Prentice Minner and the ministry he founded called Love All People. She remembers that the song came to MCC through Rev. Minner and his ministry. 

“The Wicked Shall Cease Their Troubling” is by Jessy Dixon

“Jesus is Here Right Now” is by Leon Roberts.

“Child of God” and “Walk Together Children” are traditional African American spirituals.

THANKS

Special thanks to

  • Mary Clover Obrzut, Stephen’s sister, for insights into his life and for so much great audio.

  • Dr. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes for telling us about Stephen’s time at Union Baptist and connecting us with folks there. 

  • Alfred Williams for helping us get connected to Double Rock.

  • Dr. April Parker and Mardy Coates for facilitating the use of “Who Kept Us.” 

  • And to the folks at Double Rock Baptist Church, past and present, especially the beloved Minister of Music.  

Resources:

Balm in Gilead – works to integrate public health and faith principles. It was founded by Dr. Pernessa Seale in to help Black churches address HIV/AIDS and support people and families living with AIDS.


Double Rock Baptist Church – is still worshipping and ministering in Bayview/Hunters Point. They were deeply involved in community support during the Covid-19 epidemic. 


Love All People – is the ministry that introduced MCC to Margaret Douroux’s song, Who Kept Us, to MCC. 


National Minority AIDS Council– works for heath equality and racial justice to end the AIDS epidemic. 

TRANSCRIPT:

NOTE: This audio documentary podcast was produced and designed to be heard. If you are able, do listen to the audio, which includes emotions and sounds not on the page. Transcripts may contain errors. Check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Lynne Gerber: The very first recording in the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco's archive is from the evening service on Sunday June 28, 1987. Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day. Pride Sunday.  

Linda Rochelle: to Reverend Mitulski the pastor of this great church. To all my brothers and sisters in Christ, as always, it is indeed a privilege and a pleasure to be with you in the house of the Lord. Once again.

Lynne Gerber: Most Sunday services were made up of MCC members and friends. But on Pride Sundays, MCC always had company. Folks from other MCC congregations around the Bay Area. Folks wandering around the Castro after the city’s Gay Pride parade and wandering into 150 Eureka Street. And folks from other churches who were friends in the LGBTQ struggle. That Pride Sunday they had a guest preacher -- a new friend from another San Francisco church. 

Linda Rochelle: For those of you who do not know me, I am Linda Rochelle from the Double Rock Baptist Church under the leadership of Reverend Victor L. Medearis. Once again, I bring you good mornings and God's unselfish blessings from Pastor Medearis and the Double Rock Church family. Now that I have given you my old traditional Baptist greeting. Hi everybody. 

Lynne Gerber: MCC folks had complicated relationship with other Christians. After all, the church was founded because almost no other church welcomed gay folks, lesbians, trans folks, or queer people. Not the ones who were out and unrepentant. Not the ones who couldn't pass if they wanted to. And not the ones who stopped wanting a long time ago.  Some churches didn’t even think queer people could even be Christians. It didn't always seem like there was much to build a friendship on. 

Linda Rochelle: When Jim called me and asked me to come here, you know, I couldn't say no. You know, I was floating on air. You know, I ran and told everybody. I'm going back to MCC. Here I am. I wouldn't miss it for the world. Congratulations on your parade today. And I hope and pray that this will take you to the heights that you always wish to go as the gay community 

Lynne Gerber: AIDS sharpened the need for friends. Real friends. Friends like Linda Rochelle, who would show up in hard and uncertain times. And when new and unexpected friends did show up, they sometimes challenged MCC's notion of what was necessary for friendship. It did that Sunday, when Linda talked about AIDS. And when she talked about the need for churches to be more involved in AIDS. And then she talked about the sinfulness of homosexuality. Decades later, Bob Crocker – MCC’s music director remembered that service. And that Linda was there addressing AIDS– in a moment when not a lot of other Christians were. 

