The Rev. Elder Freda Smith is the former Vice-Moderator of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches; a political activist in California; and an advocate for women’s and minority concerns. Rev. Elder Freda Smith entered the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1971. Rev. Freda is widely known for her tireless advocacy and concern for GLBTI and minority rights.  Read her first-hand account of ministry in Metropolitan Community Churches here!

(Summary taken in part from www.revelderfredasmithmcc.com)

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Oral History

Rev. Elder Freda Smith

Where is the place you call home?
 Sutter Creek, California.

If you have a life-partner or spouse, do you wish to name him/her?
 I sure would love to:  Kathleen

And do you celebrate an anniversary?
 We definitely cele-…we celebrate 2 anniversaries.

Would you like to give us those dates?
 OK, we met on September 7, 1974 and we had our Holy Union on April 13, 1975.

OK, now did you grow up “in church?”
 I definitely grew up in church.

What denomination?
 OK, I grew up…my early years I grew up in the Nazarene Church.  My great-grandmother was a Nazarene preacher and I was first taken to church when I was two weeks old.  We had church in the church; we had church at home.  And then as a teenager I changed my membership to the Salvation Army—my great-grandmother died—and I was in training to become an officer in the Salvation Army. 

When did you first discover Metropolitan Community Church?
 I discovered Metropolitan Community Church in 1971.  It was the…the day was the Los Angeles earthquake and Joseph Gilbert had come up from San Diego and was on the radio.  And I heard on the radio that there was a church where you could be gay and Christian, and it just bowled me over.

Could you please describe that first visit?
 [Laughs] I certainly could…it was 1971…we…Joseph gave his address and it was his little, tiny apartment in downtown Sacramento.  And we went in and there was probably 6 or 7 of us and the little apartment was so small… It had a little room that had a little, tiny bed—a single bed—in it, and then it had a little hallway and it had a kitchen, that’s all.  And we sat on the little, tiny bed in Joe Gilbert’s apartment and…we had church… He told us about Metropolitan Community Church; he told us about Troy; and then he led us into the kitchen to have communion because Joseph had been Episcopalian.  But I had been Salvation Army where we didn’t take communion, so that scared me to death and I backed right out of the kitchen. 

What church would you call your “home church” now?
 Sacramento Metropolitan Community Church

Who preached a sermon that you’ll never forget?
 Well, I’d say that Rev. Troy Perry preached a number of sermons I’ll never forget, but probably the first time I ever heard Troy—and I don’t know what the title would be—but Troy was phenomenal…I couldn’t even believe it.
Do you remember where you were when you heard it?
 Yes, we were…I was in the Los Angeles “Mother Church” at 22nd and Union; it was the 1971 General Conference.

Who influenced you the most in MCC?
 Oh, Troy… Troy, definitely.

What do you like best about your MCC in Sacramento?
 Well, MCC Sacramento is my home church.  I first attended before it was ever chartered—it wasn’t chartered until General Conference of 1971.  I attended it from the very first meeting, from the very I heard about it.  I was a deacon in MCC Sacramento; I was a…became an exhorter in MCC Sacramento; I became licensed in MCC Sacramento; I became the assistant pastor in MCC Sacramento; I became the pastor for 33 years in Sacramento; I retired as pastor after 33 years in Sacramento; and now I’m a member of Sacramento MCC. 

What do you like best about the movement, ministry and community of MCC?
 I love, I absolutely love the ministry of MCC.  I believe we’re the new Reformation of the Christian Church.  I believe that we have already so profoundly influenced Christian Churches around the world that we have made an enormous contribution:  women in ministry, inclusive language, social action … incredible.  But we have much farther to go so it, its…we are the new Reformation of the Christian Church.  And the most exciting church since the Book of Acts!

