‘Church of Outsiders’ Preaches to Gay Community

If you were a Christian walking in off the street and looking for a nice place to worship on a Sunday morning, you might not notice that anything was different about the Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley.

You could easily slide into a back pew and join in the Christian hymn that was being sung by the congregation, look around and see an organ player, a choir, Christian symbols hanging on the walls, and a gray-haired pastor in a robe.

In fact, it wouldn't be until Rev. Dr. Bob Shore-Goss started preaching that you might realize you weren't in any regular, run-of-the-mill church.

"When we ask the question, 'Do angels have sex?' I've had some strange reactions," Shore-Goss said to his congregation on a Sunday afternoon in September after quoting a Bible verse from Genesis that suggests angels mated with humans. "There was an ex-Catholic nun and she said to me in kind of a quaint voice, 'You mean I've been celibate for many years when angels were sexual?'"

What was that, Pastor?

"Even a more curious response was when I preached this sermon at MCC in St. Louis," Shore-Goss continued. "I had people running from the church, a few of them, because they could not imagine 'Touched by an Angel' and Della Reese having sex. That's our view of angels."

As the congregation bursts into laughter, depending upon your sensibilities, you might either bolt from the church like those parishioners in St. Louis, or lean forward and wait for what this pastor is going to say next. But either way, you would know you weren't in an ordinary Christian church like millions of other Americans visit every Sunday morning.

Shore-Goss and his partner, Rev. Joseph Shore-Goss, whom he married before Prop 8 was passed, lead a congregation in North Hollywood that preaches to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. They are a church of outsiders, as Rev. Bob puts it, and preach to people in the San Fernando Valley that are often treated with hostility by other Christian denominations.

MCC in the Valley, one of over 250 MCC churches around the world, promotes a message of acceptance. One need not even be a Christian to worship there, and Shore-Goss' own belief system mixes Christianity and Buddhism. He even lets the local Druid community rent out the church for their own services.

"I think the uniqueness is that our church is about radically inclusive love," said Shore-Goss in an interview with Patch. "So, we are a church of exiles, although 10 percent of our congregation is heterosexual. We have about 100 members and we probably have as much diverse beliefs as there are people. It's not dogma that holds us together; it is practice that holds us together."

Shore-Goss' message of inclusiveness is what attracts many of his parishioners. Sharon, a Buddhist of 30 years who has been coming to MCC for about a year and asked to only give her first name, said she was immediately turned on by Shore-Goss' sermons because of their inclusiveness.

"(MCC) is open to everyone. You don't have to be a Christian to come to the service and that's the beauty of this church. This is also a wonderful example of God's love for all," said Sharon.

Shore-Goss is a former Jesuit priest who was excommunicated from the church in 1978 for moving in with another Jesuit with whom he had fallen in love.

In his book, "Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus ACTED UP," Shore-Goss tells his story of his life as a Jesuit, and it's not a tale the Pope would likely want publicized. In the book, Shore-Goss details a multitude of homosexual encounters with other Jesuits and says it was an open secret among the priesthood.

"The Roman Catholic priesthood is the largest closet outside of the US military. And it's no exaggeration that one out of two priests is gay and when you get into religious orders, it's about nine out of ten," Shore-Goss told Patch. "As a young Catholic kid going in there, not knowing how to define myself, I was like a kid in candy store. There were all these men like me."

It wasn't until he fell in love with another priest two years after being ordained and moved in with him that he had to leave the Society of Jesus.

"I left because I fell in love with another Jesuit and I was told if I stayed in I could be promiscuous, but not to settle down and just to keep it quiet," he said.

But Shore-Goss didn't keep quiet about it ever again. After coming out, he became an activist preacher and "queer theologian" fighting for gay rights. This freedom of expression didn't come without a cost.

"My mother said to me, 'If I had a gun I would shoot you for what you did to the priesthood.' She's dead now, but we reconciled," Shore-Goss recalled. "That's how emotional it was. She would not tell anyone about it. And my younger sister thought I did something terrible, some criminal thing."

Deepening the pain was the fact that Frank, the man he left the priesthood for, contracted HIV and died on the same day as his brother in 1992. Feeling obligated to be at Frank's service, he further upset his mother by not attending his brother's funeral.

"I wouldn't change anything around because the things that we fought for in the 70s, I never dreamt would happen," said Goss. "In terms of marriage, I never thought I would see it in my lifetime. And the acceptance of society, 'Will and Grace' and all those things. Young people for the most part think its no big deal as far as same-sex marriage. They see sexuality very different from their parents. And that's okay."

And if Shore-Goss is bitter about being tossed out of the Catholic Church, he doesn't show it. "The Jesuits taught me a lot of things, like how to love humanity and I still have that vision of humanity and justice that they taught me. And how to be a disciplined scholar," he said. 

He has written eight books, including "A Rainbow of Diversities," "Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible," and "Jesus ACTED UP: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto." He earned his Th.D from Harvard, served in Mother Theresa's House of the Dying Destitute, and currently teaches classes on theology at California State-Northridge and the Claremont School of Theology.

Shore-Goss preaches about embracing and celebrating sexuality and to even view it as a gift from God.

"God created us as sexual human beings with desires, and that desire is good. Christians, unlike the Jews, laid guilt trips on people," Shore-Goss preached to his congregation in September before telling them of a story from the Middle Ages, when a priest told his followers it was sinful to have sex on any days except for Tuesday and Wednesday.

"…Two sevenths of the year. Except for lent. And advent. Or holy days. If Christians lived and listened to that, there would be far less Christians. But you see how fearful Christianity has been of sexuality."

Shore-Goss came to MCC in the Valley six years ago after preaching at MCC in St. Louis for nine years. He said his sermons in the Midwest would turn a lot more heads than they do in North Hollywood.

"I love it (in North Hollywood) because I'm normal here. In St. Louis, gays and lesbians that stayed were fairly closeted," said Shore-Goss. "…It's not a very open city, so there I was presumed to be a radical. Here I'm just normal. It's very different."

MCC holds regular services every Sunday morning at 10:30 a.m. The church's services can be viewed online at http://www.mccinthevalley.com

Stephanie Guzman contributed to this article.