Hey, I'm Darren. And I'm Esther. And this is Second Sunday, a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith.

One of the reasons that church right [00:00:30] now, religion is in such a mess, such a quandary, is because the people that really have the answers are the people that are least welcome. They have the answers because they're not stuck. They have the answers because they're not stuck by the walls and the jail that is religion.

Now that's powerful to me, to just immediately name that the church needs the [00:01:00] people who the church has not been very welcoming of. If you look back through church history, that's who's made it better for all of us. High key. It reminds me of that, this concept we've spoken about before called like ministering from the margins and how looking in the places where we normally don't serve and connect with people is really how to make things better for everyone.

Because when you take care of the people who are least cared for, then [00:01:30] by default, like. Everyone is included in that. Absolutely. And, you know, Esther, when we started Second Sunday, we really did this deep dive into what's happening inside the church, the way that Black queer people are surviving and thriving, and even when they leave, they often come back.

This season, we're also going to get into some other kinds of stories. Yeah, this season, we're going to talk about people who are [00:02:00] finding faith and spirituality outside of the church in so many different ways. And in all these stories, I feel like it gives us an opportunity to understand ourselves better, to understand our faith and our beliefs better.

I'm honored that we have Bishop Yvette Flunder kicking off season two. Bishop Flunder is a preacher, activist, author, and you'll hear her describe herself as a gatherer. In 1991, she alongside Mother Shirley Miller, founded [00:02:30] City of Refuge, United Church of Christ in June, 2003, Bishop Flender was consecrated presiding bishop of the fellowship, a multinational fellowship of churches and faith-based organizations across the us, Mexico, and parts of Africa.

Bishop Flunder is a San Francisco native, and she grew up with deep roots in the Church of God in Christ. I mean, her granddaddy walked with Bishop Mason, who was the founder of the Church of God in Christ. That is a spiritual lineage, y'all, and I think it certainly was [00:03:00] passed down to her. I knew from day one almost, time I was five, six years old, that I was a pastor.

I look back on it now, I didn't know what to call it then, but I was the little girl that if I sat down on the curb outside the house, three or four little children would come over and sit next to me and they would ask me, so what you doing? If you understand what I'm saying, there was a gatherer [00:03:30] inside of me.

I didn't have to go to school to learn it. I always wanted to heal something. I catch the birds with the broken wings and the frog with the, you know, with one leg missing and I would bring them to the house and my mother would just have a fit because it was in me. I think we come from. eternity into time with an assignment.

I believe that. I don't think that eternity begins because you die. I think that there's a part of us [00:04:00] that is from God and returns to God. And I think that it is literally the part of us that is spirit. I believe we literally come into the earth realm. with an assignment. And something sort of chases us.

Why are some people artists? You know, why are some people musicians? Why are some people great cooks? Without anyone showing them what to do. There's some things that are sort of written, I think, on our DNA. [00:04:30] And for me, it was to be a gatherer. Her calling as a pastor wasn't the only way she felt set apart from everyone else.

In the early part of my life, I realized Early on, that I was different. You know, unusual. I was set up by the church to take the path that women take. When you get to be a certain age, they start talking to you about marriage. And, you know, [00:05:00] they'd have a, all the families intermarried when I was a kid, you know, families from different churches in the Bay Area and down in Los Angeles and like that, when the children got of age.

They would start, Well, what do you think about brother so and so? Well, sister such and such, you know? And, um, so they had started looking for folks, you know, for me. And I was not pleased. Maybe that's a good way for me to say it. It wasn't working. And I remember some years and years [00:05:30] ago, one of the older women, you know, we had those older women that I call battle axe women.

So this was one of those ones that wore the nurse shoes and everything, you know, she was full of the Holy Ghost and heavy handed and authoritarian. So she came to me one day and she said, listen, baby, she took me to the side. She said, I want you to know, we know who you are. So immediately I knew what she was suggesting because I knew there was something [00:06:00] other about me.

Like I said, I wasn't finding anybody at the musicals that I wanted to marry. This is the truth. And so she said, um, Here's what you need to do. You can go right on, she said, in the church. If you'll just get you a little husband. She didn't say much about what she meant. I absolutely understood, however, what she was saying.

I have to get me a honeydew. You know, honey [00:06:30] do this, honey do that. Got to get me a little husband that I could be the heavy. in the relationship, and if he would be amenable. If I got a husband, it would be okay for me, essentially, to be a woman's woman, a same gender loving woman. Now, I didn't have any words for it then, but I knew what she was talking about, just like I'm talking about it today.

I was [00:07:00] shocked because I did not know the underground. It took me a while, but I began to learn that I would never have to leave the church that I was raised in, in order to be a same gender loving woman, as long as I followed the rules. and regulations, if you understand what I'm saying. And I carried myself in a certain way.

