Episcopalians Double Down on Pride Month

By Luke Pelser 

JUICY ECUMENISM

June 10, 2025

Episcopal Church officials are emphasizing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) advocacy even as the Federal government and some corporations dial back their public embrace of Pride Month following the “Bud Light” backlash of 2023 and increasingly visible public skepticism of transgenderism.

The denomination’s Manhattan headquarters hosted a special June 1 communion service to bless and commission Episcopalians participating in Pride Month celebrations. Led by Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, the service featured a sermon delivered by transgender Episcopal Priest and activist the Rev. Cameron Partridge.

The service took place at the Chapel of Christ the Lord at the Episcopal Church Center in New York. Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe celebrated the Eucharist while Partridge preached remotely from San Francisco’s St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in the livestreamed event.

Partridge, as was touched on briefly in the sermon, transitioned from a female to male identity in 2001 and went on to be ordained in the Episcopal Diocese in Massachusetts. In 2011, Partridge served at Boston University as its first transgender chaplain. In 2014, Partridge became the first transgender priest to preach at the Episcopal Church’s Washington National Cathedral.

Among the most influential conversations Partridge had, then identifying as gay but not as transgender, when questioning whether or not to pursue ordination was with a Philadelphia gay clergyman named John, who, when asked by Partridge about being gay in relationship with his ministry, said “My life is defined by love, and being gay is how I love.”

This largely focuses on the concept upheld by the Episcopal Church, which stands out in Partridge’s sermon, that the church should recognize the unique embodiments of every individual as a signpost of the divine image and that people ought to be glorified as such. This interprets and utilizes the idea from Genesis 1:27 indicating that people are made in the imago dei (image of God).

The sermon message drew from passages in the Gospel of John and the First Epistle of John emphasizing a connection and identity of those who follow Jesus Christ as being first and foremost children of God.

“Both God and the community were not and would not be seen for who and what they were,” Partridge preached.

Partridge cited 1 John 3:1 in support of this idea that reads, “The world does not recognize us for the world has not recognized God.”

According to Partridge, Jesus Christ offers for the people of God a community defined by a shared love that illuminates the glory of unique individuals made in the image of God. The San Francisco Rector described that God’s glory shines through those who are truly recognized by him. The community of God is held together and becomes one through a shared radical love that rejects no person. The recognition of the light and glory of God in unique persons of the LGBTQ community is realized, not in spite of what they are but because of what they are, Partridge insists.

Partridge described the love of God in action as the church and its members seeking out the light and uniqueness of every individual and to celebrate, recognize, and to allow that light to radiate even brighter through what Partridge describes as the “transformative love” of God. This is the exhortation that the preacher concluded with in sending out the Episcopal Church into the activities and events in the month of June.

“As this month unfolds, as we celebrate Pride around and beyond our church, let us seek out and celebrate that light in one another. Let us actively seek to perceive one another, refusing the distortions and dehumanizing political rhetoric all too often uttered in the name of Christian theology. Let us behold and uphold one another in recognition of the divine beauty in which we stand, queer, trans and allied beloved,” the Episcopal priest concluded.

Episcopalians have a long history of LGBTQ affirmation. In 1976, deputies to Episcopal General Convention adopted resolutions stating that “homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church” (1976-A069), and that they “are entitled to equal protection of the laws with all other citizens” (1976-A071). 

What began as toleration shifted to required affirmation.

In 2012 General Convention authorized canonical changes prohibiting discrimination in the ordination process on the basis of gender identity and or expression. In 2015, immediately following the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, canon law was further changed for gender-neutral marriage rites between any two persons. The denomination’s Book of Common Prayer remains unchanged, but most parts of the Episcopal Church today hold that homosexual practice, transgenderism, and other configurations of gender identity and expression are not sinful and requiring of repentance. Instead, they are viewed as immutable characteristics central to a person’s identity and therefore merit special protection and privilege, as displayed in the recent Pride Eucharist.

It can be tempting for Christians outside of the Episcopal Church who uphold a biblical sexual ethic and oppose same-sex and transgender practices on scriptural, theological, or moral grounds to quickly disregard these views as mistaken without first engaging their line of reasoning. The June 1 service and Pride Month in general raises important questions and ideas for Christians who oppose this view to wrestle with, including asking what it means to show radical love to our LGBTQ neighbors without condoning or unconditionally affirming practices that the Episcopal and other progressive mainline Protestant churches accept and promote.

More from IRD:

National Cathedral ‘Comes Out’ With Transgender Preacher