Cleveland church’s 40-foot pride flag represents huge commitment to extravagant welcome

A wide array of colorful and creative symbols can communicate a church’s welcome for LGBTQ+ folks. At Pilgrim Congregation United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio, a 40-foot pride flag has evolved together with the congregation’s ministry for the past 25 years.

The flag was donated to the church 25 years ago by a member of a local group called Asians and Friends Cleveland. Every year since, Pilgrim has gathered a group of around 20 people that it takes to carry it through the streets of downtown Cleveland at Pride, according to the Rev. George Graham, the church’s pastor.  

“Carrying the flag every year at Pride has been a symbol of the size of Pilgrim’s welcome and commitment to the LGBTQ+ community,” Graham said. “There were not very many churches that took part in Pride in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Pilgrim wanted to show that our congregation’s welcome was extravagant and our commitment was huge!”

The flag’s creation had been inspired by other major Pride festivals that featured huge flags at the time – like a 2003 rainbow flag that stretched 1.25 miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean.  

The witness of many sewn into the fabric

As the church has evolved, so has the flag.

The flag originally displayed a very long version of the traditional pride rainbow flag. In 2024, Graham invited a longtime Pilgrim member, Nanci Adams, to make it more inclusive by adding the chevron of brown, black, pink, white, and blue of the progress pride flag.

Adams, an avid sewer and quilter, used her skills at age 83 to expand the flag’s message of welcome. She died last year. Adams had been together with her life partner, Becky Dolder, for 59 years, and they were able to legally marry in 2006, Graham said.

“Her witness is still present in the flag,” he reflected.

After Adams’ death, another Pilgrim member collected some of Adams’ remaining fabrics and sewed them into a rainbow stole for Graham.

“I just wore it for the first time to a wedding that I officiated for two women,” he said. “It was a full circle moment. I treasure both the flag and the stole.”

Draping the pulpit with pride

In 2024, the church draped the updated flag over the pulpit and chancel for a Pride worship service that was held in collaboration with the UCC National Ministries’ Love is Louder Campaign.

“We were really intentional about draping the new chevron with black, brown, pink, blue, and white over the pulpit, and then the rainbow colors flowed from them. It was a symbol of how we were attempting to center the experience of people of color, as well as trans and non-binary folx, as part of our celebration of Pride,” Graham said.

Pilgrim has continued the tradition of draping the long flag over the pulpit or balcony each June since, including during this year’s Pride worship service where several UCC pastors and leaders led the service, with guest preacher the Rev. Bentley deBardelaben-Phillips, minister and team leader for UCC Education for Faithful Action Ministries.

And this year, Pilgrim was one of many churches marching at Cleveland Pride with about 20 people who represented several churches collaborating to carry the long flag’s message of love and inclusion through the streets.  

“In recent years, the flag has been a way to invite members of other churches to have a place and role in Pride,” Graham said. “We are thankful that many, many congregations now march.”

Watch this year’s Pride worship service at Pilgrim Congregational UCC below:

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