The Call And Response Of A Gay Bishop: How The Truth Transformed Dennis Meredith's Life and Ministry
Bishop Dennis Meredith
“The Holy Spirit can use anybody. I am a pastor, a preacher, a teacher, and I’m bisexual.”
It’s been 14 years since Bishop Dennis Meredith, 68, stood in the pulpit of Tabernacle Baptist Church (TBC), which he has led since 1994, and publicly disclosed that he was bisexual. On any given Sunday, the pews in this 100-year-old church formerly located on Boulevard in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward would be filled, and this Sunday in 2007 was no different. There had been rumblings among members of Meredith’s congregation that the charismatic pastor who was married to former First Lady Lydia Meredith for 27 years and bore three sons, was gay, or at the very least bisexual. But until the words escaped his mouth, no one expected the revered spiritual leader with everything to lose to disclose the truth about his sexuality, including Meredith himself. This moment was the culmination of a progressive shift in membership and theological approach that would spur a mass exodus for some straight and Biblically conservative members while becoming a Genesis for those who identify as LGBTQ+.
“For everyone that left, 15 to 20 people joined because I was the only African American pastor in the city that was saying it's not a sin to be gay. It's okay to be who you are,” says Meredith.
Once the words left his mouth, he knew there was no going back into the closet. A hush swept across the sanctuary. The silence was deafening. Shock and confusion replaced faces that were cool moments before, but now everyone looked as if they were collectively asking—’what did he just say?’”
“Then they broke out into applause and gave me a standing ovation,” Meredith recalls.
“When he said that, I was waiting for the earthquake to come because I knew there was going to be a consequence,” says Tony Winston, a member of TBC for 23 years. “I knew there were going to be some members that were going to leave.”
“They loved the church and loved him, but they just couldn't understand the idea of a bisexual preacher, as well as the influx of LGBT members coming to the church,” says Eric Richardson, a deacon and long-time member of TBC.
Bishop Dennis Meredith
“I don’t feel like these churches are really helping us. I think most of this stuff is entertaining people.”
Meredith tells The Reckoning that “by the time I announced it, we were, say, 75%, a same-gender-loving congregation.” Initially, Meredith says he was perplexed by the surge in LGBTQ congregants only to find out that Joe Taylor, widely known as Miss Sophia, a popular drag queen, and Atlanta radio personality was behind the uptick.
“He [Taylor] was a member of Tabernacle. He was on the Courtesy Guild. I did not know anything about TRAXX,” says Meredith, referring to the once-popular and now closed Atlanta nightclub where Taylor performed as Miss Sophia.
“I didn't know that he was doing drag. A whole bunch of gay people started joining Tabernacle, just droves started joining the church, and I was like, well, what the heck is going on? The deacons got upset with me because they said, ‘you're turning this church gay.’ I found out that at the end of his show he would always tell the attendees to come to his church. ‘I attend Tabernacle Baptist Church where Dennis Meredith is the pastor,’ Meredith recalls Miss Sophia telling the crowd at TRAXX. “And this went on for months. I knew nothing about it. All I knew was these people were coming to my church by the droves. I mean, sometimes we had as many as 45 people joining a Sunday,” says Meredith.
TBC was becoming a safe place for LGBTQ+ Atlantans to worship without the fear of being spiritually abused. And while Meredith was being embraced by one segment of the Black community, the fallout from his straight Black congregants and other clergy was severe.
“Prior to me coming out, I preached for everybody. As soon as I came out all of that ended,” says Meredith. “I have no relationship with straight ministers in Atlanta. Period. All of those guys were my friends. But you know, they don't put any money in my church, so to hell with them. Why should I care about what they think about me? The people who take care of me are the people I'm going to take care of,” he added.
A matter of privacy?
In the years following Meredith’s truth revealing moment, his ex-wife, Lydia Meredith, whom Bishop Meredith remains connected to, wrote a book in 2016 detailing their tumultuous marriage, including his infidelities, which he admits were with “both men and women.” Meredith shares three sons with his ex-wife. Their middle son, Micah, a gifted musician, is also gay. Meredith tells The Reckoning that he came out to Lydia 12 years into their marriage as bisexual, although today he now identifies as gay. He has been in a long-term relationship with his husband and First Gentleman Lavar Burkett-Meredith, 44, for 16 years. The couple has successfully navigated a 24-year age difference and were legally married in 2018.