What was the moment that you really felt, if you can pick out one or two, the most proud to be a member of MCC?
 Oh, there are so many.  I used to…I’d go to conferences and the tears—I’m very emotional—tears just stream down my face.  Everything that we accomplished, everything from (unintelligible).  Probably some memorable things would be the marches on Washington, our worship services at the Lincoln Center [Lincoln Memorial]  We did the service at the National Council of Churches and Nancy and I celebrated communion—first time that they’d had women celebrating communion in the National Council of Churches—first time the National Council of Churches memebers took communion together because they couldn’t agree on how to do it.  We just did it; they came.

Do you know how many General Conferences you have attended?
 I do.  All but the first one.

Wow, and what is your favorite thing about General Conference?
 Oh, the people.  The people…the Holy Spirit…just being there and being a part of this incredible Church.

You spoke earlier about the Inclusive Language Project; would you like to talk a little more about that and what it was like during that time?
 Well, absolutely.  Well I was elected, ordained and elected to the Board of Elders in 1973, that was the third General Conference; and at that Conference all of the bylaws had only male language.  Actually the ministers were all male…the deacons, exhorters…the bylaws used “he” all the way through.  At the 1973 conference was where I stood up and made the motion, all the way through to change the “he”s to “he”s and “she”s so that there wasn’t any office in Metropolitan Community Church that could possibly be closed to women.  And that was the very first inclusive language we did was 1973 in the Bylaws.   1974, after I was elected to the Board of Elders, we built—we developed—a Women’s Commission that at the 1974 General Conference we brought a proposal that outlined language as being one of the big barriers to the full participation of women.  That was 1974.  From 1974 all the way to 1981 we were struggling.  In 1981, then the Directive on Inclusive Language was passed at General Conference.  It was a very, very contentious General Conference, but because it was…language is very charged, very emotionally charged…and it was not at all easy to get people to believe that language was as powerful as it is. 

What do you remember about the movement for the ordination of women as well as the ordination of people of color?
 Well, actually that was the 1973 General Conference was really moving for…first we had to look at the Bylaws.  As long as the Bylaws…as long Metropolitan Community Church was seen as “the Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of God,” and the word “he” meant men and women unless it was on…or it only meant men…until we could do that the door was really …it wasn’t exactly closed but it was consistent with other churches, some of whom—oh say, like the Baptist Church—wouldn’t allow women to learn to preach.  The Catholic Church won’t allow women to touch communion.  (Unintelligible)  So the ordination of women…to open that door was really changing the language of the Bylaws.

And people of color, too.  I mean, it all went together.  Soon as you start working toward liberation, as soon as you start working toward looking at the way that language holds people back, customs hold people back, then you open the door to say, “None of us are free until all of us are free.”  You know that liberation is not changing the gender or the color or the class of the person on top; it’s a whole, new revolution.

What do you remember about the first Children’s Ministry within your MCC or within…?
 Oh, we started out with children almost immediately.  I raised a boy and he was 7 years old when we started going to the church at Joe Gilbert’s home.  And so we in Sacramento always had a children’s ministry with children’s sermons and then ultimately Sunday school…and really…really encouraging families.  MCC has a kind of mixed sort of a ministry in that the lesbian and gay community…a lot of people who are lesbian and gay leave home and go to the “big city”—whatever that is: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas—and a lot of gay and lesbian people stay home.  And they’ve got their mothers, their fathers, their sisters, their brothers, their pets and children (laughs)…and if we’re here in a home, say like Sacramento, nobody who really wanted to be gay stayed in Sacramento.  It was very, very, very (laughs)…uh, restrictive, being the capitol city in California.  If fact when I first came to Sacramento there wasn’t even a gay bar there.  So what we had is…we had a congregation that’s largely made up of people who were very involved in their families.  So from the very first we had a number of children.  Now if you were, say in a big city, there aren’t as many children, at least at that time.  You know, it was before gay people started adopting children in the number that they do—or even, praise God, having children.

What do you remember about MCC’s ministry during the AIDS pandemic?
 Oh (sighs) I remember is so vividly.  In fact, I’m going to be speaking at the AIDS breakfast on Thursday, and I’m going to be recounting—given the time that I have—about the AIDS Ministry.  What I can say is that for the 20 years that we went through the AIDS crisis, AIDS took many of us; everything we had.  Yeah, everything that we had—all that we had—all of our attention, all of our time, all of our heart, all of our spirit; it was…I can’t imagine another community in modern times that went through what we did as a Church during the 20 years of the AIDS epidemic.

