We need a variety of spiritual care practitioners to be available to provide care for Drag & Spirituality Summit goers and other participants.
WELCOME RECEPTION 🕯 WELCOME RECEPTION 🕯
WELCOME RECEPTION 🕯 WELCOME RECEPTION 🕯
The Castro Country Club is a safe and sober community center for all people and a refuge for the LGBTQ recovery community. We provide programs and services that help people change their lives by supporting personal growth.
Friday October 13th, 2023 at 1200p-200pm Welcome Reception - 4058 18th St 🚫♿️ (16 steps)
1200p-200pm Welcome Reception - Castro Country Club - Say hello to Minister John Brett and get a complimentary drink and pass to the GLBT Historical Museum- 4058 18th St 🚫♿️ (16 steps)
SPIRITUAL MOMENT 🕯
SPIRITUAL MOMENT 🕯
Friday, October 13, 2023 @ 2pm The Community Room, 501 Castro ♿️
The Spirit of Drag Clownery
King Julez (they/them) has been involved with the United Church of Canada for most of their life! They are one of the chair of Affirm United/S’affirmer Ensemble, an organization that helps communities of faith become fully inclusive of all genders, orientations, and families. They are the Program Coordinator at Toby’s Place, a drop-in program for 2S-LGBTQIA+ youth. They are moving towards ordained ministry in the United Church and incorporate drag into their preaching and leadership opportunities. On top of all this, they are tackling the combination of a Masters of Divinity and a Masters of Pastoral Studies at Emmanuel College in Toronto.
SPIRITUAL MOMENT 🕯
SPIRITUAL MOMENT 🕯
Saturday, October 14, 2023 @ 9am Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, 50 Scott ♿️
Song-Soak: an Immersive Listening Practice for Meaningful Performance
Scott Sessions is a San Francisco-based queer cultural practitioner who was raised in the monochromatic suburbs of Salt Lake County, Utah. He survived an orthodox Mormon upbringing by clinging to the few LGBTQ-affirming stories he found through friends and the internet. Now Scott facilitates accessible community programming called Queer Bedtime Stories, which empowers attendees through transformative encounters with LGBTQ poetry and literature, and also offers spiritual life-coaching to support others who escaped oppressive religious environments.
SPIRITUAL MOMENT 🕯
SPIRITUAL MOMENT 🕯
Sunday, October 15, 2023 @ 12pm Harvey Milk Center for the Arts, 50 Scott
Middle Pillar
Laiylah Alf Wa Laiylah - My drag is a combination of glamour and elegance with a definite nod to campy films of the past. I am always humbled by the transformation drag brings about . I read a quote once about treating everyone as if they were meeting God in drag. That’s a big order to fill but in drag I do my best for my audience to feel they are just that important.
Spiritual Care Team 2023
IrReverend. High Priest of Fabulous. Poetry Fool. Connector of People & Organizations for Good. Street Chaplain. Artistic Dilettante.
he/hym/hys
John Brett
Spiritual Care Coordinator
Spiritual Care 2022
FOR THE ARCHIVES
Spiritual care will be available before/during/after panels for those who may need it, from a diverse set of spiritual leaders. There will be 2 panels centered around spiritual care - Drag as Spiritual Healing and Spiritual Care for Drag Artist and their will be spiritual care offering before Spiritual Drag Shows, during and after.
Spiritual Care Team
revel (they/them)
"revel dreams of a world where the fullest embodiment of self is inherent. they seek to invite others to meet themselves where ever they are. as a disabled and mad massage therapist, death and grief doula, transition support coordinator, lover, world builder, super model, vulture, storyteller, medium, medicine maker, they are a continuous student of the many ancestral modalities that can bring us closer to ourselves. flux believes that leaning into multiplicity and the shifting nuance that is being is absolutely overwhelming and a deep practice of surrender and liberation. revel identifies as alive and lives from the pronouns we, they, and flux. they are Black, decedent of stolen african bodies, matrilineally italian, and decedent from white colonial settlers."
Elle Dowd (she/they)
Pastor, Author, Community Organizer
Elle Dowd (she/they) is the bi-furious campus minister of South Loop Campus Ministry and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Elle has pieces of their heart in Sierra Leone, where their two children were born, and in St. Louis where they learned from the radical, queer, Black leadership during the Ferguson Uprising. She does community organizing in her city as a board member of SOUL, serves on the Clergy Advocacy Board for Planned Parenthood, and facilitates workshops in both secular conferences and Christian spaces. In 2021 she published a book with Broadleaf, Baptized in Teargas, about her conversion from a white moderate to an abolitionist is available now in print, e-book, or audiobook.
