Building an Inclusive Community of Faith in Lakeview
North Side
The community area of Lakeview on the North Side of Chicago is home to landmarks such as Wrigley Field and neighborhoods including Lake View East, West Lakeview, and Northalsted. As early as the 1950s, areas of Lakeview were settled by gay and lesbian communities, eventually growing into the first recognized gay neighborhood in the country, Boystown.
A school assignment written by a 5th grader in the 1990s, found in the collections at Northern Illinois University, documents a piece of this community's history. The letter of support, from the records of an organization called In All Things expresses the sentiments of a child and a community as they confronted opposition to same-sex marriage.
A part of this community is Broadway United Methodist Church, where Reverend Greg Dell ministered to his congregation in the 1990s. Dell regularly performed marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples as part of his job and had spent years working toward inclusiveness in the church. On September 19, 1998 Reverend Gregory Dell conducted a Service of Holy Union for two men from his congregation. After the marriage ceremony gained media attention, the Methodist Church filed charges against Dell. While Dell and much of his congregation supported equality for LGBTQ members of the church, the Methodist Church had voted just two years before to maintain its position against homosexuality. Dell was suspended from serving as a Methodist pastor indefinitely, but the sentence was later changed to one year.
Dell and the Reverend Susan Davis founded In All Things Charity in 1996. Fifteen clergy from all across the country joined to sponsor a statement of conscience challenging the exclusionary and bigoted practices of the Methodist Church and affirming that God’s vision of humanity embraced and celebrated its full diversity. Thousands of clergy and laity signed the statement. The purpose of In All Things Charity was to work toward positive change concerning the issues of inclusiveness and heterosexism at the 2000 General Conference of the Methodist Church.
During his one year of suspension from being the pastor of Broadway Church, Gregory Dell served as Director of In All Things Charity. He spoke throughout the country on behalf of the organization's mission and gained support for a more inclusive church. In 2001, In All Things Charity changed focus and became the Reconciling Ministries Network, aiming to join together the 35% of Methodists who support a fully inclusive church.
Dell returned to the Broadway Church after his suspension and continued his social justice work until his retirement in 2007. Rev. Dell has received numerous awards and honors for his decades-long fight for social justice for the LGBT community, including the Chicago Commission on Human Relations Award (2000), induction into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame (2008), and honorary doctorates from Illinois Wesleyan University (1999) and Chicago Theological Seminary (2007).