Oh, it's the honeydew for me. Wow. I [00:07:30] was lost in the sauce on this one, Darren. You know, it's always about the story behind the story. It really is. Where you get the good nitty gritty. They said, we see you, baby. And by the way, here's tea. And they said, we're going to set you up for success. That's the mothers of the church.

Even the battle axes. Oh, to be a battle axe. I immediately think of pantyhose, um, a certain shoe [00:08:00] selection, a certain closeness to the ground, groundedness, one might say. Someone that could really put hands, but maybe could scrub a pan. Yes. If they, like, bathed you as a child, they'd be very rough, but you'd also be clean.

You'd put lotion on, Vaseline, okay? That's a battle axe. Vaseline down. Washing the sheets by hand. Okay?

But, you know, we are talking about a different generation. We're talking [00:08:30] about people who really had to do what they had to do to get along, and we That's what she did. Eventually, Bishop Flunder does go get her a honeydew husband, and she struggled with how to deal with it. I did get married because I, I just couldn't figure what else can I do?

You know, if I'm going to have intimacy, I thought about having children. I wanted to have children. You know, I [00:09:00] just couldn't fit the role. I couldn't fit the required diminishment of myself. That was the problem. That was the real problem for me coming along. Why would God do that to me when I feel called?

I don't fit the calls that are for women in the church, and I just couldn't pull it off. I could not pull it off. And I have to say, I pulled back, you [00:09:30] know, and I married a gay man. I didn't know I was gonna marry a gay man, but I wasn't surprised. Because we sort of cancelled each other out, if you understand what I'm saying, it's, you know.

And we made an incredible baby. Absolutely, I have incredible respect. And sometimes I'm in awe of my child. She's remarkable and incredibly gifted. She's a great [00:10:00] seer and she's multi faceted. Faith. She's a wonderful blessing and I, I'm very grateful. Life really does take us in wild and unexpected ways.

And for Bishop Flunder, she ended up moving away from the church of her childhood and she found purpose in helping others through her community work. Then, in 1986, she found herself drawn to the needs of the community that surrounded her. This included being on the early front lines of the HIV AIDS care and [00:10:30] activism movement.

Fear and stigma had many distancing themselves from people living with AIDS, but she stood in the gap. It began for me when we were at Love Center, because that's when, you know, we first started seeing it. When we were the Arc of Love then, 501c3, we had to get some money. We were the first black Faith based organization that provided services to the black community in Oakland.

We were the first house, [00:11:00] we rented a whole house because people's families were throwing them out and they were not playing about it. We did that before anybody did it. that we knew of in Oakland because everybody was afraid. The funeral homes were afraid to take the bodies. That's just how, how it was.

And when I got involved in HIV and doing that work, I had already come to Love Center. In fact, I was already the associate pastor. It [00:11:30] was Love Center that came into my life. Bishop Hawkins, and Edwin Hawkins. They came into my life at a time when I was out of the church of my youth and just unchurched. I was giving my time to serving.

I was serving seniors with food programs that we developed and housing programs. I was serving people who were [00:12:00] aging out of the systems for teenagers and they were young adults and floundering and trying to figure out what to do. And I felt like that was as wholly a work as anybody needed to do, frankly.

I'll just be honest. And then when the HIV epidemic started coming. It's about that time. I came to Love Center because that was about 40 years ago. And when I started at Love Center, serving at Love Center, the epidemic blew up and blew up and blew up and we had to do something. And [00:12:30] that's why we, you know, got the houses and started doing the services.

Services as in getting people food and caring for people. And it got so I was doing like two or three funerals a week. And it was hard. My emotions were just really in bad, bad shape. But I married someone just a few years before the HIV epidemic, and I do not know why I was not infected by HIV, or my daughter, [00:13:00] because that is how her father died.

And it got me deeply involved and engaged in a broader understanding of the LGBTQI community and the way in which there were literally people in areas of faith. Who were thanking God for the epidemic because it was killing people in certain populations more so than others. [00:13:30] And I've been working around HIV and AIDS since the time that it was called GRID.

I remember I was having one of those meltdown and I was playing Donny Hathaway music, now that'll get you, you know, and that song that I was, I remember singing it, you know, he sang a song. It was like. Giving up, you know that when it's hard to do when you really love someone. [00:14:00] And I was singing it in the dark and drinking bourbon, and that was when the Lord began to speak to me.

Just for anybody that hears this, the Lord will speak to you. Singing Donny Hathaway music and drinking bourbon. I knew it was God calling me in that moment to do even more for people who were living and dying. Being broken and feeling bad and [00:14:30] carrying on, I knew I had to act up. That was the beginning of the African American funding that came from the CDC.

