Remembering Cecil Williams: A Nice & Actual Spiritual/Religious Chief

An ideal man died this week on Monday, which was Earth Day and Passover Day.  Rev. Cecil Williams, co-founder in 1963 of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, handed on at age 94. 

A mystic and prophet who knew what wholesome faith is supposed to be, I feel it may be mentioned that Cecil helped redefine faith and church and holiness for the 20^th and 21^st centuries. 

It has been mentioned that he remodeled his church “right into a nationwide powerhouse for social justice and nonprofit service.”*  Cecil was a prophetic chief, reaching out to the marginalized by marching, by cajoling politicians, by providing every kind of assist teams, by elevating funds and establishing retirement housing for the poor and by main a Sunday worship service that was the true factor.

When is worship the true factor?  While you stroll in Sunday morning and stroll out a special individual, as a black theologian in Chicago advised me years in the past.  When transformation occurs due to this fact.  Transformation is what Williams was about.

A PBS profile advised of how Williams opened the church as much as jazz music, hippies, addicts, the poor, poets and “anybody else who wished to come back.”  He additionally hosted political rallies and companies, together with speeches by Angela Davis and the Black Panthers.   

And most notably, he made the then radical resolution to open up his church to LGBTQ individuals.  It was a queer sanctuary earlier than church buildings did that in any respect, feedback Pam Nole, a 30-year member of Glide.  He carried out identical intercourse weddings within the 1970’s a long time earlier than same-sex marriage grew to become authorized within the US.  Wiliams, she mentioned, was “all about social justice, all about fairness.”

Usually, if I had a customer on the town, I might take them to Glide Memorial Church for companies on Sunday morning.  By no means did the vigorous choir and musicians or sermon or expertise of profound variety in a worshipping group disappoint. 

As soon as I introduced Anita Roddick, founding father of the Physique Store and promoter of so many causes for justice all over the world, and she or he was completely smitten.  She begged me to introduce her to Cecil and the 2 hit it off instantly. 

She advised me she was struck by the “realness” of the expertise and thanked me profusely for the chance to expertise actual faith at work.  

To be continued.

Martha Ross and Caelyn Pender, “Beneath Cecil Williams, Glide Memorial grew to become world-renowned for welcoming ‘anybody who wished to come back,’” The Mercury Information, April 23, 2024.

See Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Put up-denominational Priest, pp. 304-333, 340, 352, 442.

And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth.

Banner Picture: Reverend Cecil Williams (heart entrance) at an anti-eviction rally, January 1977, to save lots of the Worldwide Resort at 848 Kearny Road in San Francisco. Photograph by Nancy Wong on Wikimedia Commons.

Queries for Contemplation

What do you discover inspiring about Cecil Williams’ story?

Really useful Studying

Confessions: The Making of a Put up-Denominational Priest (Revised/Up to date Version)

Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his private, mental, and religious journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. 5 new chapters on this revised and up to date version carry added perspective in gentle of the creator’s continued journey, and his reflections on the present modifications happening in church, society and the surroundings.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible religious revolutionary enlivens the thoughts and emboldens the guts — should studying for anybody all for braveness, creativity, and the way forward for faith.”
—Joanna Macy, creator of World as Lover, World as Self

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth

Fox’s spirituality weds the therapeutic and liberation present in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of each non secular and political persuasion to unite in a brand new imaginative and prescient by way of which we study to honor the earth and the individuals who inhabit it because the present of and simply Creator.
“A watershed theological work that gives a standard floor for non secular seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Follow.