John E. Bevan

JOHN E. BEVAN
John Bevan was born in 1931 in Alpine, California, a tiny hamlet over a mile high in the San Bernardino Mountains, in Los Angeles County.  The family, which consisted of his mother, father, an older brother and younger sister, eventually settled in Los Angeles.  John graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles in 1949 and head off across town to UCLA for college -- the first of his family to attend college.

John did not grow up in a particularly religious family.  They did not attend church regularly, although occasionally the family went on either Palm Sunday or Easter.  In high school, however, John fell in with a group centered at the Robertson Community Methodist Church and soon became a ringleader there.  At UCLA he kept his Methodist connection, and became active in the Wesley Foundation, which became his central extracurricular activity during college.

During his senior year at college he applied to and was accepted at the University of Southern California Seminary, which later became Claremont School of Theology.  After Seminary, John worked for several years at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and later at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey as the University Registrar.  After Drew, John served a brief period of pastoral ministry in Southern California.  John later worked as assistant registrar at Georgetown University and then as registrar at American University, both in Washington, D.C.  In 1973 he took the post of director of recruitment and admissions at Wesley Seminary.

John was consecrated as a Christian Education Director and later became a Diaconal minister with certification in Christian Education.  For eight years he served as chairperson of the Baltimore Annual Conference Board of Diaconal Ministry.  He also served as Wesley Seminary's liaison with the Division of Diaconal Ministry in Nashville.

The church was central in John's life and he attended Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. as his local parish.  John served on a variety of boards and committees at Foundry from education work to the board of trustees.  John was also a member of the Cathedral Choral Society and sang with the choir of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. for more than 20 years.

John was a delegate to the 1984 and 1988 Jurisdictional and General Conferences of the United Methodist Church.  In 1988 he was appointed by the Council of Bishops to the Agenda Committee and became chairperson of that committee.  John served the United Methodist Church honorably, involving himself in the highest levels of governance in the denomination and electing bishops of the church.

John was an active member of Mid-Atlantic Affirmation, United Methodists for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns.  He was instrumental in initiating the Foundry/Affirmation Neighborhood Bible Study Group, which served the spiritual needs of Gay and Lesbian United Methodists in the Washington, D.C. area for more than 10 years.  John died of AIDS related complications in 1991.

Established in 1815, Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, DC has been the home to Presidents, members of Congress, and many other public servants.  In 1995, Foundry became one of the largest Reconciling congregations in the country, working for the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people into the life and leadership of the United Methodist Church.

This is one of six stoles (#587-591, 846) donated by Foundry in advance of the 2000 General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Cleveland, OH.  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