That initiative, which eventually was an enormous amount of money. It was several millions of dollars that came to us from the CDC as a result. Uh, that moment with Bourbon, and getting together with a bunch of other people who went down there and said something has to happen. Cause the black church is not [00:15:00] gonna help us, the black community is not gonna help us, there's too much prejudice.

We are going to have to get some help from the Centers for Disease Control, and we did get help.

You had me at Bourbon. Listen, the spirit speaks through the spirits. She was having a spiritual experience. That's what I got to say here. Exactly. More puns, please. You know, there are so many ways that I have seen God show up in the least likely way, and [00:15:30] I, I think it's really powerful. One, we got to hear her sing.

So epic. Gosh. Right? At the end of the day, I think everything that is wonderful and good and beautiful has the potential to give glory to God. And Donny Hathaway's song certainly gave some glory to God in that moment. And this is a really critical moment because when the AIDS crisis first began, doctors didn't know what it was.

And people didn't know how to respond to [00:16:00] it. You know, the pandemic really helped us maybe get a fresh understanding of just how scary it can be when people around you are getting sick and even dying, and no one knows what's causing it or how. And in the eighties, they didn't even have Google to go search and get some conflicting answers about.

Not having Google is wild. I'm sorry. Now you're dragging me. No, but. But. High key, the really fascinating part about this is she wasn't even necessarily [00:16:30] part of the church at this point. She was doing God's work in the community, and she was with the people.

I was driving down the freeway, and all of a sudden, I started to emote, and I started to pray. And I hadn't prayed and prayed in tongues in eons. So the presence of God caught me in my car. I had to pull over. I pulled over the side of the road and went all the way in. It's not that I didn't know [00:17:00] what it was.

It's just that I had been ignoring it for a mighty long time. And my yes came out, all the way yes. And I agreed with God, I said, I don't understand how we gonna do this, because this me is not the me that I'm experiencing again. You know what I mean? The me that I am now, this is not how I move in the world.

I'm trying to understand how we're going to homogenize these [00:17:30] things. And I could feel in my heart that God had an intention, something, you know. I never heard God say, you got to un gay yourself. That's not what happened. I never heard God say, you need to find a husband. I never heard God say any of the things that the people told me.

Someone found my Bible. I dug around and dug around and dug around until I could find it. I was led to the book of Revelation, first chapter. And [00:18:00] I understood what the message was. That there are a lot of people that the Spirit of God wants to use right now that think themselves incapable, unworthy. One of the reasons that, that church right now, religion is in such a mess, such a quandary is because the people that really have the answers are the people that are least welcome.

They have the answers because they're not [00:18:30] stuck. They have the answers because they're not stuck by the walls and the jail that is religion. It is for freedom. I love that passage. It is for freedom that Christ has made us free. Don't be entangled ever again with the yoke of bondage. Don't do it. It is for freedom.

For freedom. Hallelujah. That's why we are being made free. [00:19:00] And for Bishop Flunder, finding romantic love was also part of that freedom journey. Bishop Flunder and Mother Shirley Miller found love while singing with the Hawkins family. In 1991, they birthed the ministry we know today as the City of Refuge in Oakland, California.

It's a radically inclusive ministry where all are truly welcome. When I received the freedom to drive a few cars and kind of understand how I [00:19:30] could land as it related to my own idea of intimacy in relationship, it wasn't long after that, that Shirley and I met one another. And we met one another when I became a part of the Hawkins Center.

She is first cousin, as you know, to Edwin and Walter. And we were on the road, out there singing. And if you ever watch us sing the longest song that Walter ever wrote, which was, um, Grab a Hold, as we called [00:20:00] it. And we sing a duet. I sing and then she sings and then we sing together in harmony. And we recorded that at a love center in Oakland on MacArthur Boulevard, that, that love center.

And I sing a verse, [00:20:30] she sings a verse, and then we sing the harmony together. We were madly in love, but for a period of time we walked alone. Her family wouldn't talk to us, my family wouldn't talk to us. So it's not that they were beating us up, they just figured that at some point we'd come to ourselves.

And we walked that. We first walked it alone, and then we got together and walked it together. And then, well, we got pregnant. [00:21:00] We gave birth to City of Refuge together. And when we got pregnant with the call for City of Refuge, I left Love Center, where, you know, I wasn't alone as the same gender loving person in that church.

But we didn't talk about it. We talked about it as LGBTQI people. But I was a pastor, and I didn't talk about it from the pulpit. Don't ask, don't tell, because always, it's always the gay people have to take it easy with the straight people, [00:21:30] because you know, always, they're sensitive. When God called us to City of Refuge, we gave birth to City of Refuge together.

Our child, our call, and where God leads, God feeds. Where God guides, God provides. It's true. Because it was time for the all of me and the all of Shirley. I felt relieved that we actually were going to plant a church. Where from day one, everyone would know [00:22:00] who we were. And we've had several members who are not identified as gay or trans or on the line, even, but I think that it was because, and still is because of our authenticity.

