CLGS

The room vibrated with spirits of the gay tribe on Sunday evening as living history thrived in Easton Hall at PSR’s neighboring seminary, Church Divinity School of the Pacific. In the presence of a cloud of witnesses, both living and dead, Mark Thompson, journalist, author, editor, photographer, and spiritual shaman of the gay community, donated papers, books, and photographs to the CLGS Archive Project. The gift will be known as the Mark Thompson Gay Spirit Collection, and will be one of the first archival collections on LGBT spirituality movements beyond mainstream Christianity.

The event was the kick-off to CLGS Arts Week, and the opening of a remarkable exhibit, called Fellow Travelers: Liberation Portraits, of photographs of gay male spiritual figures that ranged from Harry Hay to Robert Mapplethorpe and Thompson’s longtime partner and collaborator, Rev. Malcolm Boyd.

Thompson, who wrote a trio of groundbreaking books on gay spirituality: Gay Spirit, Gay Soul, and Gay Body, was also a reporter and editor-in-chief for The Advocate, and had the opportunity to take the photographs as he formed relationships with these men professionally and personally. Thompson, who, with trademark wit, identifies as an “Episco-pagan” was instrumental in the development of the gay spiritual movement that became known as the Radical Faeries. As the LGBT rights movement grew in the late 1970s, the Faeries brought together previously unexplored dimensions of sexuality and spirituality, creating new forms of communal erotic ritual that continue today in Faerie gatherings across the country.

Thompson said it was fitting that this exhibit, which has been shown in bathhouses and Cathedrals, and the other products of his life’s work, should be donated to the archives at CLGS. “I could have given these materials to other gay and lesbian historical archives,” Thompson said, “but I felt they should be here, because CLGS has an explicitly spiritual mission.”
Thompson’s partner of more than twenty-five years, Rev. Malcolm Boyd, also spoke.

A 1954 graduate of Church Divinity School of the Pacific and an Episcopal priest for more than fifty years, Boyd was active in the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam-War movement. In 1965, he published Are You Running with Me, Jesus?, a collection of “pop prayers” that echoed the beat poets of the era and became a million-copy bestseller. In 1978, he published a spiritual autobiography that has become a classic of the coming-out genre, Take off the Masks.

Boyd spoke with deep emotion about returning to his seminary alma mater as an out gay man to celebrate the accomplishments of LGBT spiritual pioneers. “It’s hard to imagine now how difficult it was back then,” (for LGBT people) Boyd said. “It’s a time for telling stories, for those of us who lived and somehow survived. And those of another generation need to listen.”

Jay Johnson, senior director of academic research and resources at CLGS was instrumental in securing the archival materials from Thompson, and said he hopes the archive can attract still more collections that represent the full range of LGBT-inspired spirituality movements in addition to its already impressive collection from figures involved in mainstream religious denominations.

Speaking for the need for spiritual as well as political liberation for LGBT people, Johnson said, “Yes, political liberation is important, but, ‘What do we profit if we gain the whole world, but lose our souls?’”

The Mark Thompson Gay Spirit Collection, including Thompson’s exhibit, Fellow Travelers: Liberation Portraits, will be accessible to both scholars and activists through the Graduate Theological Union Library.

Photo: (L-R) PSR President Bill McKinney; his wife Linda McKinney; Malcolm Boyd; Mark Thompson; CLGS executive director Bernard Schlager; CLGS director of Bay Area Coalition of Welcoming Congregations Roland Stringfellow; CLGS senior director of academic research and resources Jay Johnson.