Published in the June/July 2025 Edition
By The Rev. Mark F. Phillips, Minister, First & Franklin Presbyterian Church, Baltimore
We are in the midst of LGBTQ+ Pride month, a global celebration that grew out of a pivotal movement of resistance to legalized bigotry in this country. In 1970, several thousand people walked in the first Pride march through the streets of New York City. Now, millions of people from all walks of life participate in Pride activities.
It is interesting, though, that the word “Pride” originally had a negative connotation, in which a person exhibiting pride had an “unduly high opinion of oneself,” according to Webster’s New World College Dictionary. How many of us have quoted warning of author of the Old Testament Book of Proverbs: “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 19:18). We have many words for pride, and they are not good: “Big headed,” “uppity,” “high and mighty,” “stuck up.”
I wonder, have you been called any of those things as a caution or a correction? A reminder not to stick out too much. Or maybe you’ve been told you should be ashamed of everything about yourself, not proud at all. The LGBTQ+ community, along with women, people of color, poor people, and neurodivergent people, are all told not to be too proud, too loud, too much, too showy, too out, anything that makes someone uncomfortable. The world is full of hateful speech and real danger for the LGBTQ+ community. This year, people who count say there are 590 pending laws ready to limit freedoms, coming down especially hard on our trans friends and trans kids. Only certain individuals are allowed to be proud.
Sadly, even the church plays a big part in that. One famous Christian thinker says, “Pride is a turning away from God; the refusal to stay in one’s proper place.” But who says, who says what our place is, what if pride is really turning towards God, seeing what God built into us, seeing what God created us to be. What if pride is about seeing and discovering the gifts that God has given us and using them in the way that only we can? What if pride is just being our real selves in God’s world?
In a recent article for his congregation’s newsletter, the Rev. Andrew Ogletree of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, makes a helpful distinction between pride that is rooted in a sense of superiority and pride rooted in an awareness of being created in the image of God. Father Ogletree writes,
As I celebrate Pride month as a gay man and a Christian, what I always take away from being part of Pride celebrations is that the LGBTQ+ communities remind human beings of their true value: one that does not come from arbitrary human-made labels and limited understanding, but from the God of all creation, who is LOVE, who desires for human beings to love and be loved in mutual respect and understanding, and for humans to live at peace with one another.
I attended my first Pride parade over 25 years ago in Washington, DC. Since then, I have attended parades on Long Island, New York City, and Detroit, Michigan. The thing that has always struck me, and the thing I have loved every time since, is the sheer delight in who people are meant to be, the freedom to experiment until they get it right, and the joy of living in our own bodies in place without judgment. It is a moving experience for me to see young people get that in a way that older people didn’t until much later in life. Pride month is its own, beautiful, essential celebration, and if we are watching, we can all learn something because, without the right amount of genuine pride, we can become pale echoes of our true selves. Pride is meant to be part of us, allowing us to see who we truly are and to use our gifts to their fullest potential. This is hard to learn if you’ve been told to be quiet and smaller than who you really are.
This month, and every month, the LGBTQ+ community shows us how to wrestle Pride out of hate, Pride out of ignorance, Pride out of oppression, Pride out of indifference. This month, we celebrate the lives and the bodies of the people the world might ignore. This month, we are called back to action to make this a reality and ensure it is safe for everyone, not just during Pride month, but every day, everywhere.
Genuine pride, the real amount of pride, is right at the intersection of who God created us to be and how we live freely in the world. We can never be too proud of who God created us to be and how we live those gifts. That right amount of pride is rooted in God, our creator, and it can’t go to our heads.
So be big-headed, be uppity, be full of yourself, be full of your goodness, dance and sing and move in the world, be full of the God who made you because that God is filled with Pride over you.