There are people in every congregation who have been told — explicitly or through years of silence — that their full selves are not welcome in the church. Some of them left. Some of them stayed and made themselves smaller. Some of them never came through the door because they already knew what they would find.
I was one of the ones who left. I left in high school because I was gay and a figure of authority in the church made that clear. I came back as an adult because I was welcomed genuinely, and that welcome changed the trajectory of my life. I know what it costs to leave. I know what it takes to come back. I know what the difference feels like because I have lived on both sides.
Everloving Pride exists because that is not the church it has to be.
This project is a toolkit: articles, strategies, resources, and a post-making tool that gives congregations ready-to-use language at whatever level of boldness they can sustain right now. The welcome it advocates for extends to everyone pushed to the margins — LGBTQIA+ people, queer people of color, queer immigrants, and everyone whose family or body has been excluded from the center of congregational life.
I am a queer woman and a seminarian. I have been married to my wife for fourteen years. We are raising our child in the Episcopal Church.
I bring to this work decades of reading and practice in feminist and queer theory, years of experience in church communications, and a long engagement with the civil rights frameworks that underpin the legal and social gains queer people have fought for. I am not approaching this as an outsider who has discovered a problem. I am approaching it as someone who has lived inside it, studied it, and is now in the process of being ordained into the institution she is also trying to change.
I am also clear about where my lane ends. I am a white lesbian originally from the rural South. I cannot speak to the experience of queer people whose lives have been shaped by racism, colonialism, immigration, or transphobia in ways I haven't navigated. I cannot speak for gay men, or for the bisexual, pansexual, asexual, aromantic, and intersex people whose experiences are frequently overlooked even within queer spaces. I can name those gaps, hold space for them, and build infrastructure for the voices that belong in them.
In 2026, Everloving Pride is running its first pilot with a cohort of Episcopal communicators. This year is research, not launch. The goal is to understand what churches can bear to say, what they are ready to post, what tools lower the barrier, and what design language helps them act. Success is not downloads or compliments. It is churches posting, editing thoughtfully, and asking for more.
This project begins in the Episcopal Church — the community within which I live and work, and the first cohort helping shape and refine these tools. But the welcome it advocates for doesn't stop there. Progressive faith communities across traditions are doing this work, and this site wants to be useful to all of them. Other faiths entirely are part of this conversation too. We do not corner the market on the desire to see people clearly and welcome them accordingly.
If you want to be part of this pilot year, I would love to hear from you.
Reach out at libby@everlovingpride.com