Is there any other history or memories or things that you would like to be included or that you would like to share?
 Well…I would have to look at have to look at things specifically to be able to do that.  As I said, I think that MCC is so…such a miracle.  I really believe that in years to come, people are going to look back at MCC—they’re gonna look back in a historical perspective—to look at the time when MCC started, to look at how impossible the whole idea of there being a church such as this, how totally impossible it was.  In fact, I’ve got the early record called, a phonograph record, called “One God” where Willie Smith sings “The Impossible Dream.”  It was absolutely impossible for a church such as this to exist; and, but we did.  We went on.  It was impossible.  Then it was improbable.  Then it was inevitable.  And now, look at it out there; I really can’t (laughs)…I couldn’t get to the front to register.  I probably won’t get to the front of the line until this afternoon.

Do you remember anything about the fires within MCC?
 I remember about the fire whenever 22nd and Union burned; I remember with New Orleans because we, as the Board of Elders, were very involved with the New Orleans fire.  Our church in Sacramento was burned.  The San Francisco church, I remember the San Francisco church…all this time, during these times, I was on the Board of Elders.  The Board of Elders…used to be a set of regions the way we have it now…they were “hands on” across the denomination, so we were involved in all of the aftermath of the fires. 

You spoke of the breakdown of the Elders; can you talk a little bit about the restructuring from Districts to Regions?
 Well, it was a long time.  When I became an Elder, well, when Metropolitan Community Church was first founded, there were four Elders.  When I was elected in ’73 the Board of Elders was expanded from four to seven, and I was elected as one of the Elders.  And then it wasn’t until…well, the Board of Elders then were the…kind of…the ones who carried out the Bylaws in-between General Conferences.  General Conferences used to last a whole…I mean, business lasted a whole week.  The floor, the delegates, did all of the business at Conference, and then when they left Conference we had the Reports and the Directives and the Minutes…The Board of Elders was to carry out what needed to be done at a Fellowship level for all of the…for the Bylaws.  So the Board of Elders met three or four times a year, and during, and other times I trav—I travelled a lot, travelling to different churches.  So we were sort of ministering to churches.  We had District Coordinators who were elected in the Districts—we had seven Districts.  And so the District Coordinators were elected in the Districts, and the District Coordinators, at first, the District Coordinators with the clergy of the District, they oversaw the District.  So they were kind of middle-management, but nobody was paid.  And it was all…and we had District Conferences.

Then after, I’d say, probably in the 80s, it became just unworkable.  So we had a movement to get paid District Coordinators, so that the District Coordinators became more of a governing body.  Before that it was just, we met for comity and to do business, but the District Coordinators became a governing body.

Then after that, the next step up was to develop a General Council which made up of all the District Coordinators which met with the Board of Elders.  But then we decided that we needed lay people because it was too top-heavy with clergy, so we added the Lay Representative to the District Coordinators and with the Board of Elders all meeting together as a General Council.

And then (laughs) we kept growing…see, we kept reinventing ourselves because our government always grew out of the needs of the Body.  The Body was growing faster than our government could grow.  But then we would have needs because of the way we grew.  And so then we’d go back to General Conference and we’d address those needs.

Finally though, we got to such a point that we decided—after a study that went on throughout the whole denomination—we decided we had to throw it all out.  So back to the drawing board and say, “OK, we can’t do it this way anymore, and what are we gonna do now?”  So that’s when we started to get the Regions, but we had, we didn’t have the Regional Elders yet and that came later that they became Regional Elders.  Before that you had a District Coordinator and a District Committee, so…to govern the Districts.

