In the spring of 2018, Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley, pastor of Alfred Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, preached a sermon entitled, “The Sins of Sodom.”

“When you limit Sodom and Gomorrah to simply a lesson on homosexuality, you have missed three important things,” he states early in the sermon.

For 45 minutes, Wesley told the story of Sodom and Gomorrah differently. He told the story about poverty, violence, idolatry, and greed, and not about homosexuality. 

At the end of 2022, a clip of the nearly five-year-old sermon began making the rounds on social media. For some people, it made them wonder if the Black church had changed its position on homosexuality. 

Familiar with the video and the sermon, Rev. Delman L. Coates, senior pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Maryland, told The Reckoning that he was glad to see it. But, he isn’t quick to suggest that there is a trend happening within the Black church where cisgender, heterosexual, Black male pastors are becoming more affirming and preaching as such. 

“There is a lot of silence on the question of LGBTQ inclusion in the Black church,” he said. “Rehashing a 5-year-old sermon clip does not constitute a trend.”

“People are being traumatized and re-traumatized and Black preachers are not talking about it,” he said. “The killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, issues of police accountability and empire violence puts other issues on the back burner. We can't address police accountability and inclusion at the same time.”

LGBTQ equity is a hallmark of Coates’ work. His vocal stance on the issue began in 2011, before it was trendy or popular. At the time, he said, he noticed that a same gender loving couple began attending the church, but were sort of hiding in plain view. 

“I remember a gay couple approaching me that summer at my son’s football game and talked about joining from a local predominantly white church,” he said. “And then I actually observed a lesbian couple join the church on two different services on two different days.”

He presumed that maybe they were trying to avoid being seen, so he asked his executive assistant to schedule a meeting with the couple to give him the chance to meet them, welcome them, and get to know them. Unfortunately, the first meeting was canceled. But once they had a chance to reschedule, he said, it was an enjoyable and eye-opening exchange. 

“For about two and a half to three hours, we just talked,” he said. “I learned the couple was having a challenge with obtaining healthcare for one of the partners. We left that meeting and I felt there was a real injustice taking place. I had rights that this couple in my church did not have because they were same gender loving. I felt at the very minimum that justice is indivisible and I really believed that I did not want people legislating rights based on their subjective views of the bible. I thought that was wrong.”

At the time, Black pastors all over DC were publicly campaigning against marriage equality, which really bothered him. Knowing that marriage equality would be making its way to Maryland the following year, he contacted a colleague of his and decided it was necessary to meet with the governor. He wanted to express his support for marriage equality and to make it known, at least to the governor, that the face of Black pastors on the question of marriage equality did not have to be dominated by one particular cohort. 

“I do not support LGBTQ rights in spite of the bible. I do so because of it,” he said. “I do not see one passage in scripture that regards same sex people or the acts of consensual same sex as an abomination.”

“People are looking for permission to love…”

Rev. William H. Lamar, IV, pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., does not know if he would frame the rehashing of Rev. Wesley’s sermon and others, including the Rev. Dr. E. Dewey Smith, senior pastor of the House of Hope Atlanta, as an uptick. 

“I think I would frame it in this way; there are some cisgender straight Black male pastors who are seeking to do more serious work with their hermeneutics, with their historical understanding of texts in service of being faithful to the gospel,” he told The Reckoning. “Much of what we have heard came from persons who were white and either ignorant of history or ignorant of the nuances of language. Too many Black pastors have interpreted texts within white evangelical theology.”

There is a need, Rev. Lamar said, to reprise the interpretation of human sexuality and the bible.

“I think often about the fact that if Harriet Tubman read scripture like those who enslaved her, she would not have freed people,” he said. “If Frederick Douglass would have read scripture like the ones he opposed, he would not have fought for suffrage. A lot of us need to go back and reclaim our ancestors' strident belief and practice of reading scripture differently than those who would exploit them. For me, it may be less of an uptick and more of Sankofa at work.”

As a product of the south, Rev. Lamar grew up in an environment where being effeminate was considered the worst possible thing and statements like, “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” were common. 

“But then I have always been curious, and I have always asked why,” he said. “Spirit and the ancestors would not allow me to keep reading scripture the way I was being taught. In college, in seminary, in conversations at restaurants, on trips, at church meetings, I kept having moments when spirit and the ancestors kept saying, ‘Wait a minute. This reading, this liturgy, these theologies that exclude and dehumanize persons because of who they are is not acceptable.’”

And as an ordained member of the AME Church, Lamar refused to live in fear even though the denomination’s reputation regarding LGBTQ equality is complicated. According to the Human Rights Campaign, The AME Church has no formal policy on the issue even though it is believed that the denomination condemns same-sex relationships.

“I refused to let my own desire to be loved, or popular, or to achieve vocationally, set the terms of what I preach, what I teach, who I will love, and who I will accept,” he said. “I respect the denomination, but I also think the denomination is not being honest with itself. I believe we are burying our heads in the sand because we know we have queer brothers and sisters within the church sharing gifts and ensuring the church thrives.”

While he does not consider these moments as indications of an uptick, Lamar does have a prediction. 

“It doesn't take great wisdom, and it may not be nice even though it's true, but economics is going to convert those pastors that aren’t yet affirming,” he said. “For those struggling with their identity, they are looking for permission to love themselves. There will be some who will say, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t believe what I have been told is gospel is the will of the Creator.’”

For Coates, his prediction for the church is more rooted in hope and informed by him recently informing the church that he has a transgender child. 

“My hope is that churches will model the radical love of Jesus Christ and help people come out of the shadows. That is my hope,” he said. “My hope is that no child’s first memories of the church are feelings of not belonging or that no one's child is afraid of being himself or herself. It's my hope that other families and individuals experience the love of Jesus freely and without fear.”