The United Church of Canada Appoints its First Black Gay General Secretary

By Neil Armstrong

Photo contributed     Rev. Michael Blair, General Secretary of The United Church of Canada

 

As of November 1, The United Church of Canada will have a new general secretary, Rev. Michael Blair, the first Black gay man to hold that office in the 95-year history of the church and to be a senior leader of any mainline denomination in Canada.

He replaces Nora Sanders, who is retiring after almost 14 years as general secretary.  Blair’s appointment by the church’s general council executive during their online meeting August 27 came after a search process that lasted 10 months. 

The role of general secretary is a permanent position, providing leadership in the direction, management, and coordination of the affairs of the church working in close collaboration with the moderator, who is elected every three years as the church’s spiritual leader and spokesperson.

 

“I feel privileged, and excited to be invited to give leadership to The United Church of Canada at this particular time in its history. I am conscious of the historic nature of my appointment,” says Blair, acknowledging that he is not the first Black man, nor person of colour to be in senior leadership in the church as the Reverend Wilbur Howard was the first Black moderator of the church.

 

Howard, who was born in Toronto on February 29, 1912, and passed away at age 89 on April 17, 2001, was elected the 26th moderator and served from 1974 to 1976.

 

 Rev. Blair is currently serving in the General Council Office, Toronto, as the executive minister, Church in Mission Unit, which maintains the relationships with overseas partners, develops faith formation resources for the church and initiates advocacy campaigns for the denomination. He has been in that role for eight years. 

 

“I have worked with Michael for 12 years. I know his deep faith and sense of call to continue the life and work of the United Church in this time, with all its complexities. He is also well known in ecumenical circles and to many of our international partners, so he brings a broad horizon of expertise to the role,” says Sanders.

Blair, who grew up in Maverley in Kingston, Jamaica, says his roots in St. Mary’s Anglican Church in that city continue to keep him grounded.

 

 

The alumnus of Calabar High School came to Canada as a young adult with his family in 1976. 

 

Prior to serving in the United Church, he was a congregational minister of Baptist churches in Toronto and St. Catharines, Ontario, a staff member with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Toronto, and as a community chaplain with the Ontario Multifaith Council’s Reintegration Program. 

In 2010, he was admitted to the United Church’s order of ministry, however, his first engagement with the church was as the executive director of the Christian Resource Centre in Regent Park in 2003, just as the process of redevelopment was beginning in the community.

 

The Regent Park United Church owned the property and decided to invest in the redevelopment. The centre now has eighty-seven units of supportive housing in addition to some community, office, and programming spaces. 

 

Blair says working with the church to imagine what that redevelopment would like kind gave him an appreciation for a church community that was willing to take risks and to invest its resources.

 

When he came into the structure of the United Church, he was hired as the executive minister of Ethnic Ministry that worked to support the ethno-cultural linguistic congregations that were part of the church. He had to reimagine what that work could be. 

 

Just prior to his coming, the church had decided that it wanted to become what it called intercultural, to work with these linguistic cultural groups that were on the outside. They were a part of the church but had their own “rhythm and weren’t necessarily fully integrated in the church,” says Blair.

 

He says his work in that process has been very helpful coming into his new role as general secretary, in terms of working with the diversity of the church community.

 

Blair was subsequently invited to reorganize the programming area of the church and became the executive minister of an integrated program involving the ethno-cultural aspects of the church – the French church as well as all the supports to congregations, working with theological schools, youth and young adults’ worship.

 

“I think that experience again enabled me to think about issues of management, leadership, and repositioning how we would do our work.”

 

He was asked to integrate both the local community expression of programmatic life of the church with the global ecumenical so then became the executive minister for Church in Mission.

 

 

Photo contributed   Left to right: Rev. Paul Tche, Christian Disciples (USA&Canada), Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson, Associate General Minister - Wider Church Ministries of the United Church of Christ in the USA (the first Jamaican to hold the office), Rev. Michael Blair, and Dr. Gail Allan, Ecumenical Officer, United Church of Canada

 

Over a 12-year period, Rev. Blair was able to provide leadership and be involved in reimagining engagement of the church, which gave him a fairly broad global perspective.

 

“I think I’m bringing to the new role a renewed sense of the United Church in the context of a global community and also bringing a justice lens because part of my oversight over the last year was the justice work of the church, also bringing the programmatic lens.”

 

 

Challenges and Opportunities 

 

Reflecting on the challenges and opportunities of the church, Blair says there is a significant challenge around finances as many of the church’s older members are struggling so at the national level the funding capacity is lower. This means the church will need to reimagine what can happen with its finances.

 

He says the United Church has a rich heritage of engagement with the society but he thinks at the local level the church has been “disconnected from the common.” He wants the church to think about how it can re-engage and connect to the communities in which the churches are located.

 

“I think this is probably true for most mainline denominations these days where we attend churches that have historic connections to us so many of us drive past three, four, different congregations of the denomination that we’re a part of to go to our particular congregation. What that means is that we’re not always attentive to what’s happening in the communities where our churches are. For me that’s a critical piece to help us think through how we engage.”