Bob Crocker: What I remember is Jim bringing Linda to speak to our congregation. but the emotional response, I mean, to having this very, very Baptist, very put together African American lady there. Mm hmm. I mean, the people just fell on her and cried, You know, it was, and it was deeply meaningful to a lot of people. nobody was doing anything and in evangelical churches in particular, nobody was doing anything. And so I think that really inflamed everybody's interest. 

Lynne Gerber: Listening to that first tape surprised us. We didn't expect the very first recording in MCC's collection to talk about homosexuality and sin. Linda surprised us -- with her palpable warmth and her affection, and her theological questions about her new friends. And the church's response to her surprised us. Because we didn't know that MCC would count any church that thought homosexuality was a sin as a friend. It made us curious about this friendship and how it came to be. And about how AIDS shaped the gay church's connection with other churches.

Bob Crocker: She was doing this because the Lord told her. ..know, that's fine. And it moved us. I mean, it moves me now

Lynne Gerber: In this episode we're diving into the story of an unlikely partnership -- between MCC San Francisco and the Double Rock Baptist Church, a Black church in San Francisco's Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood. We're going to look at the larger question of how the gay church found friends among other Christians, who may or may not have agreed with them about homosexuality. And we'll see how AIDS changed the need -- and the possibilities -- for real Christian friendships.  

This is When We All Get to Heaven. Episode Four: Friends in the Fire. I’m Lynne Gerber. 


Lynne Gerber: AIDS opened a new chapter in a longer story -- the story of how the gay church would relate to other churches and other Christians. It was a question that shaped the MCC experiment from the very beginning, when people like Troy Perry decided to make new religious spaces for gay folks separate from existing churches. Early on, folks believed that MCC was a short-term prospect, that it was a temporary refuge while denominations figured out homosexuality. A lot of the folks who made up the first MCC churches had served their home churches and denominations with love and devotion for years and years. They were clergy, musicians, secretaries, and deacons. On Sunday mornings they arranged flowers, they organized coffee hours, and guided people to their seats. They believed it couldn't be long before the churches would realize the error of their ways about homosexuality, reverse course, and welcome back the folks who -- in truth -- had always been there.

Lynne Gerber: But it turns out it wasn’t going to be that easy. When MCC first started, established churches were just gearing up for fights over homosexuality that would last decades. Some gays and lesbians started groups to fight those fights from the inside. But being on the outside gave MCC certain powers. It let them decide from the outset that gay was good with God, sparing them the internal battles that tore many denominations apart. It allowed them to include folks from every point on the wide spectrum of American Christianity. Because they agreed on homosexuality, they just didn't care as much about all the other stuff that divided many Christians. And that diversity gave them the ability to speak back to all kinds of Christians, churches, and institutions. Ones at every point on that wide spectrum. 

Lynne Gerber: The best example of MCC trying to build relationships with other churches involves an organization called the National Council of Churches, and MCC trying -- and failing -- to join it. Nancy Wilson - a leader in MCC’s denomination  –  led that effort.

Nancy Wilson: We thought we're going to pass civil rights in this country in the eighties. 

Lynne Gerber: Even in the late 70s MCC folks were still sincere in their confidence that their fellow Christians would, eventually, see them and welcome them.

Nancy Wilson: We were very idealistic. So we went, in fully believing that if we opened ourselves to them and told them who we were and what we were about and doing, to know us is to love us. Troy Perry used to say that. To know us is to love us.

Lynne Gerber: The National Council of Churches was the country's largest Christian organization in the 20th century. And for a time it was the most powerful. It was made up of a range of Christian denominations, most of which are considered mainline– closer to the middle or to liberal end of the spectrum than the conservative end. In 1981, before AIDS was known to be a thing, MCC applied for membership in the National Council. They knew that most churches didn't agree with MCC's position on homosexuality. But member churches disagreed on all kinds of things—women’s ordination, militarism and the Cold War, what clergy should wear —and still figured out a way to work together. Was homosexuality an issue that churches could legitimately disagree on? Or did MCC's unequivocal pro-gay stance put its very legitimacy as a church into question? 

