Description

The Religion and Theology Program seeks to deepen public knowledge of religion and to draw on the wisdom of faith traditions to advance shared understanding. Partnering with scholars of religion, faith leaders, journalists, artists, museum curators, and communities of faith, our work strengthens understanding of religious diversity, promotes more curious and civil public conversations, and stimulates faith-rooted efforts to envision and build a more just, compassionate, and democratic world.      The program seeks to deepen knowledge and understanding of the diversity and complexity of American religion, and to promote more curious and civil conversations about faith and religion among diverse knowledge makers, communities, and publics. In keeping with these objectives, program grants have supported a wide range of projects making innovative use of media to share knowledge and engage new audiences.     The grant being recommended here extends that approach, and would provide core support for a podcast series intended to anchor a larger project on the history of the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco (MCC-SF). The project will draw on the efforts of a small team of independent researchers and journalists, who have been working to preserve and learn from a trove of previously unheard worship service recordings from the 1980s and 1990s.     Given MCC-SF’s distinctive history, and its unique role in responding to the AIDS epidemic, this history holds great interest in its own right, as one piece of the diverse tapestry of American religious life. Because of the ways “the church blended Christianity and queer culture” (as the proposal emphasizes), a deeper examination of this history also represents an opportunity to reconsider relatively widespread assumptions that to be religious is fundamentally to be hostile to LGBTQ people and to queer communities and cultures more generally.    Joining a number of other podcasts that have been supported by Religion and Theology Program grants, the project will also productively complement a series of program grants focused on gender, sexuality, and LGBTQ religion, including a recent grant to support the launch of a new journal dedicated to queer and transgender studies in religion.