Joyce (Park Slope United Methodist Church, Brooklyn NY)

JOYCE
Park Slope United Methodist Church
Brooklyn, New York

I am what I call a third generation Methodist.  I have very fond memories of going to a small church in a farming community in the Midwest with my Mother and Grandmother who both enjoyed singing all the various hymns.  They taught me to sing harmony and my Mother and I have always enjoyed singing together when I go home to see her.  My Grandmother was a religious person who practiced what she read in the Bible.  She spent her time simply by reading her Bible and working on her quilts.  My Mother and Grandmother taught me the very basic principles that guide me today.

I have lived in New York for over 30 years and until two years ago I was never able to find a church where a lesbian could worship without discrimination.  I then found my home at the Park Slope UMC, a reconciling congregation that has members who really practices the principles I was taught.

I find it disheartening to now hear that the general board of the UMC does not want to treat people like me the same as any other person.  The way I lead my life is no different than any other Methodist and I can't understand why we shouldn't be treated the same.

At PSUMC, I am the treasurer, co-president of the UMW, choir member, reconciling committee member, fill in as an usher, and cut the grass and help in our garden in the summer.  I am trying to live my life the same as the generations before me and hope that the delegates at the General Conference will treat us as they would want to be treated; we are no different.

This is one of thirty one stoles from Park Slope United Methodist Church included in a display of UM stoles at the 2000 General Conference of the UMC in Cleveland.  All are made from identically sized pieces in turquoise, lavender and purple cotton batik,  With only 200 members, Park Slope has donated the largest number of stoles to the collection from a single United Methodist congregation. 

A diverse community, Park Slope's creed is: Hand in hand, we the people of the Park Slope United Methodist Church -- black and white, straight and gay, old and young, rich and poor -- unite as a loving community, in covenant with God and the Creation. Summoned by our faith in Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves to the humanization of urban life and to physical and spiritual growth.  A scrappy congregation utterly committed to putting their faith into action, Park Slope has been unrelenting in its pursuit of justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the UMC.

One passing statement in Joyce's story takes my breath away.  Joyce is the sort of person that church membership committees dream of: a woman of faith with deep roots in the United Methodist church, one who is called to put her faith into action through service in a local United Methodist congregation, a leader who is ready and willing to step into positions of responsibility.  Despite all this, Joyce spent twenty-eight years searching for a congregation where she would be welcome, simply because she is lesbian.  What a tragedy that one should have to spend so many years wandering in the desert, and what a loss to the church all those years.  And yet, if it weren't for Park Slope, Joyce might be wandering still, because the UMC fails to see the gifts of God before their very eyes.

In 1999, the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) inquired about the possibility of having a display of the Shower of Stoles at the General Conference the following April.  At the time, there were only around twenty United Methodist stoles in the collection.  We decided to introduce the Shower of Stoles to the Reconciling community by bringing the twenty UM stoles and about a hundred others to RMN’s Convocation in Denton, TX over the Labor Day weekend.  Stoles started to trickle in during the fall, and by February they began coming in droves.  In all, we received 220 United Methodist stoles – the vast majority of them arriving within eight weeks of the Conference.  Thanks to a monumental effort by a number of volunteers who pitched in to help record, inventory, sew labels and make last-minute repairs, all of the new stoles were present in Cleveland.  Twenty more people brought stoles directly to Cleveland, bringing the total number on display to 240.

Towards the end of the General Conference, twenty eight lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender United Methodists and allies stood on the Conference floor in silent protest over the Conference’s failure to overturn the ban on LGBT ordination – a profound witness and act of defiance for which they were later arrested.  As these twenty eight moved to the front of the room, another 200 supporters stood up around the balcony railing, each wearing one of the new United Methodist stoles.  Hundreds more stood in solidarity as well, in the balcony and on the plenary floor, wearing symbolic “stoles” made from colorful bands of cloth.  A group of young people from Minneapolis, members of a Communicant’s Class, had purchased bolts of cloth the preceding evening and stayed up all night cutting out close to a thousand of these “stoles”.  In less than eight months, a handful of stoles had grown to become a powerful, visible witness to the steadfast faith of LGBT United Methodists nationwide.

Martha Juillerat
Founder, Shower of Stoles Project
2006