Nancy Wilson: I think we went in fully believing they could do the right thing. Absolutely. I mean, I can remember how it felt. 

Lynne Gerber: As part of the application process, MCC invited denominational leaders from the National Council to a worship service. It was in 1983 in San Francisco. Reverend Troy Perry was the preacher. 

Troy Perry: And I want to tell you those people got more than they bargained for, because they came to church that night, thinking they were going to see a group of Christians playing church, and that night we had church. Amen

Lynne Gerber: MCC's quote/unquote realness as a church was often questioned. Sometimes its congregations and clergy were derided for being church imitators. Players. Not enactors. That’s something Troy disabused the National Council of that night. He recalled his closing words to them a few years later at MCC San Francisco. 

Troy Perry: And I said, It doesn't matter, really, what you think about us. But it does matter what we think about you. Because you see, Jesus is the light of the world. 

Lynne Gerber: Jesus is the light of the world. Not the National Council. The Council's job is to reflect that light. And MCC would decide for itself how well the Council did that.  

Troy Perry: And it's very important that we have our heart in the right place. You folks vote any way you want to on our membership. I said, I'm not gonna tell you how to vote. You pray and let God tell you how to vote. You know that's the last thing those folks wanted to hear? Amen. I really believe that. They weren't prepared for that. And I said, you know, you can't give us any kind of validity. We want you to know that. That's the only reason we can stand before you today is because you can't give us any kind of validity. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. And God's already done that by calling us into existence. So that's the end of that. 

Lynne Gerber: MCC was seeking Christian friendship with Council members. Friendship based on a shared, mutually recognized Christian purpose, not on agreement about homosexuality. A purpose that could only ever be given -- or legitimized -- by the Holy Spirit. Not by the National Council of Churches or a vote of its members. MCC offered friendship on its terms and the Council was welcome to take it or leave it. Because it wasn't looking to the Council to do what it believed God had already done -- make the gay church a real church. 

Troy Perry: And I'll tell you, I got a standing ovation when that sermon was over. And it was just wonderful.

Lynne Gerber: It may have been wonderful. But it didn't get them into the Council. 

Nancy Wilson: on the day that the National Council voted to postpone our membership. Vote was in 1983, 

Lynne Gerber: The Council couldn't agree to welcome MCC into its organization. It also couldn't agree to turn MCC away. They literally decided not to decide on MCC's application for fear it would tear the Council apart. So they postponed it. Indefinitely. 

Nancy Wilson: The very same day, the Roman Catholic Church apologized to Galileo. 

Lynne Gerber: Technically, the church didn't even apologize that day. It hinted they were going to LOOK INTO a possible future exoneration. And even THAT--- had taken the church more than three hundred and fifty YEARS.

Nancy Wilson:Now, I read that, I mean, I laughed so hard I cried, saying, Okay, God, you're telling me some of these things take a little longer than others. Galileo!

Lynne Gerber: It says something to me, all these years later, that these alleged play Christians were seen as so potentially powerful that they'd tear the Council apart. The gay church wasn't going to formally become friends with mainline denominations. But gay Christians, as they always had, would become friends with all different kinds of churches. Friendships that would be tested by AIDS. 


Lynne Gerber:Which brings us back to Double Rock-- the Black church we heard from at the beginning of this episode. The friendship between MCC and Double Rock, is a story of serendipity.  A story that begins with this guy -- an MCC member named Stephen Clover."

Stephen Clover: I had to have my hat with me, because it looks so good. And I wanted the experience of taking it off in front of you. My name is Stephen, and I'm a person with AIDS, and I'm a lot of other things too. And I was thinking about it, I'm a father, I'm a son, I'm a friend, I'm a neighbor. My family is big, and diverse, and wonderful, and supportive, and frightened, all kinds of things

Lynne Gerber: Stephen Clover and MCC’s minister, Jim Mitulski, were seminarians together in the Bay Area. Stephen had just moved there and Jim befriended him right away. 

