Celebrating Black History Month | Rev. Bertram Johnson
“I can hold the complexities of being Black and queer and a pastor and know that I’m whole and accepted in all of it.”
- Rev. Bertram Johnson
As a part of Black History Month, we're highlighting Black LGBTQ+ Faith Leaders from throughout Black history. This week, we're celebrating and highlighting Rev. Bertram Johnson who is the first openly gay African American to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America (PC(USA)).
Rev. Bertram Johnson grew up in the Baptist tradition in Northeast Florida, and that faith served as a cornerstone not only in his family but in his community as well. The community was pretty conservative—politically and theologically—which only led Bertram to hear messages that painted being gay as bad.
Bertram felt a call in his life to engage in ministry in high school, and that grew while he was in college. It was in college that Bertram joined the Presbyterian Church. He graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996 and earned his Master of Social Work from Rutgers University in 1997. At that time, he felt like he could not be a pastor because of his identity; his journey towards ordination was intertwined with his coming-out process. His journey of self acceptance and embracing that he was a beloved child of God was a long one. However, as he came to know his true self, the lack of support in certain parts of his life seemed not to matter as much. Bertram came to the conclusion that if the church could not embrace him fully, then he should not be there. It was then that he started to give up on the idea of a call to ministry.
Time went on, and in 2011, the polity in the PC(USA) changed to allow LGBTQ+ individuals to be ordained. However, it wasn’t until three years later, in 2014, that Bertram was ordained as the first openly gay African American in the denomination after he spent three years of personal discernment. Bertram knew there would be challenges if he were to step forward into the ordination process again, but he relied on God to lead him through.
Collectively, he has worked for more than two decades in churches and nonprofits in roles focused on social justice, public health, and spiritual care. He has been a hospital chaplain working with cancer patients, directed programs for people living with HIV/AIDS, and worked in HIV/AIDS research education on a national level.
Currently, Rev. Johnson is serving as a chaplain at Union Theological Seminary in New York and works as a therapist at a small psychotherapy practice. He is also a member of the NEXT Church Strategy Team and was one of the eight coauthors of The Sarasota Statement. This is a confessional statement that was released in 2017 and updated in 2020 in response to the current state of the world.
We are thankful for Rev. Bertram Johnson’s work and contributions to the LGBTQ+ community, and we celebrate all of who he is today!
