Queer Youth of Faith Day Calls the Church from Welcome to Witness

Across The United Church of Canada and beyond, queer youth of faith are offering powerful witness to what it means to live courageously, faithfully, and fully. As we mark the annual Queer Youth of Faith Day on June 30, young queer people are sharing inspiring testimonies of resilience, belonging, and hope, calling the church into deeper truth, wider welcome, and bolder action.

At the heart of this year’s reflections are the voices of six queer youth of faith, who share how they encounter love and belonging in their faith, as well as areas where faith communities still have to put in work to become spaces of genuine safety, joy, and flourishing for all.

From prayer circles to peer support networks, Lucy, Heilike, Shane, Adesanya, Clinton, and Wren share how they are actively creating spaces where spirituality and identity are not in conflict but in conversation. Through their stories, they speak about what it means to gather and experience faith as life-giving rather than harmful.

Their message is also deeply pastoral, as they call for recognition of the complex, lived dualities that queer youth carry—faith and identity, joy and pain, belonging and exclusion—and for churches to respond with compassion, courage, and action.

From Affirmation to Action

This Queer Youth of Faith Day, we invite congregations to embrace these complexities and build communities that hold space for celebration, lament, joy, questioning, and belonging.

A key focus for United Church communities of faith is to move from words to lived commitments. We invite you to respond to the youth through a Faithful Futures Commitment Card—a simple but powerful tool for congregational reflection and action.

Used in worship or community gatherings, the card serves as both a declaration and an accountability tool to help embody affirming values in everyday practice. We also invite you to share youth stories and reflections within your community, and to speak publicly in support of queer youth’s dignity and rights. More resources can be found on our Youth and Young Adult Ministry webpage and on the Beloved Arise site.

The queer youth participants in the above video were Lucy Barreto, Heilike Philippsen Mog (both of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil), The Rev. Shane Goldie, Ordained Minister (St. Andrews United Church, Spruce Grove, Alberta), Adesanya Oluwatunmise, Clinton Asarfo-Adjei (both of Kitchissippi United Church, Ottawa), and Wren (Royal City Mission Church, Guelph).