The Gospel marches in Pride: Why Presbyterians, other mainline churches are marching in 2025 Pride parades

Photo: Gerald Farinas.

As Pride Month 2025 unfolds, congregations from the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the United Church of Christ (UCC), and other mainline Protestant denominations are actively participating in Pride parades across Chicagoland and beyond.

Their presence is not performative—it’s prophetic.

These churches are bearing witness to a Gospel that calls for inclusion, justice, and love for those most pushed to the margins.

And they’re doing it at a time when LGBTQ rights are under renewed attack by political powers emboldened to legislate bigotry.

The Gospel’s call to the margins

Jesus Christ lived and ministered among the outcasts: tax collectors, lepers, women, foreigners, and those society deemed “unclean.”

That’s not just a detail—it’s the defining feature of the Gospel.

And for Christians committed to following Christ’s example, it means standing beside those still marginalized today, including LGBTQ people.

The Presbyterian Church (USA), for example, has been clear in its call to “confront hate” and recognize the church’s role in past harm.

In a 2023 statement, the denomination affirmed its continued support for LGBTQ people and encouraged congregations to take part in local Pride events as “a public witness to the love of Christ” (PCUSA Office of the General Assembly).

Similarly, the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago and the ELCA Metro Chicago Synod have long marched in Pride, not just to celebrate but to repent for exclusion, to heal, and to proclaim love.

Organizations like the Chicago Coalition of Welcoming Churches, made up of mainline Protestant and progressive Christian congregations, organize joint participation in the annual Chicago Pride Parade and other LGBTQ affirming events (Chicago Coalition of Welcoming Churches).

A Christian response to anti-LGBTQ attacks

These faith communities are not just marching for celebration—they’re marching in resistance.

In 2025 alone, over 850 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in U.S. legislatures, with more than 50 already passed into law (ACLU).

These laws range from restricting drag performances and banning gender-affirming care to eliminating inclusive curriculum in schools and permitting discrimination in healthcare.

At the federal level, President Donald Trump’s administration has reinstated policies eliminating protections for transgender people in healthcare and education.

Executive Order 14168, signed earlier this year, defines gender as binary and biological, effectively rolling back Obama-era and Biden-era civil rights interpretations (Wikipedia on EO 14168).

Another order, EO 14187, ended federal support for gender-affirming care and stripped it from inclusion in public health plans (Wikipedia on EO 14187).

Moreover, conservative legal groups are preparing cases intended to reach the Supreme Court to challenge and potentially overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision that established marriage equality nationwide (Truthout).

LGBTQ families now live with the terrifying possibility that the marriages they built their lives on could be nullified overnight.

The Church’s moral and theological imperative

This moment demands more than silence or neutrality.

Mainline churches that affirm LGBTQ people are acting not out of political pressure, but Gospel necessity.

The same Gospel that calls us to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and love our neighbor also calls us to affirm the worth, dignity, and sacredness of LGBTQ people.

In Chicago and cities like it, LGBTQ youth—especially those who are transgender and BIPOC—are at elevated risk of homelessness, suicide, and violence.

Rolling back housing, healthcare, and employment protections doesn’t just hurt feelings—it ends lives.

If the Church claims to be pro-life in any meaningful, Christ-centered way, it must fight to protect these lives.

By marching in Pride, churches are not endorsing a trend—they are claiming a calling.

They are following Christ, who never waited inside temple walls for the suffering to find him. He walked into their lives, sat with them, healed them, and said, “You are loved.”

Salvation means liberation, wholeness, justice

The public witness of mainline churches in Pride parades this year is about salvation—not in the narrow sense of individual heaven-bound ticketing, but in the broad, biblical sense of liberation, wholeness, and justice.

It is a rejection of fear-based Christianity and an embrace of love without conditions.

In 2025, with LGBTQ rights hanging by a thread in statehouses, courthouses, and the White House, the need for bold Christian witness is greater than ever.

These churches are not marching because it’s easy.

They’re marching because it’s Christlike.

And that’s what the Church was always meant to be.