If you grew up LGBTQIA+ in Texas there’s a good chance you had to abandon a faith community that was hostile to queerness. Not Church offers joyous healing alongside others who get you.
For this first-ever convening of Not Church, we'll watch MAMA BEARS, a documentary by director Daresha Kyi that gave me the most healing experience I've had since I left the church at 19.
MAMA BEARS is currently doing the festival circuit and not yet available for wide release, but it feels urgent to me that others who grew up struggling to reconcile queerness and faith see it ASAP, which is why I've organized a special screening Sunday, September 11 at the AFS Cinema.
One of the things I miss about church is singing my heart out in a roomful of people who are also singing *their* hearts out. That's why after the movie ends, we'll do a pop song sing-a-long that will include a generous helping of queer anthems.
6:30pm - Arrival
7pm - Film begins
8:45pm - Queer anthem sing-a-long DJ’d by Boyfriend ATX
From the film website:
"Spread across the country but connected through private Facebook groups, they call themselves ‘mama bears’ because while their love is warm and fuzzy, they fight ferociously to make the world kinder and safer for all LGBTQ+ people. Although some may have grown up as fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, mama bears are willing to risk losing friends, family, and faith communities to keep their offspring safe—even if it challenges their belief systems and rips their worlds apart.
"MAMA BEARS is an intimate, thought-provoking exploration of the journeys taken by Sara Cunningham and Kimberly Shappley, two 'mama bears' —whose profound love for their LGBTQ children has turned them into fierce advocates for the entire queer community — and Tammi Terrell Morris, a young African American lesbian whose struggle for self-acceptance perfectly exemplifies why the mama bears are so vitally important."
At my last event, Y'allentines Day, I shared my own story of discovering my queerness after being raised in a Baptist community that vilified LGBTQ2A+ people. You can watch me share my story in the video below.
Follow me on social media @Democrasexy.
Not Church is sponsored by...
Jeanna Kadlec, author of Heretic (pre-order here)
Y'all, I am SO EXCITED for this book to come out! Here's the description, which could not be more relevant to our event:
"A memoir of leaving the evangelical church and the search for radical new ways to build community.
Jeanna Kadlec knew what it meant to be faithful — in her marriage to a pastor’s son, in the comfortable life ahead of her, in her God--but there was no denying the truth that lived under that conviction: she was queer and, if she wanted to survive, she would need to leave behind the church and every foundational building block she knew.
Heretic is a memoir of rebirth. Within, Kadlec reckons with religious trauma and Midwestern values, as a means of unveiling how evangelicalism directly impacts every American — religious or not — and has been a major force in driving our democracy towards fascism. From the story of Lilith to celebrity purity rings, Kadlec interrogates how her indoctrination and years of piety intersects with her Midwest working-class upbringing. As she navigated graduate school, a new home on the East Coast, and a new marriage, another insidious truth began to reveal itself — that conservative Christianity has both built and undermined our political power structures, poisoned our pop culture, and infected how we interact with one another in ways that the secular population couldn’t see.
Weaving the personal with powerful critique, Heretic explores how we can radically abandon these painful systems by taking a sledgehammer to the comfortable. Whether searching for community in the face of millennial loneliness or wanting to reclaim a secular form of fellowship in everyday life, Kadlec envisions the brilliant possibilities that come with not only daring to want a different way but actually striking out and claiming it for ourselves."
Democrasexy founder Becky tells the story of discovering her own queerness after growing up Baptist.