Halifax Rainbow Encyclopedia: First Baptist Church

First Baptist Church

In February, 2004, the FBC began talking about allowing Q folk to marry and participate in other ways in the church. This was very much at odds with the Convention of Atlantic Baptist Churches which opposed the "homosexual lifestyle" and the governments' progressive stance.

In the fall of 2005, the Convention declared that any clergy who officiated at a samesex wedding would be removed from their list of wedding officiants, and were likely to lose their accreditation.

In June, 2010, First Baptist Church voted to fully go ahead, and the next year performed the first gay wedding.

Here's a fairly detailed story (pdf, 4 pages) of the process, written by Deacon Marilyn Peers & Re. John E Boyd in 2011.1

June, 2006: Became "affirming" (that is, affirming the full inclusion LGBT folk in the church's life and ministry) by a 93% vote. Possibly influenced by music director AllenWayte. The decision leads to First Baptist leaving the membership of the Convention of Atlantic Baptist Churches.
: “It really started a couple of years before that, and largely it came about because the country was going through the process of (deciding) whether same-sex marriages were going to be legal or not,” says Rev. John Boyd, “That raised the issue of if they’re legal, what would we do. We didn’t want to be making that decision while somebody was standing on the doorstep, asking, because then it would become about them rather than about the issue.
2011: First same-sex wedding, officiated by Rev. Boyd.
2013: First Baptist is the only Canadian church to be featured in Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, a collection of Bible studies and theological reflections about how to be inclusive of members of the gay community. ISBN 0962289647 (alternate, search) 2018 Logo
2018: New logo highlights this history of inclusiveness
2021 - fall: Begins hosting QueerSpiritChurch
April 2, 2023: Cebrated the ordination of the first openly LGBT Baptist minister in Canada, Rev ArlaJohnson?. Article about it in WavyvesMagazine? in April, 2023.

Dan has a recording of Jazz Vespers conduced by Allen April 22, 2007 on minidisc.

HistoryProjectTodoList:

research the path to making that 2006 decision - the who's and when's.

Footnotes:

1. May, 2023: Marilyn Peers says, "perhaps written in 2011 or a bit later, as on page 2, I mention that our then minister, Rev John Boyd, performed the marriage of two men in our church in 2011"