Published on 10/1/2009

Peace and Inclusion service marks watershed in claiming right to faith

By Colin Robinson and Nadine Lewis Agard

(Curepe, Trinidad and Tobago) - Several dozen, mostly ordinary-looking gay men and lesbians, and a smaller number of their supporters, gathered in inclement weather last Friday, Sept 18 in Curepe, with a quiet, yet eager sense that they were making history. Most had come from work. A handful had dressed up for the occasion.

"Today I'm proud to be Trinidadian," a 23-year-old wrote on his Facebook page earlier in the day, before he travelled in pouring rain and traffic from Chaguanas to a modest Christian church, a stone's throw from the Eastern Main Road, to sing a solo, Don Besig's song "Flying Free."

At about 6:00 pm the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community ecumenical service at the Holy Saviour Church began that evening, celebrating peace, human rights and inclusion. Archdeacon Rev. Steve West, a senior Anglican clergyman, along with one of the diocese's youngest women priests, Rev. Shelly-Ann Tenia, welcomed the people and the clergy representing other Christian denominations.

Together the church celebrated an hour-long candlelight mass steeped in the starchy traditions of the Anglican Communion. During Tenia's sermon, in which she lapsed into "Trini," -a Trinidadian creole dialect, on more than one occasion, admonished worshippers, "each of us needs to recognize our gifts" and "be prepared to live out our identity."

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Peace and Inclusion service marks watershed in claiming right to faith

By Colin Robinson and Nadine Lewis Agard

What are we willing to give up to reach inclusion and peace?" she asked. She cautioned that it requires hard work, whereas many of us "just want to tell a victim story, and expect to get a "bligh"."

The gospel reading, exhorted the congregants to "Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors…" Matthew 5:44, which was embraced and expressed in the people's prayers, for the past architects of oppressive anti-gay laws who had died, and been redeemed, to intercede with current lawmakers and judges. Prayers were said for a host of national officials, calling several by name, for the protection of homeless drag queens on the streets of Port of Spain, the island nation's capital, in the wee hours of morning; for family, friends, and for self-acceptance. And, the congregants demonstrated their connection to larger concerns in their prayers for "those who work to create safety for people of all genders and sexualities in this bloody country" and for the members of the Equal Opportunity Commission "who will one day hear our complaints."

In keeping with the theme of the service, marking the United Nations Day of Peace, prayers were also focused on special "rapporteurs," the members of UN treaty bodies, and all those who defend human rights and address conflict internationally, "especially in places where we are persecuted in yours and other gods' names."

The Psalm, 85:10, which proclaimed "justice and peace join hands," and readings that followed, the Old Testament from the prophet Isaiah "I will make your government be peace…The sound of violence shall be heard no longer in your land," Chap 60:17-18, and the New Testament from St. Paul's letter to the people of Ephesus, the Ephesians, "For he is himself our peace…for he annulled the law with its rules and regulations, so as to create…a single new humanity in himself, thereby making peace," Chap 2:14-15.

At the core of Christian "theologies of inclusion" especially of LGBT people, is the belief that Christ's "New Covenant" overrides the laws and regulations of the Old Testament, such as, mixing clothing, eating shellfish and many sexual practices, most of which have been abandoned, and institutes a new, simpler notion of salvation through loving God and each other, as explained in the Gospels.

Although the service was typical, the group participating in it was no smaller than many church congregations on a Sunday morning, though they were probably younger. The closing sequence of the service was made all the more moving, as worshippers formed a ring against the church walls, each member holding candles and singing, with the help of a choir, "They'll Know We are Christians by Our Love." During the service, one bright spark was during the Offertory hymn, when Giselle Devereaux, winner of a local drag pageant and dressed in a gold lame floor-length skirt, lip-synched to the Yolanda Adams anthem, "Still I Rise"

"Shattered, but I'm not broken / Wounded, but time will heal / Heavy the load, the cross I bear / Lonely, the road I trod I dare? Shaken, but here I stand…"

This simple, history-making event was the fruit of conversations and planning over several months among many LGBT churchgoers, a few forward-thinking faith leaders and journalists, about how Christianity drives gay people out of their right to faith and inflicts spiritual violence from which some never heal. The conversations began when Nadine Lewis-Agard, a mother of two who works at a regional faith-based organization, approached the 12-year-old gay non-governmental organization, Friends for Life, after reading the venom in Christian responses to a newspaper article on the International Day Against Homophobia.

The article suggested that government might consider decriminalizing consensual relations between adults of the same sex. Friends for Life decided to use July, LGBT Pride month in Trinidad and Tobago, to create conversations in their weekly discussion group about sexuality, faith and self-acceptance. Anglican Canon Dr. Knolly Clarke and Roman Catholic priest, Rev Clyde Harvey attended the most recent discussion group and challenged the 60 lay men and women, most currently or formerly active in their churches, to do their own work of creating communities to worship in safety.

An active member of All Saints Church, Sharon Mottley and Agard, who responded to the challenge, encouraged other clergy to become involved. Their efforts took on new life and gained broader support when government statements about exclusion of sexual orientation from the national Gender Policy triggered a number of groups across the national LGBT community to form an umbrella Coalition for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO).

But, notoriously anti-gay Pentecostal pastor Winston Cuffie, in response to press reports of the meeting with Clarke and Harvey, began one of his recent paid newspaper columns, "With all due respect to the gay community."

And, the T&T LGBT community demonstrated exactly why it had earned that respect: last Friday morning, a 23-year-old man reflected on "my involvement in making LGBT history in Trinidad and Tobago," went to his church that evening and sang, "I cannot wait for skies of blue, or dream so long that life is through."