CLGS

The Bay Area Coalition of Welcoming Congregations (CWC) brings together religious leaders, LGBT people of faith and their allies from a wide range of religious traditions in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area to form a progressive, effective and media-savvy voice on matters relating to sexuality and religion, homophobia, and the enfranchisement of LGBT people within society as a whole. By creating a strong network of congregations and local faith communities of various religious traditions and denominations throughout the Bay Area, the CWC connects local religious leaders, religious congregations/communities, and individuals of faith who are highly motivated to act as agents of positive social change. In addition, the CWC provides a powerful tool for like-minded individuals to ally themselves with other LGBT people of faith and their allies and to make known their views in the current public debates concerning religion, sexuality, and LGBT people.

Based on the input of more than fifty Bay Area religious leaders and people of faith who gathered in two strategy sessions (in November 2004 and February 2005) and two planning meetings (in December 2004 and March 2005), the CWC began to take shape as an organization that builds upon the experience, commitment, and vision of individuals and congregations from Christian, Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, and Buddhist traditions. The individuals involved to date represent the racial and ethnic diversity of the Bay Area as a whole and they have expressed their strong commitment to creating an organization that includes a variety of religious traditions (including Muslim and Hindu) and is committed to building a coalition that is racially inclusive, ethnically diverse, and made up of individuals and congregations from various socio-economic strata of society.

An additional goal of the CWC is to demonstrate how churches, synagogues, mosques, and other communities of faith can work together to strengthen legal protections for LGBT people and their family members; provide a religious rationale for supporting civil marriage for lesbian and gay people; and initiate public dialogue on a myriad of issues that conservative religious groups so effectively control and manipulate today.

By forming strong alliances with non-religious LGBT activist organizations in the Bay Area the CWC will not only increase its own effectiveness but also serve as a useful ally to existing organizations that are dedicated to reducing the harmful effects of homophobia within our society and countering the negative effects of well-funded conservative religious organizations in the Bay Area and in California as a whole.

Starting in 2008, the Rev. Roland Stringfellow (rstringfellow[at]clgs[dot]org) began serving as the first full-time coordinator of the CWC. Consult the CLGS calendar for upcoming CWC events.