Thursday, September 17, 2026
5:00pm Pacific/6:00pm Mountain/7:00pm Central/8:00pm Eastern
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_173wv_GdTuq4FFWNJAY4hQ
LGBTQ-RAN’s new online exhibition, Queer Sacramentality: The Church of the Beloved Disciple, vividly portrays the story of this ground-breaking LGBTQ congregation, founded in New York City in 1968 by the Rev. Robert Mary Clement. This history, extending through the mid-1980s, is intertwined with the emergence of gay liberation, the Stonewall uprising, the first Pride marches, and the AIDS crisis. This exhibit displays more than 100 artifacts and offers more than the history of an early “gay church.” It reveals a form of queer spiritual creativity in which religious practice and social transformation were deeply intertwined. Its members did not simply seek admission into an existing religious institution. They drew upon Christian traditions to create a spiritual community in which queer lives, bodies, relationships, and experiences could be publicly recognized as sacred.
In this webinar you will hear curator Roy Fisher, Ph.D. talk about the origins and development of this Queer Sacramentality exhibit. Fisher will give participants a tour of the exhibit as well as relate some forgotten stories. This exhibit was underwritten by LGBTQ-RAN’s first-ever exhibit grant.
Roy A. Fisher, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the History of Spirituality and Mysticism at Loyola Marymount University’s Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts in Los Angeles. He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Near Eastern Religions from the University of California, Berkeley. Fisher’s scholarship explores human relationships with the sacred at the intersection of religious studies and cultural anthropology, examining spirituality and mysticism across diverse historical and cultural contexts. His work critically examines how the sacred is experienced and how sacred texts, traditions, practices, and material cultures are produced, interpreted, negotiated, and transformed within changing social and cultural worlds.