"Lynne Gerber is "too Jewish" to join a church, she says. But when she moved to the Bay Area in 2001 to do doctoral work in religion, she went to a school where a lot of students were studying to become ministers for the LGBTQ-affirming Metropolitan Community Church. They invited her to worship-she went and became a "friend" of the church."
"A few years later, Gerber, who is now an independent scholar in San Francisco, found herself studying how churches deal with trauma and examining how MCC San Francisco handled the AIDS crisis. In the process of that research, a longtime congregant introduced her to a collection of audio recordings documenting the services and activities of the church during that time period."
"It's these 1,200 tapes that have formed the basis of When We All Get to Heaven, a 10-part narrative podcast developed over 10 years by Gerber with her production company, Eureka Street Productions, and distributed by Slate. The series features beautiful archival sound, of the choir, of course, and of the voices of MCC leaders and congregants discussing the fraught and yet necessary place of spirituality in queer life during a time of crisis. There is sadness, but there is also joy."
Lynne Gerber used a collection of 1,200 audio tapes from MCC San Francisco to create When We All Get to Heaven, a 10-part narrative podcast developed over ten years with Eureka Street Productions and distributed by Slate. The series presents archival sound—choir performances and voices of MCC leaders and congregants—examining the role of spirituality in queer life amid the AIDS crisis. Gerber's research originated during doctoral work in religion and a study of how churches manage trauma. The tapes document services and activities during that period, conveying both grief and joy and offering lessons for contemporary moments of communal suffering.
Read at Slate Magazine
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