Jim Mitulski: He made a much larger impression than the length of his life would have led you to expect.  Plus he was a homo, homo. You know, that's what I liked about him. He was like, he wasn't an assimilated gay. He was a, he was, uh, you know, he loved jewelry and he was like, uh, was that old style gay? 

Lynne Gerber: Mm-Hmm. . 

Jim Mitulski: I like that.

Lynne Gerber: In true pastoral fashion Jim invited Stephen to MCC San Francisco. And like a lot of other gay seminarians, he became a regular there. But before he was a seminarian in California, Stephen was a seminarian in Boston. With Reverend Jeffrey Brown. Who also befriended him right away. 

Rev. Jeffrey Brown: I want to say it was the, either the first or the second day that I was there that I met Stephen. And he, you know, very gregarious guy. He was like, hi, I'm Steve, you know? And, and my first thought was, okay, this is a weird guy. 

Lynne Gerber: One thing about Stephen. In Boston he was a white member of a Black church.

Rev. Jeffrey Brown: Steve immediately said, you need to come to my church. And I was like, this guy's at a Black church? Yes. And I said, okay.

Lynne Gerber: Another thing about Stephen. He may have been a lot of things, but it seems that subtle was not one. 

Rev. Jeffrey Brown: He did not come out to me initially. but it was kind of, you know, he's very flamboyant. So, I mean, you know, a lot of folks who would make assumptions that they would be correct. But when he did come out to me, he was, we, we laughed about it cause I was like, and? You know, And he was, he was like, well, I, you know, I didn't know if you know, I'm like, I think everybody knows, man. I mean, it’s not, you know. But for me, it was, um, as much a journey for me than it was for him to try to figure all of that out.

Lynne Gerber: He became a member of Union Baptist Church. He started by singing in the choir. And he found an unexpected home there. 

Rev. Jeffrey Brown: But in the black church, there's always been this tacit acceptance, not from everybody, but from many folks in the church. As long as you did not, um, you know, um, express, not express yourself, but I mean, you know, make demands about how people should perceive you, right? Because in the black church, you've got a history of a people who have always been oppressed and who've always been told who they are and the limitations of what they can do. But when you're in the church context, you have, for example, a pastor who says you can do anything through the spirit of God. You can be who you are in the spirit of God. And so there's always been this sort of, um, tacit acceptance of, you know, who a person was. And I think it's part of the reason why, you know he stayed at the church because there were folks who would just love on him. And um, strike up conversations and bridge friendships and all that kind of stuff. 

Lynne Gerber: And then he found an unexpected calling. First to preach. At Union Baptist where he got his preaching license. And then to California for seminary. And almost as soon as he got there, in fall of 1986, Stephen got sick. 

Stephen Clover: It really hadn't occurred to me that I had ARC, AIDS related, Uh, symptoms that I didn't even know that I was at risk, frankly. I thought I was not highly at risk because of my own patterns of sexual behavior and social behavior too. I just pretty much had resolved in my mind that I would be spared. I mean, the way I felt was, the gig is up. I better get to the hospital.

Lynne Gerber: They weren't sure what it was. But they knew what it was.

Stephen Clover: Because of my history, because I was a gay person, because of the, um, uh, fever and other, uh, things they really could look at, that, uh, they They admitted me and they began treating me as if I had pneumocystis. I mean, they treated me for the condition that, that they didn't know about yet. And, uh, that was real important. It took them five days, actually, to come up with a diagnosis. And that diagnosis was given to me on Thanksgiving Day while the rest of you were eating turkey. And it dawned on me, you know, what a strange, strange bit of information. That I had to deal with, live with, look at, and digest, as it were, on my Thanksgiving day. 

Lynne Gerber: And when he was in the hospital, while he was processing his diagnosis and trying to get better, he made some new friends. 

Minister of Music: This picture was at the San Francisco General Hospital. And we had just finished singing to to all of the AIDS patients there. 

Lynne Gerber: Double Rock Baptist Church was founded in 1949. It was founded, in part, as an outreach to the kids in the Double Rock housing project. Kids were always central at the church. And in the 80s they had a children's choir. We spoke to the director of that children’s choir. She was the minister of music at Double Rock at the time and doesn’t want us to use her name. So we’re calling her the minister of music. 

