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One might assume that herchurch is a lightning rod for online criticism, the very distillation of what conservatives guess goes on everywhere in San Francisco. But in a sense, Boorn is correct: Hers is a small congregation that largely flies under the radar. When I admit to being a journalist, she half-jokingly asks if I'm a conservative spy ("we've gotten some of those"), but a little internet sleuthing reveals only a few marginal cranks cherrypicking quotes to conclude San Francisco is now officially hell's waiting room. Boorn is undeterred by this. Besides, she doesn't believe in hell, anyway.
"People say it's impossible to evolve into a community that honors the Divine Feminine from out of the Lutheran condition," Boorn says. "But for me, it just seems the obvious step."
Boorn isn't sure how many other Evangelical Lutheran pastors are doing what she's doing. She's earned some criticism from traditionalist quarters for "using the term 'Goddess,'" she says, "which I think a lot of feminists in Christianity and other patriarchal religions don't want to do, because it's a hot-button word." But there's been no large movement to oust her.
Although even-keeled and undeniably personable, Boorn bristles at the term 'alternative,' even when I use it as a neutral descriptor. "We are a mainline Christian (Lutheran) denomination and chose our direction to be the core expression of our community," she tells me by email, "not some alternative group that meets once a month down the hall."
That's fair enough, but it's also true that Boorn has put in years of sweat equity to rebuild a church that, in her own words, "fell apart" upon embracing the Goddess. And while its prominence may have piqued many people's curiosity and lured them in, Ebenezer Lutheran's location does count against it in one way. Almost everyone who arrives must do so by car, which results in a decidedly middle-class congregation, with few people of color. I speak to the only Latino male under 40 that I can find, a 21-year-old San Franciscan named Daniel who declined to give his last name. (He's with a female friend who's 22. She was raised Jewish but converted to Catholicism in her teens, and lives in Berkeley.)
What keeps Daniel coming back?
"The community is very here and now," he says. "It's not, 'Be good so you can get into heaven,' where heaven's the goal and life is sort of an obstacle you have to get through. Here, it's like, 'Take care of the earth.' And people are laughing all the time."
Daniel, too, was raised Catholic.
If Ebenezer Lutheran has a complicated relationship with its larger denomination, the Metropolitan Community Church is free to chart a course that can be considered truly radical. Having been consecrating same-sex unions since 1972 and pioneering memorials when mainline churches wouldn't let people with AIDS inside, MCC is now, as Senior Pastor Robert Shively puts it, effectively "post-Christian."
As a congregation, MCC occupied a church on Eureka Street in the Castro for decades, only to slide into a state of irrecoverable disrepair once the HIV crisis years passed. Benefiting from the neighborhood's gentrification, MCC sold the property this year and moved to a new building on Polk Street owned by the United Church of Christ.
Shively identifies as a "panentheist," which means, he says, that "God is in all of creation, but all of creation doesn't offer the total of God. God is in everything, but God is more than that." An openly polyamorous leatherman, Shively is adamant that sexuality and spirituality are inherently compatible. It is enough to make anyone who's ever sweated over an act of fornication break into a smile. "God is a seductress," he continues, "a sultry leatherman going, 'Come on, there's more. Don't you want this?' There is a seduction to the future, a pulling us forward in a kind of deliciously erotic, juicy way towards being fully alive, fully affective human beings."
In his early 50s, Shively has kind eyes and a well-groomed beard that's grayed almost to white. He looks like a junior varsity Santa Claus, years away from assuming the top position and in better shape. If you see him around town, he's likelier to be wearing a rebel cap and motorcycle jacket than any pastoral vestments.
There's little indication of anything quite so provocative as a Leather Daddy deity when I attend a Wednesday evening Taizé prayer service along with about 20 others. The service is named for a multilingual region of France where, to transcend language barriers, the lyrics of the sacred music are deliberately easy to learn. Here, the atmosphere is respectful and contemplative. An octagonal quilt in the center of the room functions as an altar, with votives, pillows, pinecones, a Buddha, a sepia-toned globe, a map of San Francisco, and other offerings spread over it. There also is a bowl of ash, made from prayers written down at the Eureka Street church, and mixed with sand.
The three elements of Taizé are silence, singing, and prayer, and that's exactly what goes on during the hourlong service, along with some extemporizing. In contrast to herchurch, the tone here is muted, even somber, although the crowd has a more even mix of genders. Perhaps the most touching moment comes when a woman who appears to be homeless prays for "people choosing between housing and their children's education." (She gives her name only as "Sunshine" and shies away from talking about herself, but tells me she was referring to First Friendship, a Western Addition shelter for families that has strict policies on admission.)
According to Shively, MCC's "post-Christian" theology differs from progressive Christianity in that it rejects both the hateful dogma in Christian Scripture and anything scientifically dubious, such as the virgin birth of Christ and most of Genesis. "We know the basic premise is wrong," Shively says. "God didn't create a static paradise. He created an evolving, creative, ever-changing universe." Yet Shively believes "there is worth in sacred texts," but "you have to do a lot in order to find it. It is not casual reading." At the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley where Shively earned his Master of Divinity degree, students encountered both the Quoran and the Bhagavad Gita, but, he quips, "The Ethical Slut was required reading."
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