So now we are at the point that we have a structure that works between Conferences and isn’t just seven people who are on the Board of Elders.  It isn’t just a General Council—it’s an administrator, it’s very, very, very diverse.  And it carries out the business so at this Conference when we have three hours of business, as opposed to seven days of business…?  So, the General Conference could not function, as large as we are, in the way that it functioned before we reconstructed the denomination.

But we will continue!   If this government doesn’t work for us, we’ll just vote it out…you’d be surprised.  You do a little bit of groundwork…go out to the churches and say, “Is this working for us?” and the people say, “Oh, no; it’s not working for us.  Da-da-da-da.”  And so then there becomes…you know, “OK, this doesn’t work.  What would do better?”  Put it place; live with it.  But we aren’t beholden to any structure; I mean, this church is going to work no matter what the structure is. 

Can you talk about your personal experience as an Elder?
 I sure can.  (Laughs)  As I said, as a teenager when I converted to the Salvation Army—which is…a lot of people in the United States don’t understand that it’s a Christian Church, but it’s a very evangelical Christian Church—like I said, it’s like Nazarenes in uniform—but it’s very hierarchical; it’s very “top-down,” very, very, very “top-down.”  MCC was never…it never probably will be as “top-down.”  But, you have the Commissioners—you have a General, who’s always in London—and you have Commissioners.  And Commissioners then tell every Officer in the entire denomination where they’re going to be and there isn’t any say-so.  So I came into MCC out of the Salvation Army; so the Board of Elders was oh, my goodness…the Commissioners and the General and you know…I just…it was…I  saw everything just in a hierarchical sense okay, by the 2nd Conference, where I was.

But see, the Salvation Army commissioned women and women preached.  So I knew, I knew.  And so when I came in, because there were so few women and I had a chance to speak to the Conference; and I remember in the 1973 Clergy Conference that we had in Atlanta, I looked out at the men—they were almost all men there—and I said, you know, “this is the way it is.”  You know, all men, almost all men, but this is not the way it’s supposed to be and this is not the way that it’s going to be.  I said, “We’re going to have women in the Ministry.”

And then in 1973 as we changed the Bylaws, which was the big barrier, we changed the Bylaws and then on the floor of the Conference, when the Elders’ Nomination Committee came in, someone nominated me to be Elder.  Scared me to death…Because I saw this hierarchy…(whispers, as if to self) ”Elder, I can’t be Elder!”  But see, I’d just been saying that women have to be in every place.  You know, “you’ve gotta have…” and here it is.  “Will you accept the nomination?” Troy said.  I almost died when he said, “…the nomination.”  But I felt I had to because I was the only one.  So I said, “Yes, I’ll accept the nomination.”  So they had the vote, and I was elected.  “Oh my goodness, what am I going to do?”

So we went back into a back room—the Board of Elders there in Atlanta—and there were 7 of us.  It had…the Board of Elders had expanded from 4 to 7, so in order to keep the terms even they drew lots.  And they had three 3-year terms, three 2-year terms…3-years, 2-years…and one 1-year term.  So I just prayed real fast and said, “Oh God, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”  So I reached and I drew it and I picked it out and it was the 1-year term.  And I thought, Whew! because if I’m supposed to be here…it was like, please, if I’m supposed to be here, I will be elected at the next Conference.  If I’m not, then someone else, you know, will carry on.  But I thought is was of God that I had the 1-year.  So then, as I said, we organized the Commission on Women and we got our report on wanting to have inclusive language, and we went into San Francisco and that year I was elected to a 3-year term.  And then I was continuously elected til I served 20 years as a member of the Board of Elders.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about that experience?
Um…well, I traveled a lot.  I was able to, at one point in time, to visit every church that we had in the denomination at that time.  I got to know the clergy very well, very close—many times staying in the homes.  Definitely being part of the churches, being part of the churches’ celebrations as they were chartered, as they had anniversaries.  And so I knew the people so well.