Minister of Music: So we practiced for about three weeks, I guess, taught them little Christmas hymns. It was during Christmas time. 

Lynne Gerber: As part of its ministry, Double Rock brought their kids' choir to sing in Ward 5B, San Francisco General's famed AIDS ward. A children's choir. In an AIDS ward. 

Minister of Music: the staff there said, just go down the hallway and sing. And so the kids said, well, can we just go and peep our heads in and just sing a little bit from the doorway. And the staff said, yeah, I guess that'll be all right. 

Lynne Gerber: Stephen Clover was a patient in Ward 5B when Double Rock's children's choir was singing there. 

Minister of Music: And he was one of the ones that we went and sang. And when we left, he was crying. And the next thing we know, he's showing up here at Double Rock, just giving a testimony of how we, the children, touched his heart.

Lynne Gerber: Double Rock got involved with AIDS through Linda Rochelle -- MCC's preacher on Pride Sunday 1987. The minister of music told us that Linda worked in administration at UCSF, a medical school in San Francisco. And as the AIDS crisis grew, she saw a need and an opportunity. We tried to hear the story from Linda herself, but she passed away before we could talk to her. So the minister of music filled us in.

Minister of Music: All the hospitals were getting influxes of sick people. And she just had a compassionate heart. And she said, I have to, there has to be more to my life than just going to church and have to be doing something. And so that was kind of her, her mantra. And that she, that's, that's how she, she went full force in it and with it. She was the only one that came up with something because she introduced it to Pastor Medearis.

Lynne Gerber: Linda helped her pastor see why AIDS was important. Even if Double Rock didn't seem to be directly affected. 

Minister of Music: Reverend Medearis always had a, a love for people and causes. but I will say that the AIDS epidemic, AIDS and HIV, that was major, because that was really dealing with how people responded to what the word of God says we should do, and that is to love people.

Lynne Gerber: So Double Rock started their choir project at Ward 5B as a way for the kids to enact the love Double Rock was teaching them about.

Minister of Music: We felt like they they needed to have a connection to humanity. You know, and you can't always have that when you don't, you're not practicing it. You know, you have to practice love to give it. You have to practice all those things the Bible speaks about and the things that Reverend Medearis is telling us how we should treat people.

Lynne Gerber: Meeting Double Rock sparked something for Stephen. And through him, Double Rock started a partnership with MCC. Each church took the long journey of just a few miles to the other's neighborhood. Each choir sang at the other's church. And they wanted to do something about AIDS together.

Bob Crocker: And I think we didn't know how to do it. But I think the thing that struck them was that Jim brought 40 people to Bayview hunters point and people were very curious and affectionate with each other. And obviously Jim and Linda had such deep respect for each other, and Stephen was on fire about it. 


Lynne Gerber: That's how Linda Rochelle came to be preaching at MCC San Francisco on Pride Sunday in June of 1987. 

Linda Rochelle: Now that I have given you my old traditional Baptist greeting. Hi everybody.

Lynne Gerber: Linda was clear on the stakes of AIDS. And the need for Christians to respond. 

Linda Rochelle: As most of you know, my goal through Double Rock was to go into the Black community and to the Black Baptist churches and let them know, Hey, we, the gay community needs us. At that time, gay males were riding real high on the charts of getting AIDS.

Lynne Gerber: But Double Rock and MCC did not agree about homosexuality. 

Linda Rochelle: So after I made it known that Black people got AIDS too, then the Baptist people threw something else on me that I was not ready for, that I did not know how to quite deal with, and it was, homosexuality is a sin. In the King James Version of the Bible, which we use, it speaks on homosexuality being a sin. But it also speaks on a man sleeping with somebody else's wife and somebody else's wife sleeping with somebody else's husband. But you find that most people don't want to deal with that. They only want to look. All right, you hear what I'm saying now. They only want to see what they want to see. Oh, well, this person's homosexual. Fine, okay, I can deal with that. Well, what you want me to do about it? I know for a fact you’re sleeping with somebody else's husband. So, six in one hand, a half a dozen in the other hand. 