From day one, we made it clear about who we were and we have not lied since then. We have not needed to. I have too great a woman in my life to pretend like she's not who she is in my life. And I found [00:22:30] a certain stability, and she was and is very clear about who she is. Someone who loves God, who loves people, who loves to worship, and we've been together just a little over than 40 years.

That love and authenticity. drives Bishop Flunder's liberating mission. She, with Mother Shirley, have built a thriving place of worship with a simple commitment to do no harm. And I [00:23:00] think the last part of it would be this. Do no harm, the prima facie duty. When a doctor takes the pledge that needs to be taken to become a physician, what is involved in that is in the Latin, the prima facie duty.

Do no harm. Do no harm. I think that that is the heart of the teaching of Jesus. [00:23:30] We spend a lot of time talking about what is right and what is wrong, particularly as it has to do with human sexuality. What is right and what is wrong? But it's these boxes that we put people in that cause harm. Do no harm.

I say that because that is the heart of ministry for me. But at the end of the day, what we are trying to do is work with [00:24:00] a group of people because I'm called to them because I am them. Work with a group of people who have been marginalized. Everybody's welcome. And there are all kinds of people in closets that do need to be a part of us.

But simultaneously, there are a whole lot of people who are not gay who also need to be a part of us. If we'll stop being afraid, we can do this. If we'll come out of these closets, we can do this. If we trust in the Lord with all of our heart and whatever way we see the [00:24:30] divine, know that the divine is the divine by any name.

Still the divine. That's my heart to yours. God bless you.

Esther, this, this just stirs so much in me. As someone who spent so much time inside the church and quite literally being abused and harmed by the church in the name of love, [00:25:00] right? I love the way that she brings us home. And she just reminds us what doctors pledge an oath to do, that I really wish more churches would consider their role in the world.

To be like, yeah, you could believe a lot of things about LGBTQ folks, but if you're putting your kid out on the street and exposing them to more harm. Kind of defeating the purpose here, guys. And I feel like she just cut [00:25:30] straight to the core of it. We're doing harm, then we're doing something wrong. Yeah, if you're welcome has to come with terms and conditions, and you have to read three pages of fine print.

I'm that. It's not about to happen. And

so I'm hoping that, This season, maybe we can go on a different journey and learn some things about the folks that we learn to hate. That we can go outside [00:26:00] and find out how is God moving in the world and where is God showing up in some of the ways that maybe are a little unorthodox or a little unusual.

But either way, I'm so glad that folks are joining us again for season two.

The [00:26:30] second Sunday podcast is hosted by Estrie Coro and Darren Calhoun, but podcasting is a team sport. So a big thank you to our dream team, our producers, Estrie. Sean and Nicole Hill, our associate producer, Amber Walker, our sound designer, Florence Burrow Adams, and our managing producers, Jocelyn Gonzalez and Courtney Florentine.

Our opening theme song is Maya B's original track titled They Don't Know. You should download the full song today. To learn more about today's guests or the show, visit our show [00:27:00] notes. Second Sunday is a production of The Qube in partnership with the PRX Big Questions Project, which is generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and produced by PRX Productions.

The Qube is your number one curated platform to discover the best BIPOC and QTPOC podcasts. Support this show and more like it by joining The Qube app. And follow the Qube across social media at the Qube app. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next [00:27:30] episode.

[00:00:00] There is no place like the Qube.

Hey, Esther. Hey, Darren. We are back for season two of Second Sunday. Pew, pew, pew, pew. Hey, I'm looking forward to it. This season is going to look totally different from the last season. Absolutely. I mean, last season, we talked to folks who have stories like mine. People who are working from within the church to build inclusive spiritual [00:00:30] spaces for Black queer folks.

This is what a church community should look like, a place where everyone is welcome, where I'm not afraid to name myself and I'm not afraid to name you as being welcome.

But we know that the need for this kind of spiritual inclusivity doesn't stop at the church doors.

This season, we're mostly talking to people exploring their faith outside of church.

We call it the Mystic Law and all these different things because it just does what needs to be done. And as long as you show up, as [00:01:00] long as you keep showing up, that's all that is required is that you show up in front of the mirror. That's it. And that you look at yourself clearly without filters, without whatever, and that you polish that.

It's amazing to me how people always find a way to connect with their spiritual higher power, even when it's outside of the traditional church. She said,

but I do know the presence of God when I feel it. And God does not inhabit a place that is against God's will. When she said that, they [00:01:30] almost lost their mind.

The sites ain't ready for this.

But we're still gonna talk about it. Catch second Sunday from The Qube and PRX's Big Questions Project. Available wherever you get podcasts starting April 24th.

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