And I think I’d like to go back really quickly to AIDS because I’d really like to say something here that I’m going to say at the AIDS breakfast.  But we lost, we lost about one-third of our male clergy to AIDS.  We lost two Elders—Rev. Elder Jim Sandmire, we lost Michael Manks, the first lay Elder that was elected—we lost, as I said, one-third of the clergy…I’ll bring this up at the AIDS breakfast.  We not only lost one-third of the male clergy, but we lost probably at least a third of the male clergy who would have been coming up to be licensed.  So when we look out here at this Conference we can imagine…if we had all the men that we lost in the Clergy House…probably about half of our men are gone.

And when I speak at the AIDS breakfast I’m going to use that passage from Hebrews 12: 2 that says since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witness, let’s set aside the weights that so easily beset us and run with patience the race before us.  The AIDS crisis involved, again like I said, everything that we had.  At the AIDS breakfast I’m going to bring up some names.  Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter in the Bible, tells about the heroes of the faith, and I think that we need to name our heroes of the faith.  I think that if we’re not careful a whole chapter, that is a defining chapter of our denomination, I think if we don’t name the names, if we don’t say, “this is what we went through, this is what it was like,” if we don’t do that, we’re going to lose that.  We’re going to be almost just like any other church, and believe me, we’re not just any other church.

We’re not just any other church…we’ve been through the refiner’s fire.  We’ve got our heroes; we’re surrounded by them.  And this Conference, I think, because time is passing, this is so important—this oral project—because time is passing. We’re losing the people, not because they left the Fellowship, we’ve got people here that I’ve already run into, that I’ve said, that I met at the 2nd General Conference of this denomination.  But people like Joseph Gilbert, who got me into the denomination, died this year.  Every year there’s fewer and fewer and we need…this is probably the most important thing that will happen at this Conference, and it’s not because you’re interviewing me.  You know, I’m just one of hundreds of people, but I have a voice and we’ve got to get those voices.  We’ve got to say, “this is a church that was an impossible church,” that we lived in a magic time; we way mountains move, we saw barriers fall.  We went through probably the greatest health crisis, the greatest ministry crisis of any church in modern times.  We came out of it stronger, but we owe that memory to our denomination.

What do you remember about the transgender movement in MCC?
 Aahh…I ran into Sky Anderson.  Sky probably was the first clergy person in our denomination that I met that said, “I’m transgender.”  She said…she was not Sky then, she was Heather…she was in the clergy and she went to San Jose, she was licensed in San Jose, and she said, “You know, I’ve never been comfortable in this gender.  This is not who I am.” She said, “I want to put myself together and I’m going to be male.”  So fine…like I said I just ran into Sky.  So Sky started taking the hormones and everything like that.

(Laughs) I’ve just run into Sky:  he told me, he said he could always remember me talking to him (laughs) and I told him to raise a beard ‘cause he still looked like Heather.  And that..(unintelligible)…he’s very…he looks like Sky now.  But from Sky on actually I’ve known just such a large number of people who this church gave the opportunity.  And our clergy…I mean we didn’t say, “No, Sky, you can’t be (unintelligible) that…a lot of churches maybe today, maybe today the churches would; back then you know it would not have happened.  So we have been able to be part of really encouraging people to be who they really are and not to be afraid.

Is there anything else you’d like to have included?
Well, not right now.  I really, what I want is I really want lots of stories, I want lots of people.  I want people to understand how important this is.  Oh yeah, one other thing I’d like to do—see, don’t give me an opening.  That’s the problem with preachers, don’t’ give preachers and opening, they jump in it.

But right now where we are, the printed word is giving way to cyberspace.  Even…anyway, the printed word just almost doesn’t exist.  I did a Google search for Michael Mank, our first lay Elder; I could find nothing on an advanced Google search that had anything about Michael Mank.  The truth is that if we’re not on Wikipedia, if we’re not on Google, if we’re not on You Tube, pretty soon that whole history is not going to be available.  People are not going to be going to libraries and looking up reference books.  So we have this opportunity right here—we have this opportunity right here—to record and to put into every type of media so that we can reach out to every conceivable person with the good news about this denomination.  And if we don’t get it in cyberspace, if we don’t get it out of the printed page, we won’t have it.

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