Metropolitan Community Church

Based on Wikipedia: Metropolitan Community Church

A Church Born in a Living Room

In October 1968, a former Pentecostal pastor named Troy Perry invited a handful of people to worship in his living room in Huntington Park, California. What happened next would become one of the most significant religious movements of the late twentieth century—a church built explicitly to welcome people whom almost every other Christian denomination had rejected.

Perry had been kicked out of his own church for being gay. Rather than abandoning his faith, he did something radical: he started a new one.

The Metropolitan Community Church, as Perry called it, grew so quickly that within months it had outgrown his living room. By 1969, the congregation had swelled to about two hundred people, and they were meeting at the Huntington Park Women's Club. But finding a permanent home proved nearly impossible. Landlords refused to rent to them. Churches wouldn't share their space for more than a week or two. The congregation bounced from an auditorium to a Methodist church to a Hollywood theater, always one eviction notice away from meeting on the street.

Fire and Tragedy

In early 1971, the church finally bought its own building on South Union Avenue in Los Angeles. They consecrated it on March 7th. Less than two years later, on January 27, 1973, that building was destroyed in what the Fire Department called a fire "of suspicious origin."

Arson. Someone had burned down a church.

That same year, tragedy struck another Metropolitan Community Church congregation in New Orleans. The church had been holding services in the UpStairs Lounge, a well-known gay bar in the French Quarter. On June 24, 1973, someone set fire to the building during Sunday evening services. Thirty-two people died, including the Reverend Bill Larson and many of his parishioners. It remains one of the deadliest attacks on gay people in American history, yet at the time it received almost no media coverage. Some local churches refused to hold memorial services for the victims.

The Metropolitan Community Church kept growing anyway.

What Makes a Denomination?

To understand what the Metropolitan Community Church actually is, it helps to understand some church terminology. A denomination is an organized group of congregations that share common beliefs, governance, and identity—think Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, or Catholics. Each denomination has its own theological positions, its own way of training and ordaining clergy, and its own organizational structure connecting individual churches.

The Metropolitan Community Church, also known by its fuller name the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, operates as a mainline Protestant denomination. "Mainline Protestant" refers to the historically established Protestant churches in America—Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans—as distinguished from evangelical or fundamentalist churches. These mainline churches tend to be more theologically moderate and more engaged with social issues.

What sets the Metropolitan Community Church apart is that it was founded specifically as an affirming space for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians. Most of its members and many of its clergy are openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. This was extraordinarily radical in 1968, when virtually every Christian church considered homosexuality sinful.

From One Living Room to Twenty Countries

Perry's living room church spread with remarkable speed. Within months of that first service, he was receiving letters from people in other cities who wanted to start their own Metropolitan Community Churches. By 1970, just two years after that first gathering, congregations from eight American cities sent representatives to the first General Conference: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Costa Mesa in California, plus Chicago, Phoenix, Honolulu, and Dallas. A Miami group existed but couldn't send a delegate.

In 1972, Freda Smith became the first woman ordained as a minister in the denomination. A year later, she was elected to the Board of Elders, the church's governing body. The denomination eventually adopted gender-inclusive language in all its worship services—another progressive step that mainstream churches would take decades to consider.

The church went international in 1973, opening congregations in Toronto and London. Today it operates 172 churches across twenty countries, according to a 2025 census. The largest presence remains in the United States, followed by Canada. The worldwide organization divides into seven administrative regions covering every continent except Antarctica—though technically Antarctica falls within Region 6's territory, along with all of South America.

Theology and Practice

Despite its progressive stance on sexuality and gender, the Metropolitan Community Church is theologically conservative in many ways. It bases its beliefs on the historic creeds that most Christians recognize: the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, ancient statements of faith dating back to the fourth century that affirm core Christian doctrines about God, Jesus, and salvation.

Every Metropolitan Community Church is required to celebrate the Eucharist—the ritual sharing of bread and wine commemorating Jesus's last supper—at least once a week. And they practice what's called "open communion," meaning anyone can participate in this sacred meal regardless of whether they're a church member or even a Christian. Many traditional churches restrict communion to baptized members or those who have completed certain requirements. The Metropolitan Community Church throws those doors wide open.

Beyond these requirements, individual congregations have significant freedom. Worship styles vary dramatically from church to church. Some feel like traditional liturgical services with robes and formal prayers. Others feel more like contemporary evangelical gatherings with rock bands and casual dress. Some pastors take what could be described as a fundamentalist approach to scripture—believing in its literal truth—while others interpret the Bible more metaphorically. The denomination holds these different approaches together under a common commitment to welcoming all people.

Marriage at the Center

Troy Perry performed the first public same-sex marriage ceremony in the United States in 1969, just a year after founding the church. In 1970, he filed the first American lawsuit seeking legal recognition for same-sex marriages. He lost that case, but he had fired the opening shot in a legal battle that would take nearly half a century to win.

The church continued performing marriages even when they had no legal standing. Today, Metropolitan Community Church congregations worldwide perform more than six thousand same-sex union and marriage ceremonies annually.

In Canada, Reverend Brent Hawkes and the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto played a crucial role in the legal fight that eventually brought marriage equality to the entire country in 2005. In the United Kingdom, the church performed the first religious same-sex wedding ceremonies after they became legal.

Spain presents an interesting case study in how complicated these matters can get. An attempt to establish a Madrid congregation in 2010 would have made the Metropolitan Community Church the first legally recognized church in Spain to officially perform same-sex marriages. But for unclear reasons, that congregation never took root. The first religiously affiliated same-sex wedding recorded in Spain was actually performed in 2018 by a Swedish Lutheran vicar—and even then, legal restrictions meant he could only marry couples where at least one person was a Swedish citizen. A Metropolitan Community Church congregation finally opened in Madrid later that year, and by 2020 it was described as thriving and expanding.

The Struggle for Recognition

Despite its growth and longevity, the Metropolitan Community Church has faced significant institutional resistance from other Christian bodies. In 1992, it applied for membership in the National Council of Churches, an organization that brings together many of America's mainline Protestant and Orthodox Christian denominations. The application was denied.

The World Council of Churches, which operates internationally, has been somewhat more welcoming—the Metropolitan Community Church holds "Official Observer" status, which means it can participate in meetings and discussions without being a full voting member. Many individual Metropolitan Community Church congregations have joined local ecumenical partnerships, working alongside other churches on community projects and interfaith initiatives. And several statewide councils of churches in the United States have granted membership.

Some observers have described the Metropolitan Community Church as "non-denominational," which technically isn't accurate. Non-denominational churches are independent congregations with no organizational ties to other churches. The Metropolitan Community Church is very much a denomination, with elected leadership, required beliefs, regular international conferences, and a formal structure connecting hundreds of congregations. It's just a denomination that many other denominations prefer not to recognize.

Leadership Across Generations

Troy Perry led the denomination as its Moderator—the chief spiritual and administrative officer—from 1968 until 2005. That's thirty-seven years of leadership, guiding the church from his living room to a global presence.

His successor, Nancy Wilson, made history as the first woman to serve as Moderator. She was formally installed in a ceremony at the Washington National Cathedral, one of America's most prominent churches, on October 29, 2005. Wilson served until 2016.

After an interim period under Rachelle Brown, the current Moderator is Reverend Elder Cecilia Eggleston, elected at the 2019 General Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The denomination's governance involves two main bodies. The Council of Elders handles spiritual matters, mission development, and representing the church publicly. The Governing Board manages finances and legal affairs. Both include a mix of clergy and laypeople—ordinary church members who aren't ordained ministers. This balance of ordained and non-ordained leadership reflects a broader Protestant emphasis on the "priesthood of all believers," the idea that religious authority doesn't belong exclusively to clergy.

A Broader Vision

While the Metropolitan Community Church is best known for its work on gay rights, it positions itself as standing up for all marginalized people. The denomination's official stance supports keeping abortion legal. Many local congregations participate in campaigns for economic justice, including the Trade Justice movement and Make Poverty History—international efforts to reform global trade rules and address extreme poverty.

The church has also been influential in developing what's known as "queer theology"—a branch of theological thinking that examines Christian beliefs and traditions through the lens of LGBTQ experience. Rather than simply arguing that gay people should be allowed into existing churches, queer theology asks what the Christian message might look like if gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender perspectives were taken seriously from the start. This intellectual project has influenced discussions far beyond the Metropolitan Community Church itself.

The Living Room to the World

In 2011, the Good Shepherd Parish of the Metropolitan Community Church was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame—recognition that the church had become not just a religious institution but a pillar of LGBTQ community life.

That journey from Troy Perry's living room to international presence took just over fifty years. During that time, the Metropolitan Community Church weathered arson, rejection, and the AIDS epidemic. It performed weddings that weren't legally recognized and fought lawsuits to change that. It ordained women and gender-nonconforming clergy when most churches wouldn't. It built communities for people who had been told their sexuality made them unwelcome in God's house.

The church never tried to argue that being gay was compatible with existing Christian teaching. Instead, it built a new denomination on the belief that existing Christian teaching was wrong. That theological confidence—the willingness to say that centuries of Christian tradition had misunderstood something fundamental about human sexuality and God's love—required a particular kind of courage. Whether you consider that courage prophetic or presumptuous probably depends on your own beliefs. But it's hard to deny that Troy Perry and the Metropolitan Community Church changed the landscape of American religion.

Today, with 172 congregations in twenty countries, what started in a California living room has become exactly what its full name claims: a universal fellowship.