Please Visit CWC’s Website for More Information.

Who We Are

The Coalition of Welcoming Congregations (CWC) helps congregations to bring spirituality out of the closet by encouraging them to:
• engage in the “best practices” of inclusion for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and questioning individuals into their spiritual communities
• and engage in what we call “sacred activism”, which is to take their spiritual convictions for social justice / public witness outside the walls of their meeting space.
The aim of the CWC is to bring together religious leaders, LGBT people of faith and their allies from a wide range of religious traditions in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area to form a progressive, effective and media-savvy voice on matters relating to sexuality and religion, homophobia, and the enfranchisement of LGBT people within society as a whole. By creating a strong network of congregations and local faith communities of various religious traditions and denominations throughout the Bay Area, the CWC connects local religious leaders, religious congregations/communities, and individuals of faith who are highly motivated to act as agents of positive social change. In addition, the CWC provides a powerful tool for like-minded individuals to ally themselves with other LGBT people of faith and their allies and to make known their views in the current public debates concerning religion, sexuality, and LGBT people.

Programs

Within our membership model, we are made up of over 200 congregations in the various counties of the Bay Area that include Jewish, Buddhist and Christian communities. Our programming includes:
• partnering with Communities of Color, Mormon and Catholic people of faith to work towards the right to marry
• supporting congregations in their public witness for important causes such as immigration rights and economic justice
• encouraging clergy in their efforts to make their congregations more welcoming and inclusive to anyone who has been excluded from worship communities.