To get in touch with Elle and to keep up with updates, you can visit their website www.elledowd.com and subscribe to their newsletter.
Bonnie Violet Quintana (she/her)
Bonnie Violet is a trans femme genderqueer spiritual drag artist, identity doula and digital chaplain. YouTuber, Twitcher & Host of a queer chaplain podcast with such series as Drag & Spirituality, TranSpirit & Faith Leaders. Co-host of Splintered Grace with her conservative christian aunt & At the CCC recovery podcast. Director & Creator of the Drag & Spirituality Summit.
Bonnie Violet shares her experience of strength and hope with HIV, recovering from drugs, alcohol, and sexual assault among other things in classrooms, community centers, churches, online and pretty much anywhere else she is invited.
As, a queer chaplain, she is present with people in death and dying to self by helping to lace one’s narrative with a spiritual thread to remind one of their resilience, strengthen faith in self and create serenity in the now.
John M. Brett (He/Hym/Hys)
Programs - Spiritual Care
San Francisco, CA
IrReverend. High Priest of Fabulous. Poetry Fool. Connector of People & Organizations for Good. Street Chaplain. Artistic Dilettante.
Rev. Todd Atkins-Whitley aka Blessya Hartz (He/Him)( She/Her)
Programs - Spiritual Care
Oakland, CA
As a cisgender, male-identified, white, gay person born into two dominant religions (America and Christianity), I engage the art of drag to help heal the wounds of toxic masculinity and misogyny upon my body and spirit while also transgressing patriarchal, sexist notions of God that bring harm to queer people. Drag is a new form of spirituality for me and I have found it so far to be liberating. It has also allowed me, as a religious leader, to hold space with folx who have been traumatized by purveyors of toxic religion.
Mark Caswell (he/him)
Mark is grateful to be with you today and share his developing pastoral skills of radical hospitality, deep listening, and mindful breathing. Mark is an Aspirant within the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) and a second year student at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. He holds a BFA in Theater Arts from Rutgers University. When he isn’t singing show tunes he’s at his day job at Nordstrom, Mall of America selling CHANEL handbags and accessories.
Bridget Purdome (She/Her)
Bridget is a Spiritual Companion, Retreat Leader, Life Coach, and Spiritual Explorer. After spending more than ten years ministering to those who had experienced homelessness, were HIV positive, in recovery from substance addictions, and/or challenged with other physical and mental illnesses, Bridget now has her own private practice at www.thepearldivers.com, a spirituality center without walls.
Bridget accompanies people from diverse backgrounds including women, men, and non-binary individuals, those who identify as LGBTQ+, BIPOC, those from various spiritual traditions, and those who are spiritual but not religious.
Bridget would love to create space for you to explore.
Emmy C-G (she/they)
Emmy C-G is a podcast host and a multi-passionate, multidisciplinary storyteller. She's a death doula and witch and an all-around too-much person. They're all about storytelling for self-exploration and liberation, alternative wellness for the misfits and morbidly inclined among us, and honoring our shadows.
They have been reading tarot since they were 16 and started Akashic Records readings in the spring of 2021. Their death midwifery is focused on normalizing grief, & uplifting funeral customs that have been labeled “other” by corporate interests. Their podcast, The Violet Vulture, covers all of these topics and then some.
Her favorite color is pink.
Christopher Bednash (he/him)
Christopher Bednash is an artist and an art & humanities professor for the City Colleges of Chicago. Chris will be offering readings of the Motherpeace Tarot, which he learned first, like so many spiritual lessons, from his beloved mom.
Juan Pablo Herrera
Logistics Committee Chair
Chicago, IL
he/him
Juan Pablo is Pastor of Discipleship at Urban Village Church. He is currently imagining a new faith community that is bold, inclusive, and relevant but centered around Latinx voices as part of his work at Urban Village.
King Julez
Fundraising and Finance Chair
Toronto, ON
they/them
King Julez is a Masters of Divinity student, board chair for Affirm United/S'affirmer Ensemble, and future ordinand within The United Church of Canada. Their long-term goal is to be a drag clown minister, and help to bridge the gap between faith communities and the 2S-LGBTQIA+ community through education and the healing of trauma.
Rev. Anders Nelson, he/they (Rhonda F'Plause, she/her)
Virtual Tech Committee
Wheaton, IL
he/they, she/her
Anders Nelson (he/they) is the associate pastor at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Wheaton, Illinois where he’s been serving since the very beginning of the pandemic. Much of his ministry centers on queer theology and developing theological imagination through storytelling. He’s subsisted during the pandemic on learning how tasty vegetarian cooking can be, singing hymns and broadway numbers in the shower, and scheduling as many Dungeons and Dragons sessions as possible.