Rev. Godfrey Adera on witnessing a commitment to radically inclusive love and justice at the "Faith Beyond Borders" LGBTQIA+ consultation
This reflection emerges from my lived experience and active participation in the recent “Faith Beyond Borders” Regional Workshop on Human Sexuality and Gender Diversity, in Nairobi, Kenya. I am a young Black African theologian and pastor living and serving in Kenya, and one whose ministry continues to evolve through pastoral and theological accompaniment with LGBTQIA+ persons of faith seeking belonging, dignity, and spiritual affirmation within African religious spaces. My perspective is shaped both by the pain of exclusion I have witnessed and by a deep conviction that the church in Africa can embody a more liberating, life-giving, and radically inclusive expression of Christian love and justice.
From the very first day, the workshop intentionally cultivated a spiritual and relational atmosphere where truth-telling was not only welcomed but held with tenderness. The daily devotions led by the Cosmopolitan Affirming Community Church (CAC) were central to this. As a Kenyan queer-affirming Christian community rooted in spiritual formation, healing, and radical inclusion, CAC offered liturgies born from lived faith, struggle, and hope. Through scripture, song, prayer, testimony, and embodied storytelling, they reminded us that LGBTQIA+ persons are not peripheral to the faith, but they are theologians, liturgists, prophets, and pastors in their own right. Their leadership grounded our time together in a spirituality that was both deeply African and unapologetically queer, creating a sacred container for the courageous work ahead.
The sessions invited participants to name and hold the tensions, joys, and complexities surrounding gender and sexuality within African faith spaces. By establishing shared values of inclusion, imagination, courage, and mutual respect, we created a community of trust that allowed participants to speak vulnerably about their experiences, assumptions, hopes, and fears. This was not a space for debate but for authentic encounter and an opportunity to listen with the heart rather than defend with doctrine.
The “Mapping the Room” exercise was particularly transformative. Participants anonymously positioned themselves along a spectrum of theological, pastoral, and personal engagement with LGBTQIA+ concerns. As reflections were shared, a collective story emerged; one marked by pain caused by the church, yet also by an unquenchable longing for healing, accountability, and renewed Christian witness. This session affirmed that before we can reimagine our theology, we must first tell the truth about our wounds and the harm inflicted in the name of God.
Diving further into theological depth, tools were offered for reimagining a liberative African Christian theology of sexuality. Presentations highlighted Global South innovations in inclusive faith, illustrating that affirming theology is neither Western nor imported, but is profoundly rooted in African moral imagination, communal ethics, and spiritual traditions of hospitality, kinship, and justice. The question was not whether Africa has inclusive theological resources, but rather how we reclaim and amplify them.
A consistent theme that emerged was the essential role that decolonizing theological education plays in African churches’ confrontation of the colonial legacy that fused Christianity with patriarchy, heteronormativity, and sexual control. Participants noted that much of the harm in our churches today is a continuation of mission-era doctrines that sought to police African bodies and suppress indigenous expressions of gender and sexuality.
Reflections on pastoral presence and psychosocial care also reminded us that inclusion is not a theoretical aspiration, but it is deeply pastoral and profoundly urgent. Participants shared stories of trauma, rejection, family loss, and spiritual exile, but also of resilience, faith, and chosen community. These testimonies demonstrate that how the church responds can be a matter of life, faith, mental health, and survival.
We wrestled with what compassionate accompaniment looks like for pastors, chaplains, counsellors, and congregations within African contexts where silence, taboo, and stigma remain powerful forces. The conversation on intersectionality expanded this further, maintaining that a justice-rooted African church must confront multiple forms of marginalization, whether based on gender, sexuality, class, disability, or social location. True inclusion cannot be selective; no one must be left behind.
The workshop concluded with a shared commitment to action. Participants identified concrete steps to nurture affirming ministry, influence theological curricula, and strengthen networks of solidarity across East Africa. There was a collective sense of calling, understanding that God is inviting the African church into a more expansive Gospel, one grounded in the liberating love of Jesus, whose ministry consistently centered the marginalized, disrupted oppressive norms, and widened the circle of belonging. Our time together was not an end, but a beginning—a commissioning. It was a reminder that to love beyond borders is not merely a theological idea but a spiritual practice, a pastoral responsibility, and a public Christian witness.
—Rev. Godfrey Adera is a priest in the Anglican Church of Kenya, a theologian, and a social justice activist. He serves with the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, St. Paul’s University Chapter, as the Programs and Research Assistant. He also serves as a supporting minister in charge of Christian Education at the Cosmopolitan Affirming Community Church (CAC).
The views contained within these blogs are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of The United Church of Canada.