He feared coming out. Now this pastor wants to help Black churches become as welcoming as his own

The Rev. Brandon Thomas Crowley speaks during Sunday service at Myrtle Baptist Church Sunday, May 5, 2024 in Newton, Mass. In 2015, Crowley, the senior pastor of the church, one of America’s oldest Black churches, announced to his congregation, “I am a proud, Black, gay Christian male.” The Rev. Brandon Thomas Crowley speaks during Sunday service at Myrtle Baptist Church Sunday, May 5, 2024 in Newton, Mass.

Crowley said his great grandmother repeatedly assured him that he was made in the image of God. She also told him about getting pregnant at 14 — and breaking away from her own church after refusing its demand to apologize to the congregation. He had still not come out by the time he entered Morehouse College in Atlanta, joining its Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel Assistants program. While at Morehouse, he said, he experienced his first serious romance with a young man, but led his family to believe it was a non-romantic friendship.

But he stayed in the running for the job — even breaking away from a weekend Gay Pride party in Miami to get back in Boston in time to preach at a service attended by the search committee. Periodically during his life, Crowley said, he heard a voice he believed was coming from the spirit of God. He says it first spoke approvingly of his same-sex attraction as a child in 1993, after he was rebuked by a relative for saying that a male character on a sitcom was “so fine.”

But minutes later, a tearful Crowley did just that — announcing to his congregation, “I am a proud, Black, gay Christian male.”Some congregation members decided to leave Myrtle after the announcement, but mostly there was strong support for the pastor. Myrtle’s pews swelled with new members, many of them gay, and Crowley felt emboldened look beyond Newton and take aim at the broader realm of the Black Church.

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