Thursday, December 11, 2025
5 pm Pacific/6 pm Mountain/7 pm Central/8 pm Eastern
This webinar will explore When We All Get to Heaven, a documentary project that tells the story of Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, and how it faced the personal, social, and political trials of the AIDS epidemic, including the deaths of 500 of its members. Danny Ballon-Garst will interview co-creators Siri Colom and Lynne Gerber about their 10-part podcast series now available on Slate. The podcasts are drawn from an archive of 1,200 cassette tapes recorded during the height of the AIDS epidemic. They tell the stories of clergy and lay people, people with AIDS and those who cared for them, and the activists, theologians and community members that joined the congregation in search of spiritual answers, sustenance, and healing.
Danny Ballon-Garst is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. He studies American religious history with a focus on the history of race, religion, and sexuality in the U.S., religion and politics, and the history of LGBTQ religious activism. He is currently writing his dissertation on the religious history of the gay rights movement in Washington, DC, titled "Queer Religious Capital: Race, Religion, and the Movement for LGBTQ Rights in Washington."
Siri Colom, Ph.D. is an urban sociologist who focuses on politics after disasters. She uses the lens of sociology to think about how structural oppression manifests and emerges in the everyday politics of people attempting to rebuild lives and homes. She is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Worcester State University and holds a Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley. She has recently been trained in radio production through Transom.
Lynne Gerber, Ph.D. is the host and co-creator of When We All Get to Heaven. Lynne is an independent scholar who writes about religious responses to HIV/AIDS in 1980s and ‘90s San Francisco. She's held research and teaching positions at Harvard Divinity School and the University of California at Berkeley.