Lynne Gerber: There may have been laughter, but this was tough. For everyone. I imagine MCC folks weren't overjoyed hearing about the sinfulness of homosexuality on Pride Sunday. And Linda seemed to be working through some complex and maybe even contradictory thoughts and feelings of her own. 

Bob Crocker: You could see her struggling. She's trying to figure out you know, right there in front of us. She's trying to figure out what she thinks this is not about what she thinks. This is about the Lord told her to help these people. 

Linda Rochelle: Homosexuality never really bothered me. I don't know, it never really, it's never been an issue with me. And I've, the last two years I've heard so much about homosexuality. It's like, well, do you think you might be getting it? Do you know, is it affecting you? It's like, it's going to rub off on you, and you're scared that, to even be near a homo-, a gay person or the gay. If you drive through the Castro you think somebody's going to throw a cup full on you or something. What's the problem here? But my mother had always raised us. No matter what a person is. They are still a person. They have feelings like you. They want like you. 

Lynne Gerber: MCC's whole purpose was challenging the idea that homosexuality is a sin. But they also knew their position was a stretch for a lot of people. And that not a lot of those people were reaching out to MCC, respecting them as a church, and trying to do something about AIDS together. Were they friends? Or not so much?

Lynne Gerber: The next Sunday, Jim knew he had to say something. The church loved Linda Rochelle. God knows they loved a good choir exchange. They wanted community with this church. But their differences were hard to hold. 

Jim Mitulski: I want to say a word about Linda Rochelle's sermon last Sunday some of you were here. We have very different ideas about, for example, sexuality, and that became clear. And what she said was, we'll worry about what we think about things like sexuality later, but the more important calling right now is helping people who are sick and in need of comfort. I really respect her for saying what she said, even though it wasn't exactly like my favorite gay pride day sermon in the whole world. The thing that I appreciate about it is this. A coalition. A relationship is very, very difficult, and I believe God is calling us to this relationship right now. Linda was telling us the absolute truth about where she was coming from and where her church is coming from. And I don't know that many churches or many groups would have been so honest with us. Linda was saying, flat out, we don't agree with you about sexuality, but we do care about people with AIDS. 

Lynne Gerber:  The fact is, other churches were saying similar things. Some liberal congregations, some Catholic parishes, some white churches said things like we may not accept your sexuality, but we want to help you in your suffering. Some churches in the National Council said it, but coalition with them wasn't working out. And it's really hard to imagine someone from one of those churches preaching at MCC on Pride Sunday. But Jim was telling MCC that it was time for them to risk relationship with Double Rock.

Bob Crocker: And this is one of Jim's big things that was a theme, but I don't know if he even knew it was a theme yet, which is, you know, we've got to stand with people, um, and they've got to stand with us to the extent that we can. It's like, okay. If we are actually going to help people who are sick, we have to stand with the Black religious people who are actually concerned about this exactly as they are. And by the way, we are not perfect, you know, we're not all that, uh, you know, so that's, you know, and we have to examine. The habits of mind that prevent us from working with Black Baptist actual San Franciscans. Like we can have these imaginary people in our head. It would meet all of our needs. Um, but you know, the house is on fire. 

Lynne Gerber: This was a particular moment and a particular pair of churches with a particular set of longings. A Black Baptist church that longed to show Christian love in a place and among a people that many were fleeing from. Even as they kept underlining their disagreement with those people. A mostly white gay church that identified with the struggles of the Black church and longed to be recognized by them as fellow strugglers. But not always recognizing the problems with that identification. Or with the Castro's part in the city's racial politics – and social tensions between the predominately white gay folks in the Castro and communities of color.  Complicated Longings in every direction. 

