June is Pride month, and in celebration The Center is hosting a series of lectures, entitled “Reclaiming Our Faith,” in an attempt to open discussion about religious and spiritual affairs within the GLBT community.

The first installation, which took place June 5, featured the Rev. John Gill of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), Linda Gibbons-Croft of the MCC and Dean Scott Richardson of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. The topic of the evening was how to reconnect those who have lost their Christian faith.

AJ Davis, The Center’s director of public policy, opened with a brief statement about her hope for the speakers series.

“My reason is twofold,” she said. “One, to broaden the education of the LGBT community about faith, and then also to try to encourage the LGBT community that there are quite a few accepting places of worship in San Diego.”

What followed was a small but intimate circle of believers, questioners and nonbelievers sharing ideas and finding common ground in regard to the Christian belief system.

Gibbons-Croft of the MCC spoke first about her experience with shame, hiding and fear. She told a personal account of her search for a congregation that accepted her and dispelled her feelings of guilt. Where she ended up and still remains today is with the MCC.

The MCC was started in 1968 by the Rev. Troy Perry who, after coming out, was told he was no longer welcome in his church. Perry then started the MCC with specific outreach to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

According to Gibbons-Croft, the MCC is an open, liberal communion with its mission to stand up for the social and spiritual rights of minorities. Today the MCC has grown to include 23 countries and more than 250 member churches.

“For me, what I found [at the MCC] was a place where there was no shame or the God that I had been so scared of,” Gibbons-Croft said.

Rev. Gill, also of the MCC, explained that reconciliation comes from a strong personal foundation, and that it is not up to the church to provide all the answers but up to each individual to find a personal relationship with God.

“It is not a lazy person’s church, which will do the thinking for you,” he said of the MCC, adding that the church has learned from its mistakes and is trying to be a better place with room to grow in every service.

The final panelist was Dean Scott Richardson of the Episcopal St. Paul’s Cathedral. Dean Richardson opened with the Episcopal method: “Honor the text and the context, respect the human reason and guide it to the light of the Lord.”

He spoke at length about the Jesus of the past and the textual Jesus seen in the Scripture. Dean Richardson dispelled the idea that the Bible says anything about homosexuality being a sin, and instead replaced that ideology with one of faulty cosmology, stating that the ancients were obsessed with the idea of purity versus chaos. Statements about man lying with man where as faulty as statements about seeds lying with unlike seeds, he said.

“Just because it’s red-lettered in the Bible does not mean He said it,” he added.

Dean Richardson paraphrased a section of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, where Jesus comes back to the world but is immediately locked away because he is seen to be a threat to the organization of fear and punishment the church has instilled upon the people.

Dean Richardson said of his church, “We are an organism, not an organization.”

A question and answer portion followed the panel of speakers. Topics shifted from the Trinity and the issue of same-sex marriage to different ways individuals can help participate and fund programs at The Center and in the community.

St. Paul’s is located at 2728 Sixth Ave., with Sunday service at 8:00, 9:00 (en Español) and 10:00 a.m.

The MCC meets at The Center, located at 3990 Centre St., every Sunday from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m.

The Reclaiming Our Faith series is free and open to the public and will continue throughout June and into July. Future speakers include local professors of biblical studies, Buddhists, Muslims, Native American spiritual leaders and followers of Judaism. For more information, visit www.thecentersd.org or contact AJ Davis at (619) 692-2077 ext. 212.