 

Blair also wants the church to think about how it can re-empower the layfolk within the church and to encourage and celebrate their ministry. 

 

It also means considering what it means to be a church in the context of the post-COVID world where “things we value, like community, is going to be harder to engage when there is not a lot of face-to-face connection.”

 

Historic First

 

He’s excited about being the first but contextualizes this by noting that for most of his life in Canada, up until 2001, his energy and passion were around ministry and the Baptist Church. 

 

However, when he came out in 2001 his marriage ended and his job in the Baptist church came to an end.

 

“There was a sense that my world as I knew it, as I imagined, and as I dreamed it, would be totally lost -- so fast forward to 19 years later and being in a position of the first Black gay general secretary really is a way of seeing that life doesn’t end, that there’s opportunity. So I think there is that sense for me of being very privileged, very excited. There’s a sense of me being very overwhelmed at the kind of expectation that that brings. Sometimes the first in the role can be a hard place and on the other hand, for me, it’s a testimony of witness to spaces where there’s still this intolerance of people who are gay or lesbian or trans.

 

“My sexuality is part of the gift of what I bring to my leadership and my experience around that, and in some ways it’s a reminder to folks who struggle to find their place that it is possible. It’s not always easy but it’s possible.”

 

In terms of his global connections, he says there were times when he was muted around his sexual identity for theological and political reasons, and sometimes safety reasons when he travelled globally.

 

“But I think it’s also for me now a way of saying to global spaces, global churches that a person’s sexual identity is not a barrier to God’s ability to use them. So I feel a sense of responsibility to be part of the struggle for justice and freedom for LGBTQ communities in religious spaces.”

 

Photo contributed     Rev. Michael Blair newly appointed General Secretary of The United Church of Canada

Blair knew he was gay from age 10 but it took him more than thirty years to be able to acknowledge and celebrate his sexuality.

 

He attributes this, in part, to growing up in church communities where he bought into the notion that the church had scripted for him that he was abnormal.

 

Rev. Blair says over the years he struggled and thought that if he did all the right things the church said he needed to do, his feelings and desires would be taken care of but they weren’t. “In some ways, it almost killed me,” he says.

 

In his spiritual journey, he discovered Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian,someone he respected as a Christian leader, whom he noted was, unfortunately, outed after his death.

 

“That was for me a gift to realize that here was somebody who I had looked up to as a spiritual mentor who was gay and it became clear to me that part of the struggle of his identity was also part of his gift, in terms of his understanding of his spirituality and that freed me in so many ways to begin a process of saying, why am I afraid of who I am and it enabled me to start a process of coming out.”

 

Blair, who is also a father of two boys, says he learned that his faith calls him to honesty, to truth telling and so it was important to own the truth of who he is, and not allow a system that is oppressive to define him.

 

Rev. Blair says he knows the church is a hard place and the interesting thing is that one of the challenges is that the church isn’t quite clear what it is that it is afraid of. “I think, theologically, part of the issue is around procreation and so the church’s opposition of the relationships of gays and lesbians and procreation is because they have bought into the narrative around creation that, in some ways, they have got some work to do.

 

“For me, owning truth, the truth of who you are is important. I think it’s also important to recognize that the text, scripture, there is no innocent reading of the text. Everybody reads their context so don’t become enslaved to a notion of a reading of the text which says you are an abomination, you’ve got to own that. 

 

“And I think the thing I would say they’re enough communities of people, church communities that acknowledge, name and celebrate our identities and to be part of those communities. It means sometimes you have to let go of places where you enjoy being that those places are soul-destroying. I know for many folks from the Caribbean and Jamaica they stay in spaces that destroy them because they like the expression of the worship or whatever it is. I think if you keep doing that in the hopes that those places are going to change, it’s only soul-killing so choose life and part of choosing life means being honest with who you are,” he advises anyone struggling with their sexual orientation and Christianity or religion. 

 

 

Being the first Black person in his new role also means that is a fairly lonely place because when Blair looks around – with the exception of the Black Church traditions, but even churches that many Black folks attend -- oftentimes the leadership is white.

 

“There’s a sense of being again the only one and that space kind of always…I don’t get a chance to just be, in a way I need to represent and I need to remind folks of who is not at the table. I need to remind folks of the kind of systemic racism that exists in faith communities causing people like me not to find places to kind of be.”

 

There are over 60 Black ministers in the United Church but the church does not have data enumerating its Black membership. Most of the ministers are serving in communities where there are no Black people.

 

Blair thinks the United Church has some work to do, in terms of how it engages Black communities, because the church has so much to offer and “sometimes people don’t engage us because they don’t know who we are, they don’t see themselves among us.”

Blair is a graduate of Ontario Bible College (now Tyndale University College and Seminary), the University of Waterloo, and Wycliffe College – University of Toronto. 

He is also an avid gardener and is passionate about cultural and equity issues.