Jim Mitulski: And even in her midst of saying that, she was planning for, a chorale that we're gonna have a music festival with our choir. which is all of you. we expand the definitions of choir for occasions like that. And, and, churches from, choirs from four other black churches. What Linda said when she contacted the choir director from the Catholic Church in Hunter's Point was, she said, now you understand there's going to be lots of gays there, and we're collecting food for people with AIDS. And the choir director said, yes, yes. And Linda said, well what about people in your choir? Are they going to have any problem with that? The choir director said, if they do have a problem with it, then they don't belong in church. There's hope there. There's hope there. There's real hope there. God is calling us together, I think. It's only the hand of God, and it's the kind of thing that God is calling us to do. 


Lynne Gerber: Double Rock and MCC had their first joint Gospel Fundraiser for AIDS in August of 1987. Just a few weeks after Linda Rochelle preached at MCC. Stephen wanted to be there. So badly. But he was just too sick. A Double Rock leader welcomed folks to the concert and acknowledged the unlikely combination of people in the room. We found a home video of the event.

Speaker 5: Today, we have a unique congregation made up of blacks, whites, young, old, homosexuals, bisexuals, heterosexuals. What brings such a group together? The answer to that question is AIDS. And how can I reach out and make everyone here today feel welcome? The rally point that will make each and everyone welcome is their belief in Jesus Christ. All right. Our Lord and Savior. For each and every child of God has to feel welcome inside of any building calling itself a church 

Lynne Gerber: One thing I hear in this welcome is a recognition of MCC as a church and its members as believers. And that is enough to merit welcome, especially when fellow believers are suffering. That didn't make it easy. Sin came up at that concert just like it did when Linda preached. This is Double Rock's minister Rev. Victor Medearis. 

Rev Medearis: It would be a rather sad situation with the group of people we have assembled here for us to misunderstand what we mean by none but the righteous. When we speak of none but the righteous, we're talking about, uh, people who have been saved by Jesus Christ, our Lord. And when we're talking about sinners, we're talking about all of us. 

Lynne Gerber: A lot of churches talk about sin. And talk about it at every event they have. It does sound a little intense to my ears that they're talking about sin at a concert. Especially given the guests in the audience. But I also hear an effort to not use the language of sin to divide one Christian from the other. Or to vaunt Christian virtue and condemn everyone else's vice. 

Rev Medearis: I think, uh, the time is far past that Christian people are going around trying to stick their necks high and say we are the angels and everybody else is the devil. That's a sad mistake that people have been making a long time.

Lynne Gerber: And where it really counted -- when it came to the money -- Rev. Medearis was right on point. 

Rev Medearis: I want you to take some money out, because we want to send it to The AIDS Foundation. We want to keep money going that way because somebody, somewhere, God got a cure for that disease. And we all know how folks are, we just don't work without money. And let's, shovel the money to them. Somebody's gonna find a cure somewhere. 

Lynne Gerber: MCC's choir sang at the concert. And Jim preached. About some gay Christians he knew and what he learned from them. 

Jim Mitulski: I've learned a lot about heaven in the last few years. And I've learned about it from people with AIDS. The first is Bill Knox, a member of my church who died last week. 

Lynne Gerber: You might remember Bill Knox from the last episode. He’s the MCC congregant who consecrated communion on Easter Sunday while visibly sick with AIDS. 

Jim Mitulski: And he taught me about Heaven. That Heaven means that after we die, God will care for us. That we live forever in the presence of God. Last week at Coming Home Hospice, just before Bill died, we had a time of prayer and communion with him. And he said this, just before he went into a coma. I'm going home. And it's such a beautiful place. It's the most beautiful place you could ever imagine. And anyone can go there who wants to go there. And then Bill went home the next day. And I learned from Bill, a gay Christian, that God cares for us after we die, and God holds us in our arms, and God is with us. We're in that place where there's no hunger or thirst.

