Today In Black LGBTQ+ History: BISHOP YVETTE FLUNDER

TODAY IN BLACK LGBTQ+ HISTORY, we celebrate Bishop Ivette Flunder, who in 1991, she founded the City of Refuge under the United Church of Christ, "in order to unite a gospel ministry with a social ministry". She describes the City of Refuge UCC as an effort to "create a spiritual community that will embrace our collective cultures, faith paths, gender expressions, and sexual/affectional orientations while simultaneously freeing us from oppressive theologies that subjugate women, denigrate the LGBT community, and disconnect us from justice issues locally and globally". In 2000, she founded the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries a multi-denominational fellowship of 110 primarily African American Christian leaders and laity representing 56 churches and faith- based organizations from all parts of the United States Mexico and Africa and in June 2003 Bishop Flunder was consecrated Presiding Bishop. Responding to the needs of the AIDS epidemic, Bishop Flunder and her staff opened Hazard-Ashley House and Walker House in Oakland and Restoration House in San Francisco through the Ark of Refuge, Inc., a non-profit agency which provides housing, direct services, education and training for persons affected by HIV/AIDS in the Bay Area, throughout the USA and in three countries in Africa. Flunder earned an undergraduate degree from College of San Mateo. She then went on to receive a Certificate of Ministry Studies and a Master of Arts in 1997 from the Pacific School of Religion, before earning her Doctor of Ministry degree from the San Francisco Theological Seminary in 2001.