First Gentleman Lavar Burkett-Meredith (Left) Bishop Dennis Meredith (Right)
For Meredith, who has battled various forms of cancer since 2006, and is currently undergoing treatment for prostate cancer, Burkett-Meredith has been the literal definition of a helpmate when he’s been at his lowest, especially when the demands of being a pastor refuse to take a backseat to the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation for many of Meredith’s parishioners.
“People will demand so much of you in ministry. They'll kill you. You'll be dead, they’ll walk past your casket and say, ‘well, I sure enjoyed him. Too bad he’s gone.’ And they’ll go on and kill the next pastor,” says Meredith.
In 2017 and 2020, with tumors all over his body, Meredith was certain that he was in the final days of his life.
“I flirted with death the whole time. I lost 165 pounds and I remember telling my husband, you're looking at a dying man,” says Meredith. “It was a rough period for us, for him to watch me be so sick like that. I knew for sure last year that I wasn’t going to make it.”
Meredith says he was so sure that his death from cancer was imminent that it prompted him to invite an undertaker to his home to plan his home going. But what he wasn’t prepared for was his cancer to go into remission for seven years after adhering to a holistic regimen that cost less than $25 compared with the $450,000 price tag of a previous stem cell transplant.
In 2020, cancer returned with a vengeance, having metastasized outside of the prostate. And despite a series of physical and emotionally crippling days, Meredith says he refuses to deal with his diagnosis privately.
“I don't mind being vulnerable. When I go to that hospital, it is full of men with prostate cancer, full of women with breast cancer. And it's kinda sad that when we get sick, we think it’s a private manner, and we know generations are coming behind us who are going to have the same experience, but we don't share,” he says. “I just think that we as men, older men, in particular, should share our stories and our journeys so that younger Black men, at least when they get to it, they'll know what to look for.”
The Business Of Church
Meredith’s transparency does not surprise those who know him or have worshipped under his leadership at TBC. Before Atlanta became home to several Black LGBTQ+ affirming churches, TBC was an outlier in a sea of traditional worship spaces, many of which, at the very least, was unwelcoming if not downright hostile towards LGBTQ+ people. TBC also became a training ground for many of the preachers now leading affirming churches across the city—a development that has left Meredith feeling betrayed, and in those early days, his church’s finances in the red with a sharp decline in membership.
“I think they all, truthfully, have a level of great respect for me. Although, I felt betrayed by a lot of them because most of them came to Tabernacle and then went and started their churches,” says Meredith. “They always talk about how they came to Tabernacle and sat in the balcony. Even Bishop O.C. Allen from The Vision Church was at Tabernacle. I remember him saying, ‘I never thought I could be a pastor and be openly gay until I met you.’”
Pastoring is a difficult job, a sentiment that Meredith says many of the LGBTQ+ affirming pastors who came out of his church often say they were not prepared for. His response: “I said, no [you weren’t prepared] because you didn’t talk to me.”
While Meredith sees value in houses of worship that are inclusive to the Black LGBTQ+ community, he wonders if they sometimes fail to help the very people their ministry targets.
“Now that I don’t have call and response, I am solely arresting upon my ability to articulate and persuade, and to not be motivated by the call and response of the people.”
“I don't feel like these churches are really helping us. I don’t,” he says. “I think most of this stuff is entertaining people. I think most people come to your church, they want to see you work, they want to see you sing, they want you to shout them. They want to be entertained. They want to see their friends. But have we made any improvement in our community when it comes to HIV prevention, homelessness, youth issues? So we got all this church, but we don't have a lot of ministry.”
Today, Meredith’s ministry has transitioned online throughout the pandemic. And his church that was once facing foreclosure is now fully paid off after the sale of the church-owned property at the old Boulevard location.
“We went from nothing to $1.2 million in the bank in a matter of less than four months,” says Meredith. “The church we’re in now, I took that money and paid cash for it. I wasn’t going to owe another bank after having gone through that.”
Now that virtual services are the temporary new normal, Meredith says he’s reveling in the opportunity to do church differently.
“Now that I don't have call and response, I am solely arresting upon my ability to articulate and persuade, and to not be motivated by the call and response of the people.”
And for Meredith, if the message requires the messenger to tell the truth about scripture or his life, as long as there is breath in his body, he will commit to speaking the truth that sets his people free, regardless of the fallout.
