Am I welcome in MCC if I’m a member of the BDSM/Leather Community
In a word, YES!
As a denomination, MCC is open to and accepting of all sexual orientations and all types of sexual expression, including leather/fetish/kink sexuality. I’ve been an out and proud gay leatherman nearly all of my adult life (I’m now 64), including the 27 years that I’ve been a member of Founders MCC (a/k/a MCCLA), the founding church of the MCC movement in Los Angeles. I wear leather to every church service I attend (usually a leather jacket or vest, boots and a studded belt, but on holidays and other special occasions I wear my full dress leathers). I’ve preached, celebrated communion, and participated in other ways during worship services while wearing leather; I’ve headed up MCCLA’s contingent, carrying the American flag and wearing full leather, in the annual Pride parade in West Hollywood; and in 2005 while dressed in full, formal leather I participated in the installation service for the then new Moderator of our denomination, Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.
Leatherfolk and kinksters…aren’t just accepted, we are celebrated, celebrated both for who we are and for the unique gifts we bring into our church and, by extension, into the world.
And I’m not alone—I’ve seen dozens of other leatherfolk and kinksters, both men and women, equally embraced by my church’s congregation and its leadership. We aren’t just accepted, we are celebrated, celebrated both for who we are and for the unique gifts we bring into our church and, by extension, into the world.
In 2007, I was invited to be a part of MCC’s first ever denominational “Theologies Team”, and as part of the team I was tasked with writing the section on Sexuality and Spirituality for “Holy Conversations”, a wonderful resource that we created to facilitate our churches engaging in healthy and healing conversations around a wide variety of sensitive topics. In that section, I freely discuss my leather sexuality and how my BDSM practices are often a pathway to a direct, embodied connection with the Divine. By all accounts “Sexuality and Spirituality” is one of the most popular and most widely used portions of the Holy Conversations resource.
Rev. Troy Perry, the founder of MCC, is himself a leatherman. So you might say that the integration of leather/fetish/kink sexuality and spirituality has been part of the core of MCC’s ministry since its inception. Of course, each MCC church is different, and that includes the knowledgeableness of a particular church’s leadership when it comes to leather/fetish/kink sexuality and the number of visible leatherfolk in a particular church’s congregation. But, with few exceptions, all of MCC’s churches welcome leatherfolk and members of the BDSM community with open hearts and open arms.
ABOUT THIS MCC AUTHOR: Skip Chasey, a/k/a Master Skip, addressed a crowd of nearly one million people at the Millennium March on Washington, and since then he has given more than a dozen keynote addresses and presented nearly 300 programs on the spiritual dynamics of BDSM at noteworthy leather and kink events throughout North America. He has been profiled in Nerve.com magazine, Power Exchange magazine, the award-winning documentary film Pup, and Ask the Man Who Owns him, a book on gay male Master/slave relationships that received the National Leather Association’s 2010 non-fiction literary award. Read More