Lynne Gerber: Members of Double Rock may not have loved the evocation of Gay Christians from their pulpit. Just like members of MCC may not have loved the evocation of homosexuality and sin from theirs. But the two churches had a kind of mutual respect for each other -- as churches and as believers -- that made it possible to hang in with each other in those kinds of fraught moments. It was a more modest collaboration than the kind that MCC sought with the National Council. It didn't require the movement of institutional levers or resources. And it was forged, in part, in a very personal love for Stephen, who died less than a week after the concert. But it's striking to me that no one was making this experiment a referendum on faith or legitimacy. I imagine that helped make it possible. 


Lynne Gerber: The two churches held together. For a little while.

Jim Mitulski: It was hard to sustain. Yeah. It almost was impossible to sustain. It was too much of a jump.

Lynne Gerber: They did a few more concerts together, raised some money, and had an article written about them in the newspaper. A program from the second AIDS benefit concert sits proudly in Double Rock's trophy case. But the storms got harder to navigate. The Castro was overwhelmed by AIDS. The Bayview was overwhelmed by all of the compounding issues facing Black communities in the late 80s. And the connection faded.

Lynne Gerber: AIDS was making MCC develop a much more complicated understanding of who they were, who their friends were, and what the basis of that friendship might be. Accepting homosexuality, it turns out, wasn't strictly necessary for friendship. Or for collaboration. But showing up was. Especially for people who were sick and dying. And for a church indelibly marked by AIDS, reeling from its losses. Because in the mid-80s, that was the more deeply meaningful expression of Christian faith and Christian love.

Lynne Gerber: Linda tried to work through another religious conundrum AIDS presented to some people of faith that Pride Sunday -- the question of why God sent AIDS and whether it was to punish gay people and drug users. 

Linda Rochelle: My answer to, that would be that, That maybe a God's way of inventing AIDS or letting AIDS come into the world or come into the gay community, the heterosexual community, and to the drug abuse community is that maybe this was God's way of saying who was going to stand up and help, such as the churches.

Lynne Gerber: By the late-80s, more people in more churches were understanding that AIDS was something they needed a better response to. That it wasn't something that was happening somewhere else. That it was happening in their communities and that there had to be a better Christian response than condemning the sick and dying. MCC would keep trying to be in conversation with folks who wanted to be in conversation with them. But the question of homosexuality would keep being a stumbling block -- one that got bigger as the churches fought and fought and fought over it while the losses from AIDS just grew.     

Next time, on When We All Get to Heaven: How to heal when there is no cure. 

Ron Russell Coons:  The Christian church has told us  that we are to live and live and live, and what we've interpreted that. to mean, eternal life, is that everyone stays the same and that someday we're going to just like, you know, ascend or something, but no one is supposed to be sick. No one is supposed to die.  That's the lie of the church.  The truth is that everyone dies.

CREDITS

When We all Get To Heaven is a project of Eureka Street Productions and is distributed by Slate. It was co-created and produced by me, Lynne Gerber, Siri Colom and Ariana Nedelman. 

If you love the show, we’d love your help. The best way for new listeners to find us is through word of mouth. Please spread the word and tell folks about us. The next best way is through listener reviews. Please review us on whatever app brought you here. Thanks so much!

Our story editor is Sayre Quevedo. Our sound designer is David Herman. Our first managing producer was Sarah Ventre. Our current managing producer is Krissy Clark. Tim Dillinger-Curenton is our Consulting Producer. Betsy Towner Levine is our fact checker. And our outreach coordinator is Ariana Martinez.

The music comes largely from MCC San Francisco’s archive and is performed by its members, ministers, and friends. Additional music is by Tasty Morsels.   

We had additional story editing support from Arwen Nicks, Allison Behringer, and Krissy Clark. 

A lot of other people helped make this project possible, you can find their names on our website. You can also find pictures and links for each episode there at – heavenpodcast.org. 

Our project is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, the E. Rhodes and Leona B Carpenter Foundation and some amazing individual donors. It was also made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. You can visit them at www.calhum.org.

Eureka Street Productions has 501c3 status through our fiscal sponsor FJC: A Foundation of Philanthropic Funds

And many thanks to MCC San Francisco, its members, and its clergy past and present – for all of their work and for always supporting ours.