The first Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) was founded by Rev Troy D. Perry in 1968 in Los Angeles, CA (USA). This Fellowship of Churches plays a vital role in addressing the spiritual needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community around the world. For those of us who were raised in a religious atmosphere, homosexuality was usually associated with shame and guilt. As a result, many of us were cut off from the spiritual dimension of our lives. Metropolitan Community Churches provide an opportunity to explore a spiritual experience that affirms who we are.
Throughout the history of Metropolitan Community Churches, thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual people have found hope, and have lived the joy, reverence, and excitement of our fellowship and faith in God. We have seen how people have been changed by this experience. Quite simply, we make a difference in people’s lives.
Today, as self-aware and self-affirming people, we reclaim the fullness of our humanity, including our spirituality. We find great truths in the religious tradition, and we find that our encounter with God is transformational and healing.
Thousands of individuals have experienced emotional healing and reconciliation from abuse and oppression, and countless members and friends credit their involvement in the Fellowship and its congregations with saving their lives. We experience our communities of faith as places of healing and hope, places of reconciliation with family, with self-esteem, and with individual spirituality.
Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon respond as a people of faith to the needs of Oregonians to create a more just, compassionate, sustainable and peaceful world. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
The Center for Progressive Christianity provides guiding ideas, networking opportunities, and resources for progressive churches, organizations, individuals and others with connections to Christianity.
The CPC promotes an understanding of Christian practice and teaching that leads to a greater concern for the way people treat each other than for the way people express their beliefs, the acceptance of all people, and a respect for other religious traditions.
They affirm the variety and depth of human experience and the richness of each persons’ search for meaning, and they encourage the use of sound scholarship, critical inquiry, and all intellectual powers to understand the presence of God in human life.
The CPC is opposed to any exclusive dogma that limits the search for truth and free inquiry, and they encourage work that eases the pain, suffering and degradation inherent in many of the structures of society, as well as work that keeps central to the Christian life fair, open, peaceful, and loving treatment of all human beings.