SCLC to Honor Founder of Church for Minority Gays : Award: Group says that recognition for Unity Fellowship should signal mainstream black denominations to recognize people who lead alternative lifestyles.
The Unity Fellowship Church and its founder and pastor, Bishop Carl Bean, are to be honored Mondayfor their ministry to gays and lesbians in minority communities.
The church, which was founded in 1985, will receive the Prophetic Witness Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles and the Martin Luther King Legacy Assn. at the 16th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Dinner Celebration at the Westin Bonaventure hotel.
Presenting Bean with the Prophetic Witness Award, SCLC spokesman Kevin C. Spears said, is intended as a signal to mainstream churches in the black community.
“The whole idea is to affirm people who choose lesbian and gay lifestyles,” Spears said. “For the SCLC--which is one of the traditional black civil rights organizations--to recognize the work of Unity Fellowship is saying the . . . the African-American church needs to recognize there are persons in our community that represent alternative lifestyles. We have to move forward.”
With a reported 700 members in Los Angeles and 450 in Detroit and New York, Unity Fellowship churches are unique in ministering to the needs of gays and lesbians in what Spears calls “communities of color.” The Los Angeles church is on Jefferson Boulevard near Culver City.
In an interview, Bean, 48, said he organized the church because as a gay man he was concerned about “the beating and oppression I had taken in Christendom once it was discovered who I was.”
Black gays and lesbians, he said, needed a place to go for what he calls spiritual healing. Bean said the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, was also predominantly white.
As Unity Fellowship grew, however, it began attracting heterosexual men and women, as well as Latinos, American Indians and Anglos. Bean attributed the growth to the use of non-sexist or inclusive language in worship services as well as the fellowship’s proclamation of “liberation theology.” As Bean defines it, liberation theology means freeing people from dependence and dominance from systems and beliefs that are oppressive.
Bean is also the founder and chief executive officer of the Minority AIDS Project Los Angeles.
Awards will also be presented to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley; Xylina Deloris Bean, executive director of Shields for Families; Fred Williams, founder and executive director of Cross Colors Common Ground Foundation; Maria Elena Durazo, president of Local 11 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union; the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., executive director of the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice, and to the Gas Co. for its creation of a multicultural community issues panel and employee diversity task force.