Gayla Goehl

Washington Square has long been a place of welcome to New York's LGBT community.  The Rev. Paul M. Abels, Washington's Square's pastor from 1973-1984, was the first openly gay installed parish minister in a major Christian denomination.  The church was also home to the Harvey Milk School of lesbian and gay youth and the Gay Men's Health Crisis Center.  Known as the "Peace Church" due to its antiwar activism during the Vietnam War, Washington Square hosted dozens of other activist groups over the years, from the Black Panthers to community housing development organizations and a variety of dance, theater and music groups.

In 2004, the congregation decided that renting space for worship and other programs would be a better use of their resources than maintaining their church and the parsonage, two old and decaying landmarks.  The buildings have since been sold, and Washington Square has merged with Church of All Nations and Metropolitan-Duane United Methodist Churches.

This stole was donated in advance of the 2000 General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Cleveland, OH.  Members of Washington Square joined with Park Slope Methodist Church to contribute 35 stoles for display in Cleveland.  Washington Square's four stoles and Park Slope's thirty one are identically sized pieces made from turquoise, lavender and purple cotton batik.  In addition to her own stole, Gayla Goehl made one for her friend Brad Shuttler (stole #682). 

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