Celebrating Black History Month | Archbishop Carl Bean
“God is love and love is for everyone.”
- Archbishop Carl Bean
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 Archbishop Carl Bean. Carl Bean founded the Unity Fellowship Church Movement, a denomination that embraced LGBTQ+ African Americans. He was also a Motown singer who sang the gay liberation song “I Was Born This Way”.
Archbishop Carl Bean was born in 1944 in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents were teenagers when Carl was born, which ultimately led to him living with neighbors he had become close with. Carl often found comfort with music and could often be found singing.
Carl ended up learning about civil rights activism by being on the Jackie Robinson Youth Council in his local NAACP chapter. He did great in school, which allowed Carl to attend Baltimore City College for music as a high school student. While doing great in various aspects of his life, he was hiding a secret life where he would have sexual encounters with men. However, his church and family did not respond well when Carl was outed by a sexual partner. This led to a time of hospitalization, in which he met a psychiatrist who helped Carl heal.
After this time of hospitalization, Carl moved back in with his biological mother for a short period of time. At the age of 16, he moved to New York to pursue a singing career. While there, he connected with renowned gospel singers and writers. This led to him touring with Calvin White and the Gospel Wonders, and then moving to Chicago so he could sing with the Alex Bradford Singers. Carl moved back to New York to work with Gospel Broadway shows. Even with all of this success, he felt something was missing.
In 1972, Carl left the Alex Bradford Singers and moved to Los Angeles, California, with nothing in his pocket. He bounced from job to job, while living in hotels. Bean then formed his own gospel music group called Carl Bean and Universal Love. It was at this point that producers at Motown found Bean and offered him a contract to sing a song that was penned by Bunny Jones, “I Was Born This Way.” It was recording this song in 1977 that affirmed Carl’s call to ministry, while he watched the song move up to #14 on the Billboard music charts. Carl turned down any remaining offers from Motown and started to study to follow his call in ministry.
Carl Bean was ordained under Archbishop William Morris O’Neil of the Christian Tabernacle Church, in 1982. Bean’s ministry, the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church, met in his home and started as a Bible study with gays and lesbians. The ministry grew over time, to the point where it became its own denomination in 1990 under the Unity Fellowship Church Movement. UFCM, at that point, became America’s first affirming and welcoming Black church for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons.
The beginning of Carl’s ministry focused on responding to Black gay men with AIDS because many were left alone due to the stigma of the disease. This led to Bean starting the Minority AIDS Project, which provides free educational and other HIV/AIDS related support services to eligible individuals regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, culture, language or other circumstances. However, it started out by focusing on the needs of African American and Latino communities when it came to AIDS support. At that time, Carl was seen as one of the few African American clergy to respond to the AIDS crisis.
Carl Bean passed away in 2021, leaving behind a legacy that has changed many lives and will continue to as time goes on. Today, the UFCM has 20 churches across the United States and the world, and the Minority AIDS Project is standing strong. We are thankful for Archbishop Carl Bean’s work and contributions to the LGBTQ+ community, and we celebrate all of who he was today!
