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‘Queerness into church spaces’: Seattle faith leaders take the stage at second annual drag fundraiser
The Church Council of Greater Seattle’s second annual ‘Clerics, Abbots & Heretics: Oh My!’ pairs professional drag performers with faith leaders and organizers June 14, raising funds for community organizing work.
By Liam Walsh | for FāVS News
On Sunday, June 14, The Church Council of Greater Seattle is hosting “Clerics, Abbots, & Heretics: Oh My!” for the second year. The event is a fundraiser and drag show featuring amateur and professional performers.
The Church Council of Greater Seattle, a nonprofit, organizes alongside faith communities across Seattle and King County on issues including land stewardship, immigration and emerging community priorities.
Tara Miller is one of the event organizers and is co-executive director of the Church Council.
“We’ve had this vision of having some kind of queer trans celebration event, and last year was the first year that we decided to do a drag fundraiser,” Miller said. “We take amateur performers from our network, they could be faith leaders, they could be non-faith-based organizers that we work with, and invite them to come perform at our show. Then we have professionals that support with makeup and performance, and then the professionals and the amateurs will perform together.”
The event will run from 6-8 p.m. on Sunday, and tickets are available online. The location will be forwarded to those who sign up. Proceeds from the event will fund general operations for faith ready community organizing.
The event will include two professional drag performers and six amateur performers.
Bring queerness into church spaces
Chloe Guillot is a performer at the event, and she has worked on the Church Council’s budget round table organizing team for the last three years. This past week she became a board member. She performed in the event last year, and it was her first time doing drag.
“It just felt like a really cool opportunity to get to bring queerness into church spaces,” she said. “I binge watched RuPaul’s drag race for like the week before, and learned that I am actually not capable of repeating or recreating professional drag queen levels, but once I got there last year, and was actually performing, I just felt the pressure kind of fade off.”
Guillot will be performing again at this year’s event. Her persona is “Suzy Anne Gomorrah,” an uptight church lady who has a more scandalous side that likes to let loose. The song she has chosen for her performance is “Church Girls” by Beyonce.
“To be a Christian and to believe in God doesn’t mean that you can’t let loose and have fun as well, and lean into your queerness and embrace that, and also poke fun at some of the rigidity of religious systems. That’s what I like about the Church Council in their organizing work, it’s rewriting those narratives of what that means to be a Christian,” she said.
Joy as resistance, organizing as mission
One of the themes of the event is joy and celebration in the face of attacks against migrant communities and LGBTQ+ communities.
“A drag fundraiser, like this, feels like a reminder of what we’re fighting for. We’re fighting for this ability of free expression, for this ability to come together in this queer joy, in the joy with migrant communities,” she said.
Another key aspect of the event is community organizing. Miller emphasized the importance of building strong community relationships through events like this, which broadens their network and ability to create change.
“We really believe that faith communities have a pivotal role to play in all the justice issues that are rampantly affecting our communities at once, and so being able to continue to build our collective power together, and taking those moments to celebrate and rest is really important,” Miller said. “And so, even in the silly and fun things that we do, this is a moment to build power together and have those relationships that will help us continue forward as we’re tackling what seems like insurmountable odds, but something